Thanxeros was an incredibly powerful wizard in his time, even founding a university of magic. Many students flocked to listen to his lectures, and all who attended exalted Thanxeros's prowess and ingenuity in regards to magic. Alas, despite being one of the most powerful mages of his time, there was an enemy that could defeat even him: age. During the last year of his life, Thanxeros secluded himself in his private study. The halls of his university were bereft of his lectures. Students and other instructors began to leave as the university fell into disrepair and rumors circulated about the dark experiments that Thanxeros performed in his study. In truth, Thanxeros was merely trying to get his raven familiar to shoot flames from its eyeballs. However, once he succeeded and put out the fourth fire, he began to consider his age and increasing frailty of both mind and body. It was then that Thanxeros decided he wasn't quite ready to die yet, as there were so many more opportunities to further the study of magic. Digging through the old scrolls that essentially made the carpet of his study, he located the ritual used to become a lich. However, he found it dreadfully grim what with the human sacrifice and soul stealing and such. He took out his quill, pen and abacus and tweaked the ritual to his liking. Later, Thanxeros would not remember much about his version of the ritual, only that it had something to do with a pig and three radishes. Thus, Thanxeros conquered death itself and became a lich. He and his snake familiar (the raven set him on fire one too many times) traveled the land, finding new lairs to practice magic in and relocating each time after being killed by adventurers (Thanxeros refused to kill adventurers as that would be terribly rude to a house guest). The last adventuring party to attack his lair was by far the worst, however. Not only did their wizard's initial fireball destroy the scroll on which he was developing a spell to cure all illness and give everyone a free kitten (at least, that's what he thought it'd do), they also stole his spellbook, the one way he was able to remember all his spells. After reforming, he tried to cast a simple fireball spell to see if he was still in shape, only to accidentally tear open a portal to the Abyss which swallowed up an entire village before he could close it again. Now, with no familiar (he seems to have misplaced his snake), he has set off to regain his repertoire of spells and continue his magical experiments.