Lantis

Lantis was a gnome summoner and adventurer from the city of Dakan in Azreidel.

Description
Lantis' face was disfigured from extensive burns brought about by an inquisitor of Torm. He wore a copper mask (also a symbol of the inquisitors of Torm) to conceal his disfigurement.

Personality
Erratic, temperamental, greedy, and often selfish, Lantis embodied most of the negative attitudes considered stereotypical of gnomes.

Abilities
Lantis was a summoner who used High Magic to pull powerful entities out of something he calls "the Void", and bind them to his will. The nature of the Void was not known for most of his life, but it had been suggested by Paraccio the Disenchanter that it was actually either the Fluid Nothing or just raw Chaos.

It was later clarified that it was, indeed, the Fluid Nothing, though it could be argued that Lantis' final summoning -- the Void Immortal -- was actually from Chaos. The summoning process was focused using tuning forks. Lantis commanded three such entities: He also summoned a few other entities by other means: When Lantis was killed by a nightskitter, he arrived at the Black Gates where he made a deal with a psychopomp to limit his control over "the Void, after which point he ran a risk of throwing himself into the Void with each attempt to summon something, which became more likely with each summoning he performed. To avoid the nightmares in the Fluid Nothing, he pleaded with Tahl to use his blade of light to sever his connection to death, which Tahl reluctantly did.
 * Zulg, a titanic, semi-stable mass of stone. Standing about three stories tall, Zulg is compelled to crush and destroy, and is able to command the earth. When it is incompletely summoned, Zulg often appears too small, too stable (or too unstable), or is made of the wrong sort of earth, such as sand or soil.
 * Seris, appearing as a feminine humanoid form of water. Seris is compelled to protect, and is capable of healing with her water, as well as becoming just solid enough to carry an individual. She can also "fly" by expelling jets of water. When incompletely summoned, she is often in the wrong state, appearing frozen or vaporous. Control of Seris was taken briefly by a psychopomp, but given back soon after.
 * Zaros, a whirling cloud of bones and blood from various creatures. Zaros has immense power, far exceeding that of Zulg or Seris, but summoning it is extremely dangeorus; Zaros can perform just about anything Lantis asks, but it invariably comes at a tremendous price. At the time of Lantis' death, it was revealed that Zaros was actually an extension of Titer, the god of chaos, lending Lantis power for unfathomable reasons.
 * Druzmther, resembling a massive ethereal squid. Though theoretically powerful, Druzmther was summoned by Lantis' staff in the fight with the bounty hunter Ernestine -- a situation where its intangibility was more of a curse than a blessing.
 * Leviathan, numbering at about fourteen. They were summoned from a tuning fork Lantis was cursed to use by Zaros at one point, and multiplied by striking the fork against his summoning staff. Some were destroyed by being thrown into a burning black hole created by Nel Stormeyes, but the fate of the rest are still unknown.
 * The Void Immortal, the Immortal of pain, destruction, and nothingness. Summoned into being through a bizarre chain of events involving Lantis' final act of attempting to kill Albrek Bane.

Possessions
Lantis owned very little. Among the most notable of his possessions was a copper mask that he wore over his burned face, which he acquired from a priest of Torm during the attack on Torm IV. He also carried tuning forks everywhere, which he used to help him summon spirits from the Void.

As a souvenir of sorts from his first trip to the Fluid Nothing, Lantis held a strange spherical gemstone he called a "dream orb" until it was taken from him by Torm -I in a bizarre alternate version of Torm he encountered during one of his later stays in the plane of chaos. He found it again on yet another trip, this time to a plane composed of an endless forest of clockwork gelatinous reptillian tree-men, in a house full of slime, tended to by a slime tree-man wearing a small crown.The dream orb was revealed at Lantis' death to have been one of three parts containing the essence of the Void Immortal.

For a while, Lantis also carried a "summoning staff," which opened rifts to the Fluid Nothing similar to his own, but bound random entities passing through the plane of chaos instead of fixed ones. He lost it when he struck a tuning fork against it and summoned a nightmare of Leviathan.

In his home in Dakan, Lantis also owned a small one-room workshop that doubles as his house.

Relationships
Lantis maintained an extremely heated rivalry with Sitnal, a gnome also from Dakan who is more dedicated to tinkering and less to magic. Their rivalry is very well known to Dakan, for which it tends to be quite destructive.

He also had several other relatives across Northmarch, including Tisnal in Valencia, and Rentis in Portsmouth.

History
Lantis was born and raised in the city of Dakan in Azreidel. At some point he met Eldrin, who convinced Lantis that he was well suited for a life of adventure (mainly as Eldrin's sidekick). Lantis began adventuring at that point, traveling at first with Eldrin and then later with Tahl and Leander Lightstruck, and later still with Nel Stormeyes, beginning the events of Genesis.

Rumors and Legends

 * Paraccio di Mir claimed that "the Void" Lantis summons from was probably either the Fluid Nothing (the plane of chaos), or Chaos itself. It was, however, revealed later that it was indeed the Fluid Nothing.

Appearances

 * Genesis