Daxiong

Daxiong was an elven necromancer and inventor who was obsessed with perfecting zombies circa 1372 DR. "Horrific? Why, my friend, these people are dead... mere food for worms and rot grubs..."

- Daxiong

Description
Daxiong was bald and looked extremely anemic, pale even by the Fair Folk standards. He carried on with blind determination, engulfed in the smell of death as if he'd recently exhumed an entire graveyard.

Personality
He was not aggressive towards others and preferred to work in peace as he truly believed his quest was for the betterment of civilization. The necromancer aimed to alter Faerûnian culture by sending his intelligent zombies to work in dangerous mines, as guards, or in armies. He was ready to reward anyone willing to help his research.

He felt a certain respect for the dead, intending to return the bodies back to their graves after the experiments and the use of the deceased bodies were over. Yet the necromancer did not tolerate religious fanatics who would condemn his work.

Possessions
This necromancer's most precious possessions were his undead experiments. He wore an enchanted robe called Daxiong's robe of undead protection and was armed with a rusty dagger, filthy with caked-on decay from the corpses he dissected. Another item of note in his possession was Daxiong's Marvelous Magriscope, a unique scrying device of his creation.

History
Daxiong hailed from the Dalelands. At some point, he discovered his talent for necromancy and became obsessed with developing and perfecting zombies. Not content with their eventual decay and mindlessness, his end goal was creating a perfect sustainable workforce. With time, Daxiong perfected his magical formula, giving zombies increased intelligence and giving them the capabilities to perform more complex tasks and even memorize and recite excerpts from Aesthetics of Human Anatomy. However, Daxiong's research needed more and more cadavers to continue, so the necromancer followed plagues, wars, and famine.

In 1372 DR, Daxiong followed a strange disease to Gillian's Hill. The breakout of plague that caused insomnia and fatigue and resulted in high fever, sweating, delusions, and death attracted the attention of the clerics of Lathander in Daggerford. When Daxiong arrived at the hamlet, he overheard locals telling tales of an evil giant vampire bat called Gothma that allegedly preyed on the locals. This fabled creature was the perfect cover for the necromancer. He donned a cape that greatly resembled bat wings and went on excavating the freshly deceased farmers. Subsequently, locals saw this strange "giant bat" and attributed the plague and stolen corpses to Gothma, as well as the vampirism it spread.

With the recently dead disappearing from their graves, Liam Sunmist of Lathander suspected an outbreak of vampirism and tasked the Hero of Daggerford with the investigation. Eventually, the adventurer discovered that the crypt of the Gillian's Hill Graveyard was filled with rotting shambling experiments of the necromancer. The zombies were labeled with their batch number and a letter indicating their variant. Most of these zombies were considered "failed" experiments as they were rotting apart and shambled with little to no purpose. By Daxiong's admission, he continued to fail at stopping his experiments from falling apart.

When the Hero met Daxiong, his experiments were close to completion. The final prototype, 235-F, was almost ready to be mass-produced within several months. Not much was known of the resolution of their meeting for sure. The Hero of Daggerford may have been so outraged by the experiments, the meeting erupted in a battle to the death. Alternatively, the adventurer tricked the necromancer into following rumors of the black rot epidemic further south, leaving Gillian's Hill for good.

Appearances

 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford