Lyras

Lyras Maorgwelder
Status:	Alive
Aliases:	Devourer
Guild:	Necromancer
Race:	Human
Gender:	Female
Location:	Wilderness, Warcamp
Type:	undead
Associates:	Klusarlaik, Tachid, Gurglesnout, Sahfra

Lyras is a vile Necromancer with an enchanted staff who raised the Prydaen and Rakash dead in their Western homelands as to create an undead army. She was killed by Vael. She rose from death and became even more powerful than she had been in life. The Prydaen and Rakash fled to the eastern lands of Kermoria and sealed the way behind them by erecting the Great Barrier. Lyras and her army remained trapped behind this Barrier for about four decades.

On 22 Dolefaren 393, Balam and Felinda returned to the Wheel (a Prydaen euphemism for death), and the Barrier was greatly weakened. In its weakened state, Lyras was apparently able to corrupt the Barrier and break through. Her exact whereabouts are unknown, but she is on the eastern side of the Barrier in the vicinity of Forfedhdar.

Appearance

First view by mortal eyes

You see Devourer Lyras Maorgwelder, a Human Necromancer. Severe features highlight this tall woman's face. Thick strands of ash-blond hair, marred by a single streak of black, hang behind her and reach just below her shoulders. She appears as neither beauty nor beast, yet her gray eyes sweep constantly across the area to survey all with a frozen gaze and pursed frown.
Concealed from neck down by a many-layered deep purple cloak, she almost seems to float around as she moves.
Lyras appears to be of middle-age for a Human.
She is in good shape.

She is holding an ebony-hafted scythe of polished steel inset with a deep red blood ruby in her right hand.
She is wearing a voluminous deep purple cloak arrayed with myriad folds and inscribed with a single stark-white sigil across its back.

From GM Zeyurn's post:
You see Devourer Lyras Maorgwelder, a Human Necromancer.
Severe features highlight this tall woman's face. Thick strands of ash-blond hair, marred by a single streak of black, hang behind her and reach just below her shoulders. She appears as neither beauty nor beast, yet her gray eyes sweep constantly across the area to survey all with a frozen gaze and pursed frown.
Concealed from neck down by a many-layered deep purple cloak, she almost seems to float around as she moves.
Lyras appears to be of middle-age for a Human.

Lyras's Aura

Moon Mages and Clerics experience special visions when they attempt to PERCEIVE Lyras. These visions grant them glimpses into both Lyras's destiny and the extraplanar entity that is using her.

• Moon Mage

You sense massive amounts of Arcane energy clinging to Lyras.
The maelstrom of myriad manas swirling around her makes detecting any singular spell impossible.
However, you are able to discern immensely powerful Corruption and Transcendental energies constantly ebbing and flowing around her.
Roundtime: 4 sec.

Your unconscious mind screams out a warning, interrupting your examination of Lyras's aura! The threads of her fate are clear and highly archetypal in nature. You understand what you see with the same immediacy and shock as a punch to the gut: the End. Lyras's destiny is not tied to the death of individuals or even whole nations, but to the inevitable death that waits at the end of time.

The intensity of this symbolism is absurd and easily beyond mortal limits. There is something beyond Lyras's mortal shell, perceivable only by its influence, that has the potential to break the universe.

• Cleric

As you attempt to extend your senses towards Lyras, you feel darkness drag upon your soul, chill like the touch of the very Void itself!

Though you do your best to struggle, she feels like a walking mass of hunger, trying to inexorably draw you and the deities you serve into her maw.
Mercifully, the connection snaps, though you feel a large part of yourself lost with it!

Location

Charnel

It has been 394 years, 63 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer. It is the 2nd month of Ka'len the Sea Drake in the year of the Golden Panther. It is currently spring and it is dusk.

[Warcamp, Charnel] Corpses of every race, gender, and size litter the ground of this putridly smelling building, stacking up to make piles several feet high. Trinkets and bits of clothing, barely visible amidst the morass of death, identify most individuals as obviously having been harvested from each of the four mainland provinces. Despite the fact that the cadavers can't all be fresh, no signs of decay beyond that of the manner of their deaths is visible. You also see a polished marble altar marred by dull red stains with an array of sharp knives, scalpels, and other assorted cutting tools on it. Also here: Devourer Lyras. Obvious exits: south.

Great Salt Road

On the 1st day of Ka'len the Sea Drake, Lyras attacked the Great Salt Road.

Warcamp

On 14 Akroeg 394, Lyras was seen at Wilderness, Warcamp with Klusarlaik and Tachid. She had a risen with her, presumably an undead Moon Mage.

[Wilderness, Warcamp]
Command tents and structures set up to protect against the elements provide a defensible perimeter, showing clear signs of intelligence and tactical prowess by the camp's creators. Orderly piles of weaponry and armor lay outside tents, and shambling creatures, both zombified and skeletal, continually prowl the grounds. The very ground underneath shows signs of having once been lush, vibrant wilderness, but has now been stripped of all but the faintest hint of its former life. You also see a patchwork abomination, a stark white skeletal archer, a necrotic warrior, a red Moongate, an arisen magus and a gestalt draugen.
Also here: Ravenous Klusarlaik, Fleshtearer Tachid, Devourer Lyras.
Obvious exits: none.

• Snapcast locates worked from: Raven's Point, Hibarnhvidar, Great Salt Road, and the Trabe Plateau.
• Farther north at Boar Clan, locate showed all but room occupants.

Near the Barrier

In Dolefaren 393, Lyras was located on the eastern side of the Barrier.

[Wilderness, Near the Barrier]
Lush vegetation fills most of the area and green forests and plains are easily visible to the east. A blackened line is carved into the ground, everything west of it dead or withering, forming a stark contrast as verdant green stands opposed to dull gray and brown. Shortly past the dead zone, an oily wall of black energy rises from the ground, stretching as far as the eye can see. Streaks of ominous red power crackle across it constantly, its makeup just opaque enough to bar any ability to see beyond. You also see an arisen magus, a red Moongate and rotting figures continuously emerging from the surface of the oily wall and beginning to march east.
Also here: Devourer Lyras.
Obvious exits: none.

• Kraggur and Rieum worked to triangulate the location of the Barrier. This was based off min prep, snap cast locates as well as full prep with twenty stream locates.
  • Locations where at least full room could be seen (but not Lyras herself): Boar Clan, Hibarnhvidar, Raven's Point
  • Room title: Trabe Plateau, Forfedhdar Cleric's Guild, Wolf Clan, Shard, Therenborough, Asketi's Mount, Langenfirth, Fornsted, Hvaral
  • The most likely location is somewhere southwest of Hibarnhvidar.
• The arisen magus and red Moongate were found sometime after Yavash rose. The rest were there since the initial attempts at locating Lyras.

Prydaen and Rakash Lore

The Prydaen in Their Own Words

It took much reconnaissance to know that our enemy did in fact have a name. Some of the Humans knew of her, a Warrior Mage with dark powers...a necromancer, they said, and our own eyes perceived her as the only living creature at the center of an army of dead things. They described her as pale and tall, white skinned and black-haired and Human. She had a staff of gold tipped with what the Human Warrior Mages confirmed was a gem called a bloodruby. They also disclosed to us that this staff was the focus of her power, and was likely the means by which she was commanding all the undead.

Vael was the one who came up with the idea of killing her, and it seemed like a good idea. Very obvious. Big army. One leader. Kill leader. No army. Right?

It should have worked. He beats himself over the fact that he didn't think it through enough, and I feel sorry for him sometimes. He feels responsible for so many things, including Sharlir's death. I was with him when we crept into the camp -- do you have any idea what it is like to creep through rank upon rank of dead, smelly corpses that are staring RIGHT AT YOU with only an invisibility spell standing between you and certain, hideous undeath? I don't think you do.

Lyras was alone when we slit her throat. She had become too careless and fell for old tactics. While we snuck up on her, Prydaen and Rakash fighters launched a flash attack on the north flank of her army. The Human Warrior Mages who remained had constructed special poison pills of some magical liquid -- I think they called it naphtha? -- that we had all been fitted with in false teeth...crush the tooth and the liquid ignites inside and immolates the person. The fighters threw vials of the stuff, coated their blessed weapons with it. And in the end, less than a third made it out alive.

Lyras had all of her attention on the fight rather than the shadows creeping up behind her. She was casting spells from a great distance away and laughing. She was LAUGHING as my people died.

It was Vael who grabbed her by the hair and yanked his claws across her throat. And she died...I SAW her die....

But you never get used to seeing someone jump back from the dead, and the moment she sprang to her feet, screaming and cursing us, we thought we were dead. I don't often thank Demrris for magicians, but I did then. The Moon Mages who had been cloaking us in invisibility teleported us back to safety. And things got worse from there.

Rakash Introduction Log

Felinda says, "We came to this new hub to escape the undead armies raised up by Lyras, driven from our hubs which were destroyed we came here seeking a new place to seek food and shelter"

Felinda says, "The undead armies are being held back by the great barrier, it blocks them from coming here in full force"

Felinda says, "Vael, the one that led us here infiltrated Lyras' camp and killed her. Unfortunately she did rise up as undead and is now more powerful than before"