Elrich the Old

One of the things I appreciate about video games, novels, and comics are the iconic, recurring characters that exist within them.  Forgotten Realms has Eliminister and Drzzt, Final Fantasy has Biggs and Wedge, Discworld (but moreso Terry Pratchett) has Death, and Star Wars has Boba Fett.  I like the idea of characters, powerful and mysterious, whose personalities are so gigantic that they bleed out into other stories.  This gives a story a sense of a larger universe, where other events are occuring and that this single string of a narative isn't the only important thing that is going on.  These characters can be so larger-than-life that some ask: why aren't they featured in their own separate series?

Well focusing on a character makes you get to know them; you begin to understand them and their daily powers seem just as mundane to you as it does to them.  In essence, you focus your story around a single mysterious character and then they loose their mystery.  I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but that doesn't change the fact that establishing a universe entails using characters that make brief cameos.

There are several characters that I would like to make available in a cross-storyline arc, but the one I'm most certain on for this current project is Elrich the Old.

Some months ago I came up with a silly, ludicrous, ridiculous, idea:  two liches meet in a Denny's diner, eating breakfast.  One is having scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, and the other is eating strawberry pancakes.  They, of course, have illusions placed on them so they don't disturb the public at large, and they are meeting because they want to duel each other, and the Silver Hammers (the cloak and dagger police that keep the modern world oblivious to the supernatural) will be overseeing the event to ensure that no civilians are harmed or notice fireballs erupting from ancient, dead, corpses.

One was called Hedric the Betrayer, and the other was called Elerich the Old.

I didn't get that far in writing that story, but the characters were there, and I loved them, or more precisely, I liked Elerich (now Elrich), the pancake eating troll archlich with a missing hand and eye.

Elrich is a troll, and the great-great-great-great-great(i think you get the idea)-grandfather of necromancy.  His experiments violated the laws of nature, creating the Taint, but also prolonging his life.  His student, Hedrich, betrayed him, stealing Elrich's hand and eye after six centuries of serving and secretly plotting.  Elrich survived the encounter, and, annoyed over the inconvenience of missing body parts, returned to his work.  Hundreds of years passed, and Elrich secluded himself further and further into his studies until he was almost completely unaware of anything around him.

Eventually, Oracle Vul's Taint exceeded his ability to control it, and he went on a spree to destroy the continent of Aos'Teg.  The other dragons interceded, with Kav contacting Elrich and asking him to set aside his studies and assist the dragons in defeating Vul or trying to cure the Taint.  Elrich refused, and continued working on unlocking the secrets of Aetherium, which led to a showdown between Oracle Vul and Kav.  Predictably, Kav won, inheriting the title of Oracle of Stone.  This led to Kav's corruption and inheriting the Taint of his predessor, and a century later Kav went on a quest to destroy the entire world of Toth.

Understandibly, Elrich's studies were disturbed and it was at this moment that Elrich reached an impasse: if he doesn't do something, he won't be able to study, if he does something, he'll have to stop studying for a while.  Elrich chose to go with the decision that will eventually let him study again, rationalizing that he had all of eternity to return to his studies after he put out all of the "little fires" cropping up around Toth.

It is not certain how much of a part Elrich played in the War of the Oracles, some believe that he was instrumental in banishing Kav, others think that he didn't return to the world until a few decades after Kav was exiled.  Either way, Elrich travels across the world, trying to get everything back on track since the chaos of the War of the Oracles, so he could go back to his studies.

I like this character because he's complex:  he is a creature of unspeakable evil, driven by power, doing good things for very selfish reasons.  This is something that is supposed to be typical for the characters in the Father's Realm: implacably evil characters doing good, achingly good characters doing evil.  Elrich has no compunction about people dying or suffering, afterall, he's thousands of years old and is very acquainted with death and suffering, and on the whole he would rather kill people than save them, but he learned his lesson: he has to participate in the world so he can go back to doing whatever he wants.