Qirauz

Art by Igor Sid

Skies Over San Xalco

Shamtar: Search for Fire

Akkadi: Empire's End

Modern Horizon's: Triumph of Qirauz

**Prince Qirauz of Akkadi**, the Prince Who Failed, the Dread Necromancer, is an undead human planeswalker from Akkadi. Once a benevolent and pacifist heir to the imperial throne, his hubris in enacting a great magical ritual to speed the passage of time led to the destruction of his empire and the death of his people. His planeswalker spark igniting in the aftermath of his grief, he sought to replicate his ritual to reverse his mistakes; a plan which would see him hunting from plane to plane over centuries to discover the ancient relics used to power his magic.

## Early life

Born in the purple to the ruthless emperor Qamurab of Akkadi, Qirauz was a peaceful and learned scholar, who wished to rule the empire with a benevolence and fairness which he saw lacking in his autocratic father's reign. Tempted by the whispered urging of his father's chief advisor, the demon Ghazuz, Qirauz assembled five great relics from the imperial treasuries—the Heart of the Ocean, the Eternity's Horizon, the Bones of the Earth, the Soul of Fire, and the Timeless Heartwood. The combined power of these artifacts would thrust him forward in time—no more long nights dreaming of his coronation, but instead the throne would be his immediately, the golden age of his people mere seconds from reality.

Qiruaz realised too late, however, that no demon can be trusted. The ritual worked, in a sense. Akkadi was thrust forward in time but not by days or months, but centuries—a world of crumbling stone, bleached bone, and empty eye sockets greeted the Prince Who Failed on the other side. Qirauz too had changed, skeletal and heartless, his undead mind burning with only one thought: to undo all that he had done, no matter the cost. The people of Akkadi would know peace and prosperity eventually, no matter how many worlds would drown in blood to let it happen.

## Adventures in some set

Qirauz hunted across the multiverse to find the imperial relics again, as the ritual had scattered them far and wide in its wake. Following whispers and legends of strange items from world to world, he eventually discovered all five, wounding and destroying planes in his wake with little regard. On Tytheus he awoke an eldritch sea-god in his haste; on Shamtar he caused the plane's slow descent into endless winter; Quyrash ceased to exist as a result of his meddling; and San Xalco, though he could not enter it himself, saw his slow machinations drawing the planeswalker Orflaith Ó Nal from Ulaith to do his bidding.

With the relics once more gathered together, Qirauz returned to Akkadi to attempt to reverse his hubristic efforts. It was for naught, however, as no possible future or past the ritual could conjure would see Akkadi as anything but an empire of the dead. His heart hardened, his people lost to him forever, Qirauz swore vengeance on life itself, vowing now to visit every world within his grasp again—coming now not to seek, but to slay.

Qirauz's rampage brought his skeletal legions across scores of planes in his bloody triumph. The crystalline world of Jystan ruptured beneath undead footsteps, while Shamtar and Boccacius were put to the sword by his tireless soldiers. Tytheus saw its oceans froth with boiling blood, Kushab's ogres fought tooth and nail against lifeless monstrosities, and the cities of Morstad became little more than cursed tombs in the haunted moonlight. It was only the organised resistance of Orflaith and the elven prince Shilok of Tytheus that finally saw the end of this crusade—cornering the necromancer in his imperial palace, and shrouded by the obscuring magic of the Ulaith trickster-god Annan, the planeswalkers were able to destroy Qirauz's relics, draining his power with a sudden blow. Left without his source of magic strength, the lich let out an anguished howl before disintegrating into little more than dust on the breeze, leaving behind a legacy of bone and blood.

## Planes visited

* Tytheus
* Quyrash
* Shamtar
* Akkadi
* Morstad
* Jystan
* Kushab
* Boccacius