Vox Verlix
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Vox Verlix is a fictional character in the Edge Chronicles, a series of fantasy books created by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. He features specifically in Midnight Over Sanctaphrax and Vox. He is mentioned often in The Last of the Sky Pirates, and at the beginning of Freeglader.
Vox is often portrayed as a bully and a tyrant. However, this behavior had merited its own destruction due to the fact that he had been bullied and betrayed by all around him, such as the Guardians and the shrykes, making him a broken man.
After the Mother Storm, he was chosen by Cowlquape Pentephraxis, the Most High Academe of New Sanctaphrax to be his assistant. Later, with the help of his partner, Amberfuce, he overthrew Cowlquape and took over the city. During this time he constructed the Tower of Night, which replaced the previous smaller building used by the academics. To protect himself from the earth scholars the half of the Sanctaphrax academics that studied animals and the Deepwoods, and who hated the new Tower, he founded the Guardians of Night. The Guardians later took over the Tower and forced both Vox and the earth scholars to flee. Vox then installed himself as mayor of Undertown. The Guardians later contacted him, and despite throwing him out of New Sanctaphrax, asked him to find a way to stop the Sanctaphrax Rock touching the ground for them. This was because the Guardians believed that a lighting bolt from a Great Storm would heal the rock of stone sickness, which apparently could not happen if the rock ever touched the ground. Vox agreed, and designed the Sanctaphrax Forest. This was to be a great mass of wooden pillars holding up the rock. The only problem with his plans was that no-one in Undertown would volunteer to work on this ambitious project, so he resorted to slavery.
Vox hired an army of flathead goblins, some of the fiercest creatures on the Edge, to force the Undertown citizens to help build the Forest. This went well, until the flatheads became greedy for power, and so overthrew Vox.
Despite this, Vox managed to secure a third deal with the various traders of Undertown and the Deepwoods. Since stone sickness, all sky ships has been grounded, and so Undertown was completely cut off from the Deepwoods. Vox designed and built the Great Mire Road, which would lead over the Mire, the bleak wilderness that was for the most part uncrossable, connecting the city to the Deepwoods.
In order for the Road to reach the Deepwoods, it would have to go through the Twilight Woods, the most dangerous part of the Edge. The Twilight Woods caused all those who entered them to go insane, and wander the Woods without their senses for eternity, for those who entered them also become immortal.
Only one type of creature was invulnerable to the Woods' effects, and they were the Shrykes. Vox plan was to hire a group of these to build the Twilight Woods part of the Road, and in return let them take that part of it. This worked, and the Road was completed. Less than a day after it was opened, however, the Shrykes conquered the road and diverted all its trade to their city in the Deepwoods, the Eastern Roost.
Robbed of all his creations, Vox planned his revenge for many. In this he succeeded, by bringing a Dark Maelstrom, the worst possible type of storm in the Edge, down to destroy Undertown and New Sanctaphrax. However, his escape plan failed thanks to his besotted servant, who held him back. The servant and Vox were both killed in the storm.
His name could be a reference to the Latin quote vox populi, vox dei. This would be a subtle joke, as the quote preaches the peoples' rights while Vox is portrayed as a tyrant and sometimes a dictator.
