Bolerodrin

Bolerodrin was once a great red wyrm, one of the greatest, should fairytales be believed. He was old even when the world was young, his scales creaked with his movements and as his size grew, he became full of power and wisdom, alongside schemes and powers. Bolerodrin is still the mightiest of the Old Wyrms, and possibly the only one yet alive. Alive is to be taken in context, of course. Bolerodrin is the Prince of Disks (coins) and Debauchery in a single form. He spent his life luxuriating in his hoard and, never wanting to let it go, pursued his greed on a timeless scale. When yet still young (in dragon timelines) he began to search his acquired hoard for tomes of necromantic lore. For long years he searched and studied in a library that lay in piles of precious metal around his massive, clawed feet. When these resources were exhausted, He took wing, and raided the places he knew of that were rumored to harbor the secret knowledge he required. Upon successful excursions, the wyrm would return to his isolated mountain lair, and take stock of his precious things. In this way, over time, Bolerodrin came to differ from his “lesser” brethren, and grew to value secret knowledge and strange magics to a higher extent than the stones and metal coins that became so envied by others. He still had mounds and mounds of them, as is the nature of a dragon, but cared for them not, burying himself within the ancient tomes of dark secrets. Only the lesser races could develop a system as dark and depraved as this, eh? Such short and tormented lives, prevented from ever gaining true power, their greatest limit was mortality.

Even ancient elves must die one day, though they be aged perhaps a thousand years or more, and that on a paling scale with a great dragon. Thus, the little ones had developed certain methods by which to circumvent mortality. There existed a system to deposit a soul into an item, and thereby sustain it by magical rites. This was a dire task, and the dragon was surprised that any of the small ones could have puzzled out this fel series of processes, much less that they could have stumbles upon it by mistake and known how to put the discordant pieces of knowledge into formation. The risk was awesome, but as the old dragon felt his sinew strain and his bones crumbles as he began to reach his final years, he was unwilling to do away with his plans, his hoard, his dominions, and began the long process to undertake lichdom.

The journey to such a fate is dark, and fraught with peril for even such a creature as capable as a dragon. Long periods of isolation and starvation drive the creature to madness, as he desiccates himself to become a vessel capable of eternal lives. Additionally, the nascent monster brews and consumes terrible toxins derived from vile and brutal plants and creatures. Over a long period, this acts as a sort of vaccine, the creature feels themselves dying a thousand times over and writhes in pain for hours upon hours upon hours, but eventually a resistance develops in conjunction with vile rituals and appeals to cruel deities. Bolerodrin undertook this crime against the world, to maintain his own life/unlife, for he could not imagine a world without himself, as vain as he is/was. He struck dark bargains with demon princes and draconic deities, and thousands were killed in his name, until he died with a last, massive gout of flame from his throat and a belly full of molten gold at the hand of Asmodeus. He remained in such a state for only a moment, however, and was reborn again as a dracolich, Nathramarin. In this form he seeks to achieve utter dominion over the other sentient creatures of the world from his lair, a terrible and massive network of caves in the far northern reaches of the world, bound in ice and snow to which his rotten body does not respond. There he keeps a legendary hoard of knowledge and gold enough to buy entire kingdoms. The location of the phylactery remains a mystery.