From Introduction:
Known universally as “the Damned” for more than just his unhealthy appearance, the wasted, spindly form of Narriot Zorbal is immediately recognizable mostly because of the tendrils of darkness that constantly accompany him. A superstar even amongst evil wizards, he has not one, but three towers from which he terrorizes the countryside, through which many younger wizards journey, either to apprentice themselves to the master, or simply to observe his successes firsthand.
Zorbal was not always so fearsome. He was always sickly as a boy, and experienced several life-threatening illnesses during his life. Asthma, fistulas, plague, and rickets were all familiar friends to the young Zorbal. He turned to sorcery when neither physician nor surgeon could help him take control of his body and his life. Now he is not as aged and decrepit as he looks, nor is he as yet undead — but there is no denying that only sorcery sustains him at this point.
But even so, he has no fondness for the isolated hermit mystique that so many other wizards cultivate. Not only does he constantly maintain feuds with other wizards — everyone from Harlan Blackhand to the Crystal King, and even the recently deceased Themaculus — but he is also constantly hiring minions to undertake missions on his behalf, as well as working to undermine the powers of law and order that surround him and try to keep him boxed in by their civilized standards of decent behaviour.
He is a master of the arts of shadow and the beasts of the outer planes. He reaches through the darkness of our world and the cold beyond space to desolate planets, pulling the ghosts of ancient warrior races from their frozen hell-worlds into bodies made of shadow here, to wage his wars for him.