Characteristics
Physical features
Vanadon-Necroth take on the guise of mortals to guide his follower. Among those guises, one is his favorites.
Taking the shape of a
Human woman, he guides those between life and death. Long black hair waving and raching below the shoulder, she's surrounded in a faint blue aura of power. A long alluring blue dress open on the side of her leg, revealing her thigh. SIlver garnement enlightening her ankles and waist, and earings dangling from her ears, shining with the same silver.
Abilities
Vanadon-Necroth values his own survival over all other things. While his hoard of priceless and irreplaceable treasures means the world to him, all the knowledge that he has gleaned from them live on within his mind and written across his scales. These things cannot be replaced. He uses time stop or wish as soon as possible to prevent harm from befalling him. While using time stop, Vanadon-Necroth has up to 5 turns to act with impunity. He tends to first create a forcecage around one dangerous target. Then he casts greater invisibility upon himself. Then, after making any final preparations, he casts prismatic spray upon as many of the intruders as possible.
From here, he uses his invisibility and powers of flight to stay as far from his enemies as possible while still raining death down upon them.
Worship
Clergy
Temples are a complicated matter for Vanadon-Necroth. Everyone knows the god’s name and power, but few people openly worship him. Who would openly praise her in a city filled with blessings from the myriad of other deities?
Clerics of the dragon god keep their association to him a secret. They do not openly reveal their faith. Instead, they lead small prayer circles in abandoned places, far removed from civilized society. Clerics do not seek out followers. They take their time examining who would make a good addition to the flock and then slowly convert them to join their ranks.
Paladins are altogether different. Vanadon-Necroth’s holy warriors fear nothing. They are imbued with the strength of the dragon god. And while most misinterpret and misunderstand his involvement in the world of mortals, Vanadon’s paladins continue to fight in his name, all the while assuming his divine protection regardless of what they do.
Worshiper
While temples to Vanadon-Necroth are rare, shrines honoring him are common. Peasants outside of large cities honor Vanadon.Lair
Vanadon-Necroth prefers to be left alone to guard the records of the dead in peace, but every few generations he welcomes powerful mortal travelers to his home. Some come for simple reasons, to learn the final words of an ancient ancestor — possibly revealing the location of a hidden treasure or an arcane secret. Others come seeking the names of ancient heroes who have been lost to time so that they might be resurrected to aid them in their quests.
Vanadon-Necroth's lair in
The Mortuary, a dungeon filled with dangers, undead and construct servitors, and arcane wards made to deter all but the most determined knowledge-seekers from reaching his sanctum.
Wealth
The undead dragon scribe's wealth is made up entirely of art objects, historically significant jewelry, ancient books and scrolls, and a few rare coins collected from across the eons.
His true wealth is the knowledge contained on his scales. A creature that studies Vanadon-Necroth's scales finds that they are milky white, but covered with black text, like the pages of a book. A creature can find any spell on Vanadon-Necroth's scales by spending one hour in study and making a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check with a DC equal to 10 + the level of the spell the creature is searching for.
History
In ancient times, the
Dragon scribe Vanadon served the goddess of the dead and protected her endless
Book of the Dead, a massive tome which, thanks to his diligence, bore the names and final words of all creatures who ever have died, and who ever will die. Vanadon served his goddess dutifully for millenia.
Rumors of Neltharion's newfound power spread among the ranks of powerful dragons, catching the attention of Vanadon-Necroth, the scribe of the goddess of death. Intrigued by Neltharion's plot to confront the goddess, Vanadon agreed to lend his aid to the earth warden.
Consuming the Endless Book of the Dead and taking its power into his own body, Vanadon transformed himself into the Living Book of the Dead while Neltharion slew the former goddess of death, assuming her mantle and dominion. Thus, Neltharion the Destroyer was born.
From now on, the names and last words of the dead instantly inscribed themselves upon his milky-white scales. When he emerged, with paper-white scales covered in endlessly shifting patterns of black scrawling, he became known as Vanadon-Necroth, the Scaled Book of the Dead. Now recognized as the god of Passage, all mortal are destined to face him.
Though the loremaster Vanadon once kept his library open to all creatures, he has grown paranoid after the
War of the Ancients. His archive-lair was once a majestic castle that towered over the passing dead soul, but Vanadon-Necroth transported his entire archive-lair elsewhere, leaving only the crumbling, gutted structure of his once-magnificent castle in its wake. His godly power also grant him the power of perfect recollection and all information he adds to his infallible intellect is instantly inscribed upon his ivory scales.
Now, the Archives of the Dead drift on the waves of the endless Void, tethered to the bones of a dead god of memory, whose name is forgotten to all but Vanadon Necroth himself. Within this arcane fortress, Vanadon-Necroth stores and maintains all of the physical tomes and scrolls he collected in his long life-which has also inscribed the details of countless spells from all disciplines of
Magic upon his scales. Though he no longer needs physical records of his accrued knowledge, he takes pleasure in reading and re-reading his favorite scrolls.
Comments