Orick (Ore-ick)

Orick is the only divine entity to have once been mortal. Born in Arak, in the city of Thalassarion, Orick Erades was a Human man who found purpose in devoting his life to shepherding the dead to what comes after. Initially serving as an abbot of the Essi Tera, providing funerary services, Orick was one day blessed with a prophetic vision of the future by the Skiantine present in the mountains nearby which guided him to become a cleric in service to Estrea.

Orick has never shared what he saw in his vision, but perhaps it was the destruction of his home, Thalassarion, which was wiped off the map nearly 8,000 years later – Skiantine can often distort the timeline of events, giving a false sense of urgency. He faithfully served Estrea for more than 30 years, laying undead to rest, until his journeys led him to the ruins of a Dwarven Runeforge in what is now known as the Blasted Lands. The Dwarves which had once inhabited these lands had long since abandoned the Runeforge, and Orick found an artifact there that would go on to catalyze a number of cataclysmic events in Aellorah’s future.

Orick studied this artifact for a time, and learned that it had immense power locked away inside of it, and that it could be burned through in one fell swoop to elevate a single spell to godlike power. Orick had come across many forms of magic in his travels, and one such creature he had encountered, called a Lich, had the ability to separate its spirit from its body by flooding it with spectral Flow and using an object called a Phylactery to contain its animate Flow, its soul. This process typically required an immense amount of spectral Flow, requiring the one performing the ritual to sacrifice a large number of people in order to harness their spectral Flow before they could pass on to the afterlife.

However, Orick discovered that the Flow within the artifact could serve as a replacement for this spectral Flow. This would allow him to achieve this transformation without any ritual sacrifice. He spent a great deal of time trying to make a decision as to whether or not to utilize this power, but ultimately his desire to serve Estrea for all time led him to go through with it.

When he achieved his transformation, Estrea was furious with him. How could one of her own faithful clergy take such a disgusting form… he had spent his life in her service hunting down creatures just like the one he had become. Orick pleaded with his mistress; he had not sacrificed a single soul to achieve this transformation, and sought only to serve her for all eternity. Estrea did not speak to him for many years, and he thought himself forsaken. But after some time, she returned to him, and forgave him, saying that it was in her nature to find his form revolting, as she was the shepherd of the dead, and he had sought to avoid the inevitable. She said that she could not suffer him to exist as he was, and said that the only way she could allow him to continue to exist would be if she held the key to his existence.

Orick turned over his Phylactery to Estrea, and laid himself at her mercy. For this, she elevated him to divine status, an act which had never before been performed, and which has yet to since. She bade him to ensure creatures such as himself would never threaten Aellorah, and to lay them to rest as he did in life.