Skall

Skall
Medium lich (Undead, Extraplanar)
Wizard 19

HD: 19d12 (133 hp)
Inititiative: +0
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
AC: 25 (+5 natural, +5 bracers of armor, +5 ring of protection), touch 10, flatfooted 25
Base Attack/Grapple: +9 (+19 insight bonus)
Attack: Touch +38 melee (1d8+5, plus paralysis and blightfire)
Full Attack: Touch +38/+4 melee (1d8+5, plus paralysis and blightfire)
Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Damaging touch, fear aura, paralyzing touch, blightfire, spell-like abilities, spellstitching,19th level spellcaster..
Special Qualities: Magic immunity, turn resistance +20, DR 15/epic, immunities
Saves: Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +18
Abilities: Str 12, Dex 11, Con --, Int 29, Wis 25, Cha 25
Skills: Alchemy +22, Concentration +22, Craft (Calligraphy) +22, Knowledge (Geography) +22, Knowledge (History) +22, Knowledge (the Planes) +22, Knowledge (Arcana) +22, Knowledge (Nature) +22, Knowledge (Religion) +22, Profession (Mortician) +22, Scry +22, Spellcraft +22
Feats: Brew Potion (or Dark Speech), Improved Familiar, Skill Focus: Knowledge (the Planes), Skill Focus: Knowledge (Arcana), Spell Focus: Necromancy, Spell Penetration, Craft Rod, Craft Staff, Craft Wand, Craft Wondrous Item, Scribe Scroll, Leadership

Climate/Terrain: Negative Energy Plane (currently an ethereal maze)
Organization: The Dustmen
Challenge Rating: 26
Alignment: Neutral Evil (True Neutral tendencies)

Skall's natural weapons are treated as epic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Fear Aura (Su): Skall is shrouded in a dreadful aura of death and evil. Creatures of less than 5 HD in a 60-foot radius that look at the lich must succeed at a Will save (DC 19) or be affected as though by fear as cast by a 21st-level caster. The DC is Charisma-based. Skall can turn this power on or off as a free action.

Paralyzing Touch (Su): Any living creature Skall touches must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 36) or be permanently paralyzed. Remove paralysis or any spell that can remove a curse can free the victim. The effect cannot be dispelled. Anyone paralyzed by a demilich seems dead, though a successful Spot check (DC 20) or Heal check (DC 15) reveals that the victim is still alive. Skall may choose to turn this power on and off as a free action.

Blightfire (Su): Living creatures taking damage from Skall's touch attack find themselves ignited with blightfire; cold, blue-green flames cascade over their bodies, and they must succeed at a Fort save (DC 37) or permanently lose 6 points of Constitution. The opponent must continue to save every round for the next 6 rounds (7 rounds total) to avoid being permanently drained of 6 more Con points. The creature heals 30 points of Damage whenever it drains 6 points of Constitution, gaining any excess as temporary hit points. These temporary hit points last a maximum of 1 hour. If the opponent is slain by blightfire, only icy fragments of the victim remain, until they reform as a winterwight. The save DC is Charisma-dased. Skall may turn this power off as a free action.

Spells: Although he was more powerful in the past, when he cared about such things, Skall is now a 19-level wizard (spells per day: 4/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5/4).

Spell-Like Abilities: At will-alter self, astral projection, create greater undead, create undead, death knell, enervation, greater dispel magic, harm (usually used to heal itself ), summon monster I-IX, telekinesis, weird; 2/day-greater planar ally. Skall uses these abilities as casters of a level equal to their spellcaster level, but the save DCs are all 36. The DC is Charisma-based.

Magic Immunity (Ex): Skall is immune to all magical and supernatural effects, except as follows. A shatter spell affects him as if he were a crystalline creature, but deals half the damage normally indicated. A dispel evil spell deals 3d6 points of damage (Fort save for half damage). Holy smite spells affects him normally.

Undead Traits: Immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, death, effects, necromantic effects, mind-affecting effects, and any effect requiring a Fortitude save unless it also works on objects. Not subject to critical hits, subdual damage, ability damage, ability drain, or energy drain. Negative energy heals. Not at risk of death from massive dam-age, but destroyed at 0 hit points or less. Darkvision 60 ft. Cannot be raised; resurrection works only if creature is willing.

Extraplanar: Skall is native to the Material Plane. He is treated as extraplanar in his typical haunt, the Negative Energy Plane, or in the maze the Lady of Pain has him currently trapped in.

Immunities (Ex): Skall is immune to cold, electricity, polymorph, and mind-affecting attacks.

At the dawn of one world's history, a race was created by the gods. The gods named the race Humanity, but in later times they would be known as Vashar.

The race was inherently violent and corrupt. They had been destroyed by the gods in disgust, but were later recreated by demonic powers.

For an age the Vasharans ruled the world, their evil uncontested by any rivals.

Then came the new human race, freshly made by the gods in penance for the crimes of the Vasharans. The Vasharans were at first confused by this new people made in their image, but inevitably they fell behind the proposition of massecring them all.

From the bloody soil of the first skirmish, a single figure rose. He didn't remember whether he had been human or vasharan or what it was that he had become. He only knew that he had been dead, and now he was... something else.

The creature was undead, the first that this world had known. Perhaps the condition had been created by the creature himself through spells cast in his mortal life as a contingency against falling in battle. Perhaps it was a new "gift" by the same demonic powers that had recreated the Vasharan race. Perhaps it was something the gods had done in some mysterious scheme of their own. No one knew, least of all the undead man.

For a long time the undead man was filled with rage at his fate, feeding his despair by slaughtering all he came across and making them into things like himself. As he grew in unholy power, it seemed that there was nothing in the world that could stand in his way. Armies and kingdoms fell before his unliving hordes.

That was when he met his guru.

The ascetic seemed familiar, almost hauntingly so. The lich felt he knew this man once. He told his disciples later that he had been a manifestation of his own higher self, though he does not know if this was a fact.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "Give me your name, monk."

"I am no one," said the ascetic. "As are you. Know yourself: you are dust, filth, earth. Nothingness."

"I am the First," said the lich imperiously. "I am Vashar, first of mortals. I have died and lived again twice over. All others are my offspring and mine to do with as I will."

The ascetic looked at him with pity. "Is that who you think you were? What you are?"

"Who else would taste life again after death? Who else would be privileged as I? Who else could rule the world?"

"The world is also nothing," the ascetic said bitterly. "There was life once; I know there was. Before the Fall. Now is only death; sand spawning sand spawning sand; a necrotic circle mistaken for biology."

What happened next is unclear, but Skall's ambitions for world conquest died that day. Abandoning his servants and generals to their fates, he retreated to a secluded cave for an afterlife of meditation and reflection. He allowed his corporeal form to fall apart, igniting gemstones in his eyesockets to begin a new existence as a demilich. In an astral body resembling his original human (or vasharan) form he explored the planes, searching for some remnant of life.

After millennia of futile questing he had grown to godlike power, a dark question mark blotting out the suns. He confronted the powers of Death itself, demanding why they did not reveal to gods and men their domination over reality.

In the Seventh Heaven, the Power called Azrael smiled at its student. "What, child, would be the sport in that?"

Skall never found what he was looking for; all he discovered was the endless suffering brought on by the multiverse's ignorance of its condition.

He resolved to return to his former state, a mere lich again for the sake of educating the worlds, though one of exceptional power. Brandishing a pact signed with the Powers of Death and calling himself simply "Skull," he began to seek out likely candidates for his new faction.

They did come: disaffected petitioners, hunger-stricken peasants, and fellow undead seeking meaning. Eventually there were even those who did not know much of suffering: wealthy princes and rebellious teens who came to the faction many were calling the Dead simply because Skall's simple message made sense to them.

Skall's sect grew in power throughout the planes, existing most strongly in those places where undeath was the greatest curse. Elsewhere it often schismed, key tenets forgotten. In the City of Doors, a center of planar trade and commerce, Skall took a particular interest. Astrally traveling from his fortress in the Negative Energy Plane, he ensured his cultists would be one of the major philosophical factions there. To keep themselves humble and aware of the transience of false physical existence, the faithful took it upon themselves to care for the city's dead. They began calling themselves the Dustmen, a wry reference to those who swept the city streets and a note of the meaningless of physicality and flesh.

The Dustmen presence in Sigil was secure for thousands of years - perhaps tens of thousands - for no one else seemed to want their job and there were always those who found a grim comfort in Skall's philosophy of death. Skall himself preferred to rule subtly, appearing in human form and occasionally changing his name and appearance to make it seem like a new factol had been found. His inner circle, all undead like himself, knew the truth, but it was understood that non-initiates did not need to know the factol's nature. It wasn't important.

At last there came a time when the factions of Sigil broke into open conflict, and to show her displeasure the city's Lady of Suffering consigned all the factols there into Ethereal mazes. It is said that Skall was trapped too, though he normally left his physical body in the Plane of Death. No one has heard from him for some time, but his Dustmen wait patiently for his return.

Appearance

Skall is a skeleton, his bones polished to a rich glow by the friction of ages; not a single scrap of skin or meat remains. They have become the deep yellow of ancient ivory. Some are missing. His eye sockets glow with a weird blue-green flame. He wears a long robe and hooded cloak; these are plain black wool, completely unadorned. He rarely shows himself in this form, however. More commonly he appears as a human man with eyes like dark pools and a shock of black hair erupting from his skull like a geyser. His nose seems aristocratic and aquiline, his chin firm and cleft. His limbs are graceful and lithe. He is tall, standing nearly seven feet, and some of his skeletal thinness shows through the veils of his illusion. He can't be bothered to hide it. In any form, his voice is a deep, funereal bass.

In the shadows lurks a monstrous robed hulk, its eyes glaring balefully from its standard-issue Dustman cloak, its face like a demonic coyote, for demon it is: glabrezu, four-armed horror, Skall's familiar. For centuries it followed Skall as the tormented spirit of a coyote, but it has become fiendish with the passage of time.