Erich

Dr. Erich Lexington is an Undead Warlock. His work in Felmancy, ancient relics, alchemy, defending Lordaeron and his interest in the Horde's continued successes have earned him a fair share of friends and foes.

Appearance[]

Erich is a tall man, but often suffers from a habitual scholar's stoop. Otherwise, he resembles a wiry, rail-thin human with ashen skin and black hair. The gauntness alongside his lack of color and ghost-lit eyes betray his undead state. He almost always wears a monocle.

Current Things and Possible Future Goals[]

Ever since he emerged from Deathknell's crypt, Erich's life has been nothing short of a harrowing and constant shift of normalcy and problems, a fact of life for anyone who decides to make their way as an adventurer and possible do-gooder in the world.

Currently, Erich is a high-ranking Apothecary within the Undercity and has worked his way up to being a Horde Champion at the Argent Tournament. The Horde's cities regard him well for assorted good deeds done over his time with the Forsaken, but individuals are usually less than warm with his reception or they manage to annoy him horribly. Because of this, Erich enjoys helping the greater populace and younger adventurers, but generally hates people on an individual basis aside from a scant handful that actually manage to get on his good side.

When the world settles down, Lexington looks forward to opening and curating a museum of things he feels people shouldn't forget. From Amani, Titan and Scourge artifacts to a fully dismantled Fel Reaver, the man's collection of strange and formerly horrible things grows steadily.

When he was alive...[]

Public census documents within the Undercity state that Erich was born three decades ago to Michael and Doriane Lexington, a middle-class human couple who plied their trades within Lordaeron City. Michael was a mage working between Lordaeron and Dalaran, and Doriane was an enlisted soldier and local armorsmith.

His father was left a widower after Doriane had died in combat fighting the Orcish Horde during the First War. Left to raise the boy as he saw fit, Michael's grieving process was shortened in light of his singular ambition for his son. Erich spent the next twelve years buried in countless books between his father's collection and the numerous libraries throughout the capital and surrounding towns in Lordaeron. Unable to mourn the loss of his mother or to even enjoy his childhood, Erich was consigned to a mage's fate before he ever truly understood what magic was.

When the boy came of age, Michael gave his son a cursory farewell and sent him to Dalaran. In four years he excelled in the arcane arts and was granted the opportunity to finish his education in Quel'Thalas, and he accepted the chance of a lifetime with open arms. His pursuits had enabled him to escape the onslaught of the Second War as the Horde extended their assault into Lordaeron and the Elven kingdom's border. Though Lexington had managed to evade combat, his paranoia drove him to train in the offensive capabilities of Arcane magic.

The time in Quel'Thalas was uneventful. Erich was prone to reckless and distracting living like all youth, but his moment of stupidity ended upon meeting a soldier from his homeland, Moriana Theynselm. To make a lengthy, heart-melting story short, their courtship was brief before returning to Lordaeron together for marriage. The ceremony was small and rushed amidst the Capital City's reconstruction, but between Erich and Moriana's colleagues and living family members, the moment would serve as a delightful reminder of what could have been.

Shortly after, rumors began to spread about a sickness gripping the farmsteads alongside hearsay regarding an uprising among the interred greenskins. War had reared its hideous face again, and as quickly as they were brought together, Erich and his wife were torn apart by the indiscriminate fist of duty.

...And then when he got caught up with those Scourge pricks.[]

Left to his devices as part of an attachment from Dalaran sent to aid the growing concerns in Lordaeron, Erich had endured his second month of writing brief missives to an unresponsive spouse in squalid conditions at a small encampment in what is now the Eastern Plaguelands. His first encounter with the dark cultists teeming in Lordaeron's wilderness was brief.

The skirmish was sudden and brutal. Lexington, having exhausted himself on the advancing dead, was barely conscious when cowled, sickly peasants reached out to steal him away to a nightmarish landscape of summoned ziggurats and unliving monstrosities scattered amidst the ruins of a quiet, forgotten hamlet.

Erich was faced with an ultimatum upon encountering the fledgling Cult of the Damned; Join them or be scoured with the rest and live out eternity as a zombie, skeleton, ghoul or worse. Seeing as either situation ended in his demise, he opted for the former, hoping that he would encounter Moriana again. He rose among the ranks of acolytes, with his past life as a mage discarded for the mantle of Necromancy. Two years in the Scholomance had honed this dark art, and he set out to spread unlife under the Lich King's forceful gaze.

It wasn't long before Erich's work yielded results. He was hailed as a doctor for reassembling dead flesh into soldiers and mending those that fell in battle. Together with twelve other like-skilled individuals, a shadowy institution was formed - The Hermetical Brotherhood of the Ebon Caduceus. It worked behind the front lines to bolster the already mighty Scourge. He was eventually dispatched to Darrowshire amidst the insatiable horde of undead, and it was here that he was granted his only wish since the Third War had begun by fate's cruel sort of irony.

In the battle, Lexington found his end at the edge of Moriana's blade. In the fleeting moments of his dwindling life, he watched as she was stolen away into the shambling throngs of skeletal warriors with her sword still lodged into his heart. His flesh, like so many others, was left to rot away in the ruins of Darrowshire.

By the unlikely act of his imp Laztai, Erich's scant remains were pulled to Deathknell and reunited with the Caduceus years later. The device restored his decayed form to its previous state upon death, and Erich found his mind free from the Lich King's overpowering compulsions. Free-willed as the other Forsaken, he stepped from the crypt with a clear mind, but not a clear conscience. In his own way, he sought to do good by his people in a backward sort of world.

The Ebon Caduceus[]

The Hermetical Brotherhood was renowned for its talents in Alchemy, Necromancy and black magic. As time went on, the organization sought to forge devices of their group's namesake that would bolster their powers; an ambition that would ultimately spell the Brotherhood's demise. At the apex of Lordaeron's fall, a lingering squabble soon broke into bloody conflict over who possessed the first prototype relic, leaving Erich the sole survivor and bearer of an incomplete wand-like utensil. The apparatus lives up to its name in appearance.

The Caduceus retained portions of disembodied souls and used the energies within to act as an all-purpose Warlock's toolkit. Lexington still coddles the device in hopes of one day completing it in order to find some kind of full potential, guarding the apparatus by carrying it on his person. Ever since Laztai used it to reconstitute Erich from the mass of rotted tendons and bones that he was, however, it seems to have gone completely inert.

Necromancer to Warlock[]

After his time in the Scholomance, Lexington distanced himself with stitching fleshly horrors together and sought a more primal, alien venue. Knowing that the Burning Legion was the source of the Scourge, he moved to meld this newfound love for Shadow and Hellfire with his growing mastery of Necromancy. Currently his practices discard death magic entirely for personal and societal reasons, leaving the man a practicing warlock. Needless to say, Erich looks back with no small bit of regret, but his understanding of the Scourge has helped with his efforts in the ongoing war against it.