> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow > [![[Kharazoth_the_Crimson_Shadow_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Kharazoth_the_Crimson_Shadow.webp) > ###### Basic Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Character | > ###### Character Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Creature Type | Dragon | > Species | Red Dragon | > Gender | Male | > Pronouns | He/Him | > Connections | [[Empress Morganna Eventide\|Morganna Eventide]]<br>[[Red Priests]]<br>[[Chaos Wars]] | > Profession | Ancient Dragon | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Alive | **Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow** is an ancient red dragon — a name out of the [[Chaos Wars]], old enough to have fought in that age and cunning enough to have survived it when nearly everything else did not. For centuries he was believed destroyed, little more than a half-remembered terror from the breaking of the world. The name has surfaced again, spoken in fear by those few who still remember what it once meant. ## Biography Kharazoth is the true power behind the [[Valtorran Empire]]. [[Empress Morganna Eventide]] does not rule in her own name so much as serve his — the Empire's reach, its armies, and the [[Red Priests]] of [[Valfyria]] all bent, through her, toward his ends. He is the hand behind the throne rather than the figure upon it, content to work the world at a remove while another wears the crown. He is also, by every account, beyond the reach of ordinary death. Those who remember him from the [[Chaos Wars]] hold that he cannot be killed by normal means — strike him down and his body simply reforms, somewhere in the world, and the work begins anew. It is part of why his name carries such dread among the few old enough to recall it. There is said to be only one path to ending him. A weapon bearing a soul-stone drawn from the [[Vale of Eternal Night]], a mortal soul bound to it, and that mortal made to die before Kharazoth can reform — a sacrifice, precise and absolute. By the reckoning of [[Praetor'Varanous]], the silver dragon who faced him in the final hours of the Chaos Wars, it is the only thing ever found that could destroy him for good. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 44 - The Elven Archmage]] Kharazoth's name was spoken aloud for the first time when [[The Bloody Nails]] used *Speak with Dead* on the severed head of a [[Red Priests|Red Priestess]]. The revelation visibly shook [[Ayana Syndrosa|Ayana]], who recognised the name from the [[Chaos Wars]]. #### [[Session 47 - Confluence of the Seven]] The name was raised again during the party's briefing with [[Illythia Voss]] at the [[Circle of the Weave]]. Illythia reacted with visible shock, identifying him as a figure *"long thought dead"* from the [[Chaos Wars]]. #### [[Session 49 - The Silver Sage]] [[Praetor'Varanous]] shared an unbidden vision of the final battle of the [[Chaos Wars]]: Kharazoth and the silver dragon clashing in the sky above a shattering battlefield, the world tearing open beneath them — the origin of the curse that has bound Praetor to his vault for centuries. ## Trivia - Kharazoth's epithet, "the Crimson Shadow," predates his apparent death at the end of the [[Chaos Wars]] — the title was in use even while he was a known, active force in the world. - The name was first spoken to the party not through any grand revelation, but through a dead woman's head in a secluded magical tower.