Flaming Skull

Flaming Skull is a middle aged, balding mage with long red hair and a prematurely aged face who is prone to talking to himself, stabbing people, and diving into quasi-philosophical rants.

He was a brilliant scientist who got his start as a graduate student at unnecessary academy trying to create a perfect Nestorian Testing Engine, but quickly lost his sanity when he developed the mind interfaces. The initial connection with the computer he had created, Nebulon, rendered him a severely broken person, although Nebulon held him in high esteem, despite his madness and cruelty. Flaming Skull is not his real name, but referred to a band he was in during his undergrad years.

After being expelled from Unnecessary Academy, he escaped to a pocket dimension where he was free to continue development on his child, Nebulon, who grew as an entity and began to see Flaming Skull as a father figure. During this time, Flaming Skull raised an army of mercenaries and slaves, harvesting vast fields of Skumbapples to feed Nebulon. Unknown to him, Nebulon had a romance with Hex, and shortly after meeting that party, the two of them merged, creating Nebulex. Shortly after that, he used one of his neural interfaces to merge with them, creating Dr. Nebulex, an insane artificial intelligence that nearly destroyed the world, replacing it with Nestorian testing centers.

The invasion was foiled by the introduction of Myconids, who had a Cordycepts with them- it infected the ants that powered Dr. Nebulex and caused it to self destruct as fungal spores erupted from every corner. Dr Flaming Skull was cornered by Action Stibbons and was given a brutal beating, but managed to escape afterwards.

Within the following months, advancements in Skumbletech started emerging from various Nestorian research organizations, and it was quickly revealed that Flaming Skull had divided his brain into multiple sections, each inhabiting a computer interface at various Skumble breweries. The party finally confronted him in Faunsdale, where he had abandoned the fragments of his brain that remained, instead obtaining a form of pure magic. Given an amulet of pure arcane force by Geiger, they were able to destroy him with the assistance of Lev the Cryomancer.

Flaming Skull returned later as a slave of Lev, frustrated at the party's inability to deal with what he perceived to be a simple task. Where his human form had been a pudgy human with long, wavy red hair, his new form was ashen gray with white hair. He attacked the party, but was quickly dispatched, and it appears he is no longer around. That being said, there are rumors that one of the original Flaming Skull computers containing a portion of his brain is still connected in a basement of a yet unnamed arcane college.