Kanderon Crux

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Kanderon is one of the major characters in the Mage Errant series.

Kanderon was a massive sphinx with crystal wings. She is High Librarian and last known living Founder of Skyhold. She is also a great power on the continent of Ithos, on the world of Anastis. She is over eight centuries old. She is pacted to the warlock; Hugh of Emblin. Kanderon is the mind that controls the Index within the Grand Library. She never took a warlock before Hugh, despite others asking and having considerable skills. She only made the pact with Hugh because he was making it to save his friends. She is an expert with her crystal, stellar and planar affinities. She opposes empires, especially the fallen Ithonian empire and Havath. Kanderon sponsors and helps with the creation of most liches on the Ithonian continent and earned the title 'Mother of Liches'. Kanderon is now a lich herself but with the ability to move freely, the perpetual dream of all liches. Kanderon was tasked with holding the Tongue Eater by the Liar and Kanderon managed to prevent the Tongue Eater being used for longer than anyone else.

## Appearance

### Original (*As of Into the Labyrinth*)

Kanderon is a exceptionally large sphinx with wings made of detached crystals and very deep blue eyes. She has the face of a woman, the body of a lion and wings of an eagle. She is at least 75 feet long and her wings are made out of blue aether crystal. Some of her wings float unconnected but in reference to the connected parts of her wings. Her wings can massively expand as they are stored in one of her pocket dimension. Her fur is a Tawny Amber colour.

### Current

Kanderon lost her living body as she became a lich. Kanderon's new form is a sphinx made of pure blue aether crystal. She appears to have a bottomless blue depth inside her crystal body. These are pocket dimensions made from her planar magic. Inside the depths of the pocket dimensions, there is a new born star that is barely viewable. Her wings have not changed and are still a collection of disconnected blue crystal shards that float in a formation that look like wings. Kanderon can change her size at will by pulling more of the crystal from her dimensional space or by putting some of her current form into her pocket spaces.

## Personality

Kanderon is not comfortable with sharing her emotions. Kanderon is cagey and disliked Hugh's labyrinth stone merging with his aether crystal. Her teaching methods involve danger and humiliation to make the lessons understood. She manipulates events decades in advance to increase her political power. She gets embarrassed when sharing her feelings with Hugh and when she is applauded for killing Krakat Ambrin. When embarrassed she either hid in her lair or began to talk in a less attached manner referring to humans as her "pets." Kanderon does not collectively care for humans but she does care for children and she gets easily attached. She also cares for "broken things" meaning people who have suffered. She also lies to herself and pretends she does not really care about individual people. She also hates empires and parades and considers it a petty reason when she hates people for trying to kill her, claiming it is good to have petty reasons for hate. She is also highly awkward about relationships and, like sphinxes in general, embarrassed about births.

> "I don’t especially care how you rate the severity of your betrayal, Anders,” Kanderon said. “I care that you did it at all. Count yourself lucky that you’re alive at all right now. As far as you’re concerned, Anders, you’re my devoted servant now."
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> The massive sphinx took off in a much less dignified manner than usual. As she did so, Hugh could hear her muttering to herself. “...ridiculous humans with their constant mating and their...”
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## Abilities

### Crystal Affinity

Kanderon uses her crystal magic to fly by repelling her aether crystal wings from the bedrock in the ground. Using her magic she can fly at such speeds that siege spells crawl in comparison. Kanderon is said to be one of the fastest fliers on the continent of Ithos and she can fly whilst asleep. Kanderon can form thousands of crystal spears from sand in an instant. She specialises in aether crystal manipulation. Kanderon can grow crystals easily using the pattern linking spell and she is specialised in quartz crystals.

### Planar Affinity

Kanderon used her planar affinity to try and increase the size of the library but due to interactions with the labyrinth the library continued to grow beyond her control. Kanderon has many planar storage spaces. Her wings are partially contained within an extra-planar space. She also has storage full of air to be used when she uses her armor. She also stores books in her storage spaces. Her planar affinity was also used to defend the Skyhold council chamber by altering the distances to enter and leave the chamber. It would be easy to go down the mountain from the chamber but going up would take days or weeks. Kanderon has extra-dimensional folds around Skyhold allowing her to enter and exit the library. Kanderon grows countless pocket spaces and stores books any anything else in them. Kanderon can use spatial gradients without doing the complex mathematics to travel through space but then the gradient collapses after she passes through, rather than remaining permanently. Kanderon has the ability to open a worldgate, a direct portal to another world but it takes years are resources that would bankrupt kingdoms.

### Stellar Affinity

Kanderon artificially developed her stellar affinity because of numerous factors, one being that it works on any world, unlike solar magic. She taught Hugh all the stellar spells he knows. Kanderon has a more powerful starbolt spell called a starbeam. The starbeam spell was the same spell that Hugh cast unintentionally in the labyrinth, but "Kanderon’s starbeam was to Hugh’s, however, what a forest fire was to a candle." Using the starbeam drained so much mana from Kanderon that the aether could be felt as it rushed into her reservoirs. She also has a stellar spell for disrupting other containment aspects to spells. She also has the starbolt spell, the spell to shield her eyes from light, the stellar beacon spell, the cutting starfire beam spell and a spell that increases the light of her stellar magic.

### Lich

Kanderon spent decades constructing her demesne. She built in many powerful items into her demesne but she destroyed many of them to speed up the process of becoming a lich so she could save Hugh. Defences that target the living do nothing to Kanderon anymore. Kanderon's body is her demesne. She is, in simple terms, a massive collection of pocket dimensions, filled with aether crystal, enchantments and a miniature star in one of pocket dimensions. Kanderon can fly through wards powered my multiple world's magic, without taking damage. Illusions and mental effects do not work on Kanderon.

#### Enchantments

Lich overlap suppressor - An enchantment that allows Kanderon to exist inside another lich demesne without pain.

Communications diary - A book that allows Kanderon to communicate with other diary holders.

Yellowstone detector - An enchantment that allows Kanderon to track yellowstone. Destroyed.

Ward intensity detector - An enchantment that allows Kanderon to determine how strong wards are. Destroyed.

Inertial enhancer - An enchantment that allows Kanderon to reduce her speed faster. Destroyed.

Worldgate ripper - Kanderon's strongest addition to her demesne. A tool she designed that would put her in the upper ranks of multiversal powers. This tool would allow Kanderon to open a worldgate in minutes or seconds, allowing her to transport to any universe instantly. This would make her one of a handful of beings in existence to be able to do so. Destroyed. Kanderon can rebuild it and integrate it into her demesne in several decades.

Sensory apparatus - Enchantments that rival senses for the UV spectrum.

Calculation engines - Performs mental calculations and prevents and breaks down illusions and mental effects effecting Kanderon.

Enchanting facilities - Internal enchanting facilities built into her demesne. This allows Kanderon to build new enchantments.

Resonance cascade dampeners - Helps prevent resonance cascades occurring. This allows Kanderon to keep multiple enchanted items active without them interfering or exploding.

Wardbreakers - Tools that allow Kanderon to break wards.

### Iopan Scrying

Kanderon intends to obtain Iopan scrying once she has the time to leave Anastis. Iopan scrying involves replacing an eye with crystal to see into the aether. As Kanderon's body is fully crystal she would have to give up nothing to obtain this magic. Viewing the aether would be a massive benefit as Kanderon would be able to view aether constructs, aetherbodies and mana reservoirs.

## Equipment

### **Aether crystal armour**

Kanderon has an aether crystal armour that is the same blue as her wings. There are no gaps in the armour at all, to prevent any disadvantages. She can only use this because of her planar storage spaces full of air. The crystal does not interfere with her vision in any way. Dragonflame can do nothing against her armour. Sound magic can damage her armour. Her armour is stored in pocket spaces and she can make it "a malformed, jagged behemoth, half again the size of Heliothrax or Indris" and potentially even bigger. However, this size is not really manageable. At a size equal to Heliothrax, Kanderon can more easily control it. She can repair damage to her armour with her crystal mana. The armour is now part of her of demesne meaning the armour is part of her body that she can manifest at will.

### **Skyhold Vault**

Kanderon designed the Skyhold Vault to contain dangerous, unstable weapons. Even the lesser weapons within the vault are exceptionally dangerous. Kanderon can not open the Vault at will as it requires a specific time and the council to open it. There are some very strong weapons that were stored within the vault and even the weaker artifacts are highly dangerous like: "A red aether crystal sword that generates uncontrollable, nigh-inextinguishable wildfires. A sphere that corrupts and twists people’s affinities permanently and horribly. A four-foot-long tuning fork that can generate mana deserts lasting decades." The stronger weapons like, the chitin wand, the Exile Splinter and the Tongue Eater, are devastating weapons of mass destruction that Kanderon sealed away.

### **Index**

Kanderon created the Index to manage the Great Library. Although it was created to lack any sentience, it has been developing it throughout the series, demonstrated when it gave Hugh access to Kanderon's lair and could operate, albeit in extreme pain, after Kanderon's "death." The Index is an extension of her mind and as it gains in sentience Kanderon claims she should have "stuffed a pigeon’s mind in there instead." The Index tracks the books in the Great Library and helps people find what they are looking for.

## Senses

### **Magical senses**

Her affinity sense for her crystal magic manifested in the same manner that sphinxes feels changes in air pressure while flying. When one of her planar nodes shattered it felt like grating on her affinity senses.

Kanderon has spent decades developing a sense for ripples in the aether. Great powers produce these ripples when they act and Kanderon can sense them allowing her to count the amount of great powers around her and vaguely locate them.

### **Eyes**

Kanderon's eyes are far better than a human's due to her nature as a sphinx. Her eyes are simply major improvements on Hugh's inherited eyes. This grants her a great level of vision in the dark, enables her to see some types of invisibility based illusions, helps her adjust to light changes faster and she has a form of eyeshine, the reflection of light to see better in the dark. Her eyes also have better distance vision, a heightened ability to make out small objects closeup, and significantly improved colour vision. Kanderon's eyes have also been warped by attuning her aether crystal. They have been changed from to the unnaturally glowing blue of her wing.