[hider=Rixis, Locus Warden][b][center][h1]Rixis, Locus Warden[/h1][/center][/b]
[b]Rank:[/b] Revenant Major

[b]Description:[/b]
[indent]Rixis, once fair in life, has been reduced by perils, trials, and admonishments to the brink of unraveling. Little more than a tenuous and pitted spine and skull, Rixis is frequently embodied in a parade of varying Dead Seas, unshaped and streaked with grime from undulation across the barren wastes with naught but a narrow gap amidst the heap through which his dead eyes may peer. The seething mass of partially liquified necrotic flesh makes for an inelegant form incapable of most basic functions, and if not for his talent in the arcane arts Rixis would doubtlessly be a complete invalid.[/indent]

[b]Background:[/b]
[indent]Rixis was once a prominent mage, unlanded and with a tenuous, nigh-mercenary relationship with numerous petty kings in one of the more chaotic and turbulent realms of Leria. When Eagoth arrived with his undead hordes, Rixis attempted to broker with the Necromancer to retain his independency - but his scheme was foiled when his early efforts to betray the various petty kingdoms he had worked for failed, resulting in him fleeing in shame to Eagoth with little to show for it. Promptly turned into a Revenant, Rixis shamed himself further in battle when - overwhelmed with terror at the notion of true death and cessation of thought and still possessing enough independence to act willfully - surrendered and was taken captive by the forces of the living, who dismembered Rixis' body for good measure and interrogated him for intelligence on Eagoth's designs. Rixis was eventually freed, and spared dissolution when Eagoth observed that his living captors had already done enough to punish him for his callow nature and that his capability to still weave magics made him marginally more useful as a willful revenant than not. He was then consigned, in shame and mockery, to attend to one of Eagoth's failed mystical experiments in a remote, secluded area of Leria, consigned to live crippled and in squalor for the rest of eternity as an aggrandized handyman for a failed enterprise. Ambitious, but limited due to his dependency upon the immobile Profane Locus to supply him with functioning bodies time and time again as each one falls apart, as well as by his innate cowardice and shameful reputation. He is a nonentity in the politics and intrigue of the Revenants Major despite his status as an otherwise competent mage and Warden of one of Eagoth's great magical works.[/indent]

[b]Ward:[/b] Nergthron, Seat of the Locus
[indent]In the midst of the Southern Subcontinent of Leria within a central but otherwise remote mountain range lies a sizable chasm and vale, wherein Eagoth has isolated the Profane Locus, one of his great but ultimately disfavored arcane works, to deter its interference with his designs elsewhere. Nergthron is devoid of any true settlements or fortifications, and is instead rife with makeshift palisades and hutches, crudely assembled originally as a staging area for the Profane Locus when it was first set aside. Although the surface features of the vale are unremarkable, there exists extensive and impressive caverns and catacombs, painstakingly dug out by undead hands, wherein writhes an untold and gargantuan surplus of rancid, mouldering necrotic flesh - aniamted and seething in a myriad of pits and ducts, arranged in a fashion not unlike irrigation, where stilt-mounted villages and shanties of meatworkers and attendant ghouls dwell and tend to the Dead Seas. Though remote, Nergthron is centrally located in the Southern Subcontinent, allowing for ease of transportation and shipments by cart or ghouls. Scraps, flakes, shreds, and minute threads of otherwise useless decaying flesh and muscle tissue are shipped to Nergthron in massive heaps, where they are animated and congealed over time by the Profane Locus. Once newly animated by the foul energies, meatworkers then shape the animated flesh into Dead Sea Warforms to be sent to Eagoth's most favored lieutenants, or else into packages of conveniently arranged fleshworking material, animated and pliable to skilled hands to be transported all across Leria to meatworkers in every corner of the Empire of the Dead.[/indent][/hider][hider=The Profane Locus]Midway through Eagoth's campaign to spread undeath and conquer all of Leria, he found himself being stalled and even pushed back on multiple fronts - the defenders of the living realms sweeping through his lines of the dead with such fervor and zeal, they denied him even the opportunity to desecrate the soil or animate the injured left in their wake.

Possessing abundant resources, tomes of ancient and forbidden lore, and various artifacts of note in spite of his losses, Eagoth devised a number of arcane experiments to assist in turning the tides of war back in his favor. Amongst these dark and terrible projects was the creation of The Profane Locus.

The Locus continuously desecrated the land around, and actively suffused all things that once lived with dark, animating energies. At first, the Locus seemed to be the ideal weapon - but shortly, numerous drawbacks and inefficiencies in its use became apparent, leading Eagoth to set it aside and turn to other ventures.

The Profane Locus can raise dead bodies in a fraction of the time normally required, even by Eagoth himself. These raised undead pay for this expediency however, as they are universally mindless and unbound. A consequence of the Locus fueling itself by binding and sublimating the spirits of the dead, torn from their bodies upon death. These raised undead possess only a primitive ability to sense life and a base drive to devour it, with a further need to bind them after rising in order to meaningfully direct them.

The Locus can accomplish more than simply raising bodies. Any and all tissue that once bore life will animate with time and proximity - severed limbs, scraps of skin, even mounds of disemboweled organs and viscera will all begin to writhe once suffused by the powers of the Locus. Like the bodies the Locus raises, these undead vestiges are universally mindless and unbound. Over time, with constant wear and decay, these remnants inevitably deteriorate into roiling heaps of partially liquefied, necrotic slop - which will congeal, aggregate, and form into massive undead constructs known as Dead Seas.

At first, Eagoth found great use in the Locus, especially upon the discovery that undead directly under his control would exert their binding upon any putrefied, animated masses left over by the Locus. An undead minion could be substantially bolstered by submerging it in a Dead Sea, fusing itself with the morass and simultaneously binding the whole of it to Eagoth. His meatworkers' labors were also eased considerably in the stitching and maintenance of valued bodies through the use of lesser animated tissues, adhered to choice skeletal remains already bound to his service.

Promising as the Locus was at first, it shortly became something of a nuisance and a detriment to Eagoth's schemes. Its proximity to any battlefield would interfere with his own magics, raising mindless, unbound corpses faster than he could, robbing him of many prized warriors and minds he had desired intact. The Locus would even snatch up and unmake their very spirits, denying their use as advisors and repositories of knowledge. Worse, it caused the active decay and deterioration of any undead to accelerate - causing bits and pieces of them that had loosened to animate, unbound from their own body and occasionally from within, with subsequent seething and writhing causing additional damage to their putrid bodies.

The Locus thus proved more of a liability than an asset, with the necessity of binding all the mindless undead it raised creating unnecessary tedium, and the loss of the spirits and minds of those it consumed proving harmful to Eagoth's procurement of intelligence from his raised enemies. When kept near to Eagoth's favored servants, it would slowly cripple them by animating bits and slivers of their flesh, hindering them at inopportune moments. Its more useful functions - its gradual production of Dead Seas and provision of animated tissue for the use of meatworkers - saved it from being abjured outright by Eagoth, but he banished it permanently to a more remote locale within his growing empire of the dead where its influence would not disturb his work. To this day, it is fed by an influx of shipped, necrotic tissue from elsewhere in Leria, overseen by a cabal of meatworkers and tenders who organize the reanimating flesh into pits where they may sculpt the unbound tissue into useful warforms to be commandeered by Eagoth's favored lieutenants, or else into packages of knit-kits to assist in the maintenance of more skeletal undead.[/hider]