Ashen Hierophant

The Ashen Hierophant, Lich of Grizburg

 

Appearance

The Ashen Hierophant is no withered corpse hiding behind illusions—its form is a skeletal cathedral of flesh and iron. Pipes jut from its ribs, exhaling violet smoke; chains of screaming spirits coil around its limbs; and its skull burns with a forge-fire halo of violet and green. In its chest yawns a cavity where a heart should be, the cavity framed by runes and filled with the glow of its soulstone, pulsing like a furnace behind bars.   ---

Origins

Once a high priest of the Depths cult, the Hierophant carved their path to undeath with ritual sacrifice. Unlike other liches, they fused their heart and their loved one’s into a vessel of brass and bone, sinking it into the ichor-dripped crypts beneath Rustwater. When the transformation completed, Zothra-Khaar’s shadow answered—and the lich became less a person and more an avatar, bearing the god’s hunger as its own.   ---  

Habitat

The Hierophant rules a lair deep in the Whispering Depths: an inverted cathedral carved from riblike stalactites, its floors paved with skulls fused in blackened mortar. Acid drips from the ceiling like candlewax, and braziers of green fire burn with the breath of the dead. Above, the influence spreads—chimneys cough blacker smoke, and whole districts tremble when the Hierophant stirs.   ---  

Ecology

Unlike the patient liches of other lands, the Hierophant is active, walking among the ruins it claims. Its power is fed by the city itself: the cries of the dying, the rust of collapsing steel, and the whispers of cultists who give their blood freely. It has no need of food, yet drinks the life of mortals for pleasure, each soul bound into its chains.   ---  

Behavior

The Ashen Hierophant is theatrical, striking with storms of necrotic fire to scatter foes before summoning wraiths from their fallen bodies. It delights in psychological torment, compelling victims to hug themselves until bones snap or to turn blades on comrades. Rarely does it kill outright—more often it binds souls as wraith-servants, swelling its retinue of the damned.   ---  

The Whispering Depths Connection

Cultists believe the Hierophant is Zothra-Khaar’s favored mouthpiece, carrying the god’s unfinished scripture in its veins. Its screeches echo like sermons, shaking foundations. Some whisper the Hierophant has found the means to rewrite the Depths itself, carving new prophecies by devouring old ones. Whether true or not, its presence makes the caverns quake with a living hunger.   ---  

Use by Factions

Rust Barons fear and revere it, whispering bargains through chained mediums. Some believe whole guild wars were decided not by steel, but by which side the Hierophant silently favored. Other factions seek to cage its soulstone, hoping to wield the lich as a bound weapon. Yet all who try soon vanish, their names erased, their souls moaning from its chains.   ---  

Cultural Role

Among the people, the Ashen Hierophant is a fireside terror. Dockhands leave offerings of salt and black iron, muttering prayers that its gaze will pass them by. Mothers warn children not to stray into alleys with strange light, lest the Hierophant’s wraiths drag them below. Yet some desperate souls pray to it anyway—better a demon that answers than gods that stay silent.   ---  

Legends

The Night of Shattered Glass tells of when the Hierophant rose from the Depths, its glare cracking every window in Rustwater as thousands clasped their arms tight in unison, restrained by its will. Another tale insists its soulstone is not hidden but carried openly, daring challengers to try and strike it—an invitation no one has survived.   ---  

Threats to the City

If unleashed fully, the Hierophant could topple Grizburg. Its life-draining aura spreads like plague, seeding wraiths in the hundreds. Its chains drag screaming souls through walls and iron gates alike. Entire districts could be unmade not by siege or flame, but by silence, as everyone within vanishes into the lich’s choir.   ---  

Behavioral Oddities

At times it kneels among ruins, arranging bones into scripture only it can read. It sings hymns in the voices of the dead, a chorus both beautiful and unbearable. The strangest accounts claim it sometimes weeps black ichor, as though mourning its own eternity.   ---  

Adventuring Hooks

• The Rust Barons secretly unleash the Hierophant during a civil war, binding its hunger to their cause. • Cultists prepare a grand ritual to merge the lich entirely with Zothra-Khaar, birthing a god anew. • The Hierophant’s soulstone is said to lie exposed within its chest, protected by curses stronger than steel. • Workers vanish nightly into the Depths, chains dragging them into a growing choir of wraiths.   ---  

Closing Words

The Ashen Hierophant is no mere lich—it is Grizburg’s shadow, the wrath of Zothra-Khaar in skeletal flesh. To face it is to fight not only undeath, but the city’s own sins given voice and fire. See full stats on D&D Beyond