Irkaxal Dakass

Irkaxal Dakass, a Seral sorcerer, set out on a journey across all of Raychan and Glodeat to the north to catalogue and study all sources of dark mana, the magical energies that give creatures and humanoids the power to drain life force, redirect energy. Irkaxal Dakass felt that, given enough understanding of the power of dark mana, he could control the very cycle of life and death.

Dakass traveled all over Raychan, and even used his magic to conceal him from sight and get past Aldrian patrols and city watches. He came to the seven known places of dark mana in the western hemisphere, all of which surrounded by death and destruction. Dakass spent the majority of his long life on these travels, searching out the shrines of mana, and spending sometimes months studying the flow of mana and the powers that surround them.

It was in the far north of Glodeat, past the Blizzard Breath Peaks that the Aldrian do not dare to cross, that Dakass found the final shrine, and by his accounts the most powerful. Untouched by civilization, its mana was the purest form of dark mana, and was a greater source of information and knowledge than all of the others combined. Dakass truly celebrated this find, and he remained in its presence for over a decade, surviving, and soon growing accustomed, to the frigid northern wastes.

The Seral sorcerer scribed all of his thoughts into journals and tomes, which he carried with him and constantly revisited, flipping through their worn pages, changing ideas and connecting thoughts. It was in the northern wastes that he brought all of his notes together into one, thorough and detailed manual, which would later be called the Tome of the Damned. It is said that Dakass created the first spell of Undeath, upon himself, and to his dark delight, he noticed his very scales wilting and falling away over the course of his long journey back to Raxanach in the far south.

When he returned to the Seral lands, he began to pay the scribes of his house to copy his Tome of the Damned, creating more tomes that he planned on distributing himself to those he deemed worthy of this knowledge. He had created life beyond death, and he would rally an army of the damned around him to claim as much of Natheria as would fall. By the time a full year had passed from his arrival at the shrine in the north, he was nothing more than rotting flesh, clinging scales, and strong bones. He had achieved the very goal he had set out for. He had become the very first Necromancer.

It didn’t take long for Emperor Kaxarness to hear of Dakass’s exploits and findings. The leader of the Seral Empire to the south feared that Dakass would turn on him first, claiming the Imperial lands as a starting point for a much larger conquest. Kaxarness acted first, destroying the convent of scribes that were copying the Necromancer’s works. Then, the Emperor sent his greatest assassins to Dakass’s home, to end it all there. But when they arrived, he was gone.

Dakass had fled after hearing of his library being ransacked. He knew that he could not find solace in the homes or cities of his kin, and so he moved further out, into the rocky hills of southeastern Raychan. There, he came to his family’s crypt, a large, underground hall holding the remains of over fifteen generations of Irkaxal. He shut himself in there, hiding from the searching eyes of the Empire.

Dakass resided within the crypt for centuries. Some say that Dakass raised his very kin from their graves and made the crypt a much deeper and darker place, turning from an eternal resting place into a stronghold to hide within.

On the surface, a handful of Dakass’s loyal servants saved what volumes of his work they could, and sold them on the black markets to mages with dark desires much like the first Necromancer. Only 147 copies of the Tome of the Damned are said to exist to this day.

Over the Ages, many different bands of adventurers have attempted to chart and explore the Crypt of Irkaxal. Rarely have any ever ventured back out into the daylight, and those who have either told horror stories of what had transpired within, or simply never spoke of the events again. Truly a test to even the most hardy of adventurers, the Crypt of Irkaxal is not a place for the faint of heart.