Vanalos

In Skyfire, a legendary mage from centuries ago.

Callista Dredd said:

Our story begins with arch-mage Vanalos, active 800 years ago in the east. His powers were immeasurable, his genius inconceivable, his hubris overflowing, and his cruelty unmatched. He moved a mountain just to prove he could do it. It is said that he seized and surgically altered 99 singers to each only sing a single perfect pitch, wrote music for them to sing, caused them to perform, became bored, and set them all on fire. As their ashes scattered to the wind, he could only laugh at his folly.

Vanalos was also a collector. A collector of the rare, arcane, dangerous, and mighty. And, as he aged and began doubting his immortality, he began worrying that his collection would fall into the hands of lesser men, and he began to hide artifacts in caves, dungeons,catacombs, and abandoned keeps. He laid curses upon these places, ensuring that adventurers who stumbled upon them would be dissuaded - or perish.

But, in the event his efforts at immortality were successful, he also left himself a path, with instructions, to each location. But his writings are dense, encoded with irreconcilable contradictions, inscrutable to all but, it is assumed, Vanalos himself.