Zlan

Scheming Lich in a Monstrous, Frozen Form

Zlan is a horrid, icy amalgamation of the seven liches who created the Artifact Crenshinibon, better known as the Crystal Shard. Zlan Clervish was one of those seven liches, and that lich's will predominates in the fused entity. All seven bodies are frozen together with ice and black crystal called chardalyn, fragments of the shattered Crystal Shard. Zlan has leveraged its connection with the shattered Artifact to psychically infest chardalyn, using the crystalline material to observe enemies and warp minds.

History: Seven powerful liches from other worlds came together to create the Crystal Shard millennia ago. Although the liches were jealous and suspicious of each other, their combined power was sufficient to create the sentient Artifact. The Crystal Shard absorbed its creators' minds, which resonated within the crystal of the Crystal Shard thereafter. When the Crystal Shard was destroyed, its fragments, called chardalyn, still echoed with its creators' malevolent minds. Fragments of ice and chardalyn drew together around the remains of the seven liches, creating an amalgamated form. Zlan is the foremost mind among the liches and controls the body, The other liches rage and scheme about being subsidiary to someone they once considered both a rival and an equal. The Zlan Liches table gives a brief description of each component.

Zlan Liches:

that killed a world of billions Solmé of Gharr | Devoured the souls of children to occupy their bodies Vaeristhelph Rex | Seized power as a wizard-king, traded his throne for lichdom Vlad Xil Haerven | Wallowed in greed and traded lives for wealth

Zlan Clervish | Currently in control, aims to expose hidden horrors and ruins beneath Icewind Dale

Personality: Zlan has an affinity for enchantment and corrupting minds. During the time he was working to create the Crystal Shard, Zlan was a devotee of a god of darkness, confusion, and pain. Zlan likes to subtly twist minds to confusion and paranoia and doesn't take direct action when an oblique or hidden action will suffice. Its plans always contain fallbacks and contingencies. One of these contingencies-one the other liches who constitute its new form failed to foresee-was to assume control of the other liches if Crystal Shard was destroyed and created the multilich entity. Zlan schemes about how to restore and control Crystal Shard's power through the accumulation of chardalyn from across Icewind Dale. Zlan's affinity with chardalyn allows it to access information across the region and use chardalyn to corrupt those who could prove useful. Zlan's current plan is to heat Icewind Dale from below, warming the Underdark to melt its ice and release aberrant terrors from frozen stasis. This melting also exposes ancient sites containing power Zlan needs to enforce its wicked will on the region.

The Lore of Zlan: Zlan is a terrifying, walking monstrosity of twisted bone and writhing shapes. Formed when seven liches sought to create the ultimate evil artifact (the Crystal Shard, or Crenshinibon), their souls were devoured and bound together into one psychic entity.

Goals and Motivations:

• Chardalyn Corruption: Zlan influences and corrupts the magical material known as chardalyn. Those who touch corrupted fragments become his puppets.
• The Thaw: He is actively generating steam vents into the Underdark to warm Icewind Dale and melt the ice, which will draw monsters upward and plunge adventurers down to him.
• Underdark Influence: By warming the permafrost, Zlan hopes to free deep dragons, mind flayers, and other ancient terrors from the ice.

How Zlan Fits into Campaigns:

• Icewind Dale Setting: Zlan is a major post-Rime of the Frostmaiden antagonist in the North, using the blizzard-ravaged region as his base. He is currently linked to environmental disasters, earthquakes, and a cursed, melting Underdark.
• Grimskalle Imprisonment: If you are running survival-horror adventures in Icewind Dale, DMs can also place a weakened Zlan inside Grimskalle, imprisoned by Auril. Players can encounter him there and may release him in exchange for his guidance to Ythryn, though he will likely betray them once freed.

Crenshinibon: Crenshinibon, also called the Crystal Shard, was a unique, magical artifact.

Powers: Crenshinibon was a vile relic of immense power, a crystal shard that drew its magical energy from the light of the sun. Crenshinibon was a sentient artifact, and it possessed a never-ending hunger for power and glory at whatever cost; therefore, Crenshinibon was not a reasonable being. It always desired a powerful wielder, usually a corruptible mage of some sort, and greatly enhanced that wielder's powers. The Crystal Shard also insidiously manipulated its wielder and would readily abandon them for someone more capable of furthering its goals of ultimate conquest. The relic could lure in thousands of evil-intentioned beings with its magical call, creating a grand army for its wielder and so-called master. Crenshinibon had the ability to create an enormous crystalline tower, known as Cryshal-Tirith (meaning "crystal tower" in Elven). In order to create the tower, Crenshinibon first created an exact duplicate of itself, a square-sided crystal that sometimes glowed with a green light. The wielder then placed the copy of the shard on the ground and recited the words ibssum dal abdur. The duplicate crystal expanded, growing into the crystalline tower, still an exact image of Crenshinibon, only now of mammoth proportions. The tower itself absorbed the sun's light, giving it more strength during the daytime. The tower was impervious; it absorbed all attacks against its mirrored walls and reflected them back on their source. The only vulnerable part of the tower was its heart, the pulsating crystal of strength that was used to construct the tower, and that became hidden away within Cryshal-Tirith. The tower's very door was invisible and undetectable to any beings inherent to the present plane the tower rested upon. The Shard's primary attack was on the ego, collecting slaves with promises of greatness and riches. It had little hold on paladins and goodly priests, on righteous kings and noble peasants, but one who desired more and was not above deception and destruction to further their ends would inevitably sink into Crenshinibon's grasp.

Personality: The goal of the artifact was to acquire power to its greatest level. This desire transcended the normally established boundaries of what was right and what was wrong.

Creation: Crenshinibon was originally created by seven liches who set out to fashion an item of the very greatest power. As an insult to the races these undead wizard-kings planned to conquer, they designed the artifact to draw its strength from the sun itself, the giver of life. Upon the artifact's completion, the liches were consumed by the overwhelming power of their joining magic. The conscious aspects of these evil creatures were obliterated by the relic's sunlike properties and the shattered pieces of their spirits were absorbed by the artifact. The seven extraordinarily powerful liches that created Crenshinibon: First Grandfather Wu, Fetchigrol, Zlan Clervish, Vaeristhelph Rex, Argent Black, Vlad Xil Haerven, Solmé of Gharr. Crenshinibon first came to the material world millennia ago in the distant land of Zakhara. At the time, the artifact was merely a wizard's tool, though a great and powerful one. It could throw fireballs and create great blazing walls of light so intense they could burn flesh from bone. Little was known about the Crystal Shard's dark and sinister past until it fell into the hands of a sultan. This great leader learned the truth about Crenshinibon, and with the help of his many court wizards, decided that the work of the liches was incomplete. This sultan, however, had no dreams of domination; he only wanted peaceful existence with his many warlike neighbors. Using the newest power of the artifact, the sultan created a line of crystalline towers that stretched from his capital across the empty desert to his kingdom's second city, an oft-raided frontier city about a day's travel away in intervals. He raised as many as a hundred of these towers, nearly completing the defensive line. However, the sultan had overestimated the powers of Crenshinibon. He believed that the creation of the towers would strengthen the artifact, and normally they would had not so many been created, but he was pulling the manifestations of Crenshinibon too thin. Soon after the sultan's raising of the towers, a great sandstorm manifested and swept across the desert, shattering the weakened crystalline towers. This sandstorm served as a precursor to an invasion by a neighboring sheikdom. The hordes overran the sultan's kingdom, and the merciless sheik forced the sultan to watch as his family was murdered. Crenshinibon absorbed a piece of the sultan's spirit. Finally, with this "second creation", Crenshinibon was complete. The artifact, imbued with the twisted aspects of seven dead liches and with the wounded and tormented spirit of the sultan, would now begin its desperate quest to attain and maintain its greatest level of power, whatever the cost. The shard was then driven to pursue evil and amoral ends because it was scarred by traumatic, tragic events during these formative years. The artifact crossed the trails of the psionic race known as illithids on many occasions, who studied this unique item that could sometimes defeat their mental attacks. Illithids or psionicists of any race alone were beyond the reach of the Crystal Shard.

Wielders: The powerful demon, Errtu, had been serving the seven liches who created Crenshinibon. When Crenshinibon stole the magical strength that preserved the liches' undead state, the ensuing bursts of energy hurled Errtu back to the Abyss, and the demon had thought the relic destroyed. Centuries later, Errtu discovered Cryshal-Tirith, a crystal tower with a pulsating heart the exact image of the Crystal Shard. Before Errtu could obtain Crenshinibon, Al Dimeneira arrived, and with a single word, he banished Errtu back to the Abyss. Al Dimeneira then tried to destroy Crenshinibon, but the powerful relic burned his hands, so instead he hurled it across the very planes of existence, and it came to rest in the snow of a bowl-shaped dell in the Spine of the World mountains on the material plane. Crenshinibon had six owners since it arrived in the Spine of the World. The first was a devil named Belhifet who, in a feud with his rival Yxunomei, was banished to the Material Plane. He stumbled upon the shard and formed an army using its powers of suggestion. He erected Cryshal-Tirith in the town of Easthaven, until a wandering group of adventurers (who killed Yxunomei) sent him back to Baator. In the 1350s DR, the wielder of Crenshinibon was a fumbling wizard-in-training named Akar Kessel. He stumbled upon the artifact in the mountains of the Spine of the World. Though he could barely cast cantrips himself, with the power of Crenshinibon, he was almost unstoppable. Kessel tried to use Crenshinibon's power to enslave the whole region and even acquired the assistance of the demon Errtu to help him with that task as the general of his army (Errtu had been summoned to the material plane by an apprentice wizard who made an error in creating the summoning circle, thus Errtu was never under Akar Kessel's control). But this supposed ally finally brought about the demise of Akar Kessel, having his own designs for the Crystal Shard. In the end, Kessel was killed by an avalanche caused by Crenshinibon's own heat in a battle with the famed drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden atop Kelvin's Cairn, with the shard buried under all that snow. In 1364 DR, Stumpet Rakingclaw, a female dwarf cleric in the employ of Clan Battlehammer, came across Crenshinibon while climbing Kelvin's Cairn. As her moral code made it too difficult for the artifact to insinuate itself into her mind, the shard quickly escaped her by calling to Errtu. Errtu had finally gotten what he wanted and was the next wielder of the shard. Crenshinibon helped guide him by first advising him to spare Stumpet to use a lure against Drizzt before later helping him recruit an army of taers to locate a suitable location to reconstruct Cryshal-Tirith. However, their relationship took a hit as Errtu purposely shielded his mind to keep the shard from learning he was actively luring in Drizzt. The balor ended the shard's mental assault using his anti-magic sapphire, wounding Crenshinibon. Concerned with Errtu's obsession with the drow ranger, Crenshinibon sent the taers to ambush the Companions of the Hall, earning his outrage, but could not deter the balor from actively seeking his vengeance. Crenshinibon was then left with the gemstone containing Stumpet's spirit, which it used to control her body in an attempt to drown Catti-brie. However, it became distracted when Regis entered Cryshal-Tirith with Guenhwyvar's aid, and attempted to repeat Drizzt's tactic of using blocking flour on Crenshinibon, but the shard defended itself until Regis contained it within Errtu's shielding coffer. Meanwhile, Drizzt, with the help of Wulfgar (whom the goddess Lolth had given to Errtu as a prisoner and was subsequently used as a bargaining chip with Drizzt and his friends), once again managed to banish him to the Abyss. Later that year, the drow Jarlaxle tricked Drizzt into giving the shard to him by hiring a doppelganger and disguising him as Cadderly Bonaduce, and used it to carve himself a place in the city of Calimport. His lieutenant Rai-guy believed he could control the shard better than his leader and tried to take it. It was stolen by Jarlaxle's companion Artemis Entreri, who had managed to ignore the Crystal Shard's manipulative magic through sheer willpower. Entreri rescued Jarlaxle from his two lieutenants, Kimmuriel Oblodra and Rai-guy, and convinced him to come along with him to take the shard to Cadderly and find from him a way to destroy the dangerous artifact. Rai-guy eventually succeeded in capturing the shard, though his possession of it was short-lived. Crenshinibon was eventually destroyed by the red dragon Hephaestus when Jarlaxle tricked him into breathing fire on it (and its wielder, Rai-guy) whilst it was inside of a globe of magical darkness, the only known way to end the Crystal Shard's evil existence, as discovered by Cadderly. However, powerful necromantic energy still lingered around the shard. When the Spellplague began to affect Erlkazar and thus Hephaestus' lair, it turned the dragon into a dracolich and the nearby corpse of an illithid, Yharaskrik, into a ghost who compelled Hephaestus to smash the shard into his forehead before fusing itself and the shard with the remains of Hephaestus' body. The three combined became a sentient conduit between the realm of the living and that of the dead. Yharaskrik's consciousness dubbed the trio the Ghost King. The Ghost King later fled to the Shadowfell, and Cadderly Bonaduce followed him there, preventing it from ever escaping.