Riament Grangerford

Once a fierce and charismatic pirate from a distant world, Riament Grangerford found himself thrust into a new reality after stepping through a mysterious portal with his beloved, McKayla. As a devout follower of a god he refers to as the Unconquered Sun he soon became one of the founding figures of the continent of Grenias. His early years in this world were spent adventuring and guiding various races, helping them to establish cities and build a foundation for a prosperous society. However, tragedy struck when it was revealed that McKayla was not entirely of this world. Due to a series of unfortunate events, she had become an Abyssal creature, a being that should not exist in the natural order. The Raven Queen, ever vigilant over the balance of life and death, discovered this abomination and, within five years of their arrival, she banished McKayla's soul from existence, ensuring that no magic, not even the most powerful resurrection spells or the coveted Wish spell, could bring her back. He continued searching for answers until he came across an unknown artifact that he began to study, until one night he was visited by a stranger requesting the item and brought with it a great price. In his desperation he accepted the traveler's price, trading his mortality and humanity for the forbidden knowledge of the lich rites and lost the hand of Vecna. Through this transformation, he continued research on how to return his beloved back to him and began working on a theory that allowed him to crystallize the essence of life itself into a substance he calls "soil." This soil retains fragments of divine sparks, making it a powerful tool in his ongoing quest to bridge the gap to the Raven Queen’s domain and retrieve McKayla’s soul. Using this knowledge of divinity, he founded the holy city of Grangerford which would become the primary city for all dealings with holy powers from clerics and paladins. Through trial and error, he slowly formulated ways on how to utilize this material. The primary purpose was of course a binder to retrieve his love, but with paid help he found a way to rebind a soul back into a body and let it remember all of the attributes from the body before and even some memories. His methods for collection ranged from capturing potential heroes and allowing the dark elves to hunt them in the feywild, to conducting sanctioned killings within the city, and most recently, harvesting souls in the aftermath of a cataclysmic battle with Tiamat. Each soul brings him closer to his goal, but also further deepens his corruption and detachment from the man he once was. Now, as a lich, his existence is consumed by the singular purpose of defying the Raven Queen and reclaiming the love that was stolen from him. Though his actions have brought ruin to many, he remains steadfast, driven by the hope or madness that with enough time he will find a way to shatter the barriers between life and death and restore his beloved to his side.