Valkanthrandilax
Appearance
Once a red dragon, Valkanthrandilax imbued runes onto his own body to augment his magic, and his scales blackened as a result. While his natural form is 45 feet long, much of his length is in his tail and neck. His build is lithe and agile, so his physical strength may not be on par with many other dragons his size, but his scales still mostly retained their hardness and resistance to the elements.
Valkan may take the forms of various humanoid species to do business with them, but his preferred one is that of a draconian. Regardless of the form he takes, his runes are visible unless he takes specific countermeasures to hide them. Valkan may also intensify the light at will, but never snuff it out entirely of his own will.
Valkan may take the forms of various humanoid species to do business with them, but his preferred one is that of a draconian. Regardless of the form he takes, his runes are visible unless he takes specific countermeasures to hide them. Valkan may also intensify the light at will, but never snuff it out entirely of his own will.
Skills and Abilities
- Flight
- Fire breath
- Heat resistance — In dragon form, his scales impart a natural immunity to damage from temperatures up to 4,250 °F, while still granting resistance to temperatures above that. If polymorphed, this benefit is lost. Barring magical augmentation, his ability to withstand heat is the same as ordinary members of the species he is polymorphed into.
- Enhanced sight — In dragon and draconian forms, his visual acuity is 5 times that of an ordinary human. He can see well in the dark, but not in total darkness.
- Enhanced smell — Has a forked tongue in dragon and draconian forms, allowing for a directional sense of smell similar to a monitor lizard.
- Painting
- Drawing
- Sculpting
- Languages — He can speak, read, and write fluently in most major languages, including Common, Elvish, Dwarvish, Orcish, Draconian, Anirian, various Eretejvic languages, Cortosi, Kaliti, Sereti dialects, Kalar, and Uytani.
Magic
Valkanthrandilax has spent most of his life honing his skills in magic, making him well-versed in multiple schools of magic.
The runes Valkan inscribed onto his own body function as reservoirs of stored mana. As such, they are a visual indicator of his magical reserves. Casting spells will activate runes and cause them to glow brightly. A rune that's gone dark is one that has been drained of mana and needs to recharge.
While Valkanthrandilax obviously prefers not to injure himself, as a dragon, his blood is magically potent. It can be used to power his magic.
The runes Valkan inscribed onto his own body function as reservoirs of stored mana. As such, they are a visual indicator of his magical reserves. Casting spells will activate runes and cause them to glow brightly. A rune that's gone dark is one that has been drained of mana and needs to recharge.
While Valkanthrandilax obviously prefers not to injure himself, as a dragon, his blood is magically potent. It can be used to power his magic.
- Evocation — Valkanthrandilax can gather and concentrate energy to form barriers, weapons, and projectiles. Weaker barriers can block or reduce damage from physical and magical attacks. Stronger ones can redirect physical and magical projectiles.
- Enchantment — Utilizing runes, he can bestow magical effects on objects. He concealed his lair from the naked eye by carving runes into the rock and imbuing them with energy to obscure the entrance from sight and magical detection. Creating runes such as these is a lengthy process—weeks in the case of the aforementioned concealment spell—that requires precise line work and focus. A botched rune can result in the spell either failing or backfiring.
- Augmentation — Similar to enchantment, only the effects are applied to living things... mostly just himself. This is utilized to enhance durability, increase stamina, nullify pain, and boost speed and strength. Also like enchantment, it often requires the use of runes.
- Shapeshifting — A more advanced form of augmentation, and similarly requires more advanced preparation. Adding a limb would require intense focus and energy. Taking the form of a different species requires him to have consumed the flesh of a member of that species at least once, as well as harvest a part of the body to utilize in the spell. As such, he cannot assume the form of inorganic beings such as constructs. Maintaining a shape other than his natural one also requires continuous energy input. While shapeshifted, his caloric requirements are 15% higher than an individual of the same size would otherwise need.
- Healing — This magic is taxing. Mitigating the fatigue caused by its use requires life energy of some sort to fuel it. Draining life energy to heal requires direct contact with the target he intends to drain. Plant life provides minuscule energy, but animals can speed up healing. The larger it is, the more energy it provides. A 200-lb creature could hypothetically provide enough energy to turn severe wounds into mild ones over a 10-minute time span, but only if he fully utilizes their life energy. Full efficiency requires consuming a target. It is the only form of augmentation magic he can cast on others.
- Elemental magic — The cost of manipulating and summoning manifestations of fire, water, earth, air, and lightning typically comes from his surroundings, such as through auras. It may entail draining the life from plants and fauna to using objects such as staffs as conduits. Valkanthrandilax can expend his own energy if needed or if he wishes to augment his spells further. Runes can also strengthen spells, though the spells he would use that require runes are often complicated and time-consuming to cast. Depending on the magnitude of the effect, it can take days to weeks to complete a functional set of runes. Nevertheless, putting in the time to draw such runes can result in powerful spells, such as creating devastating tsunamis or blizzards.
- Psionics — The cost of its use may come from his own energy, aura magic, or empathy. Telekinesis is limited to the manipulation of up to 2 objects less than 10 lbs each within 30 feet of his person. He is capable of feats of hypnotism up to the level of obsessions. In everyday life, he typically combines hypnotism, enchantment, and empathy in order to convince clients to pay him more. In a fight, Valkanthrandilax will often use empathy and hypnotism for offensive purposes, attempting to instill terror in opponents and causing hallucinations in an attempt to hamper the enemy's combat capabilities or, in the case he fights multiple opponents, kill each other. He may put up mental barriers against psychic attacks.
Personality
- Greedy
- Intellectual
- Esthetic
As an artist, he is highly concerned with aesthetics, at least when it comes to certain subjects. As a traveler, he usually doesn't care so much for his own appearance. While he appreciates looking stylish, roaming around the world is typically not conducive to that save for special occasions. He does, however, care very much about his own dwellings. Valkan is a neat freak; he's spent inordinate amounts of time carefully arranging decorations in his lair and shaping it. He takes great offense to purposely displacing anything within it, even if it isn't actually stolen.
He's naturally curious and interested in learning, having spent much of his life on both arcane and academic pursuits. Valkanthrandilax believes knowledge is a form of power, and he wants to accrue it. However, as long-lived as his kind are, he also needs something to stave off boredom, so he has adopted the pursuit of knowledge as a means to do so. He's also willing to try all sorts of things at least once.
He has little care for the politicking of kingdoms and empires. To Valkanthrandilax, it is beneath him. The only power he craves is personal power, the delight that comes with mastering a skill, particularly in the arcane arts. Kingdoms and empires arose and fell in his lifetime, and they shall continue to do so. He's observed the exploits of other dragons and their attempts to dominate the lesser species, and it amuses him to see those dragons so highly concerned with them. To him, they are sources of treasures, knowledge, and entertainment, but they are not worth going through the trouble to conquer. It's far too much effort to deal with the logistics of leadership and the headache of political games and backstabbing. Valkan would, however, fight polities if it was in his personal interest to do so.
Biography & Lore
Red dragons are often known as strong, vicious brutes of dragonkind. While this was certainly true of Valkanthrandalix and his relatives, he developed a keen interest in magic when he observed another dragon use it in combat against him during a territorial dispute. He escaped with his life and struck the other dragon down through sheer luck. Many dragons had latent magical capabilities, but without a teacher, learning it was difficult. He traded his precious hoard for tutoring from a mage, a hard decision for a greedy wyrm. Nevertheless, he does not regret the decision to this day.
The basics were all Valkan needed to kickstart his studies and practice. Once he knew the fundamentals of magic, he expanded, experimented, and continued to learn on his own. He practiced the most ancient of magics, rune magic, which he still uses despite having fallen out of favor.
With Malakath teeming with dragons, he moved his lair to the highest mountains of Eretejva. While it may have seemed counterintuitive considering his reptilian appearance, the inner fire of a red dragon provided enough warmth. There was less competition with other dragons, and the lesser species had incredible difficulty reaching the summits. Still, there were occasional intruders. When would-be dragon slayers and burglars encroached upon his lair, Valkanthrandilax decided to put what he learned to practice and enchanted the entrance to his lair to be hidden from the unaided eye. Of course, many intruders died before that. He put their bodies to use for more gruesome pursuits in skin-changing, which eventually worked after much trial and error.
Eventually, he hit a plateau in his magical capabilities. He decided to go to extremes to augment his magical power: imbuing his own hide with runes, which came at the cost of his physical capabilities. The ritual drained his scales of their brilliant scarlet color and appeared to make him wither, but it had the desired effect. While he no longer possesses the sheer physical strength he once possessed, a dragon is still a dragon, and that is more than enough for him. The gift of magic breaks physical constraints, and as an arcanist, he became stronger than he ever could have had he not done this.
The dragon grew curious of the short-lived, small, sapient species in time, and used his skin-changing to walk among them. Fascinated by their arts and cultures, he took to learning them, too. He found their artistic and philosophical pursuits to be a refreshing change of pace from the droll life of guarding a hoard in the middle of nowhere. He used the wealth he accumulated to hire teachers, and thanks to the endless amount of free time dragons have at their disposal, Valkanthrandilax became a skilled artist, too.
He now sells his skills as an artist and sorcerer, traveling the world under the guise of one of the lesser species.
The basics were all Valkan needed to kickstart his studies and practice. Once he knew the fundamentals of magic, he expanded, experimented, and continued to learn on his own. He practiced the most ancient of magics, rune magic, which he still uses despite having fallen out of favor.
With Malakath teeming with dragons, he moved his lair to the highest mountains of Eretejva. While it may have seemed counterintuitive considering his reptilian appearance, the inner fire of a red dragon provided enough warmth. There was less competition with other dragons, and the lesser species had incredible difficulty reaching the summits. Still, there were occasional intruders. When would-be dragon slayers and burglars encroached upon his lair, Valkanthrandilax decided to put what he learned to practice and enchanted the entrance to his lair to be hidden from the unaided eye. Of course, many intruders died before that. He put their bodies to use for more gruesome pursuits in skin-changing, which eventually worked after much trial and error.
Eventually, he hit a plateau in his magical capabilities. He decided to go to extremes to augment his magical power: imbuing his own hide with runes, which came at the cost of his physical capabilities. The ritual drained his scales of their brilliant scarlet color and appeared to make him wither, but it had the desired effect. While he no longer possesses the sheer physical strength he once possessed, a dragon is still a dragon, and that is more than enough for him. The gift of magic breaks physical constraints, and as an arcanist, he became stronger than he ever could have had he not done this.
The dragon grew curious of the short-lived, small, sapient species in time, and used his skin-changing to walk among them. Fascinated by their arts and cultures, he took to learning them, too. He found their artistic and philosophical pursuits to be a refreshing change of pace from the droll life of guarding a hoard in the middle of nowhere. He used the wealth he accumulated to hire teachers, and thanks to the endless amount of free time dragons have at their disposal, Valkanthrandilax became a skilled artist, too.
He now sells his skills as an artist and sorcerer, traveling the world under the guise of one of the lesser species.