Venril Sathir

Venril of the Kunzar

The greatest iksar who ever lived began as one warrior of the Kunzar tribe, in the age when the iksar tribes were divided. It was said he was never a mere broodling, always a master of combat. He killed his own father to become chief, then led the Kunzar into the ruins and wilds of Kunark in search of knowledge and weapons.

The Unholy Writ of War

What he found was a theft waiting to happen. The necromancer Kotiz had been dealing in secret with Zebuxoruk, who offered him his journal of war, the Unholy Book of Zebuxoruk, for fifty sacrifices. Kotiz completed the pact and was moments from taking the book when Venril appeared, seized it, struck him down, and left his corpse in Kaesora. The Spirit of Kotiz tells the story himself in Zebuxoruk’s Pact.

With the book’s battle strategies and dark magic, Venril came to command necromancy, raising the bones of the fallen to fight again. His army marched to every corner of Kunark, and he stopped wanting to be a chief. He wanted to be emperor.

The empire

He brought the tribes under his banner by assimilation or by annihilation. When the Kylong resisted, their three greatest mystics shattered their holy medallion and fled in three directions so that it could never be remade. When frogloks and mountain giants allied against him in the First Slaves’ War, he broke the stalemate by sending a small band of shock troops into the giant fort to kill the rebellion’s leaders.

He made Sebilis his capital, married Drusella, eldest daughter of the Obulus wizards, and built the greatest empire Kunark had known. When Drusella died he built her a tomb in the canyons of Charasis, cast every citizen out of the cliff city but the royal guard and servants, who would never again see sun or moon, and hid its entrance with a spell. He visited often. No one knows what he did there.

The son who stopped him

Even Venril could not beat death, so he forsook Cazic-Thule for Innoruuk, sacrificing the weak, the sick and the elderly of his empire to Innoruuk’s Cauldron of Souls in exchange for the knowledge of lichdom. He took his own life in ritual with his phylactery amulet on his body, meaning to rise as an undying emperor.

His first son, Rile, had waited years for the throne and would not let his father rule forever. Warned by his priest Avengain, Rile burst into the mountain temple, ruined the ritual, destroyed his father’s body and took the throne. He handed the phylactery and the Unholy Book to Avengain. That was his mistake.

Rile’s bones

Avengain secretly founded the Cult of the Arisen to raise Venril under their own control, using Rile’s body when he died. But Rile died at sea when Trakanon attacked his flagship, and the body was lost. Centuries later an explorer found it in the wreck in the Timorous Deep. It passed through a goblin king’s throne room, a mountain giant’s keep and an iksar merchant’s hands before the cult’s descendants bought it and spent fifty years finding the amulet. Their ritual did nothing, and they left both on an altar beneath Charasis.

Then sarnak looters found the cult’s book and, standing near the bones and the amulet, unwittingly completed the ritual. After 1,600 years Venril was pulled out of his torment and into the body of the son who had betrayed him. He killed all but one of them.

The lich in Karnor’s Castle

His return was not a straight road to power. After his defeat by the Alliance of Stone, the alliance of goblins and hill giants that Grumbor Offaltop helped forge in the Littlest Hill Giant, the lich-king hid for more than a century at his Fortress Varis in the Bile, then moved back into Karnor’s Castle some fifty years ago. Verant told that part in Venril’s Plan.

Now he rules from Karnor’s Castle with undead and drolvarg, patiently rebuilding his strength in the Dreadlands and careful never to let the Ring of Scale learn he is back. His drolvarg packs search Kunark’s ruins for relics of his life, while drachnid spies of Mayong Mistmoore watch him. Only Venril knows where his phylactery is hidden.