The Old One

The Old One

The malignant tyrant known as Iuz the Evil arose over a century ago from the wild frontier north of the Lake of Unknown Depths. Once believed to be the son of a minor noble, his father’s mysterious death left the young warlord unchallenged. With cunning and ruthless ambition, Iuz gathered rebel warlords, only to slaughter them and seize control of their followers. His merciless conquest caught the eye of his true father, the Abyssal prince Graz’zt, who granted his son fiendish allies and artifacts of unholy power.

Iuz’s mother, the dreaded archmage Iggwilv , had already conquered Perrenland, and her political influence ensured that even the most skeptical of Iuz’s subjects dared not resist. By the time Iuz opened his cities to the monstrous hordes of the northern hills, his human subjects were already too broken to defy him. His inhuman legions crushed all opposition, and victory followed in their wake like a plague.

Under Iuz’s rule, his blighted empire expanded—to the east, the Rift Canyon; to the west, the ancient Vesve Forest; to the south, the battered remnants of the Shield Lands. Tens of thousands perished as his armies marched, and those who resisted were butchered—their skulls lining a blood-soaked road stretching three hundred miles from his dread capital of Dorakaa. The Old One’s hunger for dominion seemed unstoppable, and the Flanaess trembled before him.

Then—he vanished.

The Fall and Return of the Old One

Iuz’s conquest was halted not by war, but by treachery of cosmic proportions. The mad archmage Zagig Yragerne, in his quest for divinity, sought to imprison nine demigods as catalysts for his ascension—and Iuz was among them. With the aid of his powerful allies—Heward, Murlynd, Keoghtom, Kelanen, and even St. Cuthbert himself—Zagig bound Iuz in an arcane prison beneath Castle Greyhawk, sealing the Old One away for sixty-five long years.

But even a godling cannot be caged forever. His release did not come from a devoted cultist, but from the reckless Lord Robilar, who sought to slay Iuz upon freeing him. A cataclysmic battle erupted in Zagig’s dungeons, twisting reality and shaking the earth itself. Iuz escaped just as the other demigods raged free from their prisons, leaving Castle Greyhawk in utter chaos—and swearing eternal vengeance upon those who had sought to destroy him.

The Empire Reborn

Upon returning to his rotting, corpse-strewn capital of Dorakaa, Iuz purged his own ranks, brutally executing traitors and rewarding his most fanatical followers. The twelve greatest among them became his Boneheart—his elite circle of warlocks and priests, wielding dread magic in his name. With this dark council, Iuz reclaimed his empire, reforging his crumbling dominion into a force more terrifying than ever before.

Now, the Old One’s malevolent gaze turns once more to conquest. His forces press into the Bandit Kingdoms and the Shield Lands, his influence stretches like a black shadow across the Flanaess, and his name is whispered in terror from the Aerdy Sea to the Yatil Mountains. The world thought him gone once before. They will not make that mistake again.