Khallis
Aliases Blue Devil, Emperor Lothor Prime Species Changeling Gender Fluid Affiliation Weastern Pirates (formerly) Occupation Advisor to the Prince
Khallis is a changeling presenting under the guise of a tiefling, presenting under the guise of a human, who served as personal advisor to the first prince of the Sang-Lothor Imperium, Xervisian Lothlorian. As a member of the Golden Council of Sang-Lothor, he wielded considerable influence over the Imperium’s politics and inner workings. He is also the brother of Khemmis, First Mate of the Weastern Pirates, a fact that neither of them has found occasion to speak of plainly.
Overview
Aliases: Blue Devil, Emperor Lothor Prime Species: Changeling Gender: Fluid Height: 6’4” Date of Birth: Aries 21, 1460 TO Place of Birth: Arx Flutallum, Sang-Lothor Imperium Affiliation: Golden Council of Sang-Lothor, Stygia Coliseum (formerly), Weastern Pirates (formerly) Occupation: Advisor to the Prince
History
The Coliseum
Khallis and Khemmis were born on the same day in the same place — Arx Flutallum, deep within the Sang-Lothor Imperium — into the same life of slavery. Together they passed from owner to owner until they arrived at the Coliseum of Stygia in 1475 TO, where they were beaten, trained, and made to fight for the entertainment of noble children who threw refuse from the stands.
When the brothers were set against the Minotaur Thorun, Khallis fell. Khemmis was told his brother had succumbed to his injuries. Khemmis believed it, because he had no reason not to, and because grief does not leave room for suspicion.
Khallis is a changeling.
What happened in the aftermath of that fight — whether the body that fell was Khallis at all, whether Khallis chose that moment deliberately, whether he had been planning it long before Thorun’s horn came down — is not recorded. What is recorded is that Khemmis walked out of the coliseum alone, carrying the weight of a brother’s death, while Khallis walked out of something else entirely wearing a different face.
The Weastern Pirates
At some point, Khallis found his way to Port Tormenta on Aigora, where he joined the Weastern Pirates — the same crew his brother Khemmis had recently come to serve as First Mate. Whether Khallis sought them out because of Khemmis, or found them by coincidence and stayed for reasons of his own, is the kind of question Khallis tends not to answer directly.
Jebbedo Ode’bbej crafted him a Rod of the Pactkeeper during his time with the crew. A Rod of the Pactkeeper is a warlock’s instrument. Khallis has not elaborated on the nature of that pact, or with whom it was made — though it was eventually revealed that his patron had been Nathair for many years, without Khallis’s knowledge.
He served with the Weastern Pirates through campaigns that included the liberation of Weastworld and the foiling of schemes that reached into the heart of the Sang-Lothor Imperium. At some point, he left — or the crew dispersed — and Khallis arrived at Sang-Lothor not as a pirate but as a political figure, seated on the Golden Council and whispering into the ear of the first prince.
Sang-Lothor and the Golden Council
Khallis now serves as personal advisor to Xervisian Lothlorian, first prince of the Sang-Lothor Imperium — and by extension operates within the same court where Razgaal Lothlorian, Xervisian’s kin, made Savina Blannis Lord Commander of the Imperial Guard. He also sat on the same Golden Council as Kalkstein Grimsbane, Savina’s bastard brother, before Kalkstein was killed.
Whether Khallis knew what Kalkstein was — whether he knew who had contracted Peter Grimsbane’s death, and through what organization — is not a question anyone has yet put to him directly.
Khemmis believes his brother harbors a darkness. He wants more than anything to show Khallis a way out of the Empire’s shadow, which implies he has noticed the shadow and is not yet certain how deep it goes.
Nowhere
What happened to Khallis after the events of Weastworld and before his name resurfaced in Tamasora is, like most things about him, a matter of informed speculation assembled from pieces that do not quite fit together cleanly.
The accounts that exist are thin and contradictory in the ways that suggest deliberate care rather than simple absence of record. Certain Sky Pirates crossing the outer reaches of the Skysea have reported a figure — tall, tiefling-shaped, different eyes each time — present at transactions and conversations they later found difficult to reconstruct in full. A face that was helpful, then unhelpful, then simply gone. Whether these sightings belong to the same person is impossible to confirm, which is, of course, entirely the point.
What can be said with more confidence is this: at some point during this period, Khallis established a location — if it can be called that — known only as Nowhere. Not a city, not an island, not a place with coordinates that remain stable between visits. Those few who claim to have been there describe something between a waystation and a blind spot: a place that exists at the margins of maps, reachable only by people who already know it is there, and findable only on terms Khallis has set himself. What he keeps there, who else has access, and what purpose it serves beyond giving a changeling who has spent his entire life inside other people’s expectations a space entirely his own — none of that has been offered.
The Timescape rewards a particular kind of traveler. The kind who does not need to be anyone specific. The kind for whom every world is, in a sense, just another face to put on and move through. Khallis has been crossing worlds long enough that the crossing itself may have become the point — gathering information, resources, debts, and leverage in places that do not share borders and therefore cannot compare notes. By the time any single world realizes it has been read, the reader is already elsewhere.
His arrival in Tamasora — when it came — would not have been his first crossing. It would simply have been the one he decided to stay for. At least for a while.
Personality
Khallis is enigmatic and cunning — simultaneously the person Khemmis trusts most and the person he understands least. He is the smart one, in Khemmis’s estimation, which is both a compliment and a source of ongoing unease.
He operates in layers as naturally as he changes faces — offering just enough truth to be believed, just enough mystery to remain interesting, and just enough genuine affection for his brother to make the rest of it difficult to assess. Whether the darkness Khemmis has sensed is ambition, necessity, or something older and more deliberate is not something Khallis has seen fit to clarify.
He carries the alias Emperor Lothor Prime. The Emperor under whom both he and Khemmis were enslaved as children was named Lothor the Prime. Khallis has offered no explanation for this.
Relationships
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Khemmis (brother)
- The one relationship Khallis holds that seems to cost him something. Khemmis trusts him with his life and considers himself his brother’s keeper — Khallis has not disabused him of either belief, which in itself is a form of care, even if it is also a form of protection. The fact that Khemmis believes Khallis died in the Stygia Coliseum and Khallis has never corrected this is the thread that holds everything else in tension.
- “You’re supposed to be the smart one.” — Khemmis
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Xervisian Lothlorian (the Prince)
- The first prince of the Sang-Lothor Imperium and the man whose ear Khallis has earned. The nature of that influence — whether it is counsel, manipulation, genuine loyalty, or something operating on several tracks at once — is not easily categorized.
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- Both served, at different times, in proximity to the Lothlorian royal house. Both sat at tables adjacent to Kalkstein Grimsbane before his death. Savina has not yet asked Khallis what he knew.
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- Built him a Rod of the Pactkeeper. Whether Jebbedo understood what he was equipping Khallis for is unclear. Whether Khallis told him is equally unclear.
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- He was one of them, once. Khemmis is still one of them, in whatever form that loyalty survives the crew’s dispersal. The distance between where Khallis was then and where he is now is not a distance most people travel without having made a series of very deliberate choices.