Za-Jikku

Za-Jikku was a powerful wu jen living in the Jusofu Range in Wa.

Description
In his human form, Za-Jikku was tall. After living for an unnaturally extended period of five hundred years his body resembled a gray, withered corpse with twisted limbs and only weighed.

History
Originally Za-Jikku was a pan lung member of the Celestial Bureaucracy. He was one of the many sub-committee officers of the bureaucracy's Ministry of Animals, which governed the affairs of the animal population throughout Kara-Tur. His sub committee, located in the domain of Qui, oversaw the Fochu Peninsula and his jurisdiction within it was overseeing the scaly animals of the land.

However, Za-Jikku was always considered a wild card with an enormous ego. On one occasion he tricked a primitive tribe in the Jufosu Range to venerate him as god, then buried their village with an volcanic eruption when their tributes began to fall short of his expectations. Another time he challenged a rival to a duel deep beneath the western reaches of the Fochu Peninsula. Their battle resulted in a series of earthquakes that destroyed many small fishing villages along the coast and killed countless animals.

Around 886 DR, following an indiscretion that results in the destruction of a vast area of the Momoben Forest, the high echelons of the Bureaucracy could no longer tolerate Za-Jikku. After debating among themselves for some time, the Bureaucracy decided he was to be stripped of his duty, expelled from Qui, and his spirit reincarnated in the Fochu Peninsula in the body of a human. His pan lung body, still containing a sliver of his life essence, was transformed into a jade statue and kept as decoration in the Qui as a warning against disobedience.

As a human, Za-Jikku isolated himself from others and inhabited a marble citadel within a hollow granite mountain on the Jufosu Range. He grew content with his new life and eventually transformed his human servants into a legion of strong juju zombies. They all wore yellow robes with hoods to conceal their undead visage when sent outside. But as his face slowly began showing signs of age, Za-Jikku's thoughts turned to obsession with mortality. He began devoting much of his resources into the study of arcane practices that would extend his life. He discovered ways of adding centuries to his life, but it was ultimately still too far from the immortality he craved.

In 1358 DR he got word that a powerful wu jen named Setsu Iki, living as a peach farmer in the small village of Kawasa, had in his custody the fabled Book of Hsi and through it had attained immortality. Wasting no time, Za-Jikku immediately sent his zombie servants out to bring Setsu Iki and the book before him. He pleaded with Setsu to share the secrets of immortality, but he refused and was trapped within a section of Qui for his defiance. Za-Jikku then tried studying the book himself, but became frustrated to discover that most of the techniques outlined within would not be effective at his old age.

But one section of the book, devoted to the dark arts Tso Tao, gave him a complex plan. This section described a method of reincarnating humans as magical butterflies. The breath of these creatures would gradually transform t'ien ch'i, a vapor surrounding the world that gave life to creatures of the land, into a vapor known as yun ch'i (the vapor of death). This would eventually cause the death of all land-dwelling life in Kara-Tur, but those who mastered a technique known as chi ching tingpi could breathe these vapors and live forever. With this knowledge he sent his undead servants out to ravage the land, killing countless people for their bodies, and hid the book within another section of Qui.

Six months into this campaign of murder one of the victims, a wu jen by the name of Toshi, somehow deduced the goal of Za-Jikku and instructed her former husband Osari Minhiro to stop him. With his warnings dismissed by the shogunate as the dreams of an old man and the unexplained deaths as the work of bandits, Osari sought out an adventuring party.

Eventually he found a group of foreign adventurers and together they freed Setsu Iki, reclaimed the Book of Hsi, and ultimately thwarted Za-Jikku's plans.