Halas Lutagran

 is a powerful wizard who has been missing for an unknown period of time, likely since before the Divergence. As an NPC, Halas is played by Matthew Mercer.

Appearance
Halas is a thin man, with light brown skin, long dark hair that tumbles past his shoulders, and a very thinly-groomed chin beard falling to a point three or four inches below. He is known to wear a red robe with gold trim and billowing sleeves that folds across his lap, and a handful of rings on his hands. His eyes are a piercing amber-yellow color.

Personality
Yussa Errenis described him as "not a very team player."

Background
Halas identified himself as a "mage of Zeidel", a society based in Zemniaz, one of the floating cities wiped out in the Calamity and the basis of the Zemnian language and the culture of the Empire itself. Halas was raised in Zemniaz, which he referred to as "a half-cocked mageocracy steeped in extremely bureaucratic ways of government." When he grew beyond what it had to offer, he absconded with his research materials and other important things and began traveling the world. Becoming disgusted with the company of others, he began building a home for himself. Halas created an extra-dimensional manor with about one hundred interconnected rooms. He performed research inside his chambers as he left magical artifacts around the world to transport people into the manor. He made a deal with a blue dragon, Thelashas, to guard parts of the manor in exchange for these objects bringing it food. He brought other dangerous creatures into his manor as well.

He discovered a curious simple extra planar chamber adrift across the planes and wanted to shackle it into his tower for research. Within the chamber was a swollen, beating heart without a body locked within a field of magical energy. His curiosity got the best of him, and he dispelled the field only to find the heart emitting a corrosive aura as it summoned fleshy tendrils to defend itself. Fighting the defenses of the heart over time from the safety of his tower, he managed to seal it within a cage of runic imprisonment. Halas discovered that the heart probably belonged to The Laughing Hand.

Halas was joyous that the Gods kept themselves distracted with a lack of interest in the fate of this Laughing Hand. He cared not about the strange battles of the divine, letting them stay focused on their middling interests and efforts.

He experimented with stolen samples of the heart's flesh and its regenerative properties. He theorized that it was possible to siphon the cursed flesh from the heart and institute its undying nature into a human body. He developed a series of magic clones of himself and hoped to eventually perfect one such clone so that he might claim it and become an eternal master of the arcane without having to resort to the imperfect and troubling process of lichdom.

He failed in some experiments and needed to jettison them into the Astral Sea to make room for a new batch. He successfully developed a possible vessel and he needed to prepare his theories. He then researched methods of soul transference via customization of a magical jar and took notes of it in one of his ritual chambers within an astral dreadnought. Halas disappeared soon after, likely during the Age of Arcanum before the creation of the Divine Gate.

Using Comprehend Languages, Caleb Widogast was able to read the name "Halas" from the symbol on a cloak recovered from the a portable hole created by the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks. Beauregard recognized it as an archaic Zemnian name, but could not remember any specific historical figure named Halas.

The Mighty Nein and Twiggy were transported by the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks into Halas's extradimensional manor. They explored three of approximately one hundred chambers: a stone room with four different colored trapped banners, a library with hundreds of locked books, and the blue dragon's hoard. The stained glass panel in the library showing the layout of the planes did not include a representation of the Divine Gate, suggesting that it was designed before the Gate was created just after the Calamity.

Caleb identified one of books taken from Halas's library as a transcript of public debate from the forum of Zeidel regarding the moral implications of arcane experimentation on prisoners of Ghor Dranas and warnings of the war with the gods. Zeidel was one of a number of extremely erudite societies in the Age of Arcanum that had harnessed crystals to make their city hover aloft. There were a handful of these mobile cities that could travel across Exandria, all of them, as far as anyone knows, wiped out during the Calamity.

Yussa Errenis recognized where the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks led, and the mage it had belonged to. Yussa did not know the mage personally, but there are few in his circles that have not heard of his exploits in the past. He has, however, been missing for quite some time.

The Mighty Nein had Yussa Errenis retrieve the gem containing Halas's soul from the pocket dimension in which it is normally kept. Caleb held the gem and spoke to Halas, who offered to trade information in return for Caleb allowing him to occupy his body. Caleb counteroffered that if Halas answered three questions honestly, they would see about answering another three "in different circumstances." Halas told Caleb of his past in the floating city of Zemniaz and how he came to begin building his home accessed through the Happy Fun Ball. He also spoke of Aeor, which he said had crumbled before his time, its "tumult within" and eventual destruction by the gods, and of the Somnovem and their fanatical belief in the power of the mortal imagination. To Halas's apparent knowledge, there had been no survivors from the fall of Aeor after its annihilation by the gods. Caleb dropped the gem after these answers, resisting Halas's apparent effort to possess him.

Thelashas
Even though the blue dragon made a deal with Halas to guard the extra-dimensional manor in exchange for food and gifts, the dragon wishes to someday grow big enough to eat Halas and take the manor for themselves.

Spells Known
Halas's spirit is trapped within a gem, and he has not demonstrated an ability to cast spells currently. However, the following have been mentioned by him or appear in his notes:
 * Clone
 * Feather Fall
 * Fly
 * Magic Jar
 * Reverse Gravity
 * Trap the Soul

Notable Items

 * Happy Fun Ball of Tricks


 * Twiggy stole the Happy Fun Ball from an unknown location (possibly an auction house) in Port Damali. How it got there is unknown.
 * Set of winter clothes embroidered with his symbol (taken by the Mighty Nein from an extradimensional pocket opened by the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks)
 * Magical hand warmer (taken by the Mighty Nein from an extra-dimensional pocket opened by the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks)
 * Spellbook with the name burned out (taken from library by Caleb Widogast)
 * Public Debate Records: Forum of Zeidel (taken from library by Caduceus Clay)
 * Book on corrupted plant life (taken from library by Caleb Widogast)
 * Book on the ice fields of Eiselcross (taken from library by Nott)
 * Jar of magical ink (taken from library by Nott)
 * This ink can be used to copy 500 gold worth of spells onto any kind of paper.
 * Jar of beads (taken from library by Twiggy)
 * Caleb Widogast cast Identify on the jar, later revealing to Nott that they were a type of non-perishable food.

Quotations

 * Yussa Errenis: (in response to whether Halas is good or bad) "At a certain level of arcane practitioning, morality becomes a bit ambiguous; but to the common man, I would say probably not a very... team player."
 * Halas Lutagran: In seeing the world, I began to realize one continuous truth: Everyone else is worthless, petty, frustrating, self-obsessed, and weak.
 * Halas Lutagran: Society is sick and destined to crumble. There is an illusion to the idea of community and working together, because every single time, it reaches a point where everyone tears each other apart, or something on the outside sees the community as a threat and destroys it.

Trivia

 * Halas has many similarities to Halaster Blackcloak, a powerful wizard who created the megadungeon known as Undermountain in the Forgotten Realms.