Kyuss (KAI-oose)

Kyuss was a Tishad high priest of Orcus who dwelled in the lands of Velnar approximately 250 years before the founding of the Seven Kingdoms. As he neared the end of his mortal life, he didn't wish to seek Lichdom, so he prayed to his Demonic patron, and Orcus imbued him with a terrible sort of continuation of his life. Demonic graveworms consumed Kyuss alive, but each one came to possess a fragment of Kyuss's knowledge, personality, and power. As long as at least one worm lived, Kyuss lived, and he could gather more worms, growing in size and physical might as he did. The people of Velnar gave him the epithet "The Worm that Walks".

Kyuss wrote a book of knowledge and prophecy known as De Vermis Mysteriis. In it, he penned many prophecies, including that of a Visitor from the stars that would come to Tol to bring a massive surge in undead. He also prophecised his own return in the future, when he would come as a three-hundred foot tall colossus that would usher in a time known as the Age of Worms. He then allowed his own form to discorporate, with each worm seeking a corpse and reanimating it into the undead known as the Spawn of Kyuss.