The Watcher

Volak

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Long ago, Volak the Watcher was a tyrant-king who ruled over a brutal cyclopean dominion deep in the mountains. He was obsessed with knowledge, prophecy, and control, believing that by unlocking the secrets of fate, he could rule eternally. In his quest for ultimate foresight, Volak turned to forbidden magic, seeking the power to peer into the threads of destiny itself. He delved into the lost arts of necromancy, convinced that his death was merely a barrier to be overcome rather than an end to be feared.
Through horrific rituals, Volak ripped out his own mortal eye and replaced it with a pristine gemstone infused with necrotic energy, granting him supernatural vision beyond the veil of time. With this unholy artifact, he could see into the future—but at a cost. The further he gazed, the more his mind unraveled, leaving him paranoid and obsessed with eliminating anything that could threaten his rule. When his people turned against him, horrified by his growing monstrosity, he slaughtered them all in a single night, raising their corpses as his undead sentinels.
But Volak’s reign was not eternal. A coalition of heroes and priests, led by a warrior-saint whose name has been lost to time, sealed him within his tomb, entombing him beneath layers of enchanted stone and divine wards. The people of the land eventually forgot his name, and for centuries, he languished in darkness, his mind festering with hatred, waiting for the moment when fate would deliver him a way out.
That moment came when Invictus, a zealous warrior, stumbled upon the tomb while searching for lost relics of his faith. Unaware of the true nature of what lay within, he broke the ancient seals, shattering the divine protections that had kept Volak imprisoned. With the bindings undone, Volak awoke from his long slumber, his first breath in centuries a hollow, rasping curse upon the world. Enraged at his imprisonment and ravenous for knowledge of the world that had moved on without him, Volak descended upon Cragspire in a storm of undeath, abducting its people and dragging them into his underground domain.
Now, in the depths of his crypt, he experiments upon them, extracting their souls and trapping them in enchanted jars to siphon their memories and knowledge. Each captive is another page in his ever-growing book of foresight, each soul a whisper of possible futures. With every secret he pries from the living, his hunger for dominion grows, and it is only a matter of time before he extends his grasp beyond Cragspire, turning his unholy gaze upon the lands beyond.