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.
Using Zlan. Zlan is an unsettling monstrosity of ice, black crystal, and alien dead. The characters should see Zlan long before they confront him, crawling across the icy wastes in pursuit of some mysterious goal. Tales of Zlan's bizarre power and unsettling psychic influence should reach the characters, making Zlan seem like a terrible, eldritch entity.
Zlan's eerie connection to chardalyn allows him to spread his mental influence to the characters' friends and enemies alike, and perhaps even to the characters themselves. You can use chardalyn's psychic resonance to give the characters brief, confusing glimpses of Zlan's plans to propel the plot.
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 multi-lich 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.