Neronix17

The once prosperous kingdom of Eskad covered much of the region around their sprawling capital city, only to fall in a matter of months as the practice of Necromancy became rampant. Their leader, an archmagus by the name of Judhec The Undying so named for his exceptionally long lifespan for a Human, became obsessed with making his title more truth than legend. In secret for many years he began learning the dark art of resurrecting the dead and manipulating the barrier between life and death, in time he began replacing his guards with unknown knights in gleaming armor, hiding their true skeletal appearance till there were no living beings in his immense castle beside himself.

This continued for years until Judhec revealed to his citizens that he had ascended to Lichdom, glowing purple eyes looking out from the quite visible pale white skull shrouded by his luxurious purple robes, golden crown resting atop his head. Initially his people were horrified by this change from the young and lively looking appearance he had maintained through magic for many decades that led to his title, but began to accept it as just a normal if somewhat jarring change for someone of his age which nobody knew for certain the actual number. 

After this acceptance came a wave of nobles deciding to try to follow Judhecs example, and become liches themselves, all of them of course thought it to be a quick and easy process as long as they threw their abundant wealth around. The lack of patience and overwhelming amounts of self confidence led to their downfall, and subsequent enthralling by Judhec, who knew they would attempt to take the easy route and had planted fake ‘get Lich quick’ amulets on the markets he knew they would reach out to as they always did with his latest trend in the past. 

These cursed amulets turned them into a shell of their former selves, giving them the everlasting undeath they desired at the cost of their free will, forever to be under the direct command of Judhec. Through them he began a reign of terror that decimated the kingdom, while others tried to rise up and carve out a bit of land for themselves to rule over attempting to become liches and while some succeeded, most ended up destroying themselves. Of those that managed to become liches, Judhec quickly overcame and turned into loyal lieutenants in his fast growing undead army. 

The feeling of absolute power over all of his people, for eternity, drove Judhec to the brink of insanity, the city became a ruin filled with living corpses that would spend years at a time just standing still, waiting for something to disturb them, waiting for orders to come. By the time Judhec had turned his entire kingdom into undead armies and workers, the surrounding rulers had already made it impossible for him to spread further. They heard early on of his ascension to Lichdom and made every effort to coordinate every mage in the region to erect a barrier that no undead form could pass through around the entirety of Eskad. Locking it off from the rest of the world. 

Since that time, now hundreds of years in the past, mages have worked to preserve the barrier so that it never falls. Judhecs lieutenants have been seen many times attempting to breach the barrier, only for that area of it to be reinforced. Some smaller breaches are made now and again, leading to a temporary leak of undead into the surrounding area before mages can reach it to close it back up again. These roaming hordes of undead often travel dozens if not hundreds of miles in no particular direction till they find people to massacre or are stopped by patrolling forces. 

The story of Eskad has led to the Mages Guild permanently banning Necromancy of any kind, aside from non-practical and supervised study to ensure that if another Judhec shows up they can see the warning signs and know what to expect if they ever need to fight the undead those Necromagus raise.