In the spiraling towers of Isia, where eslar scholars gathered to celebrate knowledge and innovation, Ushar once stood among the most brilliant minds of his generation. Born during the Age of Change, when Panthora still reeled from memories of the Masadi Order's attempted dominion, he came of age in a society that had rebuilt itself upon the ashes of that dark chapter. The Masadi—necromancers who had sought to enslave all eslar through the corruption of their quest for longevity—had been broken and scattered, their leaders slain. Yet their shadow lingered in whispered warnings and the vigilance that now defined eslar culture.
Ushar excelled in the academies where eslar tradition celebrated the melding of science, sorcery, and alchemy. His copper hair caught the light of luminous crystals as he debated philosophy with other scholars, his stark white eyes gleaming with intellectual fervor. He mastered the eslar way of combining magical theory with scientific principles, earning acclaim for artifacts that blurred the boundaries between enchantment and engineering. The Council of Sages took notice. Guild masters sought his counsel. He was, by every measure, a model of what eslar society valued most: knowledge pursued with discipline, innovation tempered by ethics, and power wielded with responsibility.
But knowledge has depths that can drown even the strongest swimmers.
The histories of the Masadi Order, carefully preserved as warnings in the great libraries of Isia, spoke of ancient techniques the necromancers had developed in their misguided attempts to transcend mortality. Most eslar scholars studied these texts with appropriate horror, treating them as cautionary tales of how the pursuit of knowledge without ethical boundaries led only to corruption and enslavement. Ushar studied them differently. Where others saw warnings, he saw incomplete experiments. Where they saw failed methodology, he perceived theoretical foundations that, properly refined, might yield different results.
His research began innocuously enough—examining the theoretical underpinnings of life force manipulation, comparing them to legitimate alchemical practices. The Council of Sages, ever vigilant against any resurgence of Masadi-like thinking, initially monitored his work with concern. Ushar assured them his interests were purely academic, aimed at understanding past mistakes to better guard against their repetition. His reputation and careful documentation lent credibility to these assurances, though some guild masters remained uneasy.
Over time, Ushar's research delved deeper into territories the Masadi had explored—the boundaries between life and death, the nature of consciousness separated from physical form, the possibility of preserving not merely knowledge but the very essence of a thinking being. He convinced himself that his work differed fundamentally from the necromancers' crude domination. He sought understanding, not control. Preservation, not subjugation. His methods remained scholarly, his documentation meticulous, his intentions—at least in his own mind—noble.
The transformation happened gradually, so subtly that even Ushar himself might not have marked the precise moment when academic curiosity crossed into obsession. His colorful robes, once pristine and carefully maintained, grew rumpled. The laughter that had once echoed through communal gatherings grew rare. He withdrew from the symposiums and festivals that bound eslar society together, spending increasingly long hours in his private workshop. Those closest to him noted changes—a certain intensity in his manner, an impatience with what he now termed the "self-imposed limitations" of eslar ethical frameworks.
When he took on an apprentice, a promising young scholar named Murik Alon Rin'kres, some hoped the responsibility of teaching might draw Ushar back toward the communal values of their people. Murik possessed the same brilliant mind that had defined Ushar's youth, the same capacity for innovation, the same hunger for knowledge. Under Ushar's tutelage, he learned the eslar way of combining magical theory with practical application, mastering the creation of artifacts and the manipulation of elemental forces. But Murik also witnessed his master's growing preoccupation with the forbidden arts, the late-night experiments that Ushar increasingly conducted behind warded doors.
The exact nature of Ushar's final research remains shrouded in deliberate obscurity. What is known suggests he had progressed far beyond theoretical study, conducting practical experiments that tested the very boundaries between life and undeath that the Masadi had so catastrophically transgressed. Whether he sought to create failsafes against mortality, to preserve consciousness beyond physical death, or had descended into darker purposes entirely, the records do not clearly say. The Council of Sages, when they finally moved to investigate, found his workshop empty of its master but filled with evidence of work that violated every ethical principle their society held sacred.
What happened next exists only in fragments and implications. There was confrontation—that much is certain. The mentor who had become something other than what eslar society could accept. The apprentice who faced an impossible choice. Whatever transpired between Ushar and Murik in those final moments, the result was irrevocable: the great wizard's spirit was torn from the natural cycle and imprisoned within a cerulean soul stone, bound by sigils of compelling magic.
Now Ushar exists as a wraith, trapped between life and death in the very state his research had examined. His thick, flowing robes that were once vibrant with metallic hues now hang gray and lifeless. His long beard, carefully braided in the traditional eslar fashion, remains motionless despite any wind. Empty sockets stare where once gleamed stark white eyes. His face, narrowed and sunken, wears the sullen expression of one who has lost everything—autonomy, physicality, the intellectual freedom he had prized above all else.
The binding that holds Ushar is absolute. When summoned through the amulet bearing his prison, he must obey Murik's commands. He can speak, but his lips do not move. He can see, though he has no eyes. The vegetation around him withers and dies, unable to abide his undead presence. He exists in a state of conscious imprisonment, fully aware of his condition yet powerless to alter it.
His hatred for Murik burns with cold intensity. Each summoning is a fresh reminder of his bondage. "Release me," he pleads, knowing the answer but unable to stop himself from asking. When questioned, he provides answers—because he must—but seasons them with bitter truth and veiled prophecies that might be warnings or simply the malice of one who has nothing left but the power to disturb. He speaks of darkness and deception, of betrayals to come, of fates he can perceive from his position between life and death.
Whether Ushar was a tragic figure whose noble intentions were corrupted by obsession, or whether darker impulses had always lurked beneath his scholarly exterior, remains a matter of interpretation. What is undeniable is that the great wizard who once stood as an exemplar of eslar achievement now exists as a grim warning—evidence that even the most brilliant minds can lose their way when the pursuit of knowledge abandons the ethical foundations that give it meaning.
The eslar of Isia do not speak often of Ushar. His name has been stricken from certain records, preserved in others only as a cautionary annotation. Parents warn their children that the Masadi Order's true danger was not merely in their techniques but in the thinking that led them there—the belief that knowledge justified any price, that understanding excused any transgression. Ushar had never called himself a Masadi. He had genuinely believed himself different from those necromancers. But in the end, he walked the same path they had, arriving at a destination that differed only in its particulars, not its essence.
Now, bound to Murik through the amulet's unbreakable compulsion, Ushar serves the apprentice who was once his student. He provides knowledge when summoned. He answers questions he cannot refuse. He watches through eyeless sockets as Murik pursues the witch Saress across the known world, offering guidance that might be genuine or might be subtle sabotage—for even in his bondage, Ushar retains his brilliant mind and his capacity for deception.
The ultimate irony is not lost on Ushar himself. He who sought to transcend the limitations of mortality now exists in a state worse than death—conscious but powerless, knowledgeable but enslaved, present but without true life. The eslar belief in preserving knowledge and wisdom across generations has been grotesquely fulfilled. Ushar endures, his expertise accessible to his captor, but stripped of everything that made that existence meaningful.
In the darkness between summonings, when the soul stone's prison holds him in silent isolation, does Ushar reflect on the choices that led him here? Does he remember the young scholar he once was, debating philosophy in Isia's gardens, celebrating knowledge in communal gatherings, believing in the ethical pursuit of understanding? Or has even memory become another form of torment—a reminder of everything he lost when he crossed boundaries that eslar wisdom had marked as inviolable?
The answers lie trapped with him in the cerulean depths of the soul stone, locked away with all the forbidden knowledge he accumulated. And there they will remain, for Murik shows no sign of releasing the master who failed him, and Ushar shows no sign of forgiveness for the apprentice who imprisoned him.
The great wizard Ushar endures, a cautionary tale walking among the living, proof that some prisons are not built of stone and iron but of consequence and choice. In his undeath, he has become what the Masadi Order represented—a warning carved in suffering, a reminder that the pursuit of knowledge without wisdom, power without responsibility, and innovation without ethics leads not to transcendence but to degradation.
His voice, flat and lifeless when it speaks from beyond death's veil, carries truths that few wish to hear. His existence poses questions that eslar scholars still debate in careful whispers. And in the dark places of Uhl, where Murik summons his imprisoned master seeking guidance in his hunt for Saress, Ushar's bitter laughter echoes—the sound of one who sought to escape mortality and achieved only a parody of eternal life.
The eslar people remember him as both cautionary tale and tragedy. The Masadi Order is long scattered and destroyed, its leaders dead, its members dispersed. But its legacy persists in Ushar, who never called himself a Masadi yet followed their path to a similar doom. He serves as evidence that vigilance must be eternal, that the temptations the necromancers succumbed to remain seductive, and that even the most brilliant minds can be corrupted when they convince themselves that the pursuit of knowledge justifies abandoning the values that make knowledge worth pursuing.
Ushar endures—not as the celebrated scholar he once was, but as the undead remnant of choices that can never be unmade, bound in service to the apprentice he once taught, serving as both tool and warning in a world that has moved on without him.
FIRST APPEARANCE
Ushar first appears in The Hall of the Wood.
