The Archmage
INVOLVEMENT WITH THE VIGILANTES
The Archmage is a questionable and frightening character with an affinity for necromancy, first encountered by the spunky young A**hole Vigilantes while they were still in their rebellious phase, doing a murder-hobo tour around the Atryan countryside. They sought him out within his magical college at Winterhold, in search of some particular magical items. Sensing their vigor and lust for blood and power, he struck them a bargain: he would put each member through a small trial to test their mettle, and if he deemed them worthy, he would add them to the ranks of his rebellion to overthrow the King of Atrya - codenamed "Long Live the King". The Vigilantes agreed to participate in these trials, not because they particularly wanted to overthrow the king - indeed, they knew jack shit about him - but instead, because they recognized the power the archmage held and were wary of angering him.
The Vigilantes passed the Trials of the Archmage with varying degrees of success - notably, the archmage was unhappy with Vanessa's performance, and refused to honor her with a rank, though Bigs passed his with flying colors and was granted ownership of the ship with which he'd performed - the Queen Anne's Revenge. As their final test, he sent the fledgling rebels on their first mission - to overtake a fort near Winterhold, as its kingly loyalists threatened the autonomy of his city and rebellion. The raid went swimmingly, and the archmage threw a celebratory dinner to officially welcome the Vigilantes into his ranks. At said dinner, Vanessa absentmindedly discovered that all of the furniture and utensils in the dining hall were imbued with human souls, screaming to be set free. Though she and Morpheus were incredibly off-put by this discovery, Crass couldn't be bothered, and the matter was eventually dropped.
The archmage presented a few minor illusionists to the party at Crass's request to aid them in their heist of the Saracen bank. He also employed the party to eliminate his own brother, whom the party defeated, and - somewhat unintentionally - trapped in Bigs's ring of mind shielding. For the most part, however, the archmage left the Vigilantes to their own devices, and they him.
After some time, the archmage reached out to the Vigilantes once more - he needed them to retrieve three 'keys' and bring them back to the newly-conquered fort for a ritual he had planned. The first two keys were relatively inconsequential, but the third was, in fact, a person - a lovable if unstable little girl innocently named Tiny Tina, with whom the Vigilantes had violently mixed relations.
Upon returning to the archmage with the keys and Tiny Tina - who was apparently his daughter (of some sort), and whom he intended to use in his ritual - an intense magical bout broke out between the two and the party fled in the confusion, their opinion of him further soured.
After some time, having decided that they no longer particularly enjoyed being associated with the archmage, and perhaps having heard of some of his more recent questionable conquests, the reborn Vigilantes - with Ragnar Volaris and Heimdall replacing Bigs, Crass, and Morpheus - decided to hunt him down and kill him. They chased some leads through The Forbidden Forest and Golden Altheim before eventually tracking him to an open field strewn with bones, with an ominous portal in the center guarded by skeletons and other varied forms of undead. The Vigilantes battled their way through the hordes and into the portal, which transported them to some sort of Pocket Dimension with an altar of blood on a dais of blood - and a ritual of blood well underway.
The battle that followed was intense, and one of very few in which the Vigilantes were not victorious. Every few seconds, the archmage resurrected corpses to replace the ones the Vigilantes had mowed down, and they quickly lost ground despite Heimdall's affinity for destroying undead. Ragnar focused on killing the subjects which the archmage was keeping alive to use in the ritual, futilely attempting to buy them some time, and Vanessa - in a last ditch effort, with every other member of the party already downed - attempted to convince the archmage that she was on his side. In response, he stabbed her, and the battle was lost...until Morpheus dropped from the ceiling to deal the final fatal blow, then stabilizing the downed party and fleeing through the portal himself.
After recovering, the party seized the small focus - a brain in a jar - which held open the portal's gateway and kept it for themselves, thereby adopting the vacated pocket dimension as their own for a long time to come. Safe from the threat the archmage had posed them, the Vigilantes spared not a thought for their downed quarry for many months, until long after they'd successfully seized the throne.
INVOLVEMENT WITH THE ASCENDANTS
A quiet month after seizing the throne and crowning Ragnar king, while in an uneasy Kitchen Cabinet meeting, Vanessa felt the brain in the jar - the focus which acts as a gateway to the archmage's assimilated pocket dimension - begin vibrating. Fearing an infiltration, the ascendants teleported into the dimension, just in time to see a surprised-looking elf snatch the Blood Moon Crystal from its resting place - and vanish. The party posited - though quickly discarded - the theory that the archmage may be either directly or indirectly responsible for this infiltration, since as far as they knew, only they, Morpheus, and the archmage himself knew the coordinates of the dimension.
Assuming this theory to be no more than paranoia, the party soon put the dead mage from their minds and focused on the problems at hand.
The archmage, however, would not be forgotten so easily. Upon emerging from their (perceived) victory against the elves in the time machines, the party found the world they knew changed. The archmage - whom they'd assumed to be long-dead and buried - was alive and well, and he roamed the Atryan countryside with an army of undead, assaulting their cities; La Ciudad Blanca had already fallen to the hordes and the magical disease they brought with them. Nevermore reminded the aghast trio that the archmage had reappeared weeks ago, apparently resurrected from thin air - a fact they should have already been aware of, as they'd lived it themselves, and even structured their actions and strategies around it - he claimed they had followed the lead of the Blood Moon Crystal into the time streams as a direct result of this knowledge. Put off-balance by the unexpected revelation, the party immediately set off to rectify the distressing discrepancy between their minds and apparent events.
The ascendants would be unable to uncover any information directly regarding the archmage's unexpected return, as they were soon distracted with the threat of ceasing to exist, brought upon by Nevermore's capture by an unknown party and the (re)surfacing of memories of them losing recent battles which they themselves knew they had won. Their first stop on this new quest was Winterhold, which was discovered to be thriving and bustling. The sobering realization was made that if the archmage never died in the timeline of events the party was living through, there would be no reason for the city to have become desolate. The party makes a mental note not to attract the attention of the archmage, should he still live. After the long and arduous war with ancient primordial gods that followed, the party - advised by the newly reclaimed Nevermore - crafted a ritual circle intended to snatch them from what was apparently a simulation and replace them in their proper world. Before setting off, while Nevermore crafted the ritual, Ragnar took a detour to Winterhold with the intention of looting magical items out of the archmage's quarters; he snatched up many impressive items and returned to the other three without issue.
The four of them taking their places on four runes of the pentagonal ritual circle, Nevermore began chanting the incantation - only for, at the very last second, the archmage himself to rip open a portal behind them and throw himself onto the fifth rune, riding the spell out of the 'simulation' with them.
INVOLVEMENT WITH HEIMDALL'S PAST
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