Xerus
Name
Xerus Stunn of Highstream
Race
Human...ish.
Gender
Male
Age
His fifties. Or was it seventies? He can't quite remember.
Appearance
Of average height and a mighty build diminished by age and disuse, Xerus is clearly old, but how old becomes hard to tell. His hair and eyes both seem dimmed, yet his skin is much less wrinkly than it should be. Yet... this appearance is also unnatural, as one gazes at it they would get the feeling that said skin was stretch out by some unnatural force to give the simulacra of youth.
Personality
Xerus has the appearance of always being smug, of not letting something on. This is by and large because that is the case. He is arrogant, believing himself to be wiser and more learned than everybody else. However, he at the very least seems to have some understanding of the value of individuals, indeed despite raising many as dead servants he is nonetheless far from the worst of people, avoiding tormenting innocent souls by disturbing their undead rest. He is slow and difficult to anger, but he becomes especially petty and vindictive to those that manage to breach his pompous veneer. As a habit of his patronizing nature, he is often giving unwanted lessons on just about every topic that comes to the fore.
Background
Xerus was born to the Noble family of Highstream, so named because of the mount their keep was on that had a great reserve of water ceaselessly flowing out. He was a good, virtuous boy doing all as his family demanded of him. A shining heir to his father, he was proud to aid the King in his conquest, a faithful Paladin leading many troops of his own banner and soon others as he grew in prominence within the new order. Savage barbarians, rebellious heretics, inhuman scum, all were destroyed by the thousands at his well-planned orders and in many cases by his own hand.
But as time passed, his victories seemed ever... stranger. Reports from his subordinates became more incoherent when they were asked for, while his foes seemed to be dead in ever stranger ways. Things only came clear when another Lord came to relieve a siege a day earlier than was anticipated. He witnessed the enemy risen as the dead against their own comrades, and swiftly reported what Lord Xerus was up to.
Lord Xerus took his arrest calmly, with naught but a soft knowing smile on his face as he was taken away and gently insisted he was still a loyal servant of his King. As people searched his properties the investigators were able to vaguely piece together a story of his slow descent into madness. It all began with an artifact years ago that he recovered from a defeated warlock, all seemingly innocent as a way to better understand his foe. But as he went deeper and deeper in his studies he seemed to employ stranger and stranger methods, though he always insisted he was in control because he took to this as a craft, rather than as an art.
Some speculated this was all in an effort to somehow save his sick children, some that he was simply lusting for power. None could tell that Xerus simply sought knowledge and his own personal development. They were astounded to find that by himself he had gone leaps and bounds above the studies of many of the same witches and warlocks that he had slain during his service to the Kingdom, out of pure desire to learn with the shackles of the ritualism and secrecy others needed being dropped.
Talents
-Xerus can swing a sword, although he is a bit old and out of practice.
-He is an expert commander and leader.
-Sorcery: While it was Necromancy that put him into the Maw, he can practice magics of just about any kind. From druidism to scrying to pyromancy to even calling on some of the old might when he was merely a Paladin of the realm.
-Knowledge: he has studied almost everything under the sun if a book about it could be procured (legally or otherwise) within the Kingdom. From history to alchemy to geography to cooking and glassblowing, he has read it.
Flaws
-He is not a true wizard, he is a sorceror. What that entails is that he has very little if any magic truly within himself. He needs some external source of magic like a staff with a magical focus within, or ritualistic components, or words of power to recite (the memorization of which has lead to him being gagged for his duration of his stay in the maw). In particular, this means that this means he is much more reliant on his corporeal wellbeing and material goods for magic than other practitioners of magic are.
-He is old. While no geezer or old coot, he will simply laugh if told to perform a feat necessitating any great agility like scaling a mountain or crawling through a small passage. He also cannot run very fast (or at all, for that matter, a sort of half-jog being the best he can do without magic). Of course that is only the tip of the iceberg resulting from his age. A much more sensitive stomach than others, longer sleep schedules, and so much more are results of his age even if he slowly works to undo its effects with his studies.
-Can't swim
Equipment
A set of his old full plate, a long spear (merely a way to conceal his staff), a dagger, chalk, and assorted ritualistic-alchemical items like incense and candles.
Miscellaneous
N/A