Jorlek the Undying

Appearance
Thin and gaunt, Jorlak's sunken eyes have turned a solid white with age and use, his once-proud face pulled taut against the skull beneath. All his withered body is similar, dried old leather pulled taut against the flesh underneath. His hair is gone, well lost to old age.

In clothing, he favors a white robe, and carries at all times a cane, one that supports both his faltering step and probes the ground where he would put his feet, for he can no longer see.

History/Background
Now, as all men know, Man and Elf cannot interbreed, for the blood of the Faerie is anathema to the Mortal blood of man, and the Soul of Man is as fire to the cool ice of the Faerie spirit. Yet, it is now three millenia ago, that the impossible happened. Man and Elf laid together, and there was offspring. The maiden who bore him named him in the manner of her people, Jorlak, which means, in the modern tongue, 'Delightful Surprise.' And she did her best to raise him alone, for his Elven father had disappared in the manner of the Faerie, as his kind are wont to do. But slow to age was he, in the manner of his father, rather than fast and fiery as his mother, and it was a childhood punctuated in its first fifty years by the death of his mother, in their secluded cabin, where they hid his seemingly eternal childhood from those who would try to destroy him. And so it was that he was turned loose on the world, with the body and curiousity of a child just old enough to be sent to schooling, and many a decade to satisfy them.

But, as all men know, there are few ways for such a creature to survive, and so it was that he found his sixth and seventh decades wandering the streets of the capital, begging for his supper, his long, tangled hair and dirt-smudged face concealing him well. It was at the end of his seventh decade that it happened. He was chosen by a magi, and the man's thug cracked him upon the back of his head, and away he was stolen.

Now, after an eyeblink of time, at least to one who has lived eight decades and aged not, he was taken to the room of ritual, and sacrificed. His life energies poured forth from his soul, a freezing, blazing, rending, crushing agony, and as all children will, he screamed with the pain of it. And it was unending pain, for though the power flowed through him, his life did not end, for the tether between the spiritual realm and the physical could not be severed, for it was rejected by the realm of the Immortal. And so, the magi kept this wonder-child, the infinitely sacrificable, for centuries, stealing his infinite life to augment her own. But, she did not plan upon him learning her arts through his repeated sacrifice. And one day, he turned that power upon his captor, destroying her, her minions, and all that she had wrought with a single, enraged pulse of that same power that she stole from him.

And so he began then to wander the world, seeking all the world's deadly things, to find the thing that could finally seperate him from the mortal coil, to end the ineffably exquisite pain that wracked his body and spirit. And so, the millenia passed, and with every year he learned better the nature of life and death, and how a mortal may be passed in each direction, the essence of the art of Necromancy. And a few, twisted men sought him for his knowledge, and to each he gave a piece of it, bringing forth the knowledge to raise the dead, to consult the spirits, to inflict the horrors of beyond on body and mind, to manipulate the body's humors, its bones, and even the life that created him.

And all of these and more, techniques which tread upon the ground that only Gods may walk upon he has turned against himself, burning away his flesh and soul, bit by bit, but never has he succeeded in destroying himself...

Special Equipment
Grimore - Written in an ancient, now lost magical tongue, this book contains in its infinite pages almost every note ever taken by Jorlak. To read it and comprehend it would make a Man perhaps the most powerful necromancer to ever walk upon the ground, or fly upon the air, whichever he chose, but to do so will take nigh twice as long as it took to write... It will require a lich.

Roleplaying Notes

Jorlak is old, incredibly powerful, and wants only one thing. Death. He is also quite mad, drifting with a sea of memories that grip his tattered mind with all the force of the present. Much as a shellshocked soldier might, he may lose track of reality, believing himself in, and worse, reacting to, situations a score of certuries past.

Knowing that it is a curse, not a blessing, he will freely teach the art of Necromancy to those who ask it of him.