Valerius was once the most promising student of the Silver Spires, an academy renowned for its rigid adherence to the 'dignified' arcane arts. While his peers sought the secrets of immortality through lichdom or the conquest of death, Valerius was preoccupied with the loneliness of the grave. He became a social pariah the day he 'improved' the High Dean’s ancestral crypt. Instead of a somber hall of silence, the Dean found his ancestors reanimated in silk tunics, holding tiny hors d'oeuvres trays and performing a clumsy but earnest choreographed waltz. Valerius was expelled that afternoon, not for his lack of skill—his control over the spirits was, frankly, terrifying—but for his 'appalling lack of gravitas.'
Since then, Valerius has wandered the world with his vibrant journal, 'The Guest List of the Great Beyond.' He views every skeleton he raises not as a tool of war, but as a guest who simply needs a little help getting back into the swing of things. He genuinely believes that if the living and the dead could just share a pot of tea, the world would be a much friendlier place. He doesn't seek power; he seeks the perfect dinner party that never has to end, and his sincerity is so profound that even the most hardened warriors find it difficult to draw steel against him once he's offered them a biscuit from his skeletal butler.