The King of Shadows is the antagonist of Neverwinter Nights and a new Champion in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.
Where to begin? With a dwarf named Annaeus, maybe? He once created what would become the King of Shadows – a guardian for the great Illefarn Empire, an empire founded on the rather peculiar friendship of dwarves and elves. The guardian himself was once a man, human. That makes this friendship even stranger. He gave up everything. Even his name was lost to time.
Take a look, if you dare – the King of Shadows is not for the faint-hearted. You have been warned…
He became the perfect protector. There was no pride, no ambition, nothing that could stand in the way of his duty. He drew his strength from the weave itself and was meant to guard Illefarn for all eternity – and most probably beyond. But every good story needs a twist: disaster struck.
When Karsus tried to steal divinity from Mystryl, the goddess of magic, the weave vanished for a very brief moment. And in that moment, the guardian faced an impossible choice – to die, leaving Illefarn defenseless, or to reach for an even darker power. And he chose the shadow weave. And boy, it twisted him – badly. It turned him into a creature of shadow and hunger, draining the very life from all around him. (In Idle Champions, it’s only the adjacent champions, so no worries. Still bad though.)
Well, the people of Illefarn soon saw the corruption. They tried to destroy him – the very guardian they had once trusted. But to him, anyone who raised a hand against Illefarn was its enemy. Protector turned destroyer, his devotion became damnation. The result: ruin. He destroyed them all – the very people he swore to protect.
Before the end, they forced him into the Plane of Shadow – second plot twist. He was locked away for centuries. Now he seeks to return, and the hunger remains.
Oh, he’s still bound to a duty that no longer has a purpose, because Illefarn? Illefarn is long gone. And yet the King of Shadows just cannot let go. His hunger has only grown. Now he commands legions of spectral Shadow Reavers – building powers of darkness beyond imagining. He even grows in size (in-game, that is). But his warped sense of purpose drives him to engulf the entire Neverwinter Lands, perhaps the whole world, in eternal night.
He’s not only a fallen guardian. He’s the embodiment of corrupted purpose – and that, my friend, is the most dangerous kind of King.
The Dystopian Inn 