Jander the Forsaken's page

Jander began his criminal career as the third son of a wealthy and respected noble House in Gastenhall. He grew up knowing privilege but chaffed under the weight of his father's legacy. Determined to succeed on his own merits, he ran away from home at an early age and applied to arcane universities under a fictitious name but met with nothing but offhand rejection, no matter how earnestly he tried. For years he lived on the streets and stole food to live. Eventually realizing the futility of honesty and hard-work, he then reapplied with forged references. Two weeks later he was apprenticed to a wizard.

Years later, while posing as an agent of the crown and employing charm magic as well as personal guile, he nearly managed to sell the Cathedral of the Sanctum Solaris back to the Church in a brazen real-estate scam but was caught when an unrelated assassination attempt upon the the principle mark, a Bishop of Mitra, caused him to throw off Jander's enchantment as he stood with pen wet and parchment in hand. Branderscar beckoned.

A series of narrow escapes and brilliant plots followed which saw Jander rise to undreamed heights, culminating in his embrace of lichdom and in co-ruling a decimated nation, bringing it up out of the ashes of war (one which he he had started) and back towards prosperity.

On the eve of total victory over the forces of good, one of Jander's principle victims (and former apprentice) achieved literal apotheosis and did what no treacherous Asmodean had ever succeeded in doing, namely smashing the Dark Lord's phylactery before his eyes, even as he held the man's remaining family hostage. This allowed the man's mortal daughter, a girl of thirteen, to rise up and destroy the lich utterly with a single blow from a blessed stone.

Jander could not have been more proud of them both.

Jander has a bold soul and believes in the triumph of the superior will. As such, he is fond of testing the resolve of those around him as well as reveling in their emotional conflict. To his warped sensibility these cruelties serve two functions; to confirm his ultimate power over others and also to spur his victims on to personal growth. If a person lacks the willpower to defend themselves or do what must be done to survive, then in Jander's mind they deserve whatever the world (or he himself) visits upon them. In essence he is like a torturer who perversely wishes to be resisted. He considers death, being the cessation of pain and struggle, to be a terrible waste of potential.

Once upon a time, Jander had two crates. Kidnapping a family of three from Aldencross named Scaramore, he gave them a knife and instructed them to decide among themselves which two would be spared. If they refused to make a decision, all three would be slain. What transpired is up to the DM but if the knife was employed they discovered too late that it was merely a stage-prop from Handsome William's Theatre Company, their anguish and confusion pure sustenance for Jander's twisted soul. All three living members of the family were then placed in crates, mother and child in one and father in the other, kept alive through daily feedings through the air-holes and occasional healing spells.

Weeks later on the docks of Farholde, the father, whose given name was Jacobian, was released from his small prison and offered a deal; his family would remain safe if he served Jander faithfully and forsook his old identity. He accepted, thus donning a full-faced iron helmet and answering only to 'Markadian the Last.'

The family continued to be fed and kept alive via magic for the next year or so, with lesser restoration spells staving off the worst effects of muscle atrophy and sores but not pain. This was accomplished with aid from Nickolas (before his death), by men whom Jander hired and by Jander himself when he could spare time away from the Horn or the War.

The next chapter of Markadian's life started when Jander drowned the wife and child in their crate and left them underwater for eight days. Jander then ordered his most faithful cohort Markadian to cast spells at a number of meaningless tasks until he was exhausted of magical power. Then he teleported the man across the known world to a sleepy town where Talengarde and Asmodeus were complete unknowns.

Jander arranged the meeting at sunrise. Here, on a dock much like the one upon which he had first sworn service, Markadian was relieved of his spellbook and magical items and embraced by Demysa, who drained him almost to death. (His Constitution was reduced to 3 and his levels down to 1, from 12 and 14 respectively. This would mean that the negative levels would become permanent negative levels and require a greater restoration spell to recover.) Jander then thanked him for his excellent service and presented him with his freedom, a water-logged crate and a sack of coins, telling him "There is enough coin in this bag to return you to what you once were, either a simple man with a loving family or else a powerful wizard crafted in my image, capable of challenging me and perhaps taking revenge... but not both. I look forward to your decision! Do not tarry overlong however; you must decide before the sun sets or the choice will be taken out of your hands." Jander and Demysa then teleported away.

There is about 10,000 gold pieces in the sack. If Markadian hurries, he can find a powerful enough cleric in this town to cast two raise dead spells (costing about 5,000 go each), and thus be reunited with his family. (Jander had made absolutely sure beforehand that the strongest local cleric was capable of raise dead but not resurrection.) The former slave will be penniless, level 1, with no possessions or spells (and he cannot memorize more because Jander took his spellbook) and so will have to find work quickly so as not to starve on the streets, but he will be alive and whole again. Alternatively, Markadian could pay the priest to cast restoration spells (1,000 gp each) to restore one wizard level every week for up to ten weeks, or use some of it to build up a new spellbook again. With his returning knowledge he can earn enough to eventually get back all his arcane might!

In any case the duration at which raise dead can bring someone back to life expires at sunset of that day so he will have made his choice. Greater magics like resurrection and true resurrection can still be used later but finding sufficiently powerful clerics willing to cast them is almost impossible and the cost is astronomical (10,000 gp. to 25,000 gp. each), so even if he just tells himself he will return to power and THEN seek out ways to raise his loved ones later, really he is still making the choice of power and vengeance over family!

Unbeknowns to all, Jander scrys upon Markadian until sundown to learn his cohort's choice. He does this through a mirror where the man's wife and child, released from their crate and still very much alive, can also watch. "Behold as your husband weighs his love for you against his hatred of me. Which one of us looms larger in his heart, I wonder?"

The box that Markadian is lugging around actually contains the corpses of two hanged Gastenhall criminals, a human and a halfling, whose bodies were made to resemble the family through the sculpt corpse spell. If raised from the dead, they enthusiastically thank Markadian before setting off to do incredible amounts of crime in the town, at which point Jander teleports wife and child to Markadian's side. He is a lich of his word.

However, if Markadian chooses power and vengeance over raising his family, said family gets to witness the betrayal and corruption of the man they love as husband and father and Jander gets to witness all that drama before reuniting them anyway, secure in the knowledge that Markadian's family is torn asunder and his cohort's own choice has indeed destroyed the prospect of a happy, simple life. "For vengeance sake he'd leave you moldering in a box with your child, even when he possessed the power to bring you both back! He is not the same man he was."

And the mad lich laughs!

The phylactery containing Jander's heart is hidden behind many safeguards and deceptions. For example, many know that Jander has created his own demiplane called “The Treasure Dimension” and may search for the phylactery there. To do so requires the spells astral projection, etherealness or plane shift (this last spell requires a fork attuned to the destination so someone would likely have to have been to Jander's plane previously). Exploring this plane will result in their deaths, as the treasure has long since been moved to Straya Avarna and Jander has cast spawn calling (a.k.a calling the godspawn) in this place, trapping a Colossal Advanced Entropic Thunder Behemoth inside, which Jander has taken to calling The Procter. Because the plane is not much bigger than the beast and because it is an apocalyptic engine of hunger, it gladly devours any being who sets foot there. Otherwise Jander only plane shifts in enough cows and criminals per week to keep it alive but ravenous.

In addition to being a trap for anyone seeking after Jander's secrets, the "Treasure Dimension" also serves as a dead-man's switch; if Jander should be prevented from recasting his create demiplane spell every few weeks, due to unrecoverable death for example, the plane will collapse, releasing The Procter into our world. Thus shall divinations about Jander warn of untold carnage and destruction which shall befall mankind should he be slain.

Jander's phylactery actually resides in a vault at the First Bank of Abadar in the City of Brass, on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Here Jander has spared no expense for magical protections, especially from divinations and teleportation. If the bank does not offer these, he makes arrangements for them himself.

Within the vault his familiar Kiliketz luxuriates with all the booze, cigars and porn he could ever desire, his only companions being a massive iron sarcophagus and a towering Iron Golem, both bearing the likeness of Jander. Jander calls this golem The Headmaster. The coffin is similar to Cardinal Thorn’s in that holes allow mist to enter or leave and it is secured on the outside by a superior lock built into the lid with an arcane lock spell cast upon it (Disable Device DC 50). In addition to these objects, a permanent alarm spell upon the archway will sound a loud ringing bell for 1 round whenever someone enters the room (even invisibly, but not astrally or ethereally) and a symbol of insanity burns on the ceiling, affecting all beings within 60 feet when first beheld (DC 30, Will negates) and continues to affect creatures for 10 minutes after being tripped (the insanity is permanent). Kiliketz is attuned to these traps or knows the passwords to bypass them.

Inside the coffin lies the original captured spellbooks from which Jander has amassed his own grimoire as well as a phylactery that appears to all magical observation to be an item of overwhelming necromancy. This is actually a decoy, a perfect replica of the original containing a pinch of Nicholas' ashes, with a magic aura spell cast upon it. Even an identify spell only grants a Will save to detect the falsehood (DC 21). The real phylactery is built into the body of the iron golem and is likewise cloaked with a magic aura that makes it appear to be a non-magical component of the machine. The golem attacks any beings entering the vault until they are dead, even Kiliketz and Jander, save for those speaking the password (“Lethe”) and returns to the corner afterward.

Kiliketz is in possession of a potion of invisibility and two scrolls of sending, which he can use to contact Jander, speaking 25 words or less. Sadly, the latter spell takes 10 minutes to cast, so in the event of an intruder he attempts to flee and inform his master of the culprit. There is a 5% chance that any message sent across planes simply fails to reach the recipient, however.

Jander casts his own sending every day to check in on his familiar and while the distance is too great to sense Kiliketz's emotions, he can tell if the ice mephit is killed. Thus, the little libertine serves as a kind of living alarm.

With the Bank Vault compromised and unknown assailants ransacking the Planes to find it, Jander's phylactery now resides in the Void, also known as the Negative Energy Plane, in an an iron tomb at the heart of an asteroid. He calls this refuge "The Ziggurat of Betrayal".

Living beings travelling the Plane take 1d6 points of negative energy damage and make a DC 25 Fortitude save or gain a negative level, both every round (spells like death ward and planar adaptation can protect from this but the former has a duration of mere minutes). The asteroid is indistinguishable from the lightless eternity surrounding it due to a permanent mage's private sanctum spell that shrouds it completely in foggy darkness which darkvision, sound, scrying and detect thoughts cannot pierce, though beings may pass through freely and those on the inside can perceive what occurs on the outside. The bedrock was excavated with disintegrate spells and the chamber constructed with overlapping wall of iron spells twenty inches thick (hardness 10, 600 hit points, break DC 65) with a thin sheet of lead paint on the inside to further defeat scrying magic.

Within, the Ziggurat is actually a single airless chamber exactly 40 feet in diameter, from which the central dais can be seen at all times. An emerald green aura suffuses everything, evidence of a dimensional lock spell that blocks all extradimensional travel (including astral projection, etherealness and teleport) which Jander refreshes every twenty days. There is a single door built into the shell which literally cannot be opened from the outside without destroying the door; it has the same statistics as the wall, has no lock or outside mechanism and merely a heavy iron bar on the inside. In addition, the door is flush with the exterior surface and cloaked by the private sanctum spell so a visitor would have few methods of discovering its existence.

The Ziggurat's interior houses five Greater Shadows and five Devourers who attack any being on sight and protect the area because Jander delivers fresh and screaming meat often enough to keep them marginally loyal. Etched into the structure's walls is a permanent rune of dispelling that triggers whenever someone within 40 feet looks at it (all of the shadows and devourers are attuned to this trap) and in the center of the floor is a permanent prismatic sphere spell with a 10 foot radius that blazes merrily. Creatures with less than 8 HD are blinded for 2d4x10 minutes simply looking at it and its final color (violet) blocks all spells and so it may defeat even discern location. A few inches smaller than the sphere and positioned just inside is a secondary shell of iron ten inches thick (hardness 10, 300 hit points, break DC 45) which rebuffs those simply barreling through the sphere and is protected from destruction itself by the magic of said sphere. It is also spiked, just to be mean.

Within this shell three Iron Golems with the face of Jander stand in a circle facing outward. Two of these are permanent image spells concealing a symbol of insanity and symbol of laughter respectively. These are triggered when viewed, say by individuals disbelieving the golems or glancing at them using truesight. The third is a true Iron Golem with orders to kill anyone who doesn't appear to be a naked Jander or who speaks the password ("Blackerly").

Within the chest of the third golem is a phylactery resembling Jander's in every respect, even containing a withered human heart inside. This is a replica with a magic aura spell cast upon it, such that divinations register it as the overwhelmingly necromantic phylactery of a lich. Only an identify spell can reveal the truth and then only if the caster succeeds at a Will save (DC 22). The replica is also the trigger object for three trap the soul spells; concealed inside are three gemstones, each worth 20,000 gold pieces and each is inscribed with the name of a man whom Jander suspects of eventual treachery; Garadin Menas, Titus Rackburn and Jacobian Scaramore (Markadian the Last). If any of these men should lay hand upon the phylactery then their soul and physical body shall be automatically forced into the gem forever without the benefit of spell resistance or a save (though breaking the gem will free the individual unharmed.

Jander's true phylactery is concealed below the floor in a lead-lined metal box, carefully woven into the Ziggurat structure and cocooned between the inner and outer shells. Thus whatever divinations might be cast upon the subject could truthfully reveal, "the Enchanter's heart rests within an iron chest of his own device." The phylactery has 40 hit points, hardness 20 and a break DC of 40. An instant summons spell has been cast upon it and if Jander suspects perfidy he can call it directly to his hand by smashing a certain sapphire he keeps on his person. This functions even across planes so long as "no other creature has claimed ownership of it" in which case he learns who currently possesses the phylactery and where they are located.

Jander uses a sending spell to check in every day with one of the Devourers, whom he calls The Beadle regardless of which one he contacts.