Born in the Tower of Gorgoth in the southern Dark Lands, Unzi grew up with no particular magical, metallurgical or martial skill to speak of. He followed the path of the slaver, serving a great slave-master who traded in wretched Crookback Mountain rat-men and half-starved Broken Tooth goblins from Mount Greyhag. Finally, he won his master’s trust and embarked on a mission to purchase Asad tribesmen from Al-Haikk, the City of Thieves.
After a perilous trip across the Marshes of Madness, Unzi decided it was best to sail the rest of the way, and sought passage on a grain-barge which was promptly attacked by pirates and sunk off the Mortis Delta.
Washing up in the haunted ruins of Zandri with none of his master’s coin, Unzi searched for some treasure with which to redeem his wretched his life. Clumsily battling the long-dead skeletal guardians of a small scribal tomb, he managed to strip what little treasure it contained and escape along the coast road before the ancient undead could stop him.
Arriving the worse for wear in Al-Haikk, Unzi quickly realized his plundered Nehekaran gold was not worth a tenth of the coin he had lost to the pirates. The Arabyan merchants were unwilling to accept it for fear of the Curse of Zandri, but one appraiser held tight to a bright red gem among his plunder and hurriedly spoke of its fabled power to capture and bind the spirits of the deep desert. A fight over the stone ensued, and Unzi was forced to murder the merchant. At this the malevolent gem glowed brightly, and out spilled a terrible red horned crimson spirit trapped within.
Unzi knew little of the arcane, but he knew how to strike a bargain. In return for feeding it the souls of victims, the daemon was forced not only to slay in Unzi’s name, but to teach the dwarf the forgotten magics of the binding ritual that had imprisoned it. (edited)
Unzi quickly returned to the Dark Lands, protected by his daemon-slave. He labored day and night to craft nine jewels of binding, and sold them to daemonsmiths who entrapped all manner of foul creatures within. Immediately popular, he opened a workshop and began creating more, finally rising to some measure of status in the Dark Lands. To this day, some precious items bear daemon-bound gems created by his fervent labors.
Of his fate little is known, besides that he was exiled forever from Gorgoth by the political machinations of his former master, who claimed he was naught but a common thief. He began styling himself Al-Ashrar, claiming that he was feared throughout the Arabyan wastes for his magical prowess. Soon a wealthy dawi, it is well known that he moved about the Dark Lands often and in haste. Some whisper darkly that the sounds of rattling bones haunted him day and night. There are even those who say that his desiccated corpse was found one night in a silent alleyway, and lying beside it his broken staff, the red gem - and many golden ornaments - torn free, never to be seen again.
Whatever the truth of it, he disappeared from all records some thirty years after his triumphant return, and the secrets of the binding-stones disappeared with him. The remaining staves of similar power created during his lifetime are popular and useful magic items to this day, particularly amongst the mercantile classes of the Dark Lands, who appreciate them for their symbolic value as well as their power. They often contain bound K’Daai, Bloodletters or Daemonettes.