Alyxian
Apotheon Alyxian
Originally a great human hero of the early calamity, he served three gods - Sehanine the Moon Weaver, Avandra the Change Bringer, and Corellon the Arch Heart.
With divine favor, he grew so powerful that he became a demigod, earning the title of Apotheon.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
The Rise and Fall of the Apotheon
Near the beginning the Calamity, Alyxian was born in the lands of Wildemount, the seat of the Betrayer Gods’ power, beneath the full light of Ruidus. He was said to be cursed from birth and was viewed with suspicion by all around him, except for his parents. As a young man, he sought to defy his fate and distinguish himself on the field of battle. Alyxian found himself embroiled in the most vicious battles of the war. He fought selflessly and begged the Prime Deities to help him protect the innocent people caught up in their war. Thrice he asked, and thrice they answered, granting him greater and greater power. He was more than a champion of the gods; he had become the Apotheon—a noble warrior so suffused with divine energy that he was halfway to godhood himself. In those times, he wore a gods-gifted amulet known as the Jewel of Three Prayers as a symbol of his divine covenants.
Eventually, the war brought the Apotheon to the great jungle city now known as Cael Morrow, a utopian domain of elves and orcs. These orcs were the first generation of their kind, who had been transformed by the spilled blood of Gruumsh the Ruiner. Although fear had reigned for a short time after the transformation, the two peoples soon realized they were still kin. The city was the jewel of the lush and verdant continent of Marquet, and its people gave thanks daily to Corellon the Arch Heart for their protection.
The Ruiner despised the Arch Heart and swore to annihilate Cael Morrow and all of Marquet with a single stroke of his spear. He strode into the center of the city, smiting all who dared raise a blade against him. When he reached the city’s heart, Gruumsh raised his spear to strike the earth with cataclysmic force—but his blow was intercepted by the Apotheon at the last possible second.
The Apotheon’s intervention kept Gruumsh from annihilating all life on Marquet, but the force of his spear thrust still brought the lands of Marquet to ruin. Fire raged across the lush jungle, turning verdant beauty into blasted desert, and Cael Morrow was shunted deep into the earth. Towers toppled, stone crumbled, and all trace of the great civilization was wiped from the face of Exandria.
In that moment of destruction and death, the Apotheon’s connection to Ruidus flared to life. A rift was torn between worlds, in which alien energy from an unknown realm and the waters of Cael Morrow’s oasis mingled to produce a lightless realm of water and strange magic. There, in what came to be known as the Netherdeep, the Apotheon has been trapped for untold ages, consumed with sadness, furious over his defeat, and yearning for his freedom.
In time, the immortal Apotheon fell into a long and troubled slumber. In his dreams, the barren caverns of the Netherdeep began to shift. His memories filled the darkness, and a cocoon of melancholy formed around his body. From this Heart of Despair emerged a crimson element that embodied the Apotheon’s power. It spread, growing and crystallizing as it moved, until all of the Netherdeep was suffused with its power.
The Apotheon Awakens
Centuries have passed since the Calamity, and life has returned to the desert lands of Marquet. A grand city called Ank’Harel has been built around a desert oasis. Little did its founders know that the water of their oasis originated in the Netherdeep, and that beneath the new desert metropolis was an underwater cavern holding the ruined city of Cael Morrow.
A new form of conflict entered the story when the Allegiance of Allsight, an influential group of academics in Ank’Harel, discovered a strange mineral in the sunken ruins beneath their city. This substance—a slick, oily stone veined with blood-like streaks—possessed unknown magical properties. The Allegiance tried to keep its discovery secret, but the news soon attracted the attention of a rival faction.
The Consortium of the Vermilion Dream—a secret occult society obsessed with the magic of the Moon of Ill Omen, Ruidus—heard a rumor about the discovery of this mineral. Consortium agents broke into the Allegiance of Allsight’s excavation site in Cael Morrow and learned about the discovery firsthand. They dubbed the mineral “ruidium,” because its red veins and its mysteriousness reminded them of the light and power of Ruidus.
The consortium continued sneaking into the excavation, hunting further deposits of the mineral, and discovered a planar rift within the ruins. One of their agents succeeded in getting inside the rift—and when that agent returned, she claimed that she had entered a dark, underwater realm where the walls themselves were veined with ruidium. She managed to recover a sample and escape before the water’s intense pressure crushed her body.
When that sample of ruidium was torn from the Netherdeep, the shock of the extraction roused the dormant Apotheon from his slumber. All at once, centuries of accumulated grief crashed down upon him, and the Netherdeep roared with the strength of his tempestuous emotions.
The power that flows from the Apotheon is no longer truly his own. Try as he might to hang on to the memory of the hero he once was, he is driven entirely by his tortured emotions. Throughout his centuries of isolation, the dormant, dreaming Alyxian had hoped for someone to find and rescue him. But when mortals discovered him, they seemed interested only in stealing his power for themselves. The furious Apotheon tapped into the alien nature of the Netherdeep to cause ruidium to slowly corrupt all who hold it.
Alyxian beseeched the three gods he had prayed to in ancient times—Sehanine the Moon Weaver, Avandra the Change Bringer, and Corellon the Arch Heart—to send heroes to save him. Despite being sealed behind the Divine Gate, the gods were able to propel the Jewel of Three Prayers to a site where Alyxian once beseeched the Moon Weaver for aid long ago. The jewel materialized within a sunken temple in the Emerald Gulch near Jigow, and the gods hoped that a good-hearted band of heroes would find it, learn of the Apotheon’s plight, and rescue their tortured champion. The Jewel of Three Prayers is currently dormant, waiting to be awakened by a determined hero.
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