Urdresh the Abhorrent

NAME: Urdresh, dubbed The Abhorrent One by enemies of old

SPECIES: Once human, now undead

AGE: In waking years, over a thousand years; he has slumbered even longer

HEIGHT: Approximately six feet

WEIGHT: Extremely frail; including his robes and attire, most likely less than fifty pounds

HAIR: None

EYES: An unearthly green glow within hollow sockets

SKIN: None

OCCUPATION: Once a vizier to the grand ruler of an ancient kingdom in Amol-Kalit, long ago, now an aimless arbiter of evil.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Sutmekh, City of Endless Light

AFFILIATION: No allegiance but to himself

HOME: Though he wanders, Urdresh has a stronghold of old, destroyed and rebuilt two times: the dread spire of Zardum.

ALIASES: The Abhorrent; The Black Vizier; when traveling among mortals, he will don many guises, though the most frequently used throughout the years is “Amashal”, a cloaked traveler wrapped in tattered black linens.



APPEARANCE: Once, long ago, Urdresh was a mortal man. Tall, gaunt and sallow, with high cheek bones, pointed features and narrow green eyes, sunken beneath his heavy brows; head shaven completely of beard or hair and painted with glyphs of magic. It has been long since he was divested of flesh, however. Now he is nothing more than a withered skeleton, held together by mummified scraps of leathery, broken dead flesh.



In his guise as Amashal the Wanderer, he will wear a simple but elegant black robe and shemagh headdress, limned with bronze bells and esoteric and arcane trappings. Beneath his shemagh he will wear an iron mask, wrought unnervingly into a shape reminiscent of a naked skull, ironically to conceal the truth that he himself is devoid of flesh.



When revealed as Urdresh, however, the ancient malice of Najakhet and the Black Vizier of Amol-Kalit, he will adorn an extravagant robe of ancient Najakhet make, as well as a golden mantle upon his shoulders jutting out into magnificent decorative pauldrons. As the Black Vizier his skeletal visage is fully unveiled, and over his skull he wears only a tall and opulent headdress, bedecked also in gold.






SKILLS AND ABILITIES:



Necromancy – Urdresh is a powerful and accomplished necromancer, having mastered its secrets uncounted years ago and become an unliving embodiment of its unnatural ministrations. Unlike some necromancers, Urdresh willingly and gladly abuses necromancy as a means of enslaving the dead and warping and twisting the natural world into hideous shapes. He can raise the dead to do his bidding, unleash devastating shadows or corrupt his environment to suit his needs.



Rune Magic – The mages of Najakhet, among whom Urdresh once walked and learned as a mortal man, were accomplished Rune Mages, inscribing arcane glyphs upon their dead to protect them in the afterlife and carving powerful spells into their monumental stone architecture. He is more than proficient at using these disciplines for evil purposes, twisting the magic of his ancestors to produce vile enchantments and curses.



Minor Psionic Ability – By merit of his extensive power as an ancient undead being, Urdresh has delved into many forms of Dark Magic that have allowed him to sense and manipulate the thoughts of others, influencing their emotions and, at the full height of his power, projecting his voice into their thoughts to torment or persuade them toward his will.



As an undead lich, Urdresh is heavily disadvantaged when he awakes into an unfamiliar world changed by the passage of time and peopled by the living. He has been thrice defeated, and thrice has had to awaken from his long death-like sleep while his undead body regenerates. Divorced from the seat of power upon which he sat in his previous incarnation, Urdresh finds himself surrounded by peril, and despite his great power, he is forced to calculate a cunning and stealthful tactic through which to reestablish himself as a power of the current age. He will travel, cloaked and guised, among the living, seeking disciples and artifacts with which to rebuild his twice-ruined ziggurat citadel of Zardum.



POSSESSIONS:



There are three noteworthy items with which the Black Vizier always regenerates in his possession, for they are intrinsically bound to his rotten and imprisoned soul. Likewise, when he is defeated and his physical form temporarily destroyed, they disappear seemingly from the face of the world till his return. They are as follows...



The Amulet of Kesh – An ancient golden talisman bound to a thick gilded chain, bearing within it an octagonal emerald jewel of bewitching brilliance. The bright verdant hews of the jewel radiate with an inner light that is of a paler and more sickly green. Ancient folklore suggests that the Black Vizier sought the blessings of Bel-Ayya, and conducted a ritual that funneled dark power from a lunar eclipse into the jewel. What its precise purpose is remains unknown. However, every three hundred years (while Urdresh is corporeal), the amulet's enchantments must be recharged and rekindled at the altar upon which it was made deep within the Temple of Kesh, in the ruins of Najakhet, by performing a blood sacrifice. Some say that the amulet provides the lich with a connection to his phylactery, wherever it may be hidden. Others have come to believe it may actually be his phylactery. No record survives which delineates the truth of its import.



The Staff of Neket – A long, slender rod of power wrought from gold and etched with glyphs of power, the Staff of Neket belonged once to the high priestess of Naspar within Najakhet, Neket-Me. Neket-Me was a strong and clever woman, and the former mentor of Urdresh during his apprenticeship as an acolyte within the Temple of Kesh, where Naspar was worshiped. When Urdresh betrayed the Sun King of Najakhet, Neket-Me engaged Urdresh in a long and mighty duel within the royal palace which followed Urdresh as he fled all the way back to his tower of Zardum. After many years of civil war within Najakhet, Urdresh finally defeated Neket-Me and destroyed her body, stealing her staff as a trophy of his victory. The glyphs upon the staff which had previously depicted benevolent spells of wisdom slowly changed into evil and wicked ones, turning it into a trinket of darkness.



The Ring of Urdresh – Urdresh's enchanted ring was a device created by the necromancer early into his fall from grace, when he first became enveloped by the obsession with power and immortality. It is a gilded band set with a flawless ruby cut into a smooth oval. The ring was designed to collect the spiritual energy of freshly departed souls and entrap it for enslavement or to use their life force to power evil magic. He murdered hundred as a mortal man to empower it, and thousands more over his long existence as an abhorrent lich. It is used in some fashion to recharge the Amulet of Kesh, though none know how. Many of his enemies once believed that the ring may have been his phylactery, just as some believed the amulet was, though this is unlikely as it was designed to imprison other souls, not his.



PERSONALITY: Long have been the years since Urdresh cast off the last shredded vestiges of humanity he once possessed, but even immersed in evil he retains many mortal flaws. Though viciously cunning and an ingenious tactician, contempt for the living and a supreme, encompassing arrogance leave him susceptible to the unpredictable, to the noble machinations of those he would underestimate or second-guess. Urdresh delights in challenges that test the limits of his intellect and power and will almost never waste an opportunity to lay a vulnerable enemy low. Even so, he is a coward and a blackguard who will subject himself to no measure of ethical or honorable restriction in battle, and will flee at the first sign of imminent failure. Immeasurably hungry for sustenance and insatiable by any means of mortal indulgence, he gluts himself now almost solely on acts of unspeakable cruelty as a means of satisfying his vacuous husk of a soul.



BIOGRAPHY AND LORE: Many thousands of years ago, Amol-Kalit was host to a civilization that has since been swallowed by the sands. Older than the nomadic tribes or petty sultanate kingdoms that dotted the deserts in later years, yet younger than the still more ancient Nameless City which has stood ruined and ominous amidst the dunes since before anyone or anything can recall, this civilization was called Najakhet – a name meaning Land of the Unsetting Sun in their language. Najakhet was comprised of several cities, but the most important were thus: Sutmekh, the capital of the empire which was said to sparkle with gold so fiercely it could blind a traveler miles away from its walls, Shekmal, the sacred temple-city of Annuk, lord of the Annunaki (for the people of Najakhet worshiped the Annunaki as most other settlers of Amol-Kalit have for many ages), and Nadasir, the garden city, built upon the River Nada around an ancient and enchanted oasis.



The empire of Najakhet was once a vassal state in its infancy to the much older empire of the Abtati, from whom much of their culture and language was derived. But when the empire of the Sand Elves fell, Najakhet blossomed into its own distinct and magnificent grandeur, preserving many of the traditions and customs which they had inherited from their elven benefactors and tutors. The empire stood for over a thousand years, maintaining a fragile peace with the other kingdoms and nomadic cultures of the desert. But its fall into ruin is recorded in the annals of history as the result of a deadly plunge into evil magic. All this was facilitated by a single man: Urdresh, the Black Vizier.



Urdresh was born "Atma" to now-nameless parents in the village of Shadaset, very close to Nadasir, and as the youngest sibling in his family led the life of a shepherd in the meadows around the River Nada. His home was destroyed by desert bandits, his cattle scattered and his family slaughtered, and so he traveled, weary and traumatized, to seek a new means of subsistence, first to Nadasir and then to the capital, Sutmekh. There, he saved the life of a priestess from collapsing scaffolding cascading off a lofty monument under construction, alerting her to the danger with a warning cry. For this noble act he was richly rewarded. The priestess turned out to be none other than Neket-Me, high priestess of the god Naspar. He was apprenticed to her as an acolyte in the Temple of Kesh (Kesh meaning “whispers” in the ancient language of Najakhet).



But Atma secretly harbored a great bitterness, a festering canker on his soul left from the humiliation and pain of his displacement that left him hateful and contemptuous toward his fellow man. He would never forget the utterly wretched feeling of helplessness and despair that defined his experience as a victim, and he vowed that strength as its own reward was worth almost any price. Gradually, even from a young age, he delved into disfavorable magical arts and taboo disciplines kept under heavy guard by the priests of Naspar. He even reached out to dark and forbidden places within the desert to learn their secrets and master their hidden, latent powers.



By the time he was a grown man, he had become, in secret, a master of dark magicks.



Neket-Me grew suspicious of her pupil's burgeoning power and, discovering evidence of his idolatry, cast him from the temple in disgust. She should have destroyed him then, but in her heart she still held affection for the child she had rescued from the streets and introduced to a life of erudition. Displaced yet again, Atma delved into the political sphere, serving as an adviser to many petty noblemen and courtiers till he at last attracted the attention of the reigning Pharaoh, the wizened Sun King Hamathek, high ruler of Najakhet. The two struck up a fast friendship and Hamathek, being significantly older than Urdresh and cursed with only daughters and no sons, came to see him as a member of his royal family in all but name and a confidante in whom he could completely trust.



Under the cover of night, however, and behind palace walls, in deep and quiet sepulchers beneath the city, Atma had slowly built up a cabal of disenfranchised priests and sorcerers who, regarding him as a master of dark magic, learned at his feet and swore fealty to him in his hidden agenda to topple the kingdom and rule it from a throne of shadows. They chose a day, marked by the coming of a lunar eclipse, to unleash their hideous powers... Conducting a ritual under the black moon as the shadow of the world passed over it, Atma channeled the blessings of Bel-Ayya into a golden amulet and, using the terrible accumulated energy, transformed himself into an undead abomination; he had become a lich. By this time he had chosen a new name for himself which his servants uttered with almost worshipful reverence: Urdresh, or "Vicious Hand" in the tongue of Najakhet – also roughly translatable to "the Abhorrent", a title which stuck to his legend long thereafter.



Urdresh and his cabal of sorcerers and minions laid waste to the capital of Sutmekh in a single night under the cover of darkness cast by the lunar eclipse, raising an army of the dead from the spell-blasted corpses of their victims and marshaling them into groaning, gnashing phalanxes against the confused and terrified survivors of their onslaught. Neket-Me knew at once that it was her erstwhile pupil who was to blame for this sickening treachery. She rallied what remained of the Annunaki priesthood and took many regiments to secure the royal palace, but this response came too late. They were greeted by the sight of Urdresh, sat upon the throne of the Sun King, Hamathek dead at his feet, an ensorcelled dagger in his back. A terrible battle ensued in which Urdresh laid waste to Neket-Me's allies, even raising the body of the Sun King to cross blades with her, but the power of the Annunaki was behind her and he could not seem to best her no matter what hideous spell he unleashed. He fled, and she gave chase through the desert, uncovering the location of his stronghold, concealed in the deepest dunes of the desert wastes: the megalithic ziggurat citadel of Zardum. There she was repelled, and limped back to the devastated streets of Sutmekh to take stock of the damage and call the able-bodied across the empire to assist in Urdresh's destruction.



For many decades, Zardum and Sutmekh wrestled back and forth for control of Najakhet in a great and terrible civil war that slowly tore the empire to shreds with dark magic and relentless battle. Neket-Me was unceremoniously slain during one such battle by an undead horror whilst locked in magical combat with Urdresh, and to mark this victory he stole her enchanted staff of spiritual authority, perverting it with rites to Bel-Ayya.






Eventually, however, the last vestiges of resistance united under Shutepra, Neket-Me's strongest and wisest pupil, marshaling their strength and collectively pushed the corruption of their foe back to its source. Thus began the First Siege of Zardum, in which what remained of Urdresh's cabal was crushed by the remnants of Najakhet and an alliance of desert tribes in a united effort to avenge the angry dead and their fallen kingdom. Urdresh was defeated and his tower toppled. However, so much evil had been wrought upon Najakhet that efforts to repair the kingdom failed again and again, until men and women whispered of the Curse of Urdresh, which they believed would forever prevent them from rebuilding out of spite and malice. Finally, after centuries of quiet degeneration, their culture dispersed into so many disparate tribes, scattered back amongst the other nomads of the desert from which they had come.



Since then, Urdresh has returned two times in history, returned to corporeal form by the dark magicks which grant him everlasting unlife. The first, known as the Interregnum of Chiefs, was a period of strife among the tribes of Imahl, Kalem and Najat (the most pure-blooded nomadic descendants of the Najakhetish people). Under the guise of the desert wanderer Amashal, a benevolent sorcerer and seer of the sands, Urdresh stoked war between these three tribes and the neighboring Abtati nomads until the dunes were thick with bodies. From these he created another army, returning to inhabit the abandoned halls of his tower Zardum and lording over a desolate landscape of death. Here he ruled for hundreds upon hundreds of years, indifferent to frothing hordes of orcish conquerors that swept over the east.



During this age, his destruction came at the hands of a powerful Allirian wizard, Baldaran, with whom he came to blows over the acquisition of a priceless artifact buried somewhere in the Aberresai Savannah, though what precisely that artifact was has long been forgotten. All that is remembered is that Baldaran found the lich's depravity intolerable and dedicated himself to Urdresh's destruction. This was the second fall of Urdresh and the first ruination of Zardum, known alternatively in history as the Triumph of Baldaran. It is said that Baldaran led a large army of men and elves, both from Amol-Kalit and from elsewhere abroad, against the lich and slew him in single combat after a lengthy and exhausting duel. The legend goes on to insist that he destroyed the ziggurat of Zardum himself with a spell of singularly enormous power, though this may be a creative embellishment.



The second return of Urdresh came much later, during the Age of Expansion. The tower of Zardum reappeared without explanation over the same blighted, cursed land where it had stood once before, brought back from non-existence seemingly by the same eldritch arts which served to reincarnate its ancient master, and therein dwelt the lich, where he reigned once more for countless years. He fought against multiple agents of the ever-expanding empire of King Grichen as they probed the western desert for purchase, making an enemy of many great men and women in the east. It was during the decline of the empire, when it had begun to splinter into pieces, and thus different factions within the empire warred on their own behalf. Having developed a seething contempt for the audacity of these living men, Urdresh extended his power far east, ensnaring many of their settlements in darkness and sinister debasement , seeding cults dedicated to the dark arts amongst their people and raising the dead from their slumber to trouble the peaceful countryside. It was the paladin crusader Moltavius who this time slew the lich in the epic conclusion of the Battle of Red Vale, but none knew how to bring down the seemingly impervious tower of Zardum. Whatever magicks Baldaran had used to destroy it the first time around were lost to the ages.



And so Zardum has stood ever since, empty and desolate, rotting, waiting for the return of its master.