The Riven Lands

A tall, unnervingly slender male Darakhul with translucent, corpse-like waxy skin rippling with faint internal lights, sparse brittle hair interwoven with dessicated grave flowers and polished bone fragments. Deep-set pupil-less eyes hold twin vortexes of shimmering cold blue light. Black necrotic rune lines pulse faintly from jawline to temples. Wears grave-shroud linen robes damp with chilling mist, adorned with dried finger bones that click faintly.

A being of profound, chilling detachment and absolute, morbid authority, utterly devoid of overt emotion, speaking with calm, unwavering certainty. Driven by extraction of knowledge and power from the deceased, supreme pragmatist viewing ritual sacrifice and manipulation of spectral energies as necessary tools for theocracy's strength. Terrifyingly effective ruler, embodying despair but channeling it into grim resolve.

Oracle-Lich Mortis was not born into leadership; he was chosen by the dead themselves. As a young Darakhul, Mortis displayed an unparalleled, almost obsessive, fascination with the unquiet spirits that haunted the Cinder Archipelago. While others simply communed or interpreted, Mortis sought to become closer to the state of undeath, believing that only through such proximity could true knowledge and control be achieved. He embarked on a series of harrowing, forbidden rituals, drawing on ancient texts salvaged from sunken crypts. The pivotal moment in Mortis's life was a ritual of profound self-mummification and spiritual anchor. He voluntarily bound his living soul to a powerful, ancient lich-phylactery, but without fully dying.