Erandis Vol

LADY lLLMARROW Lady Illmarrow is a legend-an ancient lich said to dwell in a castle of bone and ice in the coldest regions of the Lhazaar Principalities. Some stories say that she is served by a legion of undead and that she maintains a court of vampires and ghosts in her palace of ice. Other tales claim that when anyone dies in Lhazaar, Illmarrow chooses whether to take their soul before it passes on to the Keeper and Dolurrh. But Lady Illmarrow is no folk tale. She is the greatest necromancer in Eberron, and after centuries of silence, she is setting ancient plots into motion at last. She is the power behind the Order of the Emerald Claw, but her motives for founding the order are buried in her past. Lady Illmarrow has no interest in ruling the living. Rather, she seeks to become Queen of the Dead. The Mark ofD eath. Illmarrow is a fiefdom on the isle of Farlnen-home to a community of elves exiled from Aerenal, who have practiced necromancy for centuries. But Lady Illmarrow's roots extend far beyond her island domain. Long ago, it was revealed that the elven line of Vol-a house that practiced the art of necromancy and bore the Dragonmark of Death-was engaged in secret blood rites with a clan of dragons. The discovery of this pact triggered an unprecedented alliance between the Sibling Kings of Aerenal and the dragons of Argonnessen. The Sibling Kings proclaimed that House Vol would be exterminated to the last member, and the Mark of Death would be eliminated from the world. C HAPTER 6 I F R I E N D S AND FOES The line of Vol had long been rivals of the Undying Court, and many whisper even today that the attack on House Vol was nothing more than an excuse to eliminate a political rival. But others believe that what the Undying Court truly feared was a path shown in the Draconic Prophecy-that a child born of dragon and elf could become a godlike avatar of death. 11/marrow Rises. Even as dragons and elves fought to destroy the line of Vol, a child was born to the house: Erandis. A scion of elf and dragon, Erandis bore a Mark of Death unlike any other. In time, it might have been her gateway to immortality and unrivaled power, but she was hunted down and killed long before she could master the mark's magic. Her mother, Minara Vol, escaped with her daughter's body to the icy reaches of Farin en, far from the conflict. There, Minara unleashed all her necromantic power to raise Erandis as a lich. As an undead being, Erandis lost the use of her dragonmark. Thus, when the diviners of Aerenal asked if the line of Vol had been exterminated and the Mark of Death destroyed, they received a vision affirming that the bloodline of Vol was no more. To the world, the last survivor of that bloodline is known as Lady Illmarrow. But in truth, she is Erandis Vol, heir to the Mark of Death. Trapped in Undeath. When Minara restored Erandis as a lich, she hid her daughter's phylactery, weaving enchantments into it that cause Erandis to be reborn in a random safe haven after she is destroyed. Thus, even Erandis herself doesn't know the location or form of her phylactery.

Restoring the Mark. Though she takes great pleasure in fighting the dragons and elves who destroyed her ancestors, Lady Illmarrow has a more important goal: restoring her dragonmark and unlocking godlike powers. The agents of the Emerald Claw who serve her fight either for the good of Karrnath or for personal gain, but Illmarrow cares for nothing except increasing her necromantic knowledge and finding a way to restore her lost mark.

LADY I LL M A R ROW A N D T H E B LO O D OF VO L The Blood of Vol and Lady I l l marrow are both legacies of the l i ne of Vol, but they aren't one and the same. As far as the world knows, the l i ne of Vol was exterminated. Followers of the Blood of Vol who have heard of Lady l l lmarrow believe that she's a cham pion of their faith, but they don't wors h i p or serve her. And the powers of priests of the Blood ofVol don't come from Lady l l l marrow.

Plus they had thousands of years for just finding a phylactery. Maybe for some reason connected to the prophecy they DON’T WANT to stop her?

It’s quite possible, though to me that would be a motivation for the Chamber to leave her alone. With that said, looking the the Undying Court, they haven’t been looking for a phylactery because they had no reason to believe that there was a surviving Vol lich. With that said, this brings up an interesting point. Erandis is a highly unusual lich. She didn’t choose to become a lich; it was done to her. Her mother was determined to do everything possible to protect her child. Usually, a lich regenerates next to their phylactery. In MY Eberron, Erandis regenerates in a random location unrelated to her phylactery, which is in turn shielded by epic defenses against divination. The upshot of this: Erandis herself doesn’t know where her phylactery is. In my Eberron, there have been times early in her existence when she has tried to destroy herself, but she can’t. Not something you have to do, but the point being that not even she knows where or what it is.

So who was Erandis in life?

There’s no canon answer to this, and it’s really a question of what do you want the answer to be? For me, a true answer to this and to the other related questions would require a serious examination of the culture that surrounded the line of Vol. The Bloodsail Principality is an example of the culture that evolved from this, but we haven’t established if they shared most of the same culture and values as the Aereni, or if they were as different from the Aereni as the Tairnadal are. Without a clear understanding of that culture, it’s impossible to say what her life was like. But if you assume some general similarity to the Aereni there’s a few things you can extrapolate.

• All the Elven cultures are tied to a respect for the great souls of the past, and developing ways to save the great souls of the future. Lineage and history are important, and you are expected to DO something with your life – whether that’s to emulate the deeds of your ancestors or to master (and potentially exceed) their accomplishments. Erandis would surely have grown up knowing that she represents the pinnacle of her family’s work, and that it was her duty to live up to their expectations. Essentially: a “normal childhood” for an elf on Aerenal means something entirely different than what we think of as a “normal childhood”, at it’s going to involve concentrated study in the history of your line and the arts they perfected.
• Erandis was a half-dragon produced in a secret breeding project with the potential to alter the world. Her existence was probably a secret, so to the degree that elven children run around and play games, she wouldn’t have been running around with them. However, she was part of a breeding program, which to me suggests that she did have siblings; she was simply the only one to manifest the apex mark.
• My thought is that the war began the day Erandis fully manifested her mark – nothing Vol could do could hide that from Argonnessen. So Erandis had her mark for a period of time, but it’s a form of the mark that had never existed before and she didn’t have time to unlock its power before she was killed.
• Given all that: I’ve suggested that she was probably around a 6th level wizard when she died. Given the general power level of Eberron, that’s an amazing degree of skill to possess as an adolescent.

So: my PERSONAL belief at this moment (because it might completely change, should I do a more in-depth exploration of the Vol culture) is that Erandis grew up in isolation, surrounded by attendants, tutors, and her siblings. I expect that it was a highly competitive environment – almost Ender’s Game level – as the tutors sought both to determine if any of the subjects possessed the apex mark and to prepare them to use it if they did. So I think you were combining intense necromantic study and competition (again, producing an adolescent 6th level wizard) with trials similar to the Test of Siberys. With all that said, I think there would have been intense focus on the fact that these children were the legacy of the line of Vol and the next generation of elven heroes. They weren’t raised to be weapons; they were raised to be Vol’s answer to the Undying Court. They were raised to be the god-heroes of ages to come. We’ve also established that Erandis’s mother truly loved her. Now, we don’t know how much sentimentality they actually expressed, but I think Erandis knew her parents and knew that they loved her – and that this was part of her drive to succeed – to make them proud.

And then, alone among her siblings, she DOES succeed. She manifests the apex mark. But she dies before she can master it, and her entire culture is wiped out. So again, to me her story is one of maddening tragedy – of having come within inches of a glorious destiny and fulfilling the dreams of her line, only to fail and carry the physical mark of that failure on her skin, the mark she can never unlock.

As a side note: She didn’t get to play with all the girls and boys. But she was a necromantic prodigy and even before she manifested the apex mark she may have displayed unnatural potential. Which is to say that I think even as a child, many of her friends and some of her teachers were dead – she probably spent a lot of time talking with ghosts.