The malignant tyrant known as luz the Old arose more than a century ago in the frontier country on the plains north of the Lake of Unknown Depths. The “son” of a petty noble who died under mysterious circumstances, luz quickly and ruthlessly gathered rebel warlords to his side, slew them, and claimed their bandit followers as his own. Iuz’s merciless nature impressed his demonic father, the great Abyssal prince Graz’zt, who provided fiendish allies and artifacts of otherworldly origin. Political influence from his mother, who had conquered the neighboring nation of Perrenland, cowed skeptical subjects of luz into submission. By the time luz allowed the degenerate savage humanoids of the northern hills into his cities and armies, none of his human subjects had the willpower to resist—and besides, the feral subhumans brought stunning victories in the field.

luz’s growing kingdom soon engulfed the Middle Lands to the edge of the Rift Canyon in the east, to the ancient Vesve Forest in the west, and to the tenuous borders of the Shield Lands in the south. Tens of thousands died as luz’s borders expanded. Those who rebelled or refused to submit to his will were ruthlessly slain, their skulls placed along a bloody three-hundred-mile road snaking from the Old One’s capital in the haunted city of Dorakaa.

luz’s ambition knew no bounds, and he seemed poised to threaten the whole of the Flanaess. Then, some twenty-five years after he appeared, luz was gone. He became trapped deep under Castle Greyhawk in one of Zagig Yragerne‘s mad schemes. With assistance from his old adventuring companions Heward, Murlynd, Keoghtom, and Kelanen as well as St. Cuthbert himself, Zagig managed to summon luz to his dungeons below Castle Greyhawk and force him into an inescapable arcane prison. For sixty-five years luz fumed within his cage until deliverance came not from one of his devoted cultists but instead from the battle-hungry Lord Robilar, who tried to murder him immediately upon release. A fierce magical battle erupted in the dungeons of Zagig’s Prison, triggering earthquakes and warping reality. luz fled just as several other enraged demigods emerged from their malfunctioning prisons, leaving Castle Greyhawk in chaos, and swore eternal vengeance on those who had attempted to slay him.

Upon returning to his homeland, luz brutally recaptured his capital and set about sorting out his loyal servants from the traitors. The twelve greatest of the former were elevated to positions in his Greater and Lesser Boneheart, a grisly cabinet of malevolent clerics and wizards. Together the Old One and his demented court reclaimed the old empire and began pressing for more, probing into the Bandit Kingdoms and the Shield Lands on its borders and initiating a conquest planned six decades before. These schemes engulfed much of the Flanaess as recently as twelve years ago, when a treaty signing in the Gem of the Flanaess forever named the conflict the Greyhawk Wars, even if the fighting never reached the city on the Selintan.