History

Varis was an accident; there's really no nicer way to say it.

Luanari was a high elf, finally free from their restrictive elven homeland of Sofyl and living their best life, aka partying hard and exploring the much more exciting nations surrounding Sofyl. Along the way, they met Xostraz'zt, demon masquerading as a charmingly handsome human noble in the capital of Phalla. They were immediately drawn to each other and thus began their decades long, explosive....relationship, for lack of a better word. They were fuck buddies that cared about each other, but would also stab each other if the situation called for it, and neither of them had any intention of settling down or officially calling it anything serious.

Unfortunately for them, no one ever explained the importance of birth control and safe sex. Xostra ditched as soon as he found out, because fuck it, he doesn't wanna be responsible for this problem, leaving Luanari to deal with their mistake alone. They did their best to raise Varis, but Luanari never set out to be parent. When Varis expressed an interest in magic at a young age, they found a well established wizard school to send him off to. Satisfied that they'd done enough, Luanari went back to living their life with minimal responsibility for Varis's upbringing. They made sure to write often and visit from time to time, but Varis was mostly on his own.

Varis found that while he loved the concept of studying magic, he struggled to flourish in the strict academic setting of his school. After spending years feeling like an absolute idiot, he decided to set out on his own to explore the world and figure out magic in his own way. Varis ran into more than his fair share of problems along the way, both from finding that most arcane spellcasting knowledge is locked up in stuffy libraries away from the public and from spells backfiring on him, leaving him with various magical scars from teaching himself the beginnings of necromancy.

This trial and error approach to magical study sometimes caused more disastrous results, especially with Varis's penchant for messing around with deeply disturbing tomes of forbidden and forgotten arcane traditions in his study of necromancy. While attempting to recreate a different ritual, he accidentally turned himself into a lich. However, because it wasn't a perfect recreation - due to his inexperience and unintentional casting - Varis has to deal with some strange consequences. Sometimes he loses bits of body parts, usuaully limbs - they're just so tricky to hold onto! - but he's gotten quite good at stitching himself back together and he keeps a positive attitude about it.

Sometime after his lich experience, Varis met another spellcaster with a thirst for knowledge in strange places: Tevvyr, a cleric of Vecna (though he likes to keep what diety he's actually serving on the downlow, due to Vecna's rather questionable morals). The two traveled together for a bit due to shared interests, but forged a friendship fairly quickly and have been in and around Imbeshia on the hunt for hidden or forgotten knowledge ever since.