Daxiong

Daxiong was an elven necromancer and inventor who was obsessed in perfecting zombies circa 1372 DR.

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 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 at altering Faerûnian culture by sending his intelligent zombies to work in dangerous mines, as guards, or in armies. He was ready to reward anyone ready to help his research.

He felt 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 own creation.

History
Daxiong hailed from the Dalelands. At some point he discovered his talent in necromancer and became obsessed in developing and perfecting zombies. Not content with their eventual decay, and mindless, his end goal was creating perfect sustainable workforce. With time, Daxiong perfected his magical formula, giving zombies increased intelligence and giving them 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, fatigue, and resulted in high fever, sweating, delusions, ending in death, attracted attention of the clerics of Lathander in Daggerford. When Daxiong arrived to the hamlet, he overheard locals telling tales of an evil giant vampire bat 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 have seen the strange "giant bat" and attributed the plague, the stolen corpses to Gothma, and 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 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 named with the 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 own admission, he continued to fail at stopping his experiments from falling apart.

Appearances

 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford