Male he/him

Head Mage of the Coven of Life

Major antagonist

143

Average build, slightly leaner in youth but became broader figured in adulthood

5'10"

Pale, especially as he grew older. Resembles a corpse, and patches of his skin are slightly scarred and decayed

Black when he was younger. Silver currently

Medium, brushing down over his shoulders. Usually slightly wavy. Had a healthy sheen when he was younger but which has faded away

None

Usually adorned in the purple robes that signify him as a member of the Coven of Life. His robes have gold trimming, marking him as the coven leader. Underneath, he usually wears simple clothing, often long sleeved to hide his disfigurations. He is so frequently covered up that people do not know what he looks like underneath, and very few know of his deterioration. He almost always wears a white porcelain mask to cover his face. It is shaped to be a crying face streaked with golden tears, forever mourning the members of the Coven of Life that were lost.

Nikellai has a sharply shaped nose, bright blue eyes, and a strong jaw and cheekbones. When he was younger he was generally considered attractive, but after nearly two centuries his face has begun to decay. Patches of his skin are missing and his face has gone gaunt, making him look like a corpse.

Nikellai is instantly recognizable from his mask, and he often keeps himself completely covered up. He is also easily distinguished by his decay, but most don't know about it as he covers it

Very calculated, carefully enunciates all his words. Nikellai's vocal cords have slightly decayed, and he now speaks with a rasp in his voice.

Nikellai is extremely ambitious. When he was young, he rose through the Coven of Life ranks quickly and now as the leader he has big expectations for it. When he is set on something, it is hard to derail it. He's clever and calculating. He was much more excitable and open about his emotions in his youth, but his experiences in the Coven hardened him and he is a concealed man now. He is extremely enigmatic, and very few know about his past. He is charismatic, able to congregate people to his side and control them as he pleases. He is also a strong leader, understanding strategy well and knowing how to use his followers for his own benefit. However, he never lets any of his people become close to him. He was quite proud of his appearance in his past, and is now disgusted with how he has decayed over the years.

Since Nikellai is so old and has alienated himself from others, he has trouble making connections. He is incredibly lonely, feeling like no one else can understand his experiences because of how long he has lived. He has trouble feeling empathy, thinking that he is superior to mortals and willing to hurt them for what he thinks is a greater purpose. Because of the environment of the Coven of Life, he has become distrustful of his compatriots, ready to dispose of them if he feels threatened. He has centered his life around finding immortality, being unhealthily dedicated to it.

Nikellai desperately wishes to find true immortality to stop his decay. To do that, he knows he has to find either Yllmadaya and Kydrei and coerce the secret out of them. He also hopes that he will be able to spread that immortality to other people once he finds it, so that ideally, nobody else will have to die and he will make the first step to a world entirely without death.

When he was younger, Nikellai had a strict moral code and did whatever he could to be selfless and help others. But after entering the cutthroat Coven of Life and the teachings from Yllmadaya, he hardened and his compassion started to lessen. He eventually became less trusting, betraying Yllmadaya. After he learned his immortality was fallible, he started to turn to human experimentation to see if he could find true immortality. He does not care about hurting people and taking lives if he thinks it will eventually help humanity as a whole, hoping in the future everyone will be able to become immortal.

Over the years, Nikellai has grown disconnected from mortals. Being immortal and having grown up with a generation that has died, their experiences are vastly different from his. He thinks many of them are vapid and shallow because they do not have the same knowledge or lofty goals as him. Although he still wants to help them by finding immortality for them, he believes that their lives are less important than his and is willing to risk them for his own gain.

Nikellai spends most of his time organizing the Coven of Life and trying to seize more political power for them. He is often trying to outsmart other Coven members he thinks might try to stab him in the back. In what little free time he has, he is trying to do his personal research into immortality and reflecting on his past.

Nikellai is a strong negotiator and extremely charismatic, having gotten the Coven of Life into King Albyr's graces and persuading Albyr to pursue immortality. After years of practice, he is an extremely talented mage and very powerful compared to most, especially in the area of combat and traps. He is also a studied academic, having a wide knowledge of magical theory and politics.

Some of Nikellai's joints are slightly worn, making his movements jerky and unnatural. He has an intense stare when talking to a person. Oftentimes, he doesn't move much to express himself, both because he isn't very emotive and some simple motions have become painful for him. When standing, he keeps his arms at his sides or behind his back with little movement.

Nikellai is immortal but it is an incomplete kind that is different from Yllmadaya's and Kydrei's. Although his consciousness lives forever and his body ages at a slower rate, his body still ages. His body has decayed as a corpse would but most of his essential functions still work, like the heart and lungs, and he continues to move, think, and live. He can sustain fatal injuries better than a mortal, but if they're too bad they can incapacitate him. Many injuries he has gotten have healed over, but there are also many wounds that make some actions difficult and painful for him. As long as his periapt is unbroken, his consciousness will survive, even if his body completely decomposed in the future.

Nikellai is an extraordinarily powerful mage. Being over a hundred years old, he has been able to make his pool of magic far greater than most others. He especially excels in magical combat and infusing magic into the world around him

Leader of the Coven of Life, a coven with the purpose of finding immortality

Began as a student in the Coven and lower ranked

Nikellai no longer follows a religion, feeling like the gods have cursed him with his false immortality and that he can no longer depend on them.

Nikellai favors King Albyr, as the king has provided support to the Coven of Life. He is often at political meetings trying to gain favoring for the Coven

His periapt, a small jewelry box that was his first purchase, and the source of his immortality

Nikellai is greatly admired in the Coven of Life. He's looked up to as a powerful mage and many wish to pursue the same goal. However, many also fear him, knowing about his experimentation on people and that others have been punished for going against him. Very few people are aware that he's been alive for so long, believing him only to be in his fifties or sixties, as he has covered up most of his past. The general populous is mostly in awe of Nikellai's achievement in the Coven, unaware of the steps he has taken to get it.

Yllmadaya Aalsyur
Kydrei Nol

Yllmadaya was formerly Nikellai's teacher in the Coven of Life. He looked up to her greatly and admired her magical prowess. He had first met her after hearing she had gained immortality, and wanted to find out the secret by studying under her. On a rare occasion she would show him compassion, giving the two a quiet emotional connection. Although not as strongly as some others, there were times where she insisted he become harsher to fit into the environment of the Coven of Life. As the years passed and she still refused to give up the secret to immortality, Nikellai began to lose his admiration of her. Once he figured out she'd given him false immortality, he began to hate her for what she had done to him.

Kydrei was Yllmadaya's partner and another teacher when Nikellai was a student in the Coven of Life. He took a few of her classes and occasionally met with her while studying under Yllmadaya. The two had a cordial relationship at the time and Nikellai admired Kydrei's kindness and intellect, but they never knew each other very well. Now, Nikellai considers Kydrei his enemy, as she is also hiding her immortality as Yllmadaya is.

Aczara is Nikellai's right hand woman and a fellow member of the Coven of Life. Aczara is even one of the few people who knows about Nikellai's decay and a few stray details about his history. However, over time, Nikellai has had some needling suspicions that Aczara may be plotting against him, knowing her to be power hungry.

Nikellai sees himself in Reid. Reid is an apprentice to Yllmadaya and is currently around the same age Nikellai was when he was apprenticed to Yllmadaya. Nikellai desperately wants to sway Reid to his side so that Reid doesn't trust in Yllmadaya as he did.

Born in the year 1101

Being at the library as a youth, Nikellai was able to teach himself a lot, although it wasn't on par with the tutoring on magic that some richer children got. Once he was allowed into the Coven of Life, Nikellai's education was of far greater quality, and he became extremely dedicated to his studying.

Nikellai was born in the city of Haldine in Bythse. His father worked as a miner and died from the work when Nikellai was young. Nikellai's mother was growing sickly and expected him to take on the job to support the family, but Nikellai was afraid that he would succumb to the same fate. This caused a fracture in the family, and Nikellai and his mother would often get into fights. He found refuge at the city library, which although he was poor, he was allowed into by the man who ran it. Nikellai found texts about magic and found a fascination in it, and began practicing the art himself. Eventually, the librarian recommended him to the Coven of Life. Although he wasn't the usual recruit, being from a poorer family, Nikellai was a fast learner and allowed into the Coven at the young age of sixteen.

Nikellai stood out as being incredibly intelligent and a hard worker, even among the other gifted students at the Coven of Life. He often took classes with Kydrei Nol, having heard she'd discovered immortality but was keeping it a secret and wanted to see if he could find it out himself. Kydrei recognized Nikellai's talent and realized that since he was so independent it would be better if he had one-on-one teachings with a mentor rather than being part of a class. She went to her partner, Yllmadaya and asked if Yllmadaya wanted to teach Nikellai as her first apprentice. Yllmadaya was reluctant, but after speaking to Nikellai and seeing some of her young self in him, she finally agreed to take him on as an apprentice. The two became closer and Yllmadaya was proud of Nikellai's growth. On one day where many of the Coven members were being visited by family, Nikellai revealed that the reason he didn't have anyone coming to visit him was because of his tumultuous relationship with his mother. Yllmadaya in turn confessed that all of her family had died and offered Nikellai join her and Kydrei's dinner so he wouldn't be alone.

Nikellai was quickly rising ranks even for someone so young. People were beginning to say he even rivaled Yllmadaya in ambition. However, he started to learn about the ruthlessness of the Coven of Life and the lengths that mages were willing to go for power. He quickly adjusted, becoming crueler to acclimate. The Coven was desperate to gain immortality and continually pestered Kydrei and Yllmadaya about it. As the two repeatedly refused to give up the secret of their immortality, Nikellai started to become disillusioned to his mentor. When the leader of the Coven of Life, Ulwyd, died, Nikellai decided that was the final straw and turned on Yllmadaya. He told her she was being selfish for keeping immortality to herself when she could have saved Ulwyd and that he no longer wished to study with her. He advised her to reveal the secret of immortality to not face anymore backlash. Reluctantly, she did, giving the instructions to him. Nikellai performed the spell on himself. At twenty-six, Nikellai became immortal. He then shared immortality with the rest of the Coven, being allowed into the highest ranks for getting the secret of immortality out of Kydrei and Yllmadaya. From then on, Yllmadaya and Nikellai's relationship was fractured.

One day, a mage named Mwylin was lethally injured. The Coven wasn't worried, since Mwylin had become immortal and they believed she could easily recover. However, a while passed, and Mwylin was still frozen in the same state of injury and was not healing on her own as Yllmadaya and Kydrei had before. Nikellai began to become suspicious, and put together that the recipe for immortality they had been given was fake. He went to confront Yllmadaya and Kydrei, which eventually turned into a battle, but the two were more powerful than him combined and were able to incapacitate him and escape. But before Yllmadaya left, she disavowed him, saying she should have never taken him as an apprentice and regretting all the years she spent teaching him. The Coven scoured for years to find the two mages, but to no avail. Mwylin's periapt was eventually destroyed so she no longer had to live through the pain.

As years passed by, the mages who had taken false immortality began to get injured. Nikellai watched as others around him started to decay, although their minds stayed preserved. Eventually, many of the mages in pain began to destroy their periapt so they wouldn't have to live through injuries and aging that would have normally killed a mortal. Other mages who hadn't yet been aged or gravely hurt decided to destroy their periapt and live the rest of their lives as mortals, not wanting to go through the same experiences they witnessed. Decades past, Nikellai's immortal peers began to either give up on their eternal life and die. Still, Nikellai stayed steadfast despite the horrors of false immortality. Eventually, Nikellai was the only surviving member from his time at the Coven.

Eventually, Nikellai decided to take a break to take some time on his own, although he still kept in contact with some of his confidants at the Coven. He went into the mountains and decided to create a protection for his periapt so no one would be able to break it. With his magic and the help of several groups of builders he cycled out to keep information on his project sparse, he created a grand hall in a cave network in the Oropal Mountains. He put his periapt in the heart of it and surrounded it with all the protective measures he could, naming the finished building The Trapped Halls, and sealing the doors so his life could not be threatened. After taking the time to reflect and erase his history, he eventually returned to the Coven of Life, pretending to be a new recruit. With help from his connections in the Coven and his talent at magic, he was able to quickly raise through the ranks again.

Nikellai was eventually appointed as the next leader of the Coven of Life at about ninety years old. He promised to eventually find true immortality and hoped that once he found it he could disperse it across the country and end death. He also knew that Yllmadaya was still out there, and swore to hunt her down to get immortality from her or his revenge.

Nikellai grew up with his parents and a little sister, his father dying when he was young. He never had a great relationship with his mother, frequently conflicting with her. He got along better with his sister, but he didn't care much for her and never had much qualms about cutting off ties with his family when he joined the Coven of Life. He later found out that his mother and sister had died after not having contact with them for a few decades.

Nikellai was first created for the book he is currently in, the Undying Mages. Unlike some of my other characters who were based on previous characters or who have changed drastically over time, he has greatly stayed the same.