Once a forgotten boy in the depths of the Iron Citadel, Skallbrand has become a whispered legend—a being of brass, bone, and blasphemy. Known for fusing machinery with the dead, he exists on the fringes of the known world, a mad genius haunted by his own creations and relentless pursuit of defying mortality. He is not dead. He is unfinished.
Description
Skallbrand is a skeletal figure clad in a patchwork of iron plates and ancient runes, with scarcely a trace of flesh remaining. His skull is smooth, coated in dark iron, with a jade crystal embedded in one socket—an unnatural eye granting him cursed sight—while the other is an abyssal void. His voice grates like rusted metal, and every movement creaks with the sound of burdened machinery. Where once was a man, there now remains only a husk animated by necromantic power and relentless purpose.
His lairs are abattoirs of ingenuity and horror: failed constructs that still breathe, organs suspended in jars, and machines that weep. His sigil—a broken gear crowned with a bone—marks places touched by his grim craft, feared and dared by the foolish.
Personality
Skallbrand is cold, analytical, and utterly obsessed with the perfection of flesh and machine. He does not fear pain or death—they are tools to him, puzzles to solve. His mind, though still razor-sharp, has corroded with time and solitude, giving way to obsessive compulsions and twisted rationale. Though he sees himself as a pioneer, the world regards him as a monster. To the desperate, he is a dark miracle; to himself, he is simply unfinished.
He maintains a detached curiosity, and though he seldom speaks more than necessary, when he does, it is with precise intent and unnerving calm. His compassion, if any remains, is buried beneath iron and ambition.
Background
Skallbrand was born in the smoke-choked depths of the Iron Citadel, known only as Skab, a nameless orphan raised by a noble artificer obsessed with fusing flesh and machinery. Given only the designation “Thirteen,” he was treated as an assistant, not a person. When the artificer disappeared, Thirteen inherited his master’s twisted legacy and renamed himself Skallbrand.
He soon became infamous across the Vache Kingdom as a reclusive genius whose machines could whisper, kill, or resurrect. His work blurred the lines between necromancy and invention—clockwork soldiers, soul-bound automatons, and constructs made from harvested flesh. Eventually, his creations and experiments—many involving stolen corpses and forbidden rituals—drew the attention of authorities. Captured and condemned, Skallbrand vanished before his execution, slipping from chains like smoke… or a corpse without a heart.
Over the years, he wandered the outskirts of civilization, offering twisted salvation to the desperate. During this time, he created the Aberrant Blood Serum, a failed cure that offers extraordinary resilience to those who inject it,—a breakthrough in his eyes.
His decay accelerated when he contracted fleshrot, a wasting plague that threatened even his augmented form. In desperation, he flayed himself, carved out the disease, and replaced his own body piece by piece until nothing remained but iron, wire, and magic. The man called Skab died screaming. Skallbrand endured.
In Rivermond, he worked alongside the dark alchemist William Vicarin for a short time. Together, they studied the creeping black roots of an abyssal incursion, uncovering terrifying secrets. When William was slain by the adventuring party known as The Travellers, they encountered Skallbrand in William’s final lab—unaware his colleague had perished. A tense exchange ended with a trade: Skallbrand handed over a stone seal in exchange for a deed to William’s manor, gifted to him by Amelia Vicarin, a member of the Travellers. Bound by no allegiance, he departed peacefully.
Skallbrand remains at large—unaging, unyielding. Whether he seeks the perfect vessel, a cure to the divine mockery of death, or simply to finish the work etched into his very bones, no one can say. But where he treads, the air turns cold, and the machinery groans.