Editing Awnshegh (section)

==[[Lich| The Magian]] ==

A mysterious lich from across the Sea of Dragons, the spellcaster who would become the Magian landed on the coast of Pipryet six years ago with the Riders, a core of loyal [[Death Knight]] followers, then launched a coup, during which he committed bloodtheft on the rulers of the nation, removing many of the disadvantages of his undead condition and letting him move like a living person while leaving him, you know, a half-rotten corpse.  He continues to war ceaselessly with his neighbors, constantly seeking expansion, though he is a shockingly fair and just ruler beloved by his people on the domestic policy front, and his reign has seen a marked increase in local prosperity and standards of living.  He also uses his loyal follower and protege, Ahazarus, as a body-double, so neither his subjects nor visiting adventurers and assassins may know the truth of his condition, misdirected towards a more obvious target.

The Magian is a strange figure among the evil awnshegh: a visionary idealist.  He is driven, not by a lust for power and domination, like the Gorgon or the Raven, but by his hatred of chaos and his conviction that all the world's problems could be solved if only a sufficiently intelligent and powerful figure could destroy it and impose order; a perfect, one-world order that would more than justify any atrocities committed in the process of creating it.  He idolizes Roele, for instance, and scoffs at the idea that Azrai's taint has affected his thinking... and to be fair, he is a bizarre aberration in more ways than one, so there is perhaps some truth to that.  That said, the Magian ''also'' performs horrible experiments in spreading Azrai's taint on people who don't remotely deserve it, and has learned several spells to induce or weaponize it.  A visionary idealist supervillain is, after all, still a supervillain.  He is in a tenuous alliance with the Gorgon and the Raven; neither of them are really his kind of people, but hell, better them than some of the freak-show awnshegh running around this crazy continent, and when the final showdown inevitably happens their time will come.

Power-wise, while his blood is somewhat-minor, he has a shitload of offensive and defensive blood powers, surprisingly excluding Regeneration, but not Invulnerability, with no listed or suggested means of destruction, Resistance to both magic and non-magical attacks, and both Death Touch and Wither touch.  Some of this ''might'' just be his lich powers treated as bloodline powers for mechanical simplicity, mind. Oh, and he's ''also'' a 20th-level magic user with a custom spell, ''bloodline corruption'', that drains a few points off the caster's bloodline to forcibly change another creature into an awnshegh, turning their blood into that of Azrai, giving them bloodform and 1d4 powers while otherwise keeping what they have.  He's also scattered a few scrolls of this spell around the continent, for his own purposes.