Marun

Description
Marun, when in his lich form, stands at nearly seven feet. Marun's gray robes are dulled and tattered from the hundreds of years he has worn them. Marun's skin is gray with a blue tint, and he wears a great helm to cover up his hideous appearance.

Marun wears many symbols of his magical powers and beliefs. Floating behind him is his disk of eternity, an artifact of his own creation that has an upside down triangle inside of two circles. Marun also wears another artifact he found when his was younger, the Pendant of the Chained God. The pendant has multiple chains attached to it, and glows purple when activated. Marun also carries his staff, a twisted piece of wood with a blue sapphire that floats above gnarled branches at the top.

About
Marun is a powerful lich who believes he is on the right path to restore the balance of power on Natrryn. Marun made a pact with Gruumsh, the orc god of storms and war, to use his orcs as an army. Marun has ulterior motives for his reason using orcs as an army, but wants to use the orcs to make humans suffer like he did when he was a child.

Marun believes that if everyone suffers the same fate he did when he was younger, then the world is just and fair. Marun is unaware of the passage of time, he spends most of his time perfecting illusion spells which he uses to distort reality and instill fear in his enemies before destroying them. Marun is also obsessed with items of power, and collecting artifacts from ancient times.

In Marun's Tower, his lair, Marun is even more powerful. Marun works relentlessly to recreate his hometown of Oberon out of memory and using his illusion spells that are so powerful, even he has trouble seeing they are illusions after he makes them.

History
Marun was born as a human in Oberon in 4055 D.C. Marun grew up in a wealthy farming family. Marun's father, Terek, grew a plant called Felmather, which was a well-known medicinal plant at the time. Terek dabbled in magic which allowed for him to grow the plants even more successfully. Marun had two younger sisters and one older brother. He grew up in a loving family, and most of the people of Oberon knew him and liked him.

Like all cities that bordered with the Orcan Forest, Oberon was often attacked by orc raiding groups but always fared well because of the many guards who lived there. When Marun was in his 11th year, a much larger than normal group of orcs came and easily overran the guards. Instead of collecting as much as they could carry and leaving, this group of orcs was filled with malice and continued killing and destroying as much of the city as they could. Marun was out walking on the northwest shore and heard the bells that warned of the orcs. Marun hurried back to his home, but it wasn't long before he saw smoke rising from the Felmather fields, and the red glow of fire destroying his home.

Marun ran into his blazing house and saw his entire family slaughtered. Terek appeared to have put up a fight to protect his family, but succumbed to the relentless fury of the orcs. Marun ran into his room and collected a few belongings and crawled out his window. Marun ran to the barn in hopes that his pony would be nearby. Marun quickly discovered that his pony had spooked and ran away. Marun hid for a long time, and after the commotion in the city died down, Marun ventured out to find any other survivors like himself.

Marun was unable to find any other people alive in Oberon. Knowing he needed to survive, Marun collected everything of value he could and planned on going to the next city to the east to let them know Oberon had been destroyed.

Marun spent his next years learning magic like his father had always planned for him. Marun went to a wizarding school, spending much of the money he had taken from home to do so. Marun managed to hide his true intentions from his teachers, but he reveled in the idea that he would one day be able to use his magic abilities to kill all of the orcs in the Orcan Forest. Marun's dedication to his magics quickly allowed him to surpass many of his teacher's abilities. When his teachers were unable to teach him any more, he left and searched on his own to find more powerful magics.

Marun's quest brought him to another continent, where he met humanoid races he had never heard of, and found new monstrosities even worse than orcs. Marun sensed a great dark power rising in the north and knew that a great war was coming. Marun had met a few acquaintances who were of the elven race, and had taught him more advanced and dangerous magics. The elven race and many others prepared for the battle they all knew was coming, Marun agreed to stay and help.

After many years, the army of darkness finally descended on the continent of Naifai, and was led by two gods in mortal form; Cyric, the god of lies and trickery, and Shar, the goddess of darkness and loss. Cyric and Shar commanded horrifying monsters and were extremely powerful, easily cutting through entire ranks of the elven army that Marun was a part of. Marun quickly realized they were not going to win the fight with this dark army and used nearly all of his magical ability to teleport himself as far away as possible.

Marun became obsessed with learning ways to defeat the gods in their mortal form. Even in the far recesses of the world that Marun had escaped to, he heard the horrific rumors of Shar and Cyric and the chaos and destruction they were spreading. Marun poured over magical books that spoke of ancient dark magics, and found one that taught him how to never die. Marun went through a horrifying dark ritual that transformed him into a lich. Marun practiced even more dark magics and became extremely powerful. Hundreds of years passed in what seemed like only weeks for Marun, and he again teleported himself back to the battlefield.

Marun found himself in an overgrown forest that showed no signs of a battle. Confused, Marun searched for the nearest city and found out that the great battle had occurred around 400 years ago. The battle was ancient history. The elves had lost, and Shar and Cyric commanded that they be worshiped, or they would finish their conquest of the world of Natrryn. Marun still wanted nothing more than to kill the gods to prove his power. Marun found out that the gods were ruling from thrones in the north, they required constant sacrifices from the groups of people who lived up there.

The many cities that provided constant sacrifices for the gods were tired of their cruel ruling, and Marun found it easy to convince the different populations to join him and rid Shar and Cyric from the mortal world. Each of the races collected large armies and joined Marun to march on the gods' castle, Castle Belphisian. Shar and Cyric were amused but did not realize that in the battle they were lacking an army.

A great battle raged on as Marun's army attacked the castle from the outside that was guarded by very few of Shar's monstrosities. After weeks of battle, Cyric opens the castle doors to finally end the battle he saw as a slight annoyance. When Cyric stepped out to meet the army, Marun stepped to its front lines and channeled all of his dark magic into a single spell to kill Cyric. Unsuspecting, Cyric was struck with the spell, and fell to his knees as his chest turned into dark ash and the spell began to permeate his entire body. Cyric turned entirely to ash in a few short seconds, and Marun's army cheered.

Shar, sensing her lover had been killed, angrily descended on Marun's army and unleashed the entirety of her godly powers of darkness out into the world. Marun and his army were decimated in a mere second. The wave of darkness continued to spread south into the world of Natrryn and killed thousands, completely emptying cities, forests, and mountains of humanoid life.

Marun came back to life a few days later due to him being a lich. He had accomplished his goal, but it had cost him thousands of lives. Marun wanted to grow even further in power so if another god ever threatened the world again, he would be ready to help. What Marun did not realize, was that because of the dark magic he used to make himself a lich, his mind was forever poisoned in ways he could not hope to understand. Marun became obsessed with getting his old life back, and making others realize the pain he had gone through.

More than 2000 years passed without Marun realizing. He had not seen another humanoid until a group of 8 walked in through the front doors of his tower.