Crypt-King Graal

Graal cannot remember his birth name. Once he was one of the Six Kings of the Confederation of Frostheim, and one of Graal's only remaining memories of his old life is of the attack on the Winter Hall by the Ice Golem — an inhuman titan of living frost — who rampaged into his hall and murdered his kinsmen. He can remember collapsing to the ground, his life trickling away into the stone floor. He can remember the Sacred Order inquisitors, who had been sent to meet with him and his fellow kings, bursting in and looking on with cold eyes as his killer butchered those who might have saved him. After that, all Graal can remember is silence and darkness. Centuries wore on, and Graal lingered in a cycle of unsteady Undeath – the malefic energies of the Ice Golem occasionally reviving his frozen corpse for a matter of seconds — before slipping back into sensationless unlife. The Winter Hall, once the seat of Frostheim's power, sat as an icy tomb for Graal and his fellow kings after the Ice Golem's attack, and was left to decay and crumble. Outside, the kingdom moved on without them. With each passing century, more of the Ice Golem's power oozed into Graal's husk, granting the former king more control of his Undeath. After what seemed like a millennia, Graal opened his eyes, and he found his body obeyed his will. He looked around his once mighty hall, his fellow kings still frozen in death next to him. His body shaking, Graal first moved an arm. Then a leg. Then his head. Gathering enough strength, he broke the rime that caked his corpse, and unshackled himself from the throne that had held him for an age. As Graal moved, he felt temperatures battling within his chest, a volcanic rage grappling with the glacial Undeath that had been bestowed upon him. His eyes burned with blue fire, ice formed to his legs and then, just as quickly, melted away. The roiling elemental crucible in his heart pushed Graal forward as he emerged from the Winter Hall, and he looked down on more frozen remnants of the massacre that had ended his rule in corridors and chambers. Graal left the Winter Hall behind him, marching down into the snow and ice of his homeland. He had to find out who had caused this calamity, and he had to know what had become of Frostheim. Above all else, he longed to claim revenge.