Anya Voorish

Name: Lady Anya Voorish, the vampire queen of Zarnova

Race: Vampire

Location: Castle Roskov, Zarnova

The country of Zarnova has been under vampiric rulership ever since the fabled Theocracy of Phylar ceased to exist some 300 years ago. Phylarian remnants still remain scattered around the country and a number of Phylarian locations are still shunned by the undead leaders of Zarnova who - as the legend goes - can not enter those areas without burning to ashes.

Lady Voorish is the third undead monarch of Zarnova and her reign has lasted since the feared  Lich Lord  Tomas Vladovych mysteriously disappeared some 80 years ago. It is uncertain whether Lady Voorish had anything to do with the disappearance, but she was extremely quick to seize power and forcefully succumbed the entire elite of the nation under her rule in just under a week. Her rule essentially is just a direct continuation of what her predecessor set forth - albeit not as harsh and brutal.

Lady Voorish's seat of power is at Castle Roskov some 15 kilometers out of the city of Wila, which is the capital city of Zarnova currently. The ancient castle is built in the deepest of forest away from the city itself and it is reachable by a single road only. The forest around the castle is unnaturally thick and menacing and many locals actually claim that the forest is not only unnatural but alive in that every soul claimed victim by the vampire queen grows a new twisted and ever-branching tree in the forest.

Lady Voorish has no grand illusions of world domination, but she also actively pursues a policy of border aggression in order to gradually extend the undead influence. While on good terms with the overseas countries of Nica and Zarkoi, Zarnova has no longer open diplomatic lines of communication with Gruenroth and Groam. Things have been steadily on the decline the last 20 years or so for the people living in the borderlands of Groam. Gruenroth and Zarnova had established trade routes over the mountains between the countries earlier, but Zarnova has not kept the routes safe for years and nowadays only the most daring of trademasters dare test their luck on those routes (the profits are phenomenal, of course!). Lady Voorish controls her country through a tyrannic ring of barons called The Roskov Ring. The barons are mostly of different undead varieties.

Anya Voorish is a powerful necromancer and mentalist herself - although probably still a has long ways to go to match that of her predecessor Tomas Vladovych. As a vampiric entity, Anya has seemingly easier access to necromantic magic and she openly wields her foul power to do her bidding. In fact she has reanimated corpses by the hundreds to form a daunting defense guard army keeping the Castle Roskov safe for her and rumor has it that there are rotting piles or corpses underneath the castle in secret chambers just waiting for the day that an actual undead army needs to be raised.