Emmrich

Every friend group needs a silly guy. Emmrich, a necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred, fills that role. Though raising the dead sounds like dirty, scary work (and not everyone on the team is thrilled by the notion), this mage is an eccentric, kind hearted, and often goofy old man who is a joy to be around. Though death and grief are universal concepts that could be part of any universe, Emmrich spends much of his time studying and celebrating death as a cultural concept within Thedas.

Some of the most memorable scenes in The Veilguard are the quiet moments when he regales you with stories about his fascination with death, how we face it, and how he maintains respect for those who are gone as he brings them back. But what does a person who deals in life and death feel about his own oncoming end? What do they think when the death in question is no longer something abstract and related to people they’ve never known? Emmrich explores those ideas in his work, but once The Veilguard makes him confront his relationship with death, he is catapulted to one of the most memorable mages we’ve ever met in Thedas.