Chapter #1229
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+ THE ADVENTURERS +
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+ Epic VI +
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+ Many of the locations, non-player characters, spells, and other +
+ terms used in these stories are the property of Wizards of the Coast +
+ which has in no way endorsed or authorized their use. Any such +
+ property contained within these stories are not representative of +
+ Wizards of the Coast in any fashion. +
+ The player characters depicted in these stories are copyright +
+ 1991-2026 by Thomas A. Miller. Any resemblance to any persons +
+ or characters either real or fictional is utterly coincidental. +
+ Copying and/or distribution of these stories is permissible under +
+ the sole condition that no money is made in the process. In that +
+ case, I hope you enjoy them! +
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+ Kronos 22nd level lich wizard, necromancer/generalist +
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+ Date: 6/1/587 C.Y. (Common Year) +
+ Time: early morning +
+ Place: the Brass Hills, within the Bright Lands +
+ Climate: hot and dry +
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+ "Superior ability breeds superior ambition." +
+ - Spock, from the _Star Trek_ episode _Space Seed_ +
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MCCXXIX. Kronos
Amidst the other wizards' dwelling-places within the Bright Alliance's
fortress, the tower of Kronos stood out as both simple and unusual. At
first glance it was a simple spire of pale white rock...but if regarded
a bit more closely, its strange shape - with different lines and angles
depending on which direction it was viewed from - was vaguely disturbing.
Viewing and assessing the structure was something of a challenge, as the
runes and other markings carved into its side did much to conceal the
true shape of the tower. At any rate, while the whole of its exterior
face was geometrically inconsistent, the building was basically round,
thirty feet in diameter and ninety feet high. Little was known of its
interior layout other than the lich's various chambers being situated in
the structure's center, surrounded by a staircase set just inside the
outer wall. These steps led from the base all the way up to the top,
winding around the spire's central core of rooms. The roof was a sharp
point, also of the same pale white stone that reminded a viewer of old,
bleached bone; the roof afforded no ingress or egress to the interior.
Oddly, the tower's outer surface lacked even a single window or door.
Kronos came and went by magical means, teleporting himself in and out as
he wished, and it seemed unlikely that anyone else would ever behold the
inside of his home. The lich was used to having no living company or
guests, and in fact anyone who ever did make it inside his tower would
have been shocked by the frigid temperature within. Kronos had decided
that, if he was to have a base here in the desert, then its hot and dry
climate would not extend into that place.
To be sure, he did not intend this to be his only home, or even his
primary one. Not only did his fortress in the Corusk Mountains, far to
the northeast, represent a massive amount of time and effort...but that
site - also known as the Black Crown, to the few who were aware of such
appellations - was also the current location of the Throne of the Gods.
That legendary artifact, a chair with immense powers and capabilities,
could not be relocated except at its own whim - and even then, it chose
its new resting place, not its user. As the ancient lich was unwilling
to give up the Throne, he would also need to maintain his fortress deep
in those frozen peaks, far from any meddlers. And that was actually a
good thing, because it meant that he could keep some magical items and
other useful things here in his new tower in the desert...while the bulk
of his possessions remained in the distant fortress. Humans tended to
refer to this as "not keeping all the eggs in one basket" and that idea
was certainly sound; besides, Kronos could easily retrieve almost any of
his belongings from the icy fortress if necessary.
While the lich did not have any henchmen, he did have a number of more
unusual minions and servants available. He had perfected the process of
creating a cloud golem (and had stationed one to guard his skyship, until
the day Belphanior found it)...he had started breeding white dragons many
centuries ago, although these lived in the Corusk Mountains and would not
be a viable option for the desert climate...and of course he had animated
and controlled a wide variety of undead, usually large ones whose primary
use was as combat troops. Kronos also had a number of undead associates
and allies who he could call upon in times of need, such as the dracolich
Nuzaanth which had been summoned to add security for the Bright Alliance's
trip to the Hellfurnaces.
All that said, he nevertheless kept things simple with regard to the
few others residing within his tower. A phantom servant - mindless and
devoid of any will or independent thinking - dealt with all of the more
mundane tasks such as tidying up or fetching things for Kronos when he
was busy with something else. That happened often, as the lich neither
rested nor ate; while all the other wizards of the Bright Alliance lost
about eight hours a day to sleep, that was extra time that Kronos could
use to work on research, spell creation, or whatever. He also maintained
a small force of animated suits of armor in his tower; while these beings
would likely never be needed, they were quite formidable in battle - not
just because of the wide variety of attacks they were unaffected by, but
also due to every piece of their armor and every one of their weapons
being magical. These nine suits of armor would fight tirelessly, with
the strength and speed and skill of veteran warriors and the advantages
of powerful magical armor and weaponry. And of course, Kronos was able
to summon more aid if needed, including some rare types of undead that
had likely never been seen by the eyes of men.
The lich had few commonly-worn or -carried possessions, but the ones
he did have were noteworthy. His hooded grey robe - which never looked
quite new but also never seemed to wear out or tatter - was a supremely-
powerful magical vestment that bolstered Kronos' strength, endurance,
and speed while also rendering him immune from the turning efforts of
priests. On one hand, he wore a ring of white metal that radiated cold
in the immediate vicinity of its wearer; this item was of great benefit
to Kronos in the desert climate, as its power actually regenerated his
flesh even as it slowly decayed. This effect also served to heal any
damage he sustained in combat. The cold ring's potent aura also meant
that Kronos' mere touch was enough to stun an average person (and kill
them, if that touch was sustained long enough.) His other hand bore a
thin ring of gray adamantine that held five powerful spells which could
be cast from it as needed: Drawmij's Instant Summons, Finger of Death,
Limited Wish, Prismatic Spray, and Teleport Without Error. In addition
to all of this mighty magic, Kronos sometimes carried wands of frost and
paralyzation to further augment his capabilities. He did not bother
learning or fighting with weapons, although his bolstered strength was
sufficient to knock a foe away (quite possibly with broken bones) with
a single blow, if he was pushed to that.
Kronos possessed a number of other magic items which he could carry
and employ for specific purposes. In recent years, he'd more or less
permanently borrowed the Book of the Dead from Belphanior; this dark
tome had great powers to hold or control undead, but also had the power
to summon them, strengthen them, and only the gods knew what else. The
Throne of the Gods was, obviously, immovable and had to be used from its
great chamber deep within the lich's mountain fortress - which was why
Kronos had built a fortress _around_ the artifact eight centuries ago.
Aside from its remote location and the many walls and halls surrounding
its cavern, the thing was quite well-protected by a series of physical
traps and magical wards, and then a pair of unusually-empowered golems
of black iron. Anyone trying to reach the Throne would have to be not
only determined but extremely powerful. While it was perhaps the single
most powerful item that Kronos had available, it wasn't the only one, as
he had actually created both a wondrous ship that could sail through the
skies and a small mithril hourglass whose sands could stop time. There
were others, things that he had not allowed out into the world at large
but which might one day be revealed. He had let one of his spellbooks
get away from him some time ago, and Belphanior had ended up with it;
this was no great problem, as the bulk of the magicks within dealt with
undead and Kronos had those spells kept elsewhere. Only the two of them
knew about the now-blank page that had contained a mighty one-time spell
capable of raising a castle from the ground in a single night; the elf
had used this in Helgate without understanding that the formula would
then be lost forever (or at least to him; Kronos still possessed it, and
indeed had used that magic for his tower here in the Brass Hills.) One
other unusual item - or more accurately, items - remained to be mastered
by the lich: the small metal spheres created by Cespedes, years before
he met his end in the sunken palace of cursed Shattados. Kronos had not
yet unlocked all of the secrets of these devices' operation, but whenever
he finally did, the flying spheres would undoubtedly prove to be a great
asset to him...or, if he chose, to the entire Bright Alliance.
As the few who had worked with and fought beside him well knew, Kronos
was far from a typical lich - insofar as much as an ancient undead being
of immense power could ever be referred to as "typical." Unlike others
of his kind, he was neither fleshless nor fearsome in appearance, instead
presenting as a human of average height and build (albeit with unusual
chalk-white skin.) He lacked hair and his eyes were blood-red; his mere
presence did not cause lesser individuals to flee in terror, nor did his
touch inherently chill and paralyze living creatures (although the ring
of cold that he wore had some of the same effects.) While non-enchanted
weapons could not harm him - and he was unaffected by spells having to do
with charm, cold, death, electricity, enfeeblement, insanity, polymorph,
or sleep - he did not require a phylactery to contain his life force and
could theoretically be slain by conventional means. His flesh did decay
like some other undead, but at a much slower rate, and this process could
be slowed greatly by a cold environment or the use of certain magic. Few
were aware of it, but the constant deterioration of his flesh caused the
lich great pain, which he quietly and steadfastly endured as he had for
many centuries.
Kronos was able to enjoy certain food and drink, although he didn't
require them to survive; he also did not need to breathe. As for his
spellcasting, he still required spellbooks (or scrolls) just like any
other wizard...but his massive advantage was that he'd been around for
two millennia and had an arsenal of spells matched by perhaps a handful
of beings in the world. He had, of course, developed plenty of his own
new and notable spells in all those centuries. Aside from the handful
of those that Belphanior had copies of (Airboat, Vinusa's New Lease on
Life, Spirit Binding, Wither, and Time Walk) he had also demonstrated
a few others in the presence of various companions. These included one
that summoned a large glowing green eye that was able to scan the nearby
area and detect things, another that opened a large teleportation portal
(an effect which had surely been duplicated in the spells of Pallin, if
not others!) and a third that allowed a teleporting wizard to first meld
minds with another person to "see" an otherwise unfamiliar destination in
order to venture there safely. All this aside, it was a certainty that
the unusual, ancient lich had invented other unique spells which he could
and would utilize in the future.
Kronos had avoided revealing much of his history to the others (or to
anyone, for that matter) but the short version was that he'd been born
a little over two thousand years ago in a small village within the old
Oerid lands to the west. This was many centuries before those tribes'
great mass migration eastward into the center of the continent; their
original region, abandoned and forgotten after they left, would become
the Plains of the Paynims more than a millennium later. Kronos had once
had another name, in those long-past times when he was a quiet, unusually
intelligent child who showed an early aptitude for magic use. This sort
of talent, as well as the numbers of wizards in general, were much rarer
back in those ancient times. Whether that helped the young Kronos learn
faster or not, there was no doubting or denying his potential...and his
power grew significantly in a short span of time. Soon he became the
seer for his tribe...and then the medium for the entire cluster of such
tribes...and then the magus for the entire small state (one of several
in those long-past Oeridian lands.) He did a lot to help his people in
their struggles and challenges - including the unmasking of the secret
sect of devil-worshippers known as the Hooded Ones, and the successful
repelling of the foul and mysterious Faceless Horde which had come forth
from a subterranean land to stalk the living. Never one for camaraderie
or formality, the wizard who would become Kronos became something of an
iconoclast, letting others handle the tedious day-to-day work and details
of things...while he studied obsessively, always learning, always growing
in power and ability.
He had certainly been close to archmage status when he discovered his
true passion within the complex, multifaceted world of magic: the very
nature of time itself, along with methods to observe and manipulate it
using magic. The insular Oeridian wizard became even more of a recluse
as he gathered, studied, and even added to the lore of all things time-
related. After a decade of diligent, even obsessive effort, he was the
undisputed expert and master of such magic. In modern times, he might
have been called "chronomancer" but such terms had not existed all those
centuries ago. At some point amidst all of these advanced studies and
peerless knowledge, he decided that a single human lifetime was vastly
insufficient to learn all that he wished to learn...and that was when he
became determined to cheat death. There were many correlations between
death magic and time magic, and he soon deduced that lichdom was an ideal
route to the immortality he desired. And yet, he had no wish to become
a decayed, rotting shell of his old self - no matter how powerful. His
suspicion was that there had to be some way to live on, far beyond his
normal lifespan, but without becoming an undead abomination...he wanted
the benefits enjoyed by a lich, without the side effects. Already well
into his middle age, these new efforts carried him well into his older
years as he researched lost lore, experimented with possible solutions,
checked and double-checked his work - and yet always fell just short of
what he sought. Until, one day, he didn't. Some revelation, some sudden
breakthrough...none but the man himself could say for sure, but he found
what appeared to be the perfect balance between a body of living flesh
and one of undying magical power. With almost two decades already spent
on the effort, he did not want to wait any longer, and so one dark night
he began a series of powerful magical rituals and processes to transform
himself into a more optimal form.
For the most part, he succeeded. His formerly white skin turned chalk-
white, his eyes assumed a horrible blood-red hue, and all of his bodily
hair vanished as his body's basic flesh and bone underwent a fundamental
transformation into...something else. His new form would never age and
die, but instead decayed slowly and inevitably, requiring near-constant
magical protection and replenishment. He was the first and only one of
his kind - a lich, yet not a typical one. Inspired to take a new name,
one suited to his greatest magical interest, the reborn pseudo-undead
wizard renamed himself "Kronos" and developed a new agenda, one with a
timetable spanning a thousand years. He soon departed the lands of his
past life and secluded himself somewhere far to the north, where the much
colder climate meant a slower deterioration of his body. In the process
of finding a location and fashioning a new lair, he encountered, fought,
and overcame the vampire king Von Kuryen. After this commenced a period
of almost fourteen hundred years in which he did little else besides a
great deal of magical study, research, and development. This era - an
undeniable golden era for Kronos - saw some of his greatest inventions,
including the airborne sky ship, the time-stopping hourglass, and the
legendary City in the Clouds (which was not the same thing as the sky
castle Belphanior had found, and which he had long ago bartered away to
a powerful band of storm giants in return for a great hoard of magical
treasures.) A full accounting of this immense span of Kronos' time had
never been made, and even he had forgotten all of the things he'd done,
places he'd been, foes he'd fought, and achievements he'd made during
those first dozen or so centuries of his lichdom. His personal history
could fill a thick tome, and would include events such as time spent in
ancient Sulm shortly before its fall and making the acquaintance of an
extremely rare purple dragon almost nine hundred years ago...but those
would be just a couple of dozens of fascinating chapters in such a work.
What he most certainly _did_ remember was the epic battle, roughly six
hundred years ago, with the mighty mummy king Al-Arakara beneath the Sea
of Dust. That foe had been around almost as long as Kronos himself, and
unbeknownst to the lich at the time, the mummy-lord had possessed some
powerful weapons and items granted to him by his master, the arch-lich
Xusia. Those had turned the advantage ever so slightly in Al-Arakara's
favor...and Kronos had lost that day, barely able to escape the scene by
magical means even as his body began to shut down from the mummy king's
unexpected attacks. He'd had scant little time to pick and choose his
destination, and had only been able to reach the very nearest of his
secret bolt-holes: a sealed and buried tomb beneath the Cairn Hills.
There he had remained, hidden and healing, for far too long...due to his
unique body suffering a unique magical attack at the foe's hands, the
resultant damage being of a sort Kronos had not been able to anticipate.
As a result, his pre-prepared curative preparations in the hidden tomb
failed to work properly, and his wounds were healed at a minute fraction
of the intended timespan. The lich had fallen into an unintended coma
and remained there while life and events continued in the outside world,
passing him by for six long centuries. He'd only been awakened by a
quirk of fate, as a certain elf found his way into the buried tomb...
along with a pursuing party. Their battle had caused Kronos to stir
from his unplanned slumber, and the lich - while greatly weakened and
far from his full power - had ended up making mincemeat of Torin the
Crusader's band. Subsequently, Kronos quietly made his way to his true
home deep within the Corusk Mountains and remained there until he was
tracked down and confronted by Belphanior and company some years later.
Diplomacy, not battle, won out that day as the two great wizards formed
an unsteady alliance...one that, in time, proved greatly beneficial for
both of them. Those and subsequent events had led Kronos to the Cabal,
and then to the Bright Alliance, and here he was with a tower deep in
the desert amidst a region currently being remade.
Aside from the fallen Cespedes, Kronos was likely the least openly
enthusiastic member of the Bright Alliance when it came to the changes
they were bringing about in the area. This didn't mean he was opposed,
but rather that he wasn't one to pontificate and celebrate such things.
Like all of the others, he understood the advantages that they all had
from being part of a larger group. He simply preferred to act instead
of debate. His particular interests - lore, particularly that of lost
kingdoms and civilizations, as well as collecting and creating spells
and magical items - would be well-fueled by both the partnership and
the immense potential of lost Sulm, scattered beneath the desert sands.
At first he had thought only of fabled magical items and lost spells...
but then he'd begun to entertain thoughts of finding, controlling, and
rallying the thousands of undead that inhabited haunted sites like the
Necropolis of Unaagh and the ruins of Darkbridge Temple. When Shemeya
had first voiced her opinions about the group not destroying the undead
remains of her people or plundering their buried wealth, Kronos had been
concerned; after some thought, however, he had realized that preventing
the destruction of those undead actually _guaranteed_ their availability
for future military efforts. At this point, he was simply watching and
waiting - something he had gotten very good at, in all his centuries of
unlife - to see what would happen there.
When it came to the rest of the Bright Alliance, Kronos subconsciously
put them into three categories. There were those he tolerated, meaning
he had no strong opinion about them one way or the other: Dexitheseus,
Pallin, and Wu. He recognized their power (as anyone would) but felt
no real desire to talk or interact with them beyond what was necessary.
There were those he respected, and to some extent enjoyed dealing and
working with: Belphanior (who he tended to favor, both because it was
he who'd inadvertently caused Kronos to re-enter the world and because
the elf had acted responsibly with two of Kronos' great inventions) and
Parekh (due to her magical creativity and passive but effective form of
leadership with the Cabal) and Shemeya (who was of similar age as the
lich and had also endured much over so many centuries.) And then there
was one who Kronos almost feared: the dark elf Alindyar, whose total
mastery of illusions - to the point of reshaping reality - made him, in
Kronos' view, perhaps the most dangerous of all the group. At least he
was now an ally, along with his mate Lyra, who would have fit into the
"tolerated" group if not for her connection to Alindyar.
Kronos was reclusive by nature, preferring the company of undead or
other silent creatures to that of living beings. He was inscrutable,
kept his thoughts private, and was impossible to read. However, the
recent efforts across the Bright Lands had stirred something deep in
his heart and mind that had lain forgotten for long centuries: the
concept of allies (if not friends) and the potential of teamwork, of
a larger group of equals working in common cause. These concepts now
had his interest, and with a natural lifespan longer than any of the
others, he had the time and patience to work with them and see where
things led. So far, he had been very much pleased with the results of
the group's many different but inter-related efforts.
next: Bright Alliance member profiles, part five: Pallin
map: http://www.peldor.com/world/atlas/Bright-Desert_1226.png
www: http://www.peldor.com/download.html
homepage: http://www.peldor.com/
email: tmiller@peldor.com
released: 10/2/2026
notes: It occurs to me that this could have been a new Lost Tale
("What happened between Kronos' defeat y Al-Arakara and his awakening
by Belphanior and Otto?") but right now, the greater need is the new
details I'm adding to these wizards.
The three new spells noted for Kronos appeared in episodes 968 (the
eye), 1004 (the portal), and 1104 (the mind meld.) I also tried to
fortify the existing timeline of Kronos from episode 1171, but that
may best be done with a small table/chart.
Four down, four to go. Kronos, along with Parekh, is the NPC wizard
who we've probably seen the most, so this one took a lot of work. I'm
sure I still missed some details from all those episodes, so if you
find one, let me know and I'll make sure it's presented in the future
Bright Lands accessory.
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