"Scholars, warlords, butchers all. They hold neither sympathy nor mercy in their cold hearts, for such things have long ago withered into nothingness in their quiet souls. Inhabiting impossible geometries, blessed with godlike powers, they are the most powerful of Warsman's myriad servants."
Nhumrethaz, the First Necromancer
In time immemorial, the great kingdom of Sjeshara reached from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and was crowned with the Mediterranean. Too long has its history been forgotten, for it has been virtually erased from all memory. No evidence exists, neither ruin nor grave. For Sjeshara became the Saharan Desert all because of the hubris of one man.
Nhumrethaz was born alongside his brother Najram, twins under an eclipse. Their parents were never discovered, their home never found. Najram eventually became a respected general of the Sjesharan armies, with his brother always in his shadow not out of an inability to keep up with his brother or a nascent need to see him successful.
No, Nhumrethaz seemed obsessed from the very beginning to see all those before him fail, and to be trampled into the dirt. It was at his underhanded suggestion that Najram instigate a rebellion and make a grab for the throne. Najram won the resulting civil war and became the new king, with Nhumrethaz as his most trusted adviser. Soon, the rule of Najram turned sour. The once-admired general started scorning his military friends and even his own children.
Always was Nhumrethaz in his shadow, watching his surroundings like a hawk.
Eventually, Najram was found dead in his room, all of his blood drained from his body. No signs of struggle were discovered, and he was buried unceremoniously. Unknown to all, Nhumrethaz had been studying dark magic since a young age, possibly attracted to such diabolical works from early childhood. He had become intimately aware of the balance of arcane law.
All power demands sacrifice; and Nhumrethaz, above all else, desired power.
He had killed his brother in the night after poisoning his mind for years that all eyes were looking to take his crown. The blood he stole became the foundation for the rest of his life, what little he had, as Nhumrethaz took his first steps into becoming a lich. He kidnapped Najram's family, using their souls to power the remainder of what he needed to make a single Blood Amulet, a powerful artifact of devilish sorcery. With the Amulet in hand, he ascended to the throne of Sjeshara, polluting the minds of those who stood against him.
But one of Najram's children escaped the slaughter, and vowed revenge. Young Ghirashem became a mighty warrior, though he knew the extent of Nhumrethaz's growing power and knew he was not enough to overthrow him. The first Great War of Sjeshara erupted when Ghirashem gathered the outlying tribes of the central fiefdom, tribes that had sworn loyalty to Najram and not Nhumrethaz, and stormed the capital.
It became a brutal and bloody siege, brother fighting brother in bitter close-quarters combat. Yet this was all according to Nhumrethaz's plan, and he enacted the full power of the Blood Amulet. Those that were butchered along the parapets and in the streets slowly started to rise, answering the will of their new master. Regardless of previous allegiances, these newly undead stalked the living, and the siege turned into a massacre.
Ghirashem himself escaped, unsure of what to do, along with hundreds of his followers. Nhumrethaz had won, and he felt himself slip deeper into the untapped potential of his sorcery. He resembled less of a man, and more of a towering creature between life and death. He had not achieved his goal of lichdom, but he was close; and he was still mortal. He made his first phylactery following the defeat of Ghirashem, using the still-beating heart of a woman who loved him - the immediate arch-mage of his court of sorcerers. Turning it to dust, the urn he kept it in was buried underneath the citadel where he had killed his brother in cold blood.
Yet he desired more. In the final days of Sjeshara, Nhumrethaz made contact with the Infernal Phalanx through intense arcane rituals. He communicated that he wanted to become a full lich, and the creature known as Warsman promised him absolute power over the undead - for a price. Nhumrethaz agreed, and constructed his vast underground fortress Nhumrethazzar in preparation for the great crime against humanity that he had committed.
All of Sjeshara, for the hubris of one man. That was the price Nhumrethaz paid for his current status as one among the Seats of Chaos.
And he has not regretted a single second of it.
Daedaroth, the Deceiver
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Rama Khan, the Indomitable
Long ago, in ancient India, the Kurukshetra War consumed the princedoms in bloodshed that would echo for millennia. During that time, one soldier crawled away from the massacre and into a mysterious ship he found deep in the forest. He fell inside, and the door locked behind him. For the next hundred days, he was imprisoned inside the ship and for every second spent inside a million lifetimes passed before his eyes.
His mind absorbed what it could, and was biomechanically augmented to accept what it could not. The soldier's name was forgotten over time, and he emerged as Rama Khan - the Indomitable. He built a monument to the Kurukshetra War in faux purpose of respecting the fallen, when in reality he was harboring highly advanced technologies he had learned about in a nearby mountain. Hollowing out the natural wonder, he filled it from root to crown with the marvels he had constructed through memory alone.
Sentinels with nervous systems preserved in glasslike metal stalk the halls of his fortress to this day, buried under hundreds of tons of rock behind unbreakable doors and labyrinthine caverns.
What he learned from the ship during his hundred days of rebirth he did not record in writing, for humanity was not ready to accept what he had come in contact with. The alien vessel carried his consciousness beyond our reality, beyond any reality, and he conversed with strange beings without shape or form. They were above godlike in their magnificence and dread and for a moment he feared them.
Yet a voice called out from the Void, and soothed him, and gave him power far and above his human mind could integrate. Therefore, the voice made him more than human.
Ever since then, even following his departure from Earth, Rama Khan has dedicated his immortal life to understanding everything around him. In the process, he has become a god to some alien civilizations, and a devil to others. After making second contact with the voice he heard in the ship, he has found his calling as a Seat of Chaos amongst the ranks of the Phalanx.
Ozias, the Watcher of the Ways
The Beast of a Billion Faces, never known to hold a single shape, Ozias has observed the rise and fall of more civilizations that even his fathomless mind can recollect in full. Their death throes haunt him, but it is a cruel kind of music in his dark nightmares that lulls him to half-slumber in the Void.
Ozias' power is that of change, of uncertainty, of magic in its most basic and brutal form. The arcane twists and turns in constant tidal waves of dangerous energies. Ozias has mastered it in its most primordial form, a feat deemed impossible by most other magi. Yet Ozias was capable of conquering the arcane through the gifts of Warsman, and he has become more powerful than any could possibly have predicted.
The Watcher of the Ways is a creature beyond understanding, a being without shape or form and yet with a physical presence. Half-alive and half-dead, stalking the reaches of insanity and screaming back the prophecies of those he has slain. Ozias possesses with him infinite magical capabilities, yet just as magic is fickle, so too is his own crumbling soul.
Ozias refuses to be anywhere for extended periods of time, seeing his titanic grasp on the arcane as an inhibitor more than a gift. His unknowable limitations constantly bask his surroundings in burning, scalding ethereal energies, bathing the land until it is molten rock infused with pure otherworldly sparks. The skies break apart and the very space around him becomes a pocket of unknown particles.
Ozias is an observer, first and foremost, seeing the ends to stories that have not been written yet. Any other task afforded to him would end in catastrophe.
Lady Seliak, Keeper of Thorns
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