Editing Kyuad's Lorebook (section)

== Study of the Undead ==
===Undead of Aryth===
Izrador’s high priest, Sunulael, is himself an undead creature, but not a randomly risen Fell. He is the product of Izrador’s corrupting will, an eternal creature of jealousy and ambition, something unlike the others. All the other undead of the world have their origins in Izrador, and most came seeking him in order to extend their lives and grow their power. There are rituals known only to Izrador and his high legates that can bestow undeath on a creature, willing or not. Different rituals produce different undead—vampires, ghosts and that known as lich — all of whom reach the other side with new powers, new perceptions, and a complete and utter devotion to Izrador’s cause. For the most part, Izrador leaves these new servants to their own devices, secure in the knowledge that even as they fulfill the desires that led them to this choice they will also be furthering his goals. Sunulael often demands a period of service from those he transforms, and it is hoped that the commanders among his undead army at Cambrial may, if the offensive is stalled long enough, eventually desert his service. If such desertion can be timed just right, it could turn the tide of the war in Erethor toward the forces of good.

Cambrial is the nexus for undead in the world, and the groaning of its mindless denizens can be heard for 20 miles or more on clear nights. Those who wish to undergo the transformation into intelligent undead most often journey there to meet with Sunulael, an event that in and of itself maddens those with weak minds. Of those who survive the mere presence of the Priest of Shadow, many falter in their decisions. No matter to Sunulael, however—they are marked to become mindless slaves and sent to the front lines in Erethor. Those who persevere are rewarded with the curse of eternal undeath and subservience to Izrador. Their minds are scoured by the dark god, but left relatively intact, and then they are sent on their way.
Cambrial was once one of the largest cities in southern Erenland and home to a vibrant, mixed-race population. Among the Sarcosan majority lived Erenlanders, Northmen, elven traders, and even a few city-dwelling halflings. Even in the dark days at the end of the Third Age, the city remained a center for interracial trade and was known throughout the southlands as the home of Sarcosan wizardry. When the Shadow’s forces took southern Erenland, they attacked and razed Cambrial as a demonstration of their power and ruthlessness. They killed all who did not flee, filling the city’s streets with blood. At the command of the Night Kings, the bodies were purposefully left untended and soon every last one rose as Fell. Neither time nor decay seemed to diminish the undead horde’s numbers and many believe it is the black magic of Izrador that maintain them. Perhaps charmed by their tenacity, the Night King known as the Priest of Shadow has made Cambrial his most common lair, within which new undead monstrosities are constantly being born from the City of Dead and the Obsidian Spire as well. In the century since its fall, so many of the foul creatures continued to haunt the place that the ruins of Cambrial came to be known as the City of the Dead. The settlement and its environs have become so dangerous that even orc legions stay well clear of the region, if they can. Unfortunately, the Priest of Shadow and his legate servants require guards, servants, supplies, and all the other trappings of a community, so Sarcosans and Erenlanders are commonly rounded up and replanted in the various keeps and secured buildings of Cambrial, forced to do their best to raise food and meet their masters’ needs while avoiding the often uncontrolled Fell and other, more powerful undead that roam the ruined sections of the city and its outskirts. No more than 1,000 humans and halflings live here at any given time . . . though that number begins dropping from the moment a “fresh” shipment of transplants arrives, and must be supplemented every few years. No one knows how many undead roam the city and its environs, but those few who have escaped the place alive say that they must outnumber the living by a ratio of ten to one, at least.

Across Aryth, the more common undead creatures are each actually part of a continuum of decay and corruption, both physical and spiritual. While undead once existed on Aryth thanks to the normal means of restless spirits and foul necromancy, the Sundering caused them to be far more common thanks to a corruption of the natural cycle. Whereas once all souls ascended to some higher place or joined the spirits of their ancestors as part of the Eternal, now they are trapped, either in body or in spirit, to the world that birthed them, unable to pass the veil brought down by the Sundering.


===The Price of Death===
With nowhere to go, the spirits of the dead far too often remain tethered to their bodies or emerge as the Lost, dangerous incorporeal undead with an unpredictable but often dangerous attitude towards the living. When a creature of aberration, dragon, giant, humanoid, magical beast, or monstrous humanoid  and a suitable amount of intelligence, will and drive to survive, the soul of the deceased can possibly depart its body and vanish into the maelstrom of trapped but harmless spirits that wreath the world of Aryth like an incorporeal halo. When the stars are right the deceased is doomed to rise as Fell in less than a week unless it is beheaded or its body is destroyed by fire. There is a small/unlikely chance that the unfortunate soul may rise immediately, and despite whatever lethal wounds may be evident, the newly undead may be completely unaware that he has just been killed. Companions may even try to aid their fallen friend, but these efforts prove useless and it will not be long before those companions realize something is very wrong.
In extremely rare occurances something potentially worse happens. Regardless of the how the body is disposed of, it becomes destined to rise as a tormented shade, one of the Lost, within a year of the person’s death. The dead creature rises as a ghost if its mind is right; otherwise, it rises as some other form of incorporeal undead. 


===The Spirits of Aryth===
There is howling wind of unseen forces that encircle Aryth. It is everywhere and nowhere at once, and it is formed by what the people of the world call spirits. Some spirits have always been there, a disembodied, nearly divine group of creatures, or perhaps a single creature, called the Eternal, as well as lesser spirits like fey creatures and elementals. Those who work magic have always been aware of these spirits— they have used them as soldiers, bound them into their artifacts, and even called upon them for knowledge and guidance. It wasn’t until the Sundering, however, that the spirits became as real to most residents of Aryth as the sun, sky, and ground beneath them. With the Sundering, a wall came down across Aryth, blocking it from the other planes. Many of the creatures trapped by that event, with no other form to take and with no afterlife or other worlds to move on to, have become spirits. There are now three types of spirits throughout Aryth, whether they are the dead souls of the once living, refugee extraplanar visitors who cannot find their way home, or eternal elemental forces who have resided on Aryth since its creation.


===Interacting with Spirits===
Other than via spells and the actions of other, similar creatures, spirits are for all intents and purposes removed from the physical world of Aryth. Normal men and women cannot affect them, and spirits in their natural state cannot affect normal men and women.
A bodiless spirit’s presence can be revealed by divination spells and a spell of force effect would affect a spirit, but a fireball would not, and no spells cast by spirits in their bodiless forms affect the physical world in any way.
Spirits would seem to be ideal spies, whether for Izrador or his foes. However, just as spirits cannot be detected, neither can they, under most circumstances, see or detect any details regarding the living. Time, place, and distance have little meaning to spirits, and getting spirits to convey meaningful information about what they’ve seen is quite difficult. Each type of spirit has a particular interest in and ability to observe specific things in the physical world; for instance, outsider spirits notice the life forces of other creatures with particular clarity, while elemental spirits are naturally attracted to the elements to which they are attuned.


===The Eternal===
Eternal spirits are those powers that are beyond the sight and knowledge even of the spellcasters of Aryth. They do not affect the material world, nor does it affect them, unless they will it. They are beyond even the power of Izrador and his legates to control. By the same token, though they are supposedly able to wreck havoc and destruction upon the material world at their whim, they rarely seem to do so, and the actions attributed to their wrath could just as easily be poor luck or violent weather as the actions of the Eternal.
Most of the souls of the dead who have joined with the weave of life and magic of Aryth can be said to have joined the Eternal, and benevolent nature spirits worshipped by everyone from the elves to the halflings are also examples eternal spirits. 
* '''The Whisper''' of the great forest of Erethor is perhaps the largest of the Eternal, spanning the entirety of the Witch Queen’s wood and composed of the souls of hundreds of thousands of deceased elves.


===The Lost===
Even those that die and are lucky enough to be spared the fate of rising as Fell are still unable to reach heaven through the murky Veil brought down during Izrador’s banishment. A further travesty is that many of these unfortunate souls are still unable to rest quietly. Instead, they rise as haunts and shades, cursed to roam the place of their death or familiar locations from their lives. These ghosts are the Lost, and they live a half existence only semi-aware of what has happened to them, confused and trapped in a limbo somewhere between the physical and celestial realms.
Like the Fell, ghosts are traumatized by their own deaths but the effects are more varied. These haunts are not driven by bloody hunger but instead follow often-cryptic or bizarre motivations that reflect parts of their past personalities. Many suffer insanities upon death that drive them to malevolent and violent acts. Others remain motivated by the things that moved them in life and can be coherent or even benevolent at times. Unlike the Fell, the Lost do not have the release of eventually decaying away to dust but face eternity in their horrific states. Instead, what passes for minds in these spirits degrade, spiraling slowly into incomprehensibility and insanity. In the end, even the ghosts of the most kind and potent souls become dim and dangerous shadows of what they once were.
As the years pass and the veil between the heavens and Aryth remains, the frequency of incorporeal undead haunting the realm of the living increases. It is an uncommon person that is lucky enough not to have been haunted by the shade of a deceased ancestor, and a rare traveler that has not been driven from his camp by the chilling wail of a Lost soul.
* Those spirits that haunted "Satan Rock" could be concluded to be some type of twisted Lost.


===The Trapped===
Whether as messengers of the gods or visitors from other planes, extraplanar visitors have always walked on the face of Aryth. They arrived in forms newly made from the fabric of creation and the magic of Aryth, and if and when they were killed by violence, their spirits returned from whence they came. Others, like creatures with the fey or elemental types, were considered natives of Aryth, though their birthrights were far from mundane. Hundreds of thousands of these extraplanar entities were present on Aryth when the Sundering occurred, and twice as many were banished there along with Izrador when he fell, either due to their association with him or due to the accident of being caught up in the devastating pull that sent him hurtling from the heavens. 
Regardless of the means by which they arrived, all such creatures that were not present on Aryth at the moment of the Sundering had no bodies of their own, and so were left screaming and formless as spirits. Others became spirits when their corporeal bodies were destroyed by time or violence, and a rare few may still exist in their original bodies. All of these creatures, whatever their means of arrival and current states, are called the Trapped.


==== Nature of the Outsiders - a spirit subtype with the Trapped template ====
Outsiders are a special case on Aryth, having been trapped there for thousands of years with no way to get home or call others from their planes of origin. Because the elthedar had built great civilizations and were master practitioners of the arts of magic, there was a significant outsider presence on Aryth before the Sundering. That event caused some outsiders to go mad instantly, affecting them in unexplainable and never-before-seen ways. Some consider these the lucky ones. Others were merely frustrated by their inability to return home, and they endeavored to find a way to break the Veil that enveloped the world. Through the millennia, these angels and demons have made pacts with one another and just about every other powerful creature on the planet in order to find a way home. They have served dragons, and elves, and the Shadow, and siphoned magic from nexuses all over the world. All of their attempts have failed.

Outsiders that exist in their normal forms have either survived in their original bodies since the Sundering or achieved them as a result of their transformation ability.

'''Outsiders Around Aryth'''
The demon-infested jungles of the Aruun are perhaps the most regarded place on Eredane when the subject of demons is broached—and for good reason. Its humid confines house the majority of evil outsiders in the world, and not many angels to combat them. The demon ruins of Ibon-sul have acted as a prison to demons for thousands of years, so long that not even the eldest Danisil sage has memory of what created such a place. There are fears that since Izrador’s victory, the invisible bonds that trap beings there are being weakened, and that more and more demons are escaping every year. If this is true, it could soon spell an end to Danisil involvement in the war for Caradul, as the jungle elves rally to defend their own home against a threat more vile than the cruelest orc.

Elsewhere, angels, demons, and devils alike have tried to blend in as best they can. Many succumb to the pull of oblivion and lose themselves among the other spirits, joining the Eternal, but others try to find a way home from the physical world or even simply resign themselves to life among the mortals. Indeed, good and evil outsiders often find common cause, and in many cases old hatreds have fallen by the wayside in light of their new circumstances. For a chance to return home, there is barely an angel on Aryth who would not work with a demon or devil, but their natures remain unchanged, and such alliances often do not last long, too strained by old prejudices and differences in philosophy that often have lethal consequences.

'''RULES NOTE''':  As a result of their millennia-long entrapment, none of the outsiders on Aryth have the Extraplanar subtype—the Material Plane on Aryth has become their home. All outsiders gain the spirit subtype as well as the Trapped template.  So in the future you COULD make Know: Spirit checks for information if you'd like...

===== Nature of the Courtesan Imp sub-type of Outsiders =====
Courtesan imps survive through stealth and trickery, lying and stealing as it suits them. All courtesan imps are out to make themselves powerful, every one is a coward first, and a traitor second. On occassion certain people (known as Collaborators) attracts the attention of evil powers outside the perview of Izrador enough to gain a courtesan imp as a follower. 

Courtesan imps consider combat to be the same as dying. The promise of protection in combat is often enough to keep a courtesan imp loyal. When caught in a fight, a courtesan imp attempts to talk or feint its way out.  

These Imp Outsiders have various abilities that have been the formation of their nature as ambassadors and deal-makers...
*  A courtesan imp is an expert intermediary.  The imp has the ability of a permanent tongues spell and predisposes others to treat the imp with open-minded indifference rather than hostility. Courtesan imps use this ability to approach new collaborators and open peaceful dialogues with would-be enemies.
*  A courtesan imp has a flawless memory for details, rumors, gossip, and secrets. 
*  Spell-Dealing: In the old days, courtesan imps traded in spells as part of their duties on Aryth. A courtesan imp can “carry” a spell from a book or scroll to a channeler who wants to learn it. ''[The channeler must spend the time, money and XP necessary to learn the spell from a book as usual, but does not have to physically see or handle the book or scroll himself.]''  The courtesan imp does not have to be able to use or understand the spell itself. Typically, a courtesan imp charges 25 vp/spell level for this service, but price can be negotiated...
*  Spellcasting Ability:  Spells believed to be known by these Imps: (5 points of spell energy/day; DC 15 +spell level) 0—mage hand, prestidigitation, virtue; 1st—jump, pass without trace; 2nd—cat’s grace, spider climb, tree shape; 3rd—meld into stone.

=====Lore Pools===== 
Most usually appearing as a small pool of viscid, purple slime lies within a crystalline basin. A pair of rudimentary eyes emerge from the slightly swirling fluid and blink languidly at you, while a burbling voice emerges from the fluid.  "What is it you wish to know?”

These beings are of neutral care to and about the world, over the years, many isolated lore pools have become antisocial and neurotic - unable to return home and confined to one spot, they are naturally irritable, grumpy, and prone to irrational temper tantrums.  

Lore pools are a race of outsiders originally sent to Aryth to watch and record the development of the fey races and to absorb what they could of the world’s history and culture. The Sundering trapped these small, helpless creatures, who have remained in their hiding places ever since. There is no gravity on their home plane, where they are able to propel themselves from place to place on extruded cilia, but on Aryth they are simply too weak to move.

Lore pools can be found scattered across all of Aryth. Some were found by elves and given new, more comfortable homes in crystalline basins in exchange for providing the elves with their knowledge and other abilities. Still others were captured by the Shadow’s minions and coerced into using their abilities for evil. Even more are sequestered across the countryside or in ancient ruins, where they hide and observe the world around them, instinctively collecting knowledge despite being unable to report back to their masters.

Where they once may have readily provided information, they now must be cajoled or intimidated into revealing what they know to others. They also take a perverse delight in commanding their “mental inferiors” to complete difficult tasks for them, withholding vital information until the job is complete.

Lore pools are somewhat able to protect themselves - a lore pool may reveal some tidbit (which may not be true) about a target’s fate, creating a pit of fear in the target. The old Outsiders have a Vast Knowledge and may cast the greater scrying spell and may, if it chooses, display the results of this spell on its surface. Finally, Lore pools do not need to eat, drink, or sleep. There are no limits to their natural lifespan and many trapped on Aryth are thousands of years old.



===The Fell===
Shambling figures of sinew-covered bones, hung with tatters of dried flesh, red eyes glinting in a broken skull... There are many dangers across Aryth, but few as foul and horrifying as the Fell. When Izrador’s fall severed the bond between heaven and the mortal world, it did more than sever the connection between the gods and their faithful. It also trapped the souls of all future dead in the material realm, preventing their ascension to the celestial kingdom. Whether by happenstance or because of some malicious magics on Izrador’s part, one of the terrible consequences of this reality has been that the souls of the newly dead are often unable to leave their bodies, remaining tied to them and doomed to walk the land as horrible undead abominations. These unfortunate, fearsome, undead monsters are commonly known as the Fell.



===Dealing with the Dead... The impact the Fell have on life in Eredane===
When the Fell first began to appear, the horrified living quickly learned how to dispose of corpses to keep them dead. Now, though the undead are no less a threat, the races’ various practices of body disposal have become culturally ingrained and greatly reduce their potential numbers. 

'''Humans''' have assumed the practice of burning their dead. They follow little ceremony, as it is widely believed that the sooner a corpse is ash the safer it is for everyone. The Dorns cremate their kin on open pyres inside circles of tall standing stones until even the bones are consumed. They then cast the ashes about within these ancestor rings, freeing the souls to watch over the living that remain. The Sarcosan colonials also burn their dead, but they collect the ash and mix it with the grain they feed their horses. They believe this passes the finer qualities of the deceased onto the steeds and gives them an extra measure of strength and endurance.

The '''elves''' are perhaps the most reverent in disposing of their dead, though the end results are also perhaps the most practical. When an elf dies, his body is covered in a wrapping of mystically prepared living vines and then is taken deep into the forest by a Whisper Adept. The vines secure the body, keeping it subdued even if it should wake as undead, for the adept may travel many days before reaching a location suited to her purpose. When the adept has chosen an appropriate site, she conducts an elaborate ritual that involves burying the body within the roots of a large tree. Over the course of the ritual, the spirit of the deceased passes into the tree and becomes one with the tree’s own essence. The new entity that is formed becomes part of the vast network of spirit tree guardians known as the Whispering Wood.

The '''halflings''' enact a somber but gruesome ceremony, removing the heads of their dead and collecting a bowl of blood from the body. They bury the heads and corpses separately beneath plots of prairie sod that have been carefully cut away and replaced undamaged and unmarked. They mix the blood with a recipe of herbs, dry the resulting paste, and grind it into powder. The powder is then placed in sacred cloth bags containing the similar remains of other family members. On the holy days of the halfling celestial calendar, families then burn portions of the powder as incense in offerings to their ancestral spirits.

'''Gnomes''', ever practical and fleshbound to the river, tightly bind the bodies of their dead in coils of ceremonial rope and weigh them down with stones. With brief services featuring improvised group songs about the individuals being interred, the bodies are committed to the waters of the Eren to be judged by the enigmatic river spirit the gnomes call the Watcher. In the river, the bodies sink to the bottom where the natural course of life disposes of the remains and the soul is freed to flow with the water.

'''Dwarves''' dig elaborate catacombs in which they entomb their dead. When a dwarf dies, she is laid in a shallow sarcophagus-like pit carved out of the stone floor of the catacomb. A heavy stone slab, often intricately worked by the deceased herself when she lived, is then lowered onto the corpse, crushing it and pinning it to the bottom of the pit. The weight of the slab is sufficient to keep any Fell from actually rising and serves as a kind of memorial on which is typically carved a narrative of the deceased’s life. Though dwarves commonly visit catacombs in hopes of speaking to the shades of their ancestors, only the most stouthearted do so before allowing enough time for the body to decay away. The moans, screams, and curses that sometimes rise from under the crushing stones are often too much for even the bravest to bear. The dwarves believe that by keeping the souls of the dead tethered to their bodies, they encourage the spirits to remain to watch over and protect the realm of the living.

Even the '''races that serve Izrador''' are not immune to the unwelcome rise of their own dead. Though many bodies are left to the necromancy of the Night Kings, most goblin-kin and orc dead are dealt with in a gruesome yet morbidly effective way—they are eaten by the living. This practical cannibalism not only assures that the dead do not wake to trouble the living but also provides a valuable food supply within a scavenging culture that suffers a great deal of mortality from constant internal fighting.

As a result of the universally diligent disposal of corpses by all of the cultures of Eredane, most Fell arise either from those slain in battle and left to rot or from the bodies of errant adventurers that die in the wilderness. Killing the Fell is not really possible, in that they are already dead. They can be destroyed, however, by freeing the soul trapped inside the body. Fell are destroyed when their bodies are completely dismembered or consumed by fire or other elemental forces (in other words, if reduced to zero hit points). If not completely destroyed, the Fell continue to function and amble about even if large parts of their bodies are missing. Few sights are as purely horrible as the severed torso of a rotting corpse dragging itself across the ground, jaw snapping with an animal hunger.


===Becoming Fell===
The initial shock of death and the subsequent realization that one has become undead is a crushing psychological blow and insanity is usually immediate, leading quickly to extreme paranoia, violent rage, and bloodlust. Strong wills may keep these overwhelming impulses at bay, but only for short periods. Fell retain its basic Intelligence and many of its memories, but as its body starts to decay, so does its mind. For every week that passes without feeding, the mental stability decreases greatly. The creature thus decays and gradually loses its intelligence and true sentience, as well as the associated memories and conscious control over its actions. As the creature reaches increasingly loses its mind, it deteriorates into more and more feral states until, eventually, it is nothing more than a walking, eating corpse. From the moment it awakens, a Fell feels a magical craving for the flesh of the living, for only by consuming the living can an undead creature maintain its foul existence. This hunger quickly becomes the driving motivation behind the actions of the Fell and continues to compel it, even after its mind has rotted away. If a Fell consumes a large meal of stillwarm flesh from the body of an intelligent creature  at least once per week, it can stave off the decay of its body as well as the rot of its mind. For every week a Fell goes without such a meal, it suffers decay and the associated loss of mental ability scores as described above. Only the flesh of living creatures with similarly potent souls can satiate the hunger of the Fell; an elf that rises as Fell could therefore survive on the flesh of dwarves or goblins but not on the meat of rabbits or bears.
Despite their horrific state, the madness of the Fell typically imbues them with a powerful survival instinct, and only the most willful soul can take direct action to destroy, and therefore free, itself. With a strong enough will an undead character can intentionally destroy itself by means of any method that consumes or dismembers its body, such as lighting itself on fire or crushing itself in a rock fall. This sort of action obviously becomes more and more unlikely as the creature’s mind decays and it loses control over its actions. Failure typically results in a period of heightened madness, bloodlust, and a sustained feeding frenzy that can last for days or even weeks.


===Nature and Behavior of Fell===
Deceased that have recently become Fell are ungral, a High Elven word meaning “tethered dead.” Ungral often appear almost indistinguishable from living creatures, though a violent or debilitating death will typically leave obvious signs. Ungral retain the intelligence they had in life, and not all of them have yet succumbed to evil. 

If an ungral fails to feed, it becomes a faengral. 

A faengral that fails to feed becomes a maelgral, or “walking dead.” 

Finally, as the bodies of the Fell inevitably continue to rot and decay, they eventually become indistinguishable from animated skeletons created through necromancy. When they reach this stage, they are no longer considered Fell. 

Ungral, the first stage of unlife for most risen, are typically intelligent enough to hunt on their own, stalking their prey on the edges of civilization, sneaking into and raiding outlying farms or hamlets in the dark of night. Many of these cunning creatures have even learned to hide beneath the surface of swamps, lakes, and other bodies of water during the day. At night, they crawl out of the depths and sneak into river towns and coastal cities to hunt. On the Sea of Pelluria, amphibious dead have become such a problem that most coastal settlements are forced to maintain boat patrols along their nighttime shores.

Faengral and Maelgral, as their minds drop to the level of animals, often turn to hunting in savage, roving packs, where their decaying minds and limited ability are made up for by numbers. Hiding in woods, ruins, or empty caves during the day, these packs shamble deliberately into villages and outposts as darkness falls, attacking without warning. These nightmare bands have forced many human settlements to build high walls and lock their gates when night comes. When they attack, the faengral and maelgral bring down their prey by swarming them, and in their frantic compulsion to feed, they often end up in savage fights among themselves.

The Fell are creatures of darkness, preferring to hide in dim and secret places during the day, avoiding the sun whenever they can, biding their time before stalking into the night to hunt. Though light does not physically harm the Fell, they seem almost afraid of it and it clearly affects their ability to see. Undead will often shy away or even flee from sunlight, and even bright torchlight and lamplight seems to affect them.

The maelgral, or “walking dead,” is the last state of the Fell before total decay. Maelgral have lost nearly all of their personality and are less dangerous, though more durable, than the other forms of undead. They have more durability and an inability to feel pain, but no longer have the ability to claw or bite their prey; instead they can only attempt to bludgeon their victims with desperate clubbing motions of their often handless arms. Unlike a lesser undead (skeletons, ghouls, ghosts or zombies), a maelgral retains some element of animal cunning.


===Known Undead Lords===
There are currently three undead lords of note around Eredane: 

* '''Zefim Vyle''', a lich who lives in a craggy natural tower on the eastern edge of the Forest of the Sahi. Sunulael has made overtures to Zefim, but so far he has resisted the temptation to join the Shadow.

* '''Gryffith Donne''', the vampire lord who residers amoung the mountain city of Idenor.

* '''The Waylander''', a wildlander who went partially insane and tried to reason with Sunulael. He now flies through the woods of the Caraheen as a stalker in the night, preying on scouts and refugees in the night.


===Necromantic Confluxes===
Certain areas have an amount of ambient necromantic energy, which can play havoc with the manifestations of newly formed Fell. This may occur in a graveyard, in a series of catacombs near the burial tombs of evil kings, or in an area where a massive unleashing of necromantic magic happened at some time in the past. In such areas, Fell may rise more powerful than normal. In some cases, a necromantic conflux speeds the process of rising, soon after its demise. Another conflux might keep the Fell from deteriorating at the normal rate, perhaps keeping them animate for months, even permanently as long as they do not leave the area. These areas are evil beyond measure, and in the case of the Obsidian Spire it is rumored that the legates are skilled in the necromantic arts and are known to use the area as a generator for a nearly limitless supply of loyal minions for supply in the City of Dead, Cambrial.
On the other side of the coin, particularly holy or blessed sites may actually prevent the dead from rising again. The home of a celestial trapped on Aryth by the Sundering may function in such a capacity, as could the burial place of a powerful magic item dedicated to good. When such areas are found near towns or other settlements, they make natural hospital grounds and sickness colonies where those who are ill beyond repair go to die so that they do not haunt their loved ones after they depart.