#ioulaum

[lycowarrior]

Wizards. how typical.

Warning: Netheril memes incoming prepare to get blasted by autism beam

[lycowarrior]

Foolish Wizard Complex

For some reason I made some art abt Karsus

Cooking up other Netheril characters as well, but since most of them only have one or none official art, it require some research and design.

[lycowarrior]

Arcanist dump

So these stupid pictures are made in a span of a few months... Other than that I don`t know what to say. I hope someday ppl will find this when they finish an expansion book or novel and want to sip on certain characters, maybe ( in 500 years)

[lycowarrior]

Shadow`s log

all of them are made weeks ago and I forgot to post. Now the contents seem kind of naive, but nonetheless they supported me through a hard time.

[tinyrogue]

I’m just brushing up on my Forgotten Realms lore and been watching some vids. Beware my unsophisticated opinions.

I’m calling it now, the new Charname in BG3 is Ioulaum’s spawn.

The hag says that your tadpole is Netherese and who is both Netherese and still alive after the Fall of Netheril? You guessed it: It’s Ioulaum.

Ioulaum, who incidentally became an Elder Brain Lich sometime after that. Which, y’know, is quite convenient when you want to bring some progeny into the world.

[tale-chaser]

Fallen Netheril - Oracle of Ellyn’taal

The legendary inventor of the mythallar was one of the few sorcerer-kings who neither perished in the fall of Netheril nor fled to Halruaa.

Thanks to his crafting of the lost epic spell Ioulaum’s longevity, Ioulaum of Seventon lived for centuries, throughout most of the Netherese era. When the phaerimms arrived, however, he soon realized that their lifedrain spells were causing his life-sustaining magic to fail.

Foreseeing the doom of Netheril, he embraced lichdom and established a lair in the depths of the Northdark.

In –339 DR, Ioulaum disappeared from Netheril.

Because the archwizard had been an immensely popular figure and something of a folk hero, the news of his disappearance touched off a panic among the populace. The High Mages of Netheril grew fearful of a popular revolt, and Karsus was moved to cast Karsus’s avatar, the spell that finally doomed the Empire of Magic.

After the fall, Ioulaum quietly continued to choose apprentices from among the most promising Netherese refugees. Curiously, he also accepted apprentices from the nearby mind flayer city of Ellyn’taal, and his illithid students, who called themselves the Alhoon, are believed to have been the first illithiliches.

Ioulaum’s intentions became clear when he created an undead elder brain from the minds of his illithid students and then merged his own sentience into it. Most of his illithilich apprentices were destroyed in this arcane ritual, but a few escaped and spread the secret of illithilich creation to mind flayer communities throughout the Realms Below.

Ioulaum’s last human apprentice, Tabra, witnessed the rite and thought her master had been destroyed in a battle with his own students.

In revenge, she slaughtered the last few of Ellyn’taal’s mind flayers by casting Ioulaum’s longevity on herself in the midst of the community. She then destroyed all records of the spell (except her own and those that Ioulaum himself had secretly hidden away) and fled to the surface.

Thanks to many subsequent castings of that epic spell, Tabra still lives today. 

Until recently, she operated a rooming house and festhall called Bargewright Inn and often worked with the Harpers. Most of the locals suspected that she was a gold dragon in disguise, thanks to her apparent longevity and infrequent casting of shapechange to assume the form of a dragon.

Recently, however, she was captured by the Shadovar and brought back to the City of Shade. Her present circumstances are unknown, but if she yields to the persuasions of the Shadovar, the princes of Shade may gain some important clues about Ioulaum’s last known location and circumstances. 

Ioulaum survives today in the form of an undead elder brain.

Now known as the Oracle of Ellyn’taal, he lairs in the depths of the abandoned mind flayer city, surrounded by echoing chambers carved with alien illithid sculptures. Because staying overlong in these strangely preserved, empty halls results in a strange form of madness (a lethal form of cackle fever and mindfire that invariably ends in death), only Ioulaum’s undead servitors and the ghosts of the mind flayers slain by Tabra remain here with him.

The few intrepid explorers who have chanced upon the Oracle of Ellyn’taal have gained bits of arcane knowledge dating back to the height of Netheril from their meetings with it.

Thus far, no one suspects that this “oracle” was once the legendary Ioulaum, but word of its existence has begun to spread in whispers across the North.

Ioulaum extracts a terrible price for the information he provides—the voluntary, permanent loss of some fraction of the questioner’s sanity or the complete knowledge of a new epic spell (which is then forever lost to the questioner).