Undying King

Necromancers in Aiaos find more notoriety than fame and enjoy little in the way of community within their art, but one figure is widely recognised, revered and feared. Whether, as his legend goes, the Undying King was truly the first mortal necromancer, or simply the first to achieve great power, all serious necromancers know of his legacy. He was said to have been the teacher the Archlich of Zeras and an enemy of the God-Queen of the Holy Kingdom, a patron of necromancers and a rival of Gods.
Few respectable sources speak of the Undying King, but the deeds spoken of in forbidden necromantic texts often appear in distorted forms in myth and folklore, attributed to a dozen names or more: The One-Eyed, Hand of Doom, Sixfinger, Wraithlord, King Under the Barrow, Baleful Gaze, Breathstealer, Lich King, and Demigod of the Undead.
Even the forbidden sources do not speak of the King's given or secret name, but often give him the magi's name of Caven. This Caven, these tales say, sought for the secret of life and death in the primitive study of necromancy. He was a prince of his people, but no story names those people or tells of their fate. Little is certain until, by no means ever described, he came to Thosis with a staff of twisted yew and a rudimentary knowledge of animating formulae.
Impressing Zerak and Sharn with his raw talent and drive, Caven became their apprentice, learning all that they had to teach. They proved less quick to learn, however, never considering Caven anything more than a clever pet. They never expected a thing when their mortal prodigy lured them into an outlying manor of Thosis and cut it loose. The manor, having lost its own bouancy, dropped to the plains north of the Great Delta.
Descending, Caven made sure his mentors were truly dead, then defiled their already broken bodies by raising them to a less sophisticated state of undeath, and using them to fashion the rubble into a great tower of grim aspect. When it was done, he served the hand from Zerak's left arm, and gouged the right eye from Sharn's skull, before sealing them into the foundations.
Caven then cut off his own hand, and cut out his own eye, replacing them with those he had stolen from the Titans. He named the tower, with dark humour, the Tower of Zerak- Sharn, and made it the centre of his dominion.
For a century, he dominated the Great Delta, an undead cohort keeping the Regime at bay as he taught a series of apprentices while advancing his own stills. All the while, he sought out Celestials, using powerful spells to overpower them and cannibalise their perfect body parts to replace his own decaying flesh.
Dubbing himself the Undying King, Caven was unwilling to rest on his decaying laurels. The knowledge that other beings exceeded his power gnawed at him, as insidious as the decay that ate at his body. To escape from both, he stole parts from the bodies of other powerful beings and grafted them to his own to increase his strength. To the hand and eye he took from his mentors he added dragon's claws, roc feathers and giant bones, but none of that was enough for him. He decided that, in order to halt his decomposition entirely and to realise his true potential, he would have to become the god of undeath.
As the original student of Zerak and Sharn, Caven felt cheated that ultimate power over undeath fell to another. He despised Tropos, persecuted eir cult and coveted eir power. He despoiled shrines to the Bone Dragon, plundering the Necrosis that pooled in them. At last, he tracked down and destroyed one of Tropos' undead siblings, making a terrible mask from Ramad's skull and binding eir bones around his yew staff.
With this power, Caven launched his campaign to challenge Tropos for the mantle of the god of undeath. He led a great army to the sanctum of the Bone Dragon, deep in the Grim Plain adjacent to the Empty Quarter of Suto, and strove to seize its hallows. At the last, however, he was overthrown and cast down, and while he was able to transcend his ruined physical form, he was ejected from the sanctum, his own treasures scattered in the hands of his surviving followers.
Caven survives as a demigod, nigh immortal but not yet divine. His hallows fall into the World, and seek ever to be reunited and to lead their holders into a quest to complete the Ascension of the Undying king.

Hallows of the Undying thing

• The Hand of Zarek
• The Eye of Sharn
• The Mask of Sorrows
• The Dragonbone Staff
• The Book of Caven

Secrets of the Undying King - not for players