A mage, scholar, and inventor that has always had a deep interest into the inner working of the different Planes of Existence.
Monetary funds for his experiments and research had always been an issue for him. In his later years he came to work in the service of the Cassalanter family. He cared little for their actions and intentions as long as they kept funding his research.
History
During his younger years Ectobius would often be traveling the world and even some different realms if he somehow could manage to find his way in there.
On one such adventure in the Underdark he met Xoblob. They would try to stay in contact with each other and by pure coincidence would end up settling down in the same city of Waterdeep years later.
Over the years he started to become envious of Xoblob's natural affinity to magic and his ability to generate loads of money through his auction house. He once tricked Xoblob into thinking his eye was cursed and then helped him remove the eye with a fake one.
While working for the Cassalanter family, he was tasked with experimenting on creating clones and doing research on souls. The Cassalanters would provide him with the stasis-like body of Syglin and would later find a way to keep bringing him a steady supply of dismembered body parts.
Ectobius managed to find a way to travel between the material realm and The Shadowfell where he would set up a base of operations.
He succeeded in created clones of people by using their dismembered body parts, the blood of a changeling, and the living shadows of the Shadowfell.
He later decided to make clones of himself to expedite his work and research which caused him to go insane because of all the self-dismemberment he had to do to create his clones. The clones ended up taking control of the operation and took every bone in Ectobius' body, leaving him as just a living sack of skin, meat, and organs.
He was ultimately killed by The Trollskull Crushers.