Sorry for reanimating this thread, but I wanna suggest magery for Lacrymas(obviously he does anything that he wanna, just a suggestion)
- Magery is NPC only
- Magery is inherently evil and chaotic.
- Magery fells completely alien and unnatural.
- Magery is hated and a inquisition wanna eradicate everyone suspected to be a magician.
- Mages area always chaotic evil and get vulnerability vs fire, radiant and holy damage.
If most divine spells from clerics and druids deals fire and radiant damage, arcane magic should deal cold and necrotic damage mostly. all PHB spell which deals fire, radiant or any type of energy is "re writen" to deal cold or necrotic damage. Eg - Fireball becomes Eldritch Ball. Becoming a magic user involves making a pact with dangerous nasty alien creatures and that is the unique way to get magical knowledge and one of the few ways to get scrolls. This creatures demands a high cost for the service, like in exchange of a circle 5 spell like cone of cold, the magic user must sacrifice five innocent people in a ritual sacricie which steals the soul of the victims and give it to the eldritch demon. If the mages fails to please the demon, the demon becomes hostile towards the mage and he has crazy high resistances vs magic as creature of pure eldritch arcane energy.
The eldritch demon instead of a being of fire(as demons traditionally are) will be a being of pure coldness and darkness.
Any PC who attempts to become a magic user becomes chaotic evil and under the GM control. He is no longer a PC, he is now a NPC villain. Far away from the main desert where the adventure takes place, there are a desolated tundra, full of ice, snowstorms, ruled by a very fascist magocracy. Politically speaking, they are akin to Morrowind's house Telvanni. Very chaotic, but far more authoritarian against common people. Where the strong rule over the weak and most people living there are slaves. Their "mage towers" are akin to Telvanni buildings but "snowy",
They developed some really nasty rituals. Criminals are often transformed into trolls and mages constantly cut the limbs of the trolls to get meat to eat exploiting the regeneration of trolls. Every peasant in the villages get their intelligence tested with divination magic. Those who have high IQ are often awarded apprenticeship with powerful mages. Those with low IQ are thralls.
Powerful mages some times fear their apprentices and send then in suicide missions or kill then in plain sight. But that is rare as they are incredible arrogant.