Name: Ozi.
Age: 141.
Birthday: October 3, 1883.
Gender: Neuter.
Category: Citizen.
Appearance Description: Ozi is a tall humanoid figure shrouded in black robes. The only parts of its flesh exposed are three fingers with short claws on each hand and four tentacles that hand down from under its hood. The robes it wears are of black leather with humanoid bones worked into their construction, with broad shoulders and long hood pulled over Ozi’s head. The robes move on their own, shifting and settling to accommodate their wearer and shade Ozi from sunlight as much as possible. Under the robes, Ozi’s skin is dry and pale like paper. Its oblong head ends in four tentacles a few feet long, and in the middle of them is a round mouth filled with rings of small sharp teeth. It has no eyes, just empty sockets that glow with red light.
Personality Description: Ozi is precise and thoughtful. It speaks little, usually just brief telepathic messages such as "stop," or "give me that," or "leave," and will happily use its psionic powers to make a point if need be. It has found that others are often more compliant when levitated off the ground and held there for a few moments. Even so, it does not waste time on pointless cruelties. It is not caring, but neither is it malevolent. Ozi simply wants to be left to its own pursuits, and if those around it oblige then it has no reason to be bothered. Ozi is not cruel mostly because it bears the loss of all it once built, all the power it accumulated, and all the other illithids it had come to rely on. It has no reason to dominate because it will never recapture the power it fell from, and no reason to make others suffer because their suffering is just as irrelevant as so much else in its endless undeath.
Likes: Knowledge, especially of magic or secrets. Shade, and complete darkness if possible. Music, favoring deep tones and intricate melodies.
Dislikes: Light, especially the light of the sun.
Weaknesses: Weary, joyless, and proud.
Strengths: Clever, patient, and pitiless.
Fears: Ozi fears a death from which it will not return and the loss of its cloak, the only remnant of its former lordship. It has lost so much that there is little else left for it to be afraid of.
Habits/Hobbies: Ozi studies compulsively, both by reading any texts it can get its claws on and soaking up thoughts and emotions from any creatures it passes. It is quite fond of conversation, discussing with those it finds well informed and tossing the ignorant aside with its psychic might.
Skills / Talents: Ozi plays an instrument called a cave harp, whose sonorous stings are tuned to frequencies that carry well down the deep passageways and wide vaults of the underdark. It is literate in qualith, a written language that mimics the feeling of telepathy.
Powers:
Psionics: As all mind flayers, Ozi is able to influence the world around it with the power of its mind. Its most fundamental form of psionic power is telepathy. It can read the current thoughts of unprotected minds within about a hundred feet and communicate with them through this telepathic link. It can do this regardless of what languages the other mind is familiar with, and can detect other sentient beings with this psychic awareness. Ozi can carry on a telepathic "conversation" or read the surface thoughts of a single mind at a time. It can also feel the general emotional tone of the minds around it by not focusing on any one mind, but when doing so cannot discern which thoughts belong to which mind. Any psychic power or magic that prevents thoughts from being read or tampered with makes the user immune to Ozi's telepathy.
Ozi can also project its mental force to stun other beings near it. This is known as a "mind blast" and can stun all unprotected minds in a 45 degree cone extending sixty in front of Ozi for a few seconds, though targets with strong or determined minds can resist being incapacitated. The effects of the mind blast can be anything from falling briefly unconscious to a bad headache depending on how well a victim resists. Psychic powers or magic that protect a mind from being controlled or harmed can make the user more resistant or completely immune to the mind blast.
Ozi has telekinetic abilities, though they are not especially powerful. It can lift and move itself or other beings of similar size and weight, and can manipulate or levitate objects like doors, tables, teacups, or writing instruments. It can fling these objects telekinetically, but not any harder than it could by hand.
Necromancy: Ozi has the gift of sorcery, innate magic performed purely through talent and discipline. Ozi’s magic is entirely focused on necromancy, granting it the ability to create and command undead beings. It has developed this skill to the exclusion of all other magic, giving it supreme command over undeath and no power over anything else. It can turn almost any collection of dead remains into some form of undead, though this works better on more complete bodies or constructions of dead bodies put together with care. Ozi’s understanding of undeath allows it to create undead with a variety of features, such as a vampiric thirst for blood or a ghoulish abaility to restore themselves by gorging on dead flesh. Ozi can only command so many undead at once. At this point in its unlife, Ozi can only command a few terribly powerful undead or a small army of weak undead. Presently the limit of Ozi’s command is about twenty humanoid skeletons or zombies, or one hulking undead beast and a few undead trifles like the cloaked robes that it constantly wears. Undead that Ozi creates fall under its control if it has to capacity to command them, but it can attempt to seize control over other undead if it wishes. Undead that have their own sentience and wills can resist this control even if Ozi is able to establish it, and the longer it controls them or the more it goes against their wishes the more easily they can break free.
Alhoon: Ozi is an illithid lich, known to the illithids as an alhoon. Ozi is an unliving but animate aberration sustained only by necromantic magic. As an undead being, Ozi no longer needs to consume the brains of sentient creatures to survive. It can still do so if it wishes, however. The four tentacles on its head can stretch almost as far as its arms, and are quite strong. If it gets a solid grip on a living creature’s head, it can shove its tentacles through their skull and extract their brain for consumption. Like all illithids, Ozi can see in complete darkness.
Among the benefits of its undead state is the durability of its body, which is untroubled by physical distress and can sustain vast damage without much inconvenience. In order to kill Ozi, its body must be destroyed so completely that it cannot hang together and loses its bodily integrity. No amount of stabbing and slashing will bother Ozi, but hacking off all its limbs and shredding the body, burning it to ashes, or other means of total destruction will kill it quite well.
As a lich, even death is not necessarily the end. Ozi’s animation is bound to a phylactery, the necromantic vessel of its soul. Unless its phylactery is destroyed, when Ozi dies its body reforms near the phylactery as its magic recreates the undead form its soul inhabits. This occurs only after a few days, ten at the most. Its phylactery is a puzzle cylinder of smooth dark stone with necromantic scripts carved on the inside. The puzzle cylinder holds nothing within but the inscriptions. If its phylactery is destroyed while Ozi’s body is still intact, it can create another with time and effort, but if it dies before finishing a new phylactery or if its phylactery is destroyed before its body reforms, then Ozi’s destruction will be permanent.
Biography: Once upon a time, Ozi was a lord of sept Sebeth. Its early life was not easy or pleasant. Shortly after it was no longer a tadpole, Ozi developed sorcerous talent and was cast out of its home sept, Brimigal. Rather than become a lone hermit like most illithid sorcerers, it decided to make a sept of its own. For a time it traveled the underdark in search of brains to sustain it and other illithid sorcerers who would hear its plans. Many refused, but Ozi defeated them and wen on in search of others who would shar its vision. While still young it found two fellows, Gezab amd Tiomi, who joined it and brought their thralls to a cave Ozi had chosen early in its travels. Their thralls built, the ilithids studied, and in time the cavern became Sebeth, the sept of sorcerers. As over a hundred years passed on the surface world, Sebeth grew with the sorcerers’ offspring and thralls taken from the surrounding cave systems. Gezab bred and tranformed the thralls into more pleasing and useful forms, Tiomi built golem servants of vast strength and mindless loyalty, and Ozi developed necromantic powers to make even the corpses of the dead useful to their masters. As Ozi and the other founders neared the end of their lives, they began preparing to forsake their bodies and become the core of a new elder brain for Sebeth. This was not to be.
Ozi returned from a raid against a drow settlement, bringing with it many captives to feed Sebeth with their brains. It found Sebeth caved in, a warning written on the walls from the illithids of Brimigal that as the Sebeth’s presumption had been punished so too would be any sorcerers who dared raise their own sept again. With its home gone, Gezab and Tiomi dead, and no chance of merging into a new elder brain, Ozi turned to its necromancy in desperation. It used its magic to become an alhoon, and the newly undead illithid lich slew the living captives it had taken to raise as an undead army. It then marched for the surface, knowing that under the wretched sun was the last place Brimigal would wish to follow it.
By the time Ozi reached the surface, its army was gone and it traveled alone. It carried little but its phylactery and the cloaked robes it was covered in, made from the skin and bones of Gezab and Tiomi’s remains. The light of the sun was still hateful, but it found some comfort in the safety that dwelling in a place so horrid to its enemies would bring.
Additional Information:
When communicating by telepathy, Ozi speaks in italics.
Age: 141.
Birthday: October 3, 1883.
Gender: Neuter.
Category: Citizen.
Appearance Description: Ozi is a tall humanoid figure shrouded in black robes. The only parts of its flesh exposed are three fingers with short claws on each hand and four tentacles that hand down from under its hood. The robes it wears are of black leather with humanoid bones worked into their construction, with broad shoulders and long hood pulled over Ozi’s head. The robes move on their own, shifting and settling to accommodate their wearer and shade Ozi from sunlight as much as possible. Under the robes, Ozi’s skin is dry and pale like paper. Its oblong head ends in four tentacles a few feet long, and in the middle of them is a round mouth filled with rings of small sharp teeth. It has no eyes, just empty sockets that glow with red light.
Personality Description: Ozi is precise and thoughtful. It speaks little, usually just brief telepathic messages such as "stop," or "give me that," or "leave," and will happily use its psionic powers to make a point if need be. It has found that others are often more compliant when levitated off the ground and held there for a few moments. Even so, it does not waste time on pointless cruelties. It is not caring, but neither is it malevolent. Ozi simply wants to be left to its own pursuits, and if those around it oblige then it has no reason to be bothered. Ozi is not cruel mostly because it bears the loss of all it once built, all the power it accumulated, and all the other illithids it had come to rely on. It has no reason to dominate because it will never recapture the power it fell from, and no reason to make others suffer because their suffering is just as irrelevant as so much else in its endless undeath.
Likes: Knowledge, especially of magic or secrets. Shade, and complete darkness if possible. Music, favoring deep tones and intricate melodies.
Dislikes: Light, especially the light of the sun.
Weaknesses: Weary, joyless, and proud.
Strengths: Clever, patient, and pitiless.
Fears: Ozi fears a death from which it will not return and the loss of its cloak, the only remnant of its former lordship. It has lost so much that there is little else left for it to be afraid of.
Habits/Hobbies: Ozi studies compulsively, both by reading any texts it can get its claws on and soaking up thoughts and emotions from any creatures it passes. It is quite fond of conversation, discussing with those it finds well informed and tossing the ignorant aside with its psychic might.
Skills / Talents: Ozi plays an instrument called a cave harp, whose sonorous stings are tuned to frequencies that carry well down the deep passageways and wide vaults of the underdark. It is literate in qualith, a written language that mimics the feeling of telepathy.
Powers:
Psionics: As all mind flayers, Ozi is able to influence the world around it with the power of its mind. Its most fundamental form of psionic power is telepathy. It can read the current thoughts of unprotected minds within about a hundred feet and communicate with them through this telepathic link. It can do this regardless of what languages the other mind is familiar with, and can detect other sentient beings with this psychic awareness. Ozi can carry on a telepathic "conversation" or read the surface thoughts of a single mind at a time. It can also feel the general emotional tone of the minds around it by not focusing on any one mind, but when doing so cannot discern which thoughts belong to which mind. Any psychic power or magic that prevents thoughts from being read or tampered with makes the user immune to Ozi's telepathy.
Ozi can also project its mental force to stun other beings near it. This is known as a "mind blast" and can stun all unprotected minds in a 45 degree cone extending sixty in front of Ozi for a few seconds, though targets with strong or determined minds can resist being incapacitated. The effects of the mind blast can be anything from falling briefly unconscious to a bad headache depending on how well a victim resists. Psychic powers or magic that protect a mind from being controlled or harmed can make the user more resistant or completely immune to the mind blast.
Ozi has telekinetic abilities, though they are not especially powerful. It can lift and move itself or other beings of similar size and weight, and can manipulate or levitate objects like doors, tables, teacups, or writing instruments. It can fling these objects telekinetically, but not any harder than it could by hand.
Necromancy: Ozi has the gift of sorcery, innate magic performed purely through talent and discipline. Ozi’s magic is entirely focused on necromancy, granting it the ability to create and command undead beings. It has developed this skill to the exclusion of all other magic, giving it supreme command over undeath and no power over anything else. It can turn almost any collection of dead remains into some form of undead, though this works better on more complete bodies or constructions of dead bodies put together with care. Ozi’s understanding of undeath allows it to create undead with a variety of features, such as a vampiric thirst for blood or a ghoulish abaility to restore themselves by gorging on dead flesh. Ozi can only command so many undead at once. At this point in its unlife, Ozi can only command a few terribly powerful undead or a small army of weak undead. Presently the limit of Ozi’s command is about twenty humanoid skeletons or zombies, or one hulking undead beast and a few undead trifles like the cloaked robes that it constantly wears. Undead that Ozi creates fall under its control if it has to capacity to command them, but it can attempt to seize control over other undead if it wishes. Undead that have their own sentience and wills can resist this control even if Ozi is able to establish it, and the longer it controls them or the more it goes against their wishes the more easily they can break free.
Alhoon: Ozi is an illithid lich, known to the illithids as an alhoon. Ozi is an unliving but animate aberration sustained only by necromantic magic. As an undead being, Ozi no longer needs to consume the brains of sentient creatures to survive. It can still do so if it wishes, however. The four tentacles on its head can stretch almost as far as its arms, and are quite strong. If it gets a solid grip on a living creature’s head, it can shove its tentacles through their skull and extract their brain for consumption. Like all illithids, Ozi can see in complete darkness.
Among the benefits of its undead state is the durability of its body, which is untroubled by physical distress and can sustain vast damage without much inconvenience. In order to kill Ozi, its body must be destroyed so completely that it cannot hang together and loses its bodily integrity. No amount of stabbing and slashing will bother Ozi, but hacking off all its limbs and shredding the body, burning it to ashes, or other means of total destruction will kill it quite well.
As a lich, even death is not necessarily the end. Ozi’s animation is bound to a phylactery, the necromantic vessel of its soul. Unless its phylactery is destroyed, when Ozi dies its body reforms near the phylactery as its magic recreates the undead form its soul inhabits. This occurs only after a few days, ten at the most. Its phylactery is a puzzle cylinder of smooth dark stone with necromantic scripts carved on the inside. The puzzle cylinder holds nothing within but the inscriptions. If its phylactery is destroyed while Ozi’s body is still intact, it can create another with time and effort, but if it dies before finishing a new phylactery or if its phylactery is destroyed before its body reforms, then Ozi’s destruction will be permanent.
Biography: Once upon a time, Ozi was a lord of sept Sebeth. Its early life was not easy or pleasant. Shortly after it was no longer a tadpole, Ozi developed sorcerous talent and was cast out of its home sept, Brimigal. Rather than become a lone hermit like most illithid sorcerers, it decided to make a sept of its own. For a time it traveled the underdark in search of brains to sustain it and other illithid sorcerers who would hear its plans. Many refused, but Ozi defeated them and wen on in search of others who would shar its vision. While still young it found two fellows, Gezab amd Tiomi, who joined it and brought their thralls to a cave Ozi had chosen early in its travels. Their thralls built, the ilithids studied, and in time the cavern became Sebeth, the sept of sorcerers. As over a hundred years passed on the surface world, Sebeth grew with the sorcerers’ offspring and thralls taken from the surrounding cave systems. Gezab bred and tranformed the thralls into more pleasing and useful forms, Tiomi built golem servants of vast strength and mindless loyalty, and Ozi developed necromantic powers to make even the corpses of the dead useful to their masters. As Ozi and the other founders neared the end of their lives, they began preparing to forsake their bodies and become the core of a new elder brain for Sebeth. This was not to be.
Ozi returned from a raid against a drow settlement, bringing with it many captives to feed Sebeth with their brains. It found Sebeth caved in, a warning written on the walls from the illithids of Brimigal that as the Sebeth’s presumption had been punished so too would be any sorcerers who dared raise their own sept again. With its home gone, Gezab and Tiomi dead, and no chance of merging into a new elder brain, Ozi turned to its necromancy in desperation. It used its magic to become an alhoon, and the newly undead illithid lich slew the living captives it had taken to raise as an undead army. It then marched for the surface, knowing that under the wretched sun was the last place Brimigal would wish to follow it.
By the time Ozi reached the surface, its army was gone and it traveled alone. It carried little but its phylactery and the cloaked robes it was covered in, made from the skin and bones of Gezab and Tiomi’s remains. The light of the sun was still hateful, but it found some comfort in the safety that dwelling in a place so horrid to its enemies would bring.
Additional Information:
When communicating by telepathy, Ozi speaks in italics.
