Archlich Vorimund of the Sealed Hour

Medium undead (archlich), lawful evil · CR 24

by Nightmarrow Atelier

Archlich Vorimund of the Sealed Hour
Armor Class
21
natural armor
Hit Points
475
50d8 + 250
Speed
30 ft.
  • STR 0
  • DEX +3
  • CON +5
  • INT +6
  • WIS +5
  • CHA +4
Saving Throws
Con +12, Int +13, Wis +12
Skills
Arcana +13, History +13, Insight +12, Perception +12
Damage Resistances
Cold, Lightning, Necrotic
Damage Immunities
Bludgeoning (nonmagical), Piercing (nonmagical), Poison, Slashing (nonmagical)
Condition Immunities
Charmed, Frightened, Paralyzed, Poisoned, Exhaustion
Senses
truesight 120 ft., passive Perception 22
Languages
Common, Abyssal, Draconic, Deep Speech, Infernal, Undercommon, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 24 62,000 XP

Traits

  • Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If Vorimund fails a saving throw, he can choose to succeed instead.
  • Rejuvenation. Vorimund’s phylactery is a working clock. If he is destroyed while that clock is still running, he re-forms beside it within 1d10 days with all his hit points. Stopping the clock does not destroy the phylactery, but it does stop this trait, and Vorimund knows the moment it happens.
  • The Sealed Hour. Vorimund cannot be surprised and cannot be aged, hastened, or slowed. Any effect that would move him through time, remove him from the initiative order, or place him outside the normal flow of a round fails, and the creature that attempted it learns nothing about why.
  • Turn Resistance. Vorimund has advantage on saving throws against any effect that turns undead.

Spellcasting

The Archlich Vorimund of the Sealed Hour is a 20th-level spellcaster. Their spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 21, +13 to hit with spell attacks).

  • Cantrips (at will). Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost
  • 1st level (4 slots). Detect Magic, Magic Missile, Shield, Thunderwave
  • 2nd level (3 slots). Detect Thoughts, Invisibility, Mirror Image
  • 3rd level (3 slots). Animate Dead, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Fireball
  • 4th level (3 slots). Blight, Dimension Door
  • 5th level (3 slots). Cloudkill, Scrying
  • 6th level (2 slots). Disintegrate, Globe of Invulnerability
  • 7th level (2 slots). Finger of Death, Plane Shift
  • 8th level (2 slots). Dominate Monster, Power Word Stun
  • 9th level (1 slot). Power Word Kill, Time Stop

Actions

  • Multiattack. Vorimund makes three Withered Hand attacks. He can replace any of them with a spell of 5th level or lower.
  • Withered Hand. Melee Weapon Attack: +13 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 48 (12d6 + 6) necrotic damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw, taking no damage on a success. The target must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed until the end of its next turn. A humanoid killed by this attack rises as a zombie under Vorimund’s control at the start of his next turn.
  • Unmake the Hour (Recharge 5-6). Vorimund removes a stretch of time from a 60-foot cone. Each creature in the area must make a DC 21 Constitution saving throw. A creature that fails has its hit point maximum reduced by the damage taken until it finishes a long rest, and loses any benefit it gained from a short rest taken in the last hour. Each creature in the area must make a DC 21 Constitution saving throw, taking 66 (12d10) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
  • Stopped Instant (1/Day). Vorimund lets the sealed hour turn over by one second and steps through the gap. He immediately takes one additional turn. Time resumes at the end of that turn, and Vorimund cannot use this action again until he finishes a long rest.

Bonus Actions

  • Set the Hands. Vorimund adjusts something small and far away. He teleports up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space he can see, and the next saving throw made against one of his spells before the start of his next turn is made with disadvantage.

Reactions

  • Not Yet. Trigger: When Vorimund is hit by an attack or fails a saving throw against a spell of 5th level or lower. Vorimund declines the moment. The triggering attack misses instead, or the spell has no effect on him. He cannot use this reaction again until the start of his next turn.

Legendary Actions

The Archlich Vorimund of the Sealed Hour can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time, and only at the end of another creature's turn. The Archlich Vorimund of the Sealed Hour regains spent legendary actions at the start of their turn.

  • Cantrip. Vorimund casts one of his cantrips.
  • Withered Hand (Costs 2 Actions). Vorimund makes one Withered Hand attack.
  • Decline the Minute (Costs 3 Actions). Vorimund ends one spell, condition, or ongoing effect currently affecting him, and one creature he can see within 60 feet must succeed on a DC 21 Wisdom saving throw or forget what it did on its most recent turn.

Mythic Actions

  • The Clock Resumes. If Vorimund is reduced to 0 hit points while his phylactery clock is still running, he does not die. The sealed hour turns over instead. He regains 200 hit points, every creature within 60 feet of him is returned to the space it occupied at the start of the round, and he can use the mythic actions below for the next hour.
  • Wind Back. Vorimund returns one creature he can see within 60 feet to the hit point total it had at the start of the previous round, whether that is higher or lower, and that creature cannot regain hit points until the end of its next turn.
  • The Hour Refuses. Every creature within 60 feet of Vorimund must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw or take 36 (8d8) necrotic damage and lose its action on its next turn as the minute it was about to spend is taken away from it.

Lair Actions

  • The Same Minute Again. Every clock in the observatory strikes at once and the room returns to how it stood sixty seconds ago. Doors that were opened are shut, spilled things are unspilled, and each creature other than Vorimund must succeed on a DC 21 Wisdom saving throw or be returned to the space it occupied at the start of the previous round. (the lair)
  • Hoarded Seconds. Vorimund spends time he has been saving. One creature he can see must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw or age 1d10 years and gain one level of exhaustion. Creatures that do not age are unaffected by the first part of this effect but still gain the exhaustion. (the lair)

Origin Story

Vorimund was not looking for immortality and said so, repeatedly, to people who did not believe him. He was a chronomancer at the Thessic observatory, well regarded and not especially ambitious, and what he wanted was one hour back.

The records do not say what happened in that hour. They say only that it was the ninth hour of the fourteenth of Sethmonth, that Vorimund was elsewhere at the time, and that afterward he requested and was denied permission to study the problem. He spent forty years solving it privately. The solution he found does not return the hour. It holds the hour open, on the theory that a thing which has not finished happening has not happened. He has held it open for six hundred years. Every year the case for letting it close gets weaker, and he knows it, and that is the whole of him.

Habitat and Ecosystem

Vorimund never left the observatory and the observatory never left its mountain, though the road up has been lost twice and the nearest town has changed language three times. The building keeps its own hour. Inside, it is always a little before the ninth bell on an overcast afternoon in Sethmonth, and it has been for six centuries.

Servants, apprentices and one accountant are still at their posts. They do not consider themselves dead and become unpleasant when the point is pressed. Food does not spoil in the observatory and wounds do not close. A creature that stays longer than a day begins to find the outside world faintly implausible.

Behavior Patterns

Vorimund is courteous, precise, and entirely unmoved by argument, having heard all of them from better minds than most parties contain. He will talk. He answers questions accurately, including questions about his own weaknesses, because he does not believe anyone can act on the answers in the hour available to them.

He does not fight to win, exactly. He fights to run out the clock, which he is unusually well placed to do. He opens with control, spends the middle of a fight arranging for the party to have not done things, and becomes genuinely dangerous only when the observatory itself is threatened. Threaten the clock and he stops being courteous mid-sentence.

Related Items or Artifacts

The Sealed Hour. A long-case clock, nine feet tall, in the observatory’s east gallery. It is Vorimund’s phylactery and it is running. Destroying it requires stopping it first, and it cannot be stopped from outside the hour it holds, because the pendulum is not in the same instant as the hand reaching for it. Rendering it inert is the real objective of any campaign that goes up the mountain, and it needs an answer rather than a weapon.

The Denied Petition. Vorimund’s original request for leave to study the event, refused in his supervisor’s hand and kept under glass in the entrance hall. Reading it aloud in his presence is the only recorded way to make him lose his composure, and it tells the party what happened in the ninth hour, which he never will.

Timeline

Sethmonth 14, year 0. The ninth hour. Vorimund is at the far observatory and does not learn of it until evening.

Years 0 to 3. He petitions four times for leave to study the event and is refused four times.

Years 3 to 43. He works privately, publishes nothing, and is written off as a diminished talent by colleagues who outlive him and are wrong about him.

Year 43. The clock is wound. The observatory hour stops advancing. The staff do not notice for some weeks.

Years 43 to 640. Eleven expeditions reach the observatory. Two return. Their accounts do not agree on how long they were inside.

Now. The mechanism is beginning to show wear, and Vorimund has started, for the first time, to make plans that assume the hour will end.

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