Blighted king makes top 3 for suree

With all the necromancy she does, her friendship with Az’Karesh, and now this, perhaps she should change her name to…

<Puts on sunglasses>

Bonelavierr.

In regards to gnoll mages, we already got a tiny glimpse of Plains Eye being pretty shady about some stuff, namely gnoll mages and Doombringers. It’s quite probable that they have intentionally destroyed any records of gnolls being mages, and/or threatened people into silence such that stories about them aren’t told anymore.

While it would be unlikely for people to forget normally even within ~500 years, a dedicated campaign to erase knowledge over 100+ years could be quite effective. Gnolls don’t have a history of making written records, so just stopping most of the stories being passed on for a few generations means people could easily start to mistake how short of a time it had last been since gnoll mages were a thing.

It’s about the mental trauma equivalent of magical backlash that can occur when the simulacrum dies. Human brains do it all the time; look up psychosomatic disorders.

The biggest issue with Zelkyr being a big boss is simply that drakes don’t live long enough. That means he’d either have had to turn himself into some sort of lich/revenant like Az’Karesh, learned time magic similar to Nereshal, or discovered a recipe and knowledge for making Potions of Reverse Aging.

Beyond that, while there is probably a crapton of materials in the upper floors of Wistram, there would almost certainly not be enough of the highest quality to last for like 150 years of crafting and experiments. Him staying up there without even a hint of leaving lends way more towards him being dead than alive.

Or, if he is alive, then there’s probably something else on the upper floors even stronger/more dangerous/evil than he is, that is preventing him from leaving, or that he is stopping from leaving.