"A beautiful face, long
silky hair of copper, gold, and mahogany, lavender eyes with a
red spark, a phoenix tattoo at the base of my throat,
lapis-colored and glowing, humming, and a figure to die for. "Literally.
"I am Xaixara Windgust, one of triplets ghost-born to Xaiphyronoth Windgust and Eumenides the Master of the Three Furies, granddaughter of Daeldron & Saphyra, great-granddaughter of Xarnoth the Archmage of Invocation.
"Dark magic surrounds me like a shroud, protecting me from the Light as I control the dark forces to fight nature, to raise the dead, that they may live again to do my bidding. In this respect I am more my father than my mother. You smell something... embalming fluid? Old blood? You can't quite decide what it is, but you know that no matter how clean my hands look, I cannot quite wash the odor of what I work with out of them. Still, you can't help wondering how someone who deals with death and dead things can look so clean. Mastering necromancy, mastering magic... that is what I most desire. And Zombies... More Zombies..."
The life of Xaixara Windgust was a very difficult one. Being a Windgust made things hard, being ghost-born made her, in the eyes of the immortal Lady Masumi, impossible. Xaixara's early years were described in her letter to Master Cabal in which she requested that they consider her for membership:
"Greetings, wise ones!
"My name is Xaixara Windgust, one of the triplets ghost-born of Eumenides and Xaiphyronoth Windgust, and yes, contrary to tradition, I am not an Invoker, but a Necromancer. As a child I did not seem to have the knack nor interest in weapon and armor enchantment, so the wizards who raised us left me alone. Brother Eumenoth had a propensity for invocation, and they loved him and taught him. Even brother Shindor, whose knack was more for transmutation than invocation, gained the wizards' favor. But I did not, and I escaped my misery by leaving the tower daily and playing in the woods nearby. I befriended little woodland creatures. They did not mind that I had no invocational abilities, but loved me for myself. As time passed, they tended to die off, old age or predators, and I would be heartbroken. I wanted to return life to them.
"One night, I dreamed of a beautiful lady who uttered a chant, producing a golden portal, through which floated a magnificent Book decorated with runes of power. She beckoned me to sit by her, and she turned the pages until she came to pictures of a dark wizard raising a corpse. She read the narrative, tried to pronounce the spell for me, but laughingly admitted that she was much better at exploding weapons than raising dead. When I awoke, I ran to the woods, and there I uttered the words which brought forth the golden portal and the floating Book of Magic. I riffled through the pages, found the raising dead chapter, and studied it. The best I ever did was to get a dead chipmunk to rise to its feet, then crumble to dust. My brothers spied on me that time, and reported me to the wizards. Indeed, I knew the words, but not the correct intonations, and the wizards could not help me. So they prepared me to go out into the world and find the Necromancers, and the Masters of the Five Magics, so that I could further my education. I have joined the Necromancers Guild, and I seek to further my studies of the Five Magics, from which all magics derive, through membership in the cabal. While it is true that Windgusts have also traditionally been Masters, I seek not to be accepted solely on my heritage, but as a worthy individual in my own right and of my own merit. If my discipline falls short of the requirement, I would hope that I could learn to be more disciplined with the help of those who are the true Masters.
"Thank you for considering me.
"Xaixara Windgust the Magician."
Shortly after sending her note to Master Cabal, Xaixara was contacted by Lady Masumi. The immortal interviewed her, declared her impossible, and laid upon her the geis to "embrace the impossible". Three quests she was given, the first of which she did correctly, getting the black robe from the dark apprentice in the High Tower of Sorcery, the second of which she did correctly after being given a hint, getting a ring of the undead wanderer in the catacombs east of the Dragon Sea, and the third quest which she never completed because the Deep-Red Potion did not exist. But she did not give up. For a very long time she sent high ranked assassins and thieves to explore the land and report to her their findings, for what she did do that Lady Masumi had assigned often meant her death. It was during this time that Xaixara met Zraqkhyss, a Master from before the purge who had not been re-admitted to the Cabal, a necromancer of high rank who had been fond of her mother, best friends with her father, and very good friends with the famous bard Esarvee. Zraqkhyss selflessly gave her some excellent equipment, asking nothing in return for it (a very un-Zraqkhyss behavior), and in return Xaixara brought him up to date on the events in Thera, the deaths of Esarvee, Jandor, Xaiphyronoth, and others, and she scribed a copy of the famous bard's final song for him because he had been mentioned in it and had never received a copy. Xaixara found herself strongly attracted to the ancient drow, but she knew he would not be around to help her and watch her rise in ranks. Xaixara also met the ancient former Master Rabilis, who had been apprentice to her mother. Rabilis, too, gave her helpful items. She employed their minds to help her with her quest, but still the potion eluded her.
Because she often looked failure in the face, Xaixara began to fear that she was not worthy of the Masters. As irrational as that seemed, it was a thought that haunted her. Another seemingly irrational fear which haunted her was that she would be inducted into the cabal of the wise ones and shortly afterward be made Mortal Leader. This fear entertained her, for it seemed impossible. When Lady Masumi disappeared from Thera, Xaixara sought Skirvin, a fire-giant Anti-Paladin Master who had been a friend of her mother's, and he asked her to keep trying for the potion a little longer. It was during this time that Xaixara's only surviving brother Eumenoth, an Invoker, was forced to commit suicide. In his farewell letter addressed to her and to Riallus Windgust, a cousin from the Darwinian branch of the family, Eumenoth advised his sister to follow him into oblivion. Even Eumenides, grieved beyond reason, sought her death. Xaixara defiantly declared to her father that the Immortals should do their own dirty work, she would not suicide for them. Despair gripped her as she tried to determine the course of her life, such as it was. Fearing that the Windgust line would die with her, she visited the High Tower of Sorcery, conferred with the mages of light and darkness, and embarked upon an experiment. Using the life sample of her mother Xaiphyronoth, and the life sample of a Master Necromancer who was not her father, Xaixara helped create a half-sister, setting her in temporal stasis until the time of her final death, whereupon the bed of temporal stasis would disappear and the girl would live. Xaixara lived for a while in fear that her life would end suddenly, but the Immortals did not insist upon her death, and she soon turned her thoughts to Master Cabal again. Upon the naming of Gilgamesh the Paladin as Leader of Master, Xaixara posted a new note to Master outlining what she had done and asking the Masters to declare her worthy or unworthy and put her out of her misery. Nepenthe, Immortal Leader of Masters, informed her by note that the potion did not exist and gave her a new quest. Gilgamesh spoke to her, also, and gave her the same new quest. She fulfilled the new quest, getting the dark red potion from the ranger at the trading post, and met Gilgamesh in the Dragon Tower in Shadow Grove. He questioned her as to why she thought she deserved to be a Master, gave her a path test (did she follow her path or did she aid good?), and told her to wait until her 400th birthday to be inducted. Her cousin Riallus (son of Darwin, adopted son of Xarnoth) was inducted just before she was interviewed, and her joke to Gilgamesh about inducting two Windgusts in one night was taken literally so that he waited until next night, sent her to get yet another dark red potion, and inducted her. Whereupon he promptly threatened her with uninduction... but by this time she had met the rest of the active cabal and began to make friends. It seemed the Masters were as fun-loving as the Entropy cabal...
Xaixara fought back-to-back with Gilgamesh during cabal defenses whenever members of Battle Cabal raided. She often died and lost all her clothing and weapons, and Gilgamesh swore to her that she would never go naked as long as he had the power to re-equip her. About a week after her induction, Gilgamesh was untrue to his path, casting a sanctuary spell upon the evil Entropy Infestix, and the Immortals punished him by stripping him of his magic. He had a weekend to try to regain it, and failed. Meanwhile, during her time in the cabal, Xaixara had made friends with the Battlerager Bael, who had become Leader of Battle, and she talked Bael into calling a retreat one time after his generals took too long to gather in strength to attack Master. She convinced him that the Masters outnumbered the Ragers and that the Ragers would die. Shortly after Gilgamesh was uninducted by Nepenthe, Bael died defending his cabal from Masters raiding to retrieve the sacred Orb of Magic (and other cabal items that they had in their Shrine). Gilgamesh took the Orb, the Book of Law (Arbiters), the Torch of Shadows (Shadow), and the Equation (Entropy) to Xaixara and instructed her to return them to their rightful owners. Then he took the Equation from her to return personally to Nero, who would have none of the young necromancer. Xaixara returned the Book of Law to one of the Arbiters and posted notes to both Arbiter and Master Cabals informing them all of her actions and asking that they also behave in a like honorable fashion when it was their turn. No Shadow turned up to take the Torch from her, so she considered herself as having done her duty to Shadow when Thera, upon being reborn, sent the Torch back to the Shadow Cabal.
The next time Xaixara entered Thera, Battle was invading Master again. In the middle of the defensive action, Xaixara was transferred to a place called the Source of Mana, there receiving the power to induct and uninduct, and the wicked looking scythe which was inscribed with runes of the Five Magics. Nepenthe named her Leader of Master Cabal and informed her that the decision had been his with the recommendation of Lord Twist, former Immortal Leader of Masters. Xaixara, upon being returned to the cabal, aided the defense. She took the dead body of the BattleRager Rakeem and animated it into a zombie, earning the title Grand Animator. There followed a raid upon Battle. Soon Xaixara held both the Orb and the Head, and she claimed to the Ragers that she had no idea where their Head was. The zombie of Rakeem danced with the Battlerager Rakeem, and the overall atmosphere at the Tower of Magic was that of party. Later, Xaixara watched a Master-Rager duel in Tar Valon, befriended an Arbiter who was neutrally watching the duel, and took her leave before too many Ragers showed up (the Master won the duel). Despite the never-a-dull-moment aspect of her life, she realized that her formerly irrational fear of being made Mortal Leader shortly after her induction had not been quite so irrational after all. Xaixara mentally noted that her plans to rise up in the ranks and become the first female to hero in the Necromancers Guild could well have been destroyed. But serving as Mortal Leader of Master Cabal was a great honor, and she determined to do what she could to reach all her goals. She created new goals for herself, to strengthen Master Cabal, to weaken Battle Cabal (the destruction of Battle Cabal in her lifetime didn't seem possible), to use methods never before considered to bring down the BattleRagers. Xaixara was not a warlord type of Leader. She was an administrator type, weak in health from all her deaths during her questing time, and she determined to use what wits she had to overcome her physical weakness. Also the night they celebrated her rise to the Leadership of the Cabal, Xaixara learned from an Anti-Paladin named Sierin that a young Master she thought was her friend had instead been working against her behind her back. The treachery seemed to have covered a couple generations, in fact, and Xaixara determined that she would get revenge against the young Master, somehow, some way.
The first wave of inductees consisted of 25, most of whom eventually became Heroes (51st Rank). Since Xaixara had been inducting many new Masters, Nepenthe closed the doors to the cabal and the Leader had a rest from inducting, running around adventuring and rising in the ranks. It was during this time that Xaixara met with the Knights Fortcoeur and Tyrille at Lord Cador's Shrine and forged a new treaty with them, and an evil Master was killed by a Knight, breaking the treaty... At this time, Xaixara received angry messages from a drow invoker whom she thought was a friend, and relegated this one, Narcissus, to unfriend status, never again to adventure with the invoker.
During this long time, Xaixara was in the habit of losing her life defending the cabal against the raiding Ragers. She made it a habit to demand that the Ragers return her equipment when they full looted her corpse, claiming knowledge of an old honor code. More often than not, the Rager who had killed and looted her was Aarakocrus the Arial Assassin, and he returned most of her equipment, and always her Leader Weapon. One time the tables turned and Xaixara returned Aarakocrus' equipment to him. The kill had been Aciduar's, but Xaixara wanted the leverage to use diplomacy and force further honorable acts between members of the warring Cabals, so she took the angry protests of her Masters and faced off the Ragers, returning the gear and making a little progress in peaceful relations. Aarakocrus gave a strong hint as to where Nepenthe's newly opened Shrine was, and shortly thereafter Xaixara found it, using the Rager's directions, with cousin Riallus and Isidor.
But Xaixara continued to adventure with Trgyt and Wynter, both evil Rangers, and befriended Skandranon the Anti-Paladin and Sharpe the Arial Assassin. Skandranon, Sharpe, and Xaixara would hang out just outside of Jullias' Shrine, Xaixara summoning feared swordsmen and large guards, and the others doing violence upon the good soldiers of the battlefield so far from their homes. At this time Xaixara spent a lot of her time sleeping to regenerate her mental powers, and she jokingly referred to herself as the Narcoleptic Necromancer. As time went on, she found herself craving the companionship of the Assassin and the Anti-Paladin. Skandranon made a habit of hanging out in Udgaard to be close to her, and Sharpe would soon join them before they tesseracted to Galadon and ran to just outside the shrine. Xaixara mastered her ability to summon. About this time,Vril the evil Duergar Cleric also befriended her, but they rarely got together to adventure with each other, living on promises of maybe next time. With the help of all these friends, Xaixara outdid her mother Xaiphyronoth and reached 45th Rank.
And then tragedy struck. Xaixara's password into the realm of Thera failed to admit her, and Nepenthe opened the doors to the cabal again while the Leader was unable to quest, interview and induct. The Immortals in Master took on the Leader duties while Xaixara was unable to pass the Skull Gate into Thera, and when at last she did return, she found herself 11 ranks short of her achievement. Now at 34th Rank, Xaixara had no time to devote to making up for the loss. The Ragers stepped up their violence against the Masters. All the gains she had made before the 11 rank loss were gone, and the renewed violence, and the introduction of newer and stronger enemies to her range rendered Xaixara even weaker in health than she had been. She devoted her life to testing potential Masters, giving them greater challenges than the first wave had received, and trying desperately to regain her ranks. Karik the Bard Arbiter had lost 12 ranks; they exchanged woeful tales of inability to cope with the new lower status in Thera. Xaixara found Sharpe, now ahead of her, and gained his help, and that of a Cloud Giant Ranger named Hastevanel who asked way too many questions for comfort. Trgyt returned to her life, unable to join her adventure groups but still able to aid her, and her companions learned to trust her instincts concerning the high ranked evil ones who made their appearances from time to time. Vril, now more than ever, became a travelling companion when the Orb was safely in Master hands.
Mendlyar the Thief Rager invited Xaixara to a duel with him. Xaixara feared for her life, but she could not turn down the invitation. Armed with two golems and a fiery demon, but with no Master second, she met the Rager in the cornfield south of Battle Cabal's hideout. They discussed the limits of the duel (neither would be allowed to die), and then Mendlyar attacked the golems and fiery demon. Xaixara attacked Mendlyar. One by one her creations and charmed demon were killed, and then the Rager turned against her and began to tear her apart. Xaixara noticed that someone was hidden in the room and suspected that the Rager had allowed for a Rager second, while denying her a Master second. Wanting to scourge him but unable to do so without turning the second Rager against her, Xaixara fled the room and declared Mendlyar the winner of the duel. The Rager followed her into the next room, and they stood together discussing the duel while she slowly healed. Xaixara did not once complain of what she considered the cheat, but claimed that she was indeed the weaker of the two and acknowledged the Rager's physical superiority. By the time she was ready to leave the cornfield, Xaixara decided that by losing the duel, she had started on the road to a greater victory. Master Cabal, and the Immortals watching, did not entirely agree, but they were not aware of her thoughts and her motives.
Shortly afterward, after yet another raid upon Master when Battle took the Orb and Xaixara died yet another death while defending, she met with four Ragers who could easily kill her, and one who was now beyond her reach but who had formerly been an adversary, in New Thalos. With only a clay golem to aid her, Xaixara received her equipment and weapon back from Mendlyar, and he and the others asked her to make a policy of equipment return to the Ragers. This would work both ways, Ragers returning equipment to Masters and Masters returning equipment to Ragers. Xaixara ignored the veiled threats Mendlyar threw at her, and she did not flinch in the face of overwhelming odds, but agreed with the Ragers, for what they demanded of her was what she herself wanted all along, an honorable agreement, peace after battle, return of equipment and weapons to save a lot of time and trouble. She could not help wondering if the agreement already was accepted by the entire membership of Battle Cabal, for she did not deal with Shamino, Leader of Battle, but with several of the younger members. Rather than turn her agreement with Mendlyar and company into policy, she set it down to the Masters as a suggestion to see who would follow through and who would not. After a week's experimentation, seeing as how the agreement did work, Xaixara rewrote the agreement and turned it into policy. Her inductees were instructed that they had to follow the tenets of the agreement as she set it down. A few of the evil Masters refused to honor it, causing every battle to be followed with renegotiations, but as long as Xaixara was in communications with the Ragers, she could work her charm and personal magic and try to garner their respect, their honor, and perhaps even their friendship. As she struggled to overcome the loss of 11 ranks, she looked back upon this time and decided that the seeming punishment was merely another challenge in her life to "embrace the impossible" and that she had turned her personal loss into a gain both for herself and for her Cabal. She even entertained the idea that she might, during her lifetime, see the destruction of the Battleragers. Then she would shake her head and be realistic: the Battle Cabal would not be brought down in her lifetime.
Xaixara with the help of Vril, Liriel, Sharpe, Rheskhan, and Morgiane rose as high as 50th Rank, Lich Lord. No female had ever gotten that high in the Necromancer's Guild, so Nepenthe changed the title to Lich Lady. Xaixara hated the title and tried to cajole her fellow Masters to help her get rid of it, but none would help her. She posted an angry note to the cabal noting the lack of cooperation and her determination to continue to strengthen the cabal while waiting for a friend to show up. Her range now consisted of Paladins, Knights of Thera, or BattleRagers, none of whom would adventure with her, none of whom would help her reach the coveted 51st Rank. Nepenthe removed the Lich Lady title, and many thought that she had heroed already, but she truthfully admitted that she had not. Eventually, Luthias (a neutral assassin who hated Ragers), Morgiane, and Necrucifer took Xaixara to Kiadana Rah, where they slaughtered elite storm giant soldiers and adventured together. The moment Xaixara reached 51st Rank, Heroine of Death, the adventure ended, and all returned to their temples or the cabal hideout. Nepenthe led the cheers in cabal band, and soon afterward asked Xaixara what title she wished to bear. Xaixara requested that she be known as Xaixara, Narcoleptic Archmage of Necromancy, Leader of Masters. The title was given to her, and when she was asked what quest she had done to get the title change, she admitted that her entire life had been a quest to strengthen Master Cabal and no special quest had been assigned.
Xaixara spent her heroine years continuing to give quests and interview applicants to Master Cabal, and attempting to aid Morgiane in her quest to get the pendant belonging to Tiamat in the Dragon Tower, so that she might have a name change. A couple times she even went to Battle Cabal to raid. Toward the end of her life, Xaixara met the evil duergar cleric Lustipher who insisted that if she inducted him into Master Cabal he would marry her. Ignoring his promise/threat, she dealt with him as with any other applicant. On the night she died her final death, Xaixara had intended to give Lustipher his final interview and, more than likely, induction.
Continue reading Xaixara's biography
Above picture originally painted by Lisa and Jonathan Hunt of Boca Raton, Florida. When I saw it, it reminded me of my Xaixara character.
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