Alaznist, Runelord of Wrath

“Alaznist!” Lloyd gasped as he made his way into the ancient room.

“Who?” Arao asked as he followed the half-elf.

“Alaznist, Runelord of Wrath. Old Quint told me about them in my history lessons.” The half-elf continued as he checked out the scarlet statue. “It has to be her. Don’t you agree Gryffin?”

“Runelord? Her?!” Jarek asked pointing his arrows towards the red statue. Likewise confused as to what the half-elf was saying.

“Runelords.” Gryffin started as he moved over next to Lloyd by the statue and started taking down notes in his journal. “The sprawling empire of Thassilon was powered by conquest and its sophisticated rune magic. That magic defined the empire’s rulers and included various forms of blood sacrifice, powerful glyph-laying, and dimensional warping. Without rune magic and the binding of the rune giants, the Thassilon legions would never have conquered their vast lands. With them, though, they were unstoppable.”

“I’ve heard about them.” Guy meekly offered. “Although the great and wise First King Xin forged the realm that would become Thassilon, the division of his empire and the cruel decadence of his governers, the runelords, are the only memories that remain of this once-great land. Each of these megalomaniacal rulers reshaped their fraction of the empire as they willed, scarring the land with monuments to their glory and shapes of their boundless corruption.”

“The symbols of the runelords were as pervasive as their graven images.” Lloyd picked up. “As each ruler became associated with a particular virtue of rule, so too did their images imply mastery of a certain school of arcana and one of seven weapons of rule. Although arcanists first and foremost, each ruler was regularly depicted bearing an imperious looking ceremonial pole arm, which once marked him as a guardian of the Thassilonian empire and defender of Xin himself. Although these symbols became meaningless in the face of the runelords’ varied depravities, each ruler retained his traditional, scepter-like weapon as a public reminder of his connection to the Celestial Age and as a physical embodiment of his mastered magic.

“This is Alaznist; The Runelord of Wrath." Lloyd continued as he pointed at the statue. "She was a powerful, blood-cloaked wizard and raging arcane knight. Her magic-, drug-, and mutationenraged legions carried her thunderbolt-lance blazon and terrorized the neighboring lands of Shalast. Known for her charisma (some would say her ability to terrify her followers), she ruled Bakrakhan and seemed close to forcing a humiliating peace treaty on Karzoug when the world shook and her entire kingdom sank below the waves. Stories occasionally tell of coins of Bakrakhan being drawn up in fishing nets. Alaznist was said to wield an ancient ransuer of charred adamantine—impaled with the skull of the first Runelord of Wrath—as her weapon of rule.

"It is a distinct possibility that these are her catacombs..."