Vhaegar

Vhaegar is a character in Mini-Grand 5109

Biography:
Lich is the term used to describe a wizard who has, through an act of powerful and forbidden magic, stored a part of his soul in an object called a phylactery in order to gain immortality. As necromancy is generally frowned upon even if it is performed upon a consenting adult (it's hard to do something you haven't consented to do to yourself) most people just content themselves with dying but there's always a few who fear the end enough to justify to themselves retreating to the edge of civilisation and fighting off the occasional self-righteous adventurer. Vhaegar was one of those people, an aging wizard who wasn't particularly nefarious and had never really dabbled in necromancy but really, really didn't want to die. Poring over many expensive scrolls bought with the heirlooms of his staggeringly rich ancestors he finalised the ancient rituals before retreating to a secluded manor he'd had built in the mountains, locking his precious soul (now safely enclosed in an ornate golden box, filled with lead so that nobody would be able to steal it) in a chest with five locks (three physical, two magical) in a warded room fifty feet underground at the end of a trap-filled labyrinth with enchanted moving walls hidden behind a secret wall in a second, trick labyrinth leading to a fake but completely unmagical golden box in his basement. Then he lived on his own in his manor for three hundred years, poring over old books, filling bottles with tiny ships, proscratinating on writing an autobiography and generally outliving everyone else, until he was pulled from his comfortable retirement into a battle to the death.

Unfortunately while he was confident his protections could repel any mortal attacker (they worked without fail for three hundred years, after all) the grandmaster computer proved a little too much of a challenge. The grand battle setting required the competitor's entire soul be present, so it was simply pulled out of its prison and stuffed hastily into a randomly fabricated new vessel.

This was a pigeon.

Description:
Vhaegar is the top half of a skeleton, floating several feet in the air as if he was still walking around somehow. His hips have been removed as with everything attached and in its place his spine disappears into a golden band hung around with long streamers of tattered blue cloth (which end approximately where his legs would if he had any). Ancient scrolls, mysterious vials and other bits of assorted wizarding paraphernalia like some kind of necromancer utility belt. In place of eyes his skull is filled with a cloud of generic glowing blue magical fog which extends down into his ribcage. He also has a pair of spiked golden pauldrons, a gold-edged purple cloak that drags along the ground and a pair of large, impractical gold and purple striped horns screwed into the top of his skull. A collection of enchanted golden chains float in pointless circles around his ribcage. Basically he's a pretty big fan of gold.

In life Vhaegar was actually a fairly law abiding wizard, only driven to practice the forbidden arts by his advancing age and desire to keep his wits for as long as possible. As the years passed though, as the flesh dropped off his bones and his only villagers were brash young men who thought to destroy the "murderous warlock" who lived in the creepy house and probably cursed all of their cows or something like that he decided he might as well live up to their expectations and put on the face they expected because no amount of reasonable discussion can convince a righteous boy with a sword that a walking skeleton just wants to sit on its own and read books. He taught himself some basic spells to animate animal bones to wander around his house (anyway he was getting a little lonely), screwed a pair of intimidating horns to his head and made sure that whenever he had "guests" he made suitably nefarious boasts and created a couple of useless magical trinkets for them to destroy before letting them "vanquish" him, like putting on a show. As a hobby he actually found it fairly enjoyable. Actual evil still doesn't really come naturally though, most of the time though he just acts like a generic crotchety old man.

His phylactery is a pretty ordinary looking pigeon if you disregard the fact that its head is also filled with burning blue fog. That tends to get it some odd looks from any other pigeons. The installation of his soul doesn't seem to have affected its pigeon mind in any way and grants him absolutely no measure of control over its actions. He is essentially a slave to its random, pigeony desires unless he feels like losing track of the location of his soul and having it eaten by an eagle.

Items/Abilities:
Given that he is a lich, his main advantage is probably the inability to be killed until his phylactery is destroyed, though as it is now a pigeon that is somewhat more of a risk than it used to be. He can be physically damaged (quite easily as he isn't much more than a skeleton) but is capable of regenerating any breakages even from reduction to a pile of dust within the space of a day. He actually surrendered his legs voluntarily, it's just so much more convenient to float everywhere and besides his manor has a lot of stairs. His main area of expertise as a wizard was in the manipulation of frost, able to congeal shards of enchanted ice in mid air and throw them at people if the mood so took him, although more usually he just used it to win wizard ice sculpture competitions before he exiled himself by becoming a skeleton, so his aim might be a little off.