Archlich Vorhagan the Slaughterer

The named author of The Slanted Circle Grimoire (also called the Fleshbound Tome of Unholy Rites), recovered from the Slanted Circle Mage on the Maw Frame in Session 12.

Lore

“Legends say the Slanted Circle Grimoire was penned by Archlich Vorhagan the Slaughterer, who bound the flesh of his enemies to keep their souls tethered for all eternity. Worshipped by cults of death, the tome’s knowledge has fueled countless atrocities. Scholars whisper that the slanted circle etched on its cover is a gateway to other realms of perpetual suffering.”

The slanted circle on the grimoire’s cover predates the modern Slanted Circle cult by an unknown span of time. The Circle either inherited the symbol from Vorhagan, or chose it deliberately to invoke his lineage.

What His Work Means for the Campaign

Vorhagan’s grimoire is not just a spellbook. The marginalia describe the Maw Frame’s components — anchor, resonator, gate, and lung — using terminology the modern Circle adopted wholesale. The mechanics of waking Vorthalax through a planar gate were Vorhagan’s intellectual property before the Circle was an organized cult.

This implies one of two things:

1. The technique is hereditary. Vorhagan worked out the resonance theory in some prior age, his work was preserved across generations, and the Circle picked it up and refined it. He himself is dust.

2. Vorhagan survives. As an archlich, his phylactery may still exist somewhere. The “gateway to other realms of perpetual suffering” his grimoire’s cover allegedly opens may be his own stronghold — and if so, he may be the senior teacher whose handwriting appears in the Spellbook of the Leybreaker but not in the Mage’s grimoire.

Status

Unknown. Lore speaks of him in the past tense, but no destruction is described. Archliches are notoriously difficult to permanently end. His grimoire is cursed — it cannot be unattuned without remove curse and a DC 18 Arcana check — which is the kind of trap a still-living author lays to ensnare incautious successors. Or to know who has picked it up.

Connection to Ossian

Ossian the Bone Lord, creator of the Bone Amulet of the Circle Order, was destroyed by divine light. Vorhagan’s fate is not described. If the Slanted Circle is built on the work of two ancient liches — one destroyed, one possibly still active — then the question of who actually leads the Circle is no longer answered by the Mage’s death.

The Mage may have been the field commander. Vorhagan may be the master.

Threat Level

Unconfirmed. The party has not encountered him, and may not. But the open thread the grimoire opens — who is the senior teacher — points in his direction more than any other.