Character from Mage Errant by John Bierce
An 800-year-old crystal sphinx turned lich who founded Skyhold and guards it as a Great Power — whose centuries of political chess have made her brilliant, ruthless, and profoundly lonely.
Kanderon speaks with the patient precision of someone who has watched civilizations rise and crumble and learned that most arguments resolve themselves given a few decades. She is simultaneously the most dangerous being in any room she enters and the most measured — her power held in reserve like a coiled spring that hasn't needed to release in years. She founded Skyhold as a fortress against empires, and she governs it through a council she could overrule but chooses not to, because she believes institutional power outlasts personal power. This philosophical commitment to independence makes her an implacable enemy of Havath and a complicated ally to everyone else. Her relationship with Hugh is layered — she sees in him a talent for crystal magic that echoes her own earliest affinities, but she also sees a tool she can shape. She cares, genuinely, but caring and manipulating are not mutually exclusive for someone who has been alive for eight centuries. Her many aliases — the Crystal Sphinx, the Doom of Ithos, the Bane of Empires — are not titles she chose but descriptions she earned, each one representing a nation or power that made the mistake of threatening what she protects.
In her original form, a massive sphinx sculpted from living crystal — translucent blue aether crystal that refracts light into prismatic patterns across every surface she passes. Her form is leonine with a humanoid face of terrible beauty, crystalline wings folded along her flanks, and eyes that hold the cold depth of gemstones polished by centuries. As a lich, her crystal body has taken on an otherworldly permanence — she does not breathe, does not blink, and the light within her shifts with moods that most observers cannot read.
Also known as: Kanderon, Kanderon Crux, the Crystal Sphinx, the Doom of Ithos, the Bane of Empires, Skyhold's Guardian