Halas Lutagran

 is a powerful wizard who has been missing for an unknown period of time, possibly hundreds of years. As an NPC, 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 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 created an extra-dimensional manor with about one hundred interconnected rooms. He left magical artifacts around the world to transport people into the manor. He made a deal with a blue dragon to guard parts of the manor in exchange for these objects bringing it food. He brought other dangerous creatures into his manor as well.

Halas disappeared hundreds of years ago, likely during the Age of Arcanum before the creation of the Divine Gate. He identifies himself as being a "mage of Zeidel", one of the floating cities wiped out in the Calamity. Much of the basis of the Zemnian language and the culture of the Empire itself used to be the society known as Zeidel.

During his research he kept notes stating that he discovered a curious simple extra planar chamber a drift across the planes. He talks about shackling it into his tower for study and goes into the process and the design of what, elements of the tower even planned to manipulate to shackle and bring it to the tower.

He speaks of the strange horror within this chamber: 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 with an a case of runic imprisonment. Halas found the heart to have probably belonged to The Laughing Hand.

Side notes speak of Halas, joy in the warning. God's keeping themselves distracted and a lack of interest in the faith of this laughing hand one way or the other. He cares not about the strange battles of these divine. Let them stay focused on their middling interests and efforts.

The next notes talk of his experimentation with stolen samples of the heart's flesh and the regenerative properties of it. His theories involved siphoning the cursed flesh from the heart and instituting the undying nature of it into a human body. Developing a series of magic clones of himself. He 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 written complaints about failed experiments and the need to jettison failed experiments to the Astral Sea to make room for another batch. Eventually Halas writes on a successfully developed possible vessel and his need to prepare his theories then descend into methods of sole transference via customization of a magical jar and take note of one of his ritual chambers within The Dreadnought. The writings and dates abruptly stop there.

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 does 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, has been missing for quite some time.

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

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 extradimensional 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 Nott)
 * This ink can be used to copy 500 gold worth of spells onto any kind of paper.
 * Jar of glass beads (taken from library 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."

Trivia

 * While nothing has been confirmed, Halas draws some noticeable parallels to Halaster Blackcloak, a powerful wizard who created the megadungeon known as Undermountain in the Forgotten Realms.
 * Halas is a Czech name meaning 'uproar'.