Chapter Text
Elenya's POV
Something was wrong.
Far too much power, amassed in ways that did not align with what was known of Larloch’s goals.
From all accounts—Vaelrith’s notes, scattered fragments of espionage, the whispers caught in the Scarlet Enclave—Larloch sought apotheosis. The archlich’s obsession was not merely dominion, nor even survival; it was transcendence. Godhood. And every tale of ascension made clear: it demanded unfathomable reservoirs of energy, drawn from magic, souls, or divine essence itself.
So why waste so much of his accumulated power and lore raising an army?
Not just an army of bound undead, either. He was cultivating something new. Something crafted. Legions of freshly wrought undead, strong and varied, built as though to resist every conceivable countermeasure. This was not simply dominion—it was engineering. A design.
The contradiction sharpened when she reviewed the historical record: the Year of Lightning Storms, seventy-six years ago. Over two hundred liches, all branded with Larloch’s mark, descended upon the Knights of Myth Drannor in an attempt to corrupt the Weave itself. The city had only just been rebuilt after centuries of ruin, newly sanctified under Mystra’s blessing. The battle was cataclysmic. Mystra’s clockwork soldiers marched alongside the Knights, and though the liches were repelled—many destroyed—the cost was staggering. Dozens of baelnorns, guardians of elven lineages, were twisted into corruption and slain.
And afterward, Larloch himself appeared to the Knights. Contrite. Almost apologetic. He explained that he had merely “freed” the liches, curious to see what they would do with their liberty. That their attack had been foolish, beneath his interest. That he desired only the pursuit of the Art, not conflict with Mystra. He even confessed his fascination with Storm Silverhand’s silver fire, calling her kindness in showing him its brilliance the first grace he had been granted in centuries.
It rang false. It always had.
Two hundred liches loosed at once, yet seventy-six years later he commands nearly three hundred. Did they return to him? Did he reclaim them? Or had they never been free to begin with, but simply actors in a broader design? The explanation of their “freedom” was laughable. Larloch, of all beings, was paranoid beyond reason. He demanded control, absolute and unyielding. To release two hundred liches at once was lunacy, unless he had prepared the leash beforehand—or unless their rebellion served a hidden purpose.
And why target the Weave itself? Wizards—even liches—know the folly of wounding Mystra’s web. The Art is their lifeblood. To shatter it is to court their own undoing. Why risk her wrath? Why invite annihilation? Unless… the goal had never been to win. Unless the battle was never the true play.
No, this had the stink of misdirection. A screen of smoke and flame to distract from some quieter theft. Larloch had wanted something in that clash, and he had taken it. Whatever it was, he hid it well, for in the years that followed his empire shifted. His expenditures of magic turned not toward hoarding for apotheosis, but toward militarization. Armies. Strongholds. Factories of undeath. He squandered resources that by all logic should have been reserved for ascension.
And yet, patterns emerged. Around that time he allied with the Imprisoners, working to craft Blueflame items—arcane vessels that bound spirits within, preserving not just mortal essence but, as some whispered, fragments of divine power itself. Mystra forbade her clergy to interfere. The Simbul later theorized those items contained strands of Mystra’s essence, a hidden reservoir of her power. Perhaps even a hedge against her death, a means of restoring her.
If true, then Larloch had woven a net not just of souls, but of godstuff.
But if that was so, why waste his hoard? Why expend so much energy on soldiers, rituals, and the slow churn of a necrotic city-state? Even the hundreds of thousands of souls in Warlock’s Crypt could not fuel godhood alone. Not when he bled his magic into walls, wards, and armies.
So how did he mean to ascend?
It was the question that gnawed at every theory. Ascension required a singular focus, a hoarding so absolute that every breath, every life, every mote of energy bent toward the goal. And yet, here was Larloch, squandering his treasure on fortifications and dominion.
Unless his path was different.
Unless he had already found a way to sidestep the traditional ladders of apotheosis.
What if the army wasn’t the waste, but the engine? What if the power wasn’t squandered, but cycled—each new creation feeding into a structure larger than itself? A web of undead souls, rituals, and bound artifacts, not meant for battle at all, but meant to be fuel for a transformation so vast it required an entire city-state to sustain it.
Perhaps the army was not meant to conquer Netheril, nor the living. Perhaps it was the ritual itself.
No, that doesn't make sense either.
Ascention requires energy. Even the magic stored here would not suffice; he expanded too much of it to be even close. Same for souls. There was not enough living for that. He would need to absorb either magic or souls to ascend. And he is squandering both on building an army to fight the returning Netheril city.
Something is not making sense.
The city’s collaboration with Thay made the entire situation all the more unnerving. Tam and his Zulkirs, for all their ruthlessness, were still fractured, prone to vanity and betrayal. Larloch was not. If he ever shifted from cold apathy toward Faerûn to ambition—if he ever lifted his gaze from his experiments and took a page from Szass Tam’s book—there would be no stopping him. Thay’s armies marched with noise and discord; Warlock’s Crypt would march in silence, tireless, precise, unstoppable.
On the surface, the Crypt appeared as an immaculate hierarchy, its obedience absolute. Every servant moved with purpose, every order carried down the chain without hesitation. Yet beneath that rigid facade, Elenya could sense something subtler: not loyalty, but terror. The fear of a master who knew not only your secrets, but the measure of your soul, and could strip either away with a thought.
At the apex stood Larloch, supreme and unquestioned. His supremacy was not debated in salons, not whispered about in hidden corners—it was reality, reinforced by the weight of centuries, the residue of his arcane supremacy. Rumour said that no oath, no binding, no spell of fealty tied his court together. The only leash was the knowledge that to rise against him was to vanish, unmade so thoroughly that even memory recoiled.
Beneath him, the society split into two dominant castes: lich lords and vampire lords.
The lich lords held dominion over knowledge. Their towers bristled with wards and wards-within-wards, laboratories thrummed with soul-engines, and entire vaults of captured minds whispered in the dark. They were scholars of annihilation, tasked with unravelling the mysteries of undeath and binding them into weapons, engines, and works of eternal preservation. Every discovery was catalogued, siphoned upward, and used to expand Larloch’s dominion.
The vampire lords, meanwhile, commanded flesh and blood. They oversaw the armies, the feeding networks, the slave dormitories. Their courts were drenched in decadence: velvet halls where blood trickled as freely as wine, salons where emissaries from Skullport and Thay parleyed under charm-laced veils. They managed the “living stock,” ensuring raids brought in fresh captives, regulating who fed and when, and directing the black-market trade of bodies, bloodlines, and half-spent souls. If the liches provided innovation, the vampires provided stability—military strength, commerce, and the appearance of life.
Though equal in might, neither caste dared overstep. Rivalries were common, but rebellion would be suicide. The Crypt was a careful balance of predator and scholar, hunger and order, each powerful enough to tear the other apart but equally aware that Larloch alone held the leash.
The economy reflected this grotesque union. Coin was useless here; the true currencies were spells, secrets, and living flesh. A name whispered at the right time, a bloodline exchanged, a relic passed hand to hand—these transactions carried weight beyond gold. Necromancer cults on the surface funnelled sacrifices and knowledge into the Crypt, while Red Wizards, bound in equal parts by fascination and fear, traded forbidden lore in exchange for power and protection. Livestock settlements, kept in perpetual dread, were bred not only for sustenance but for commerce—catalogued like breeding stock, sorted by lineage, talent, and magical potential.
Daily life pulsed with a parody of vitality. Skeletons swept corridors in endless cycles of maintenance. Wights patrolled with mechanical vigilance. Vampires held courts dripping with theatrical elegance, debating not politics but philosophy: the ethics of suffering, the poetics of blood, the meaning of eternity. Liches gathered in sterile chambers to dissect Weave-theory, their salons buzzing not with laughter but with the hum of spell-engines and muttered incantations.
Even the smallest act served the greater purpose: to feed undeath, to obey Larloch, to expand the dominion of the dead. The Crypt was not merely a fortress. It was a civilization. A dark mirror of Faerûn’s kingdoms, more efficient, more ruthless, and infinitely more patient.
And what made it unbearable was how ordinary it all seemed. No chaos. No screams. Just the endless thrum of a city that worked.
A city that had never stopped growing.
The Barterum of Secrets—colloquially known as the Barterum or the Ledger Markets—is the true arcane engine at the heart of Warlock’s Crypt’s intellectual and economic vitality. Nestled in the mid-circle near the Scarlet Enclave, this eerie network of halls serves as the primary exchange hub for spell components, forbidden rituals, and metaphysical insights. Here, there is no gold—only barter, pacts, and precise negotiations overseen by skeletal scribes who record every deal with unerring detail. Break a pact, and the punishment is swift, brutal, and always arcane. The market draws lich apprentices, vampire seneschals, Thayan necromancers, and even bound fiends, all seeking breakthroughs or leverage. Booths offer everything from soul-binding secrets to viral necromancy, and the price is paid in cattle of specific bloodlines, bound souls, or dangerous truths. As a neutral ground where prestige is bought with invention and audacity, the Barterum is both the brain and bloodstream of the Crypt’s undead society—advancing research, channeling rivalries into commerce, and binding the Crypt more deeply into Thayan ambition and infernal trade.
I did not like it.
Because it felt familiar.
Cold air. No scent. The press of too many minds whispering without lips, without lungs. I recognized it instantly—the feeling of something looking through you. Parsing. Cataloguing. Marking.
Gods. This place had Menzoberranzan’s stink all over it.
Not literally, of course. The Barterum was no city of spiders. But it bore the same obsession with secrets. The same hunger to know, to trap, to own.
Only here, it wasn’t dominance that bound them.
It was the truth.
They traded secrets.
And in a city of death, secrets were the only thing still ripening.
Astarion walked beside her, features relaxed but posture razor-sharp. She, meanwhile, wore her stolen face with ease—high cheekbones, pale olive skin, the faintest trace of noble bearing in her shoulders. Just enough Thayan coldness to pass. Just enough arrogance to sell it.
I wondered, not for the first time, whether she liked being someone else.
Not who I made her.
Not empty.
Or maybe it was the only way she could breathe in places like this.
We passed rows of shadow-bound whisperers—servants of the Barterum who neither moved nor blinked, suspended in quiet agony behind translucent veils. One turned its head as we passed. Just once. Just enough for me to see its mouth sewn shut with magic.
No one else could see it. But I did. Cursed souls bound in service.
And I also saw Curse Eater.
It was feeding, that much was certain. The blade had been siphoning magic since the moment we stepped here. Discreetly—an aerial dispel, almost imperceptible even to detect magic. What it stole, it folded back into itself, reinforcing its own enchantment.
What in the Nine Hells was this blade?
She said nothing. Astarion didn’t look.
We reminded ourselves to avoid the inner ring for now. Even if word spread that she was invisible to creatures with Truesight, better not to risk it. Better to keep to the mid-ring, among the Thayans, the barterers, and the vampire courts.
Instead, we turned toward the Copper Quill—a central library known for its esoteric holdings.
Inside, we were not greeted but faced by a mummy scribe.
We explained we sought wide access, many subjects, and asked if a catalogue existed.
“The catalogue of the Quill lies above,” it intoned. “Do you have a more specific query?”
The Wraith Scribes were not men.
Not even undead in the usual sense.
They were echoes, pressed flat and permanent like insects in amber—souls too obsessed with record-keeping to dissolve. They hovered in tight spirals beneath the banner of their master: Archlich Iscavel, Senior Warden of the Archives Malevolent in the inner ring. An archlich with too many ears and too few eyes. Obsessed with knowledge. Reputed to spy on the entire Crypt.
When it spoke, it wasn’t to us. Not directly.
Payment was demanded for consultation. She offered fragments from the dead Thayan’s ledgers—carefully redacted. Names that no longer mattered. Promises long broken. Threads cut, bled dry, worthless on the surface—but valuable here. Valuable to scribes.
The first session gave little of note. Until they gave us the name of a text—obscure, half-legendary:
Codex Tenebris: Anatomia Umbrae
An old treatise on vampiric bindings and biological necromantic matrices.
“The original,” the scribe rasped, “is held in the library of Lich Lord Iscavel.”
Elenya pounced on the copy and paid with knowledge of naga magic. She buried herself in a corner of the library, surrounded by her own tomes and the codex, scratching notes for hours. At last, she pressed a summary into Astarion’s hand.
On the Necrobiological Mechanics of Vampirism: Curse, Infection, Weaknesses, and Spawn Ontology
I. Introduction
Vampires are complex entities, defined as much by symbolic resonance as by biological or magical constraints. Their anatomy is rarely mechanical in nature; rather, it is encoded in collective mythos, cultural archetypes, and the spiritual paradigms from which their curse originates.
Vampirism is not a singular condition, but a multi-phase necroparasitic transformation, blending elements of disease, curse, and soul-bonding. Though often broadly categorized under the undead taxon, vampirism diverges significantly from classical undeath (e.g., lichdom or revenancy), due to its partial preservation of bodily vitality—manifested as a weak pulse and minimal physiological functions—and its dependence on external metaphysical anchors and sources of positive energy (i.e., living blood).
It is best understood not as true undeath, but as a prolonged state of dying, sustained by the extraction of vitality from living hosts. This treatise explores the distinct phases of vampiric transformation, the metaphysics of the vampiric curse, its infectious properties, and the ontological structure that separates spawn from true vampires.
II. Infection and Dormancy
Vampirism is a multicompartmental condition, both pathological and arcane. The disease is transmissible through blood, venom, and bodily fluids—most commonly via feeding or injury during combat. However, infection alone does not produce vampirism. In the majority of cases, the vampiric agent remains dormant, functioning akin to a magical plague—a passive necrotic construct bound within a latent curse lattice.
Absent activation, the infection is ultimately overpowered and purged by the host’s innate positive energy, typically within a few weeks.
This necromantic matrix does not self-activate under ordinary conditions. The progression to active transformation requires the fulfillment of three distinct conditions:
The host dies.
The source vampire (the “sire”) fully drains the host of its innate positive life energy—the metaphysical essence sustaining sentient life.
The host is properly buried, fulfilling the symbolic and necromantic threshold of interment.
If even one of these conditions is unmet, the matrix decays harmlessly post-mortem, and no transformation occurs.
III. Curse Activation and First-Stage Vampirism (Spawnhood)
When all conditions are met, the dormant curse lattice is catalyzed by death. The transformation is not instantaneous, but rather unfolds through staged necromantic activation, wherein the victim's soul is partially retained and altered. The body is reanimated not by autonomous negative energy—as in lichdom—but by the borrowed necromantic signature of the sire.
This intermediary state produces what is commonly referred to as a vampire spawn.
At this stage:
The subject acquires many physical attributes of vampirism: enhanced strength, speed, and bloodlust.
However, they lack true autonomy, regenerative capabilities, and, critically, a personal curse lattice.
Instead, they are animated by a necromantic tether—a siphon linking the spawn to the sire’s matrix. The spawn is thus a remote projection of the sire’s undeath, sustained by negative energy funneled from master to minion. The spawn’s will is often subservient to the sire, bound both metaphysically and mentally. True independence is impossible until the curse fully completes its transformation.
IV. The Maker’s Blood and the Lattice Consumption Phase
The final transition from vampire spawn to true vampire requires the consumption of the sire’s blood, which completes the curse’s second stage. This act allows the spawn to consume and internalize the original necromantic lattice, severing the tether and establishing a self-sustaining curse matrix.
Until this process is completed, the subject remains a pseudo-vampire, their undeath a derivative of another’s. The rarity of this completion accounts for the low incidence of “rogue” spawn and the difficulty of propagating vampirism en masse.
Vampiric mass conversion fails not due to resistance, but due to the curse’s inherent dependency structure. The matrix must be anchored and triggered by a sire. Once a true vampire is established, however, their lattice can theoretically support an unlimited number of spawns without degradation.
The sirelink tether is a potent construct and, outside of full transformation, can only be severed through rare and poorly documented phenomena. Known or suspected methods include:
The sire’s death, collapsing the dependency structure;
Divine intervention;
Demonic pacts;
Arcane rituals capable of implanting a substitute matrix (many of which are forbidden or theoretical).
Most accounts of such events are anecdotal, inconsistent, or unreplicable.
V. Halfbreeds and Outliers
There exist anomalous individuals—referred to as halfbreeds, hybrid cases, or cursed anomalies—who exhibit partial vampiric traits without full transformation or tethering. These include:
Dhampirs: Partially transformed individuals, often created by interrupted rituals or incomplete feeding events.
Cursed Lineages: Descendants of necromantically afflicted bloodlines, inheriting diluted traits across generations.
Experimental Failures: Subjects of arcane tampering, necro-alchemical grafting, or failed attempts to replicate vampirism artificially.
These outliers blur the line between undead and living. While they may possess certain abilities (e.g., night vision, minor regeneration, hematophagy), they lack the complete curse lattice and cannot transmit vampirism without substantial magical assistance.
Ethical and Metaphysical Implications
The implications of vampirism's dependency lattice are not solely academic. They present philosophical and ethical challenges regarding identity, autonomy, and the boundaries of personhood. If a spawn's will is metaphysically subordinate, to what extent can they be held accountable for their actions? If their curse is tethered, what rights—if any—do they possess as individuals?
These questions are especially urgent in cases of liberated spawn—those who sever their bonds without becoming full vampires. Such entities remain in an ontological limbo: neither fully free nor fully bound, often hunted by both vampires and vampire-slayers alike.
Moreover, the necroparasitic structure of the curse invites questions about the nature of the soul itself. Is the retained soul fragment in a spawn still the original, or merely an echo trapped in necromantic mimicry as undead often posses? Can such a soul be absolved? Harnessed ? held? Reincarnated in case of elves?
While this treatise cannot provide definitive answers, it recognizes that the curse of vampirism is not merely a biological affliction nor a curse—it is a spiritual, metaphysical rewriting. Next teratise will address behavioural patterns amongst vampire in order to ascertain differences between nature and environnement.
The study of vampirism, therefore, must include the study of the vampiric culture of suffering.
VII. Conclusion
Vampirism is a curse of dependency; its transmission is governed not just by contagion but by the metaphysical dominance of the sire and their incessant need for blood to maintain the most vitality-filled state of undeath. Future research should explore: Variations in curse matrices across planar strains of vampirism (e.g., Shadowfell-born, Ravenloft-strain) Cross-infection anomalies Potential artificial induction of curse independence for liberative purposes (see: forbidden rites of Kiaransalee)
He didn’t speak for a long time.
So she kept writing, quietly beginning the next segment—Weaknesses and Limiting Factors of Vampiric Entities. The scratch of parchment and the low ambient hum of the library filled the silence between them. A ghost-scribe drifted past, oblivious to the gravity pooling at their table.
She tried to focus on the next page of the Codex, but her eyes kept drifting back to him.
Astarion sat like a statue carved from something too delicate to touch—shoulders taut, fingers curled just a little too tightly around the parchment. He was halfway through the second section when she realized he hadn’t blinked in minutes.
She turned instead to the other tomes they’d acquired—through bartering, seduction, and no small amount of convincing.
Hollow Mirrors: On the Nature of the Vampyr, by Hazlik.
Sunward Prayers for the Night’s Children, author unknown.
Both had been on her bibliography list for weeks. She felt a flicker of satisfaction as she crossed them off, a quiet thrill of progress. But it didn’t last.
Her gaze drifted back to him.
He still hadn’t moved.
She had meant the treatise clinically. As a scholar. As objective truth. But she hoped—hoped—he didn’t find it dehumanizing. Watching him read it now felt indecent, like she had peeled him open with tweezers and pinned the pieces down for study.
His eyes slowed when he reached the section on the tether—the necromantic siphon from sire to spawn. His jaw worked, ever so slightly, as if chewing something unspoken. And when he came to the paragraph on pseudo-vampirism, she saw his throat tighten.
Then he reached the final footnote. The ethical implications. Her notes.
She watched him freeze.
He read it once. Twice. Then exhaled sharply—too sharply, like the breath had been trapped in his chest for years. He placed the last page down with a gentleness that made her chest ache, as though the paper might bruise if he held it any harder.
And then, finally, he looked at her.
No smirk. No clever line. Just his eyes—red, unreadable—and something fragile swimming beneath them. Not gratitude. Not anger.
Just understanding.
“I see,” he said quietly, voice rough. “So that’s what I am.”
“No,” she replied. “That’s what happened to you.”
The silence that followed was heavier. Not hollow—dense with all the things neither of them could say.
He reached back toward the treatise and tapped one finger against a margin note.
No evolution possible without a new curse matrix, then—either through ascension by blood, or by spell?
“That’s not what the treatise is saying, Astarion,” she murmured.
His voice came back bitter.
“This is what Cazador always knew. Why he never worried. Why he never feared our rebellion. Because the leash wasn’t in the throat—it was in the soul.”
“Astarion, stop.”
Her words came sharper than intended, but she softened them quickly.
“Despair is premature. The research shows attempts—some failed, some unreplicated—but attempts. And now we understand the structure. That’s more than anyone else ever gave you. Nothing here says the sirelink is unbreakable. These were only first findings.”
She leaned forward, catching his eyes.
“You forget,” she whispered, “that killing him is very much on the table.”
He didn’t answer.
His hand lingered near the page, hovering as if to pick it up again. But he didn’t. His eyes dropped to the table, fixed somewhere between parchment and dust. When he spoke again, it wasn’t to argue.
It was quieter than that.
“You say that like it’s easy,” he murmured. “Like you could really do it. We both know I’d be useless against him, and you’re not a killer.”
He didn’t mean it cruelly. It wasn’t mockery.
It was disbelief. Wounded. Honest.
He didn’t see it in her. Didn’t want to.
And that, more than anything, made her laugh.
Not loudly. Not harshly. Just a low sound, curling out like smoke.
“If only you knew,” she said, still smiling, though it didn’t reach her eyes.
He blinked at her. The look she gave him was not soft. Not gentle. Not cruel either—just true.
“I remember killing for you. Didn’t I?” she asked.
“It was not the same, Elenya. It was survival. The Gur were attacking you.”
“How about the ghouls? The caravan? The boneclaw?”
“Those were monsters!”
“And Cazador isn’t?” she asked. “I don’t like killing, Astarion, that much is true. But I’ve done it for far less noble causes than freeing you from him. I did it for less than you. For people I didn’t even know. For children I couldn’t save. And yes—for revenge too.”
Her voice didn’t waver. Her hands didn’t shake.
“I’ve killed because sometimes you have to, and because I wanted to. I’ve told you—I’m no saint. And if Cazador stands between you and freedom, then he’ll die, Astarion. Not for justice. Not for mercy. But because I promised you freedom. I promised to keep you from that monster. I’ll cry for every life I take—even the worst of them. But that’s my burden, not a weakness. Don’t mistake it for doubt.”
He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time.
Finally seeing the weight she carried—not the books, not the spells, not the gods—but the grave silence of someone who had already buried too many pieces of herself to flinch from one more.
She let him look.
She didn’t flinch.
“That is very kind of you to think,” he said at last, “but even you can’t take a vampire lord on your own.”
“How about you let me worry about that?”
Then she reached forward, slow and steady, and tapped her knuckle once against the table—just beside his hand. She didn’t take it. Not yet. But made it clear she could.
“We don’t need to believe in hope,” she said. “We just need a plan. It doesn’t have to be killing him. But don’t get discouraged so quickly. These things take time.”
His lips twitched—not quite a smile. But something.
And when he finally nodded, it wasn’t in defeat.
It was in decision.
As the morning started to come to a close, she had just finished the second section of the vampiric treatise, focusing on weaknesses.
On the Weaknesses and Limiting Factors of Vampiric Entities
Compiled and Abstracted from Arcane, Ecclesiastical, and Observational Sources
I. Introduction
This document offers a comprehensive analysis of the traditional, arcane, and theological vulnerabilities associated with vampiric beings. It draws upon data compiled across multiple planes—primarily the Prime Material, Ravenloft, and Toril—and is applicable to standard undead variants categorized as “vampires.” Certain extrapolations may apply to higher-level aberrations (e.g., vampire lords, cursed primogenitors, and variant bloodlines).
Vampirism, as a necroparasitic condition, is governed by both metaphysical and symbolic laws. Accordingly, its limitations are not purely physiological, but tied to deep magical systems, cultural narratives, and divine jurisprudence. These weaknesses are best viewed not as flaws in an organism, but as anchor points for containment and resistance.
II. Symbols of Divine Power
A holy symbol is any material object imbued with the spiritual resonance of a deity. It may be:
Abstract (glyphs, emblems, ceremonial patterns)
Figural (icons, statues, engraved relics)
Consecrated items (e.g., a book of prayer, sanctified relic, or even an article of vestment)
The symbol's efficacy is contingent on the wielder’s spiritual conviction. Mere possession is inert; defiant invocation is required. When presented with active will:
Vampires cannot approach within a 5-foot radius.
Concentration-based effects may falter.
Contact inflicts radiant damage, comparable to holy water.
Marks left by such contact may resist regeneration, forming visible stigmas symbolic of divine judgment.
Clerics should note: misuse of a symbol as a blunt weapon may diminish its spiritual potency, especially when the deity is one of peace, beauty, or contemplation.
III. Reflective Surfaces and Mirrors
Mirrors present a non-magical deterrent due to the metaphysical absence of the vampire’s reflection. This absence is not illusory but a byproduct of their alignment to the Negative Energy Plane.
After the Spellplague and the restructuring of the cosmology, this energy now partially resides in the Shadowfell. Vampires, as negative-energy anchored entities, fail to interact with light in conventional ways—casting no reflections, no shadows, and often lacking auras detectable by divination.
The psychological impact of this is profound. Vampires confronted with a mirror experience momentary cognitive dissonance and recoil instinctively. Effects include:
Brief hesitation (1–6 seconds)
Minor focus disruption
A tendency to destroy the object
While not harmful per se, mirrors are accessible to the average civilian and serve as excellent emergency tools.
IV. Allium Sativum (Common Garlic)
Garlic’s impact on vampires has long been observed. While it does not cause direct damage, it provokes:
Aversion, rash-like responses, dermal irritation
Nausea or blood aversion when ingested by a potential victim
Interference with mistform ability for up to 10 minutes
If consumed by a victim, garlic taints their blood, rendering it foul-tasting and mildly toxic to vampires for up to 12 hours. This can be amplified in compounds like bloodwine, which incorporate garlic to mask its taste. In such cases:
A vampire feeding on tainted blood may suffer magical poisoning
Symptoms include disorientation, reduced strength, and inability to shift form
Bloodwine is strictly outlawed in most vampiric societies.
V. Running Water
Contrary to folklore, vampires may cross running water—by bridge, by boat, by magic. Harm is only inflicted by full submersion in naturally flowing water (rivers, streams, tidal estuaries).
Conditions:
The heart and torso must be submerged
The water must be moving and natural
Partial contact or splashing has no effect
Effects vary by age and power, but even fledgling vampires may survive brief exposure. Mistform, however, cannot cross running water wider than 3 feet. This serves as a natural containment barrier.
Furthermore, burial earth tainted by running water loses its connection to the vampire and becomes unsuitable for restorative slumber.
VI. Sanctified and Hallowed Grounds
Two categories exist:
1. Sanctified Residences
Vampires cannot enter a private dwelling uninvited if the residence is:
Occupied by a living being recognized as a lawful resident
Owned, symbolically or legally, by a mortal
Invitation must be vocal and explicit. Open doors or gestures do not suffice. Once invited, the vampire may return indefinitely unless the property changes hands.
2. Hallowed Sites
These include:
Temples
Shrines
Battlefields of divine importance
Ancestral tombs
Naturally sacred spaces
Such locations reject undeath at a metaphysical level. Not even invitation permits entry. Desecration (often involving blood rituals or destruction of relics) is required to breach such wards.
VII. Wooden Stakes
A wooden stake driven into the heart induces metaphysical stasis, binding the animating necromantic matrix and forcing dormancy. The vampire “dies” in mortal fashion—its soul tethered but suspended.
To ensure permanent death, one must:
Stake the vampire
Decapitate the corpse
Fill the mouth with sanctified material (e.g., holy wafers)
Burn the heart or inter it under hallowed soil
Omission of any step risks the reactivation of the tether.
VIII. Solar Exposure
Sunlight remains the most universally lethal substance to the cursed condition of vampirism. Its properties include:
Radiant energy aligned with positive forces
Symbolism of renewal, purity, and divine judgment
Effects of direct exposure:
Severe radiant damage
Loss of all regenerative and magical abilities
Visible stigmata (burned skin, cracking veins, ocular bleeding)
Survival times vary by age and power:
Vampire Type Estimated Survival Fledgling (<100 yrs) Instant death Mature (100–1,000 yrs) ~1 minute Patriarch (>1,000 yrs) Resistant Ancient vampires may not burn, but remain highly uncomfortable in sunlight. Their powers are still diminished, and solar exposure remains a deterrent.
Progressive Immunity:
Vampires gradually grow resistant to their weaknesses as they age:
Mirrors and garlic become ineffective first
Resistance to divine symbols follows
Running water becomes survivable
Sunlight is the last weakness to fall—only patriarchs and cursed primogenitors are immune
These transitions occur over centuries and are not guaranteed. Each vampire’s bloodline, tether, and curse matrix affect the evolution of their resistances.
IX. Conclusion
The weaknesses of vampires are not merely folkloric relics, but reflections of their unnatural place within the cycle of life and death. They are reminders—structural flaws built into the curse—that even immortality has limits, and that undeath remains a condition held together by myth, magic, and meaning.
Future investigations may include:
The influence of planar origin on specific vulnerabilities (e.g., Shadowfell vs. Negative Plane variants)
Arcane vs. divine anchoring of weaknesses
Theoretical immunization through necromantic ritual or pact-based immunity forging
She set down the quill.
Not with relief. Not with pride. But with a kind of exhausted reverence—like she’d just finished transcribing someone’s last words.
Her fingers ached. The ink on the parchment had long since dried, but something colder lingered beneath it. A residue of truth. The taste of edges no one was meant to touch too closely.
So much of it hadn’t matched what he had told her.
So much had gone further than even he seemed to realize.
She glanced at Astarion—deeply engrossed in his recovery journal and the beginnings of the research dossier, or pretending to be. He had asked her a thousand questions, and she saw how some lines wounded him. Nothing she had written was a lie. Not to her knowledge, at least.
The world was what was hurting him. She tried to convince herself.
And yet—guilt crept in. For what she was planning.
He could never learn about the tunnels. Not the way she intended to use them. He wouldn’t allow it. But she had to. Because that was who she was.
He would hate her for it. Eventually.
She returned to the task. Every word she had inscribed in this section felt like a quiet dissection—not just of vampires, but of him. His condition. His pain. His limits. The things he refused to call fear.
This wasn’t just knowledge. It was weaponry.
The same kind others had used against him.
The same kind he might one day wield against his kin.
And she had catalogued it all with surgical precision.
She should have felt victorious. This was progress—everything she had been trained for. But the silence afterward pressed in like a tomb lid. Final. Weighted. Full of implication.
She closed the folio slowly.
Maybe it was empathy. Maybe guilt. Maybe something darker still.
But for the first time since she began this work, she wondered if knowledge would ever be enough.
Or if what might truly save him…
was not what she wrote—
but what she chose not to.
And yet—that, too, was not who she was.
So she kept reading. Searching.
Another lead emerged. A third tome she had long hunted:
The Necrologium.
Elusive. Cursed. Half-denied by archivists, half-remembered by the dead.
A record of the strongest necromancy practiced since Mystryl’s fall. Said to contain rituals too complex even for lich-lords. A book that didn’t just tell you what was lost—it taught you how to lose it again.
The scribes gave her only a scrap:
“Seek in Silverymoon. Or Myth Drannor.”
No page number. No author. Just a muttered direction, spoken in unison, as though reciting something they no longer dared to read.
Astarion watched her carefully as she copied it down.
And then—they spoke another name.
“Ilyn Toth,” they whispered.
The name rang hollow.
They offered a single piece of information:
“He fled east.”
That was all. No title. No warning. No price.
She didn’t ask who Ilyn was. Only how far east he could have gone—and what he had taken with him.
Because she knew. Deep in her marrow, she knew.
Whatever fragment of the Necrologium survived wasn’t meant to be found.
Not by the living.
Not by the dead.
Not by them.
But Elenya wasn’t searching for safety.
She was searching for answers.
And sometimes, the only way to find them—
was to follow the trail of someone who ran.
When they left for the city records, neither of them spoke.
There was nothing to say—not yet. The air between them was too dense with theories, too thick with the weight of possibility.
The records office—quietly attached to the Arcanum’s lesser library—was rumored to hold genealogies of ancient vampire lineages. It wasn’t urgent intelligence, not technically. But if Cazador’s bloodline carried buried secrets—ties, rivalries, pacts—if someone had broken free before Astarion ever dared to dream of it—then it was worth every risk they had taken just to read a name.
And now here they were, chasing ghosts through brittle pages.
A bloodline.
A name.
They found it in a genealogy ledger filed under The Archive Malevolent, though only a redacted copy survived in the Copper Quill. The book itself was forgettable—dry leather binding, cracked spine, pages that whispered dust when turned. Nothing about it felt remarkable. Just another relic from a world that hadn’t thought anyone would still be reading it.
But deep in its pages, among the bloodlines of Larloch’s earliest servitors, a thread appeared. Fraying, but intact.
A name.
Therys Valtun.
Sired not by Cazador, but by his sire. A true vampire. Still active. Freed in 1275 DR—one year before Cazador seized power through regicide.
Astarion stared at the parchment, his fingers pressed flat against the page as if to hold it in place, as if the ink might vanish.
“Sired by the Martinet. Freed by blood rite. Released from spawnhood in 1275 DR.”
The next line, scrawled in harsher ink and uneven script, looked almost reluctant to exist.
“Cazador Szarr, 1276 DR. Regicide, successor.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered, low and tight.
Elenya looked up from her notes, quill still hovering. “What doesn’t?”
“This.” He tapped the page. “The Martinet—Cazador’s sire—let Therys Valtun drink from him. Made him a true vampire. And then, a year later, Cazador kills him. Takes everything.”
She rose, moving behind him, brow furrowed. “Why would he do that? Let one of his spawn go free? Give him power?”
“Exactly.” His voice was sharp. “It’s nonsense. Vampires don’t do that. A true vampire is competition.”
“Unless…” her voice softened into speculation, “he didn’t let him. Maybe Valtun forced it.”
He shook his head. “To become a true vampire, you must drink from the sire. It isn’t something you steal. You have to be allowed.”
“I read that, too,” she said, thoughtful, “but maybe there was a bargain. Or maybe the sire needed someone unbound. To carry a message. An artifact. A curse.”
Astarion scoffed. “If he needed something passed on, he could have just commanded him.”
“Could he always?” she asked quietly.
He blinked. “What?”
“I mean it. This idea of absolute control—it stinks. It’s too neat. Too convenient. If lords never let go, how do any spawns ever become true vampires? You said it yourself—there’s no incentive.”
“That’s exactly my point,” he said, wary now.
“Then how are there so many true vampires?” she pressed. “Not just the ones made through ritual. The ones who turned. Did they all ask politely? Did every sire agree?”
He hesitated.
“You’re saying… there must be loopholes.”
“I’m saying control isn’t as airtight as you think,” she replied, voice sharpening. “What if it isn’t about permission, but proximity? Access. The assumption is you can’t drink your sire’s blood without consent because you’re bound. But what if that’s the illusion?”
He frowned, furrowing deeper. “You’re suggesting all it takes… is drinking?”
“Yes. The codices hint at it, if you read carefully. The essence, consumed by the right vessel, completes the matrix. No mention of permission. The rest might just be smoke—tradition, fear, obfuscation.”
He went still.
She pushed further. “And look at his rules. Cazador’s rules. Second rule: ‘Thou shalt obey me in all things.’ If obedience is already guaranteed, why waste a rule on it?”
He frowned harder. “Because he liked control?”
“Then the fourth rule: ‘Thou shalt know that thou art mine.’ That’s not control—that’s insecurity. That’s reinforcement. If the leash were absolute, he wouldn’t need to carve it into you like a prayer.”
“…You think he was compensating.”
“I think he was afraid. Afraid of failure. Afraid the leash could snap. Afraid you’d find a way. Maybe the way he once did. And should I remind you—you already broke one of his compulsions.”
The silence between them thickened.
After a long beat, his voice was quiet. “Then how did I never find it? Never see it?”
Her expression softened. “Maybe you weren’t strong enough then. Astarion, you were starved, brutalized. You can’t think clearly when all you know is hunger. And maybe… maybe you weren’t meant to. His first rule—it wasn’t humiliation. It was strategy. By forcing you to feed only on rats, on vermin—on pioneer species—he kept you weak.”
He blinked. “Pioneer species?”
She nodded. “The first organisms to colonize barren ground. The lowest rung of positive energy. Vermin, rats, creatures that resist negative energy best. He fed you scraps of life—enough to keep you breathing, never enough to let you rise.”
His jaw tightened, but not in anger. He looked back down at the name.
Therys Valtun.
A broken link. A survivor. A question mark.
“Do you think he fought it?” he whispered. “Do you think he tore it out of himself?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I think he’s the closest we’ll come to someone who knows.”
The problem was, they had no face for the name.
Only a whisper.
The Crimson Parlour.
A sin-soaked haunt tucked in a crumbling tower of the Mid-Circle. Reserved for vampires. Wine served in veins, not glasses. Breaths taken only by food.
The attendant they asked had been clear:
“Not even other undead enter. Not the Thayans. You want the Parlour? You go unbreathing. Or not at all.”
They left the Archive without another word. The brittle page was copied and sealed, silence clinging to them both. The streets outside the Copper Quill burned with late-morning light, but Elenya barely noticed.
Her mind circled the name again.
Something didn’t add up.
They needed to talk to him.
By the time the necropolis’s sunless light had reached its dullest, bone-bleached peak, Elenya had mapped the breadth of Vaelrith’s influence. It wasn’t vast, but it was layered—vines of obligation twisting through the city in old debts, buried grudges, and subtle pacts cloaked in mundane contracts. She catalogued them with cold efficiency. Contacts were divided into assets, threats, observers. Partnerships were reinforced with carefully worded letters—some enchanted, some not—all tailored to weakness: vanity, ambition, fear. For the rest, she left fragments. Just enough to buy time. Just enough to redirect trouble.
Especially within the Scarlet Enclave—where the Thayan elite cloistered themselves in corridors of crimson marble and incense-thick air. The enclave stood as a grim monument to Warlock’s Crypt’s evolving diplomacy: a walled district where Red Wizards and foreign necromancers maintained permanent embassies and research outposts under Larloch’s watchful tolerance. Strategically placed between vampire estates and lich towers, it served as fulcrum—collaboration and espionage braided together. Slaves, artifacts, and forbidden knowledge flowed in; ritual access and constructs flowed out. Though nominally self-governed, every breath was taxed by the Crypt. Teleportation was planar-locked, limited to the privileged few; the rest paid dearly to use the liches’ hub. Magic was recorded. All power borrowed.
It was strength. It was danger. A source of resentment among vampire lords, suspicion among liches, and naked ambition for Yalthera Voruun. A crucible of rivalry simmering just shy of catastrophe.
After locating the site of the upcoming council, they returned home. Elenya buried herself in Vaelrith’s journals and correspondence, combing for references to the council members, sketching the shape of their dynamics. Anything to distract her.
So much pain in the city.
So little clarity.
The tunnels whispered.
She forced her thoughts away.
One soul at a time.
She focused instead on the tidbit about Cazador. Not a typical vampire. The circumstances of his turning were stranger than they seemed. Perhaps it was time to look again. The familiar would have found him by now.
She had already decided as much earlier in the day.
And she wanted to see the man.
See the monster that had tortured Astarion for sixteen decades
Through eight silent eyes, Elenya watched.
His victim—a young man with dark hair and one torn sleeve—thrashed in a carved, throne-like chair. Screaming now. Or trying to. The sound was wet and warbled, like someone gargling glass.
Cazador crouched before him, slow and graceful as a panther, fangs deep in the man’s throat. He drank deeply. Not quickly. There was no hunger here.
And in the corner—Dalaria.
This is Cazador Szarr? Her mind questioned. The face felt wrong, too small for the monster before her. This was the one who had forged Astarion into what he was, who had stripped him of freedom, of innocence, of everything. The violence he had endured—the rules imposed, the chains of obedience, the cruelty that had been daily life—were born here, in this hall of blood and gold.
Under this cowering worm?
Not a predator. No, this was a rotten being. Undeserving of his own kill. A parasite. Feeding not from hunger but from power stolen. A coward masquerading as sovereign. Hiding and leeching by enslaving his betters.
The Familiar's mandibles clicked in rage, gnashing at the air as though it could chew through his throat.
Elenya steadied herself. Her mind raced: how many nights had Astarion hungered and starved without choice? How many moments had he stared into darkness, wishing for a release that would never come?
She counted on her mind, at least 58,765 nights enduring. And this—this rot in silk—was the cause.
And now, this man, this monster, sat at the center of it all, revelling in violence he did not even work for. Feasting with no hunger, with no need all on someone else's hunt. Being mouthfed, using his spawn as playthings.
Elenya swallowed hard, forcing herself to observe. She needed to remember everything. Every detail, every shadow, every cruel flourish. This was the source. This was the beginning. And somewhere deep in her chest, the ember of anger that had smouldered quietly since the moment she opened the tomb lid began to ignite.
Astarion’s past had a name. A face. And now, finally, she could see it.
Even the fog struggled to contain her Rage that kept rising. Furthered by Dalaria's state. When she looked at her in detail, Elenya's stomach turned. This image will haunt her, she was sure
She curled on stone like a punished hound, eyes distant, skirts dishevelled, reeking of sex and violence and foul blood. Bloodied lips—not fresh. A dead rat stiff with rot at her mouth, ribs cracked, hanging limp in her hands. She drank it in silence. Not once meeting Cazador’s gaze.
Elenya, in her real body far away, flinched. Not from horror.
From confusion as a realization hit her.
Cazador had forbidden his spawn from leaving the palace.
And yet—
This boy was here, and Dalaria had ... How?
Did the vampire rescind his orders to remain within the estate so soon?
She tried to focus her mind and communicate with the familiar.
" Yuba, what is going on ?"
Nothing, she was too far. She was too weak.
" Yuba, can you hear me? Tell me what is going on?."
The familiar voice couldn't reach, but her intent as the spider started skittering on the rafters toward the left side of the hall, where Elenya noticed a little alcove entrance obscured by red curtains. Soon enough, the familiar went behind, and she saw them.
A dead body, and before him, another. And another. They just kept piling.
All fresh, all reeking of sex to the spider sense.
How?
What was going on?
The spider went back into the main room as Cazador hissed in satisfaction, eyes fluttering closed as he drained the man to the last trembling beat of his heart. The body spasmed, still alive, still aware. He let it drop to the floor like meat off the bone.
Dalaria stood, not meeting his gaze, and slipped away like smoke.
The victim was no longer screaming.
A few minutes passed in stillness.
Then the great doors creaked open.
Gody entered—the skeletal servant in half-rotted armour. Jaw slack, eyes empty. He moved like memory more than function, waiting in silence until Cazador finished wiping blood from his mouth with a monogrammed cloth.
“Take it,” Cazador said coolly. “ put it with the rest and once i am done with violet's. process them as usual. And could you find better arrangements for the vintage? The last two were absolutely vile. I know we are in a hurry due to the wretch's disappearance, but must I suffer to this extent?”
Gody bowed, creaking. " Yes, master! I will speak the the chamberlain."
Dragged the still-breathing body by one arm to the alcove, then started cleaning the blood that smeared the marble behind them.
Ten minutes later, another one came.
Victoria. Sharp heels. Painted mouth. Her dress slit high. She led a girl into the room—barefoot, blinking, clearly drugged or enchanted.
Cazador didn’t even look surprised.
He just smiled.
And Elenya, from the rafters through the spider’s borrowed eyes, went still.
How?
The spawn were in house arrest. Neither had left.
But they were bringing prey. marks they just finished entertaining.
She scanned the hall, the wards, the doors. The prey was walking in. Willingly.
Like they’d been told, it was safe.
Like they’d been invited.
And then it clicked.
Not a spell.
A network.
Someone was sending them. Outside the palace.
A human servant? A hired hand? A puppet in the city streets feeding the palace in secret?
Worse than all. She’d been wrong.
About the seduction. About the control.
It wasn’t glamour. It wasn’t magic. Not even the spawn seemed fully rehearsed—no invisible cues, no glazed-over eyes, no enforced movements.
The girl Victoria brought in now sat at the edge of the velvet chair, brushing the sleeve of her dress from dust. Her lips were still wet from Dalaria’s mouth. Her hair mussed. Her breath shallow—but not with fear.
With excitement.
Through the spider’s eyes, Elenya studied her face.
Alert. Eager.
Alive.
Too alive.
Then came the moment that twisted everything sideways.
The girl looked up at Cazador—not trembling, not pleading, but smiling.
“Thank you for the entertainment,” she said brightly. “It was even better than promised.”
Elenya’s pulse stopped.
Then the girl added:
“Shall we start talking business?”
Cazador paused.
And for the briefest instant, Elenya thought he was surprised.
Then—he smiled.
Broad. Beautiful.
Wrong.
He threw another dead rat to Violet and sank his fangs into the girl’s neck with such force that her body arched back like a snapped bowstring. She didn’t scream at first. Just a single, choked gasp.
Then he tore.
It was violence.
The spider trembled in excitement in its perch. Elenya jerked in her own body, nausea burning up her throat.
The girl writhed beneath him, eyes wide in sudden, dawning confusion. She tried to say something—why?—but her throat filled with blood. Her hands clawed at the air, seeking meaning.
Cazador drank until her spine went limp.
Then he dropped her body like trash beside the chair and dabbed the corners of his mouth with the same handkerchief he used for guests.
Business.
Elenya’s thoughts spun.
What business? With whom?
How many had come to him like this?
Willing. Hopeful. Thinking they were being invited into something—
And then fed to the fire the moment they believed themselves safe.
It was a con.
No. A cult.
The sex was a lure, yes, but it wasn't required. Why go through with it? If the marks walked in on their own, what need was there for the spawn to go through that?
Intimacy was a ritual. That much became clear, but to what end? The feeling of power or ownership? No, it doesn't make sense.
Something is not making sense.
Manipulation.
And he was feeding so much.
They were lining up.
But somehow needed to be entertained by the spawn.
Something definitely did not make sense.
Five prey a night. That ought to be too much blood.
Something was off.
He fed so much. That should be too much blood.
Something was very wrong.
Her spiral got interrupted once again by a gentle knock on the door.
"Darling, the council is starting in two hours; you should prepare."
The Red Keep lived up to its name.
Not in the way stone earns its hue from iron deposits or rust. No—this red was deeper. It was the red of fresh blood before air finds it. The red of wounds that haven’t finished bleeding. It clung to the vaulted ceilings and shadowed corners like a stain that refused to be washed clean, no matter how many centuries passed or how many torches they lit.
Elenya, wearing Vaelrith Enmas’s face, crossed the threshold with the practiced grace of a man long used to being watched. The mask did not flicker. The performance did not falter. She had spent hours perfecting his imagined persona. She studied his journal obsessively and repeatedly
And yet.
Under the robes, beneath the high collar and the silver-threaded cloak, her anxiety thudded like war drums in her ears.
Knowing the man's inner thoughts told her nothing about his mannerisms. About his indolent gait, the way his fingers curled when bored or the way his eyes lingered just a little too long when amused. Every movement was a gamble, and she knew it.
The reception hall was made of finely chiselled stone soaked in candlelight and incense, the air heavy with the perfume of myrrh, dust, and something coppery that never quite faded. Shadows loitered in the corners like gossiping servants. Even the mage-lights flickered in odd rhythms, filtered and subdued, as though the torches themselves feared to burn too brightly in this place.
She did not look toward Astarion, though she could sense him at her side. Close. Watchful. They were not touching, not here, but his presence curled around her like a second cloak.
They had studied the people in this room for hours as well. Every figure that moved across its polished floor. Every member of the Scarlet Enclave delegation who would be in attendance and had a relationship with Vaelrith. And now, one by one, they slithered into place in the waiting antechamber.
Two vampire red wizards approached first—smirking, lacquered nobles with fangs like jewelry and hunger masked as charm. They greeted “Vaelrith” with coiled pleasantries, their words veiled in innuendo and old rivalries. Elenya quickly recognized them and Ulvar Eldurik and Pralvos Willeth. Two well-established and well-connected members of the Tam faction are responsible for much of the Thayan diplomatic activities. She met each barb with silken precision, replying in Vaelrith’s voice with the same aloof cruelty she suspected he had reserved for rival minds. Her lips curled just enough to imply amusement. Her eyes didn’t blink.
They both brought with them a small retinue mainly composed of spawns.
The conversation has been very informative as the two welcomed her and declared themselves happy to hear about Vaelrith’s return to the crypt.
The mummy lord arrived later. Rothee Kos was a stern and standoffish individual. Representing the temple's interests in the necropolis. His wrappings were stiff with age and gold, his eyes burning with green fire. The smell of embalming oils clung to him like a curse. He moved like a priest and stared like a predator. His praise dripped with condescension, but Elenya bowed with just the right angle—diplomatic deference, not subservience. It was enough to appease him. Barely.
The mortal necromancer came next. Jhaa Koraz was the only one who kept regular and evolved correspondence with Vaelrith. He was young. Eager. The kind of man who wore cruelty like a borrowed coat, too large and not yet broken in. He hung on every word she offered him, nodding with wild-eyed reverence, desperate to believe proximity to him could make him great, too. Much of his admiration came from the fact that Jhaa was a wizard first and foremost. He saw Vaelrith as a pioneer above anything else. Most of their correspondence consisted of Jhaa reaching out for clarification or questions about one of the spells or magical theory Vaelrith authored.
It was working. All of it. Every step, every phrase, every borrowed quirk. Elenya could feel the council folding around her, their suspicion dulled by familiarity and performance. Each of them saw what they wanted: rivals to needle, idols to worship, a god to flatter. Her mask fed their delusions, and in their hunger, they welcomed it. But then the air changed, and everything pretended collapsed beneath the weight of something that could not be deceived.
They were waiting on the final member, a Thayan warlord named Althan Zught. Vaerlith had had a stern relationship with the man and thought him an oaf. Elenya was glad for that; oafs were easy to deceive. She let her body sink into the role, her tongue weaving silk and snares across the council chamber.
Until the air changed.
The chamber doors—carved bone and bloodwood—opened without sound. Cold drifted in with something terrible on its breath.
She knew before she saw it. I felt the crackle along her spine, the convulsion of fear in her lungs. And then her eyes confirmed it.
A demilich.
It hovered above the ground, a skull crowned in ghost-light, jaw forever locked in its hideous grin. Its sockets held not eyes but distant constellations, moving, watching, devouring. It saw — everything. It drifted in as though the air carried it, not walking, not floating — simply there, unmoored from space. The chamber bent around it, sound dulling, heat bleeding from the walls. Its sockets burned with stars too far and too near all at once, a night sky staring back. It looked, and the world looked with it.
Her breath snagged. Her thoughts scattered. Shit shit shit. She knew what those star-holes meant. Truesight. No lies, no veils, no masks. They were cooked.
I rose at once. Fog coiled from me, around her, through her. She can’t die here. Not this body, not this bodyself I have been given. She is all I have. Fuck that. I pulled on every thread of power not already lashed to the realm, pouring it into her skin, her bones, her outline. I smothered her panic. I swallowed her fear. I ate her emotions before they could betray her face.
The fog thickened until she was muffled even from herself.
But she was brilliant, even in the haze. Even stripped of panic, her mind sprinted forward, sketching impossible exits. A smoke bomb—then Astarion—Dimension Door through the high window—run to the house, grab the children, leave for Daggerford. Her hand was already sliding under her robe, brushing the satchel. She summoned the first weapon her instincts demanded.
I held her steady. She planned; I concealed.
We weren’t ready. No records. No warnings. No mention of this horror. No time.
The others bowed. Even the vampires bent their heads, shadows of pride dissolving before that floating skull. Claws scraped against stone, robes whispered against the floor. The silence of their submission pressed against the chamber walls.
Rothee Kos, the mummy lord, spoke first, "Lord Salthir, welcome. I hope the city agrees with you. Now that we are all gathered, shall we move to the council chamber? There is much to discuss. Unless you require some time to mingle beforehand."
Who the fuck was Salthir? Where was Althan Zught?
Vaelrich, this idiot didn't even keep updated council member lists.
FUCK!
I pressed harder around her, willing the bodyself not to shatter.
You got this. Speak the word. The fog is yours. I am with you, the friend is with you. Call down Bodyself.
The demilich looked around the room, glancing past her. Her grasp on the smoke bomb tightened as she discreetly retrieved it.
After a moment of tense silence, the bejewelled floating skull spoke. In resonance. The voice of dry tombs and broken time. Its question fractured the room.
“ What do you mean, we can start? Where is Vaelrith? I thought we were supposed to have full attendance tonight. he is the only one i haven't met yet? ”
Elenya froze. A single heartbeat stretched too far. Too sharp an inhale. Her silence was a wound in the air, and everyone smelled the blood. Jhaa’s smile faltered. The vampires went still. Even the mummy lord tilted his head, the way hounds do when they hear something breaking. She started reading herself, locking eyes with a stiff Astarion.
The silence was falling toward her like a blade.
One of the vampires turned to her and, with the faintest tilt of amusement, said, “ What do you mean, my lord? Mage Enmas is right here. Maybe you haven't recognized him, it can be a surprising meeting, one of your calibre, still breathing Vaelirth ?”
The demilich replied, cold and final:
“What are you talking about, Ulvar? I see nothing. There is nothing where you point.”
The words landed like a coffin lid slamming shut. Not a question. Not confusion. Judgment. And in that instant, Elenya felt the most terrible thing of all: she was nothing. The truesight had unmade her mask, and the demilich’s voice pronounced it aloud.
They all saw it.
How the demilich looked through her.
And now their eyes pressed in, a cage of silence and teeth, waiting for her to bleed.
Elenya’s pulse drummed in her skull. Every second stretched, brittle and merciless. She had nowhere to hide—only the fogself clutching her edges together, forcing her lungs to move, forcing her face to remain carved in stillness.
The vampire who had spoken, Ulvar, drew back a fraction, his amusement sharpening into something hungrier. “Strange, isn’t it?” he purred, eyes flicking between the demilich and her borrowed form. “I could have sworn he is standing right in front of me right now… someone care to confirm if I haven't lost my mind?”
The mummy lord’s head tilted further, a dry crack of bone. Dust whispered from its wrappings as it leaned forward, nostrils flaring for a scent. " I see and smell him as well him as well"
The words wrapped around her throat like wire. The fogself howled, surging tight, feeding every shred of strength it had into smothering the bodyself’s panic. Don’t break. Don’t breathe too loud. Don’t let them see more.
But the council could already smell it. The weakness. The unravelling.
Ulvar’s grin widened, fangs glinting like knives dipped in wine. “Well then,” he said softly, as though savouring the taste of her dread, “Care to explain, dear Vaelrith ?”
The silence cracked open.
And Astarion—gods, he looked carved from marble, every muscle locked as his eyes met hers. He was telling her without words: run. Her mind worked faster than her mouth. Panic rose—but she swallowed it whole, ground it beneath the heel of discipline. Elenya drew herself up. " I have no idea what he is talking about. I am right here. I don't know what I am supposed to explain."
The words sounded off tune even to her, but she steeled herself. Put on the mask of rightful indignation.
Jhaa’s painted smile was gone now, his lips thinning to nothing. He had gone perfectly still, like a spider about to strike, then his eyes shimmered. Something in him appeared to relax before he added, " Well, whatever it is, it is not an illusion. I detect no active magic on Mage Enmas."
The demilich spoke angrily at that, declaring, "What is happening here? Is this some sort of prank? How could he be here and still escape my gaze? Shall I remind you all that I have truesight?"
The demilich’s words rattled the chamber like iron bars struck with a hammer. The lich-fire in its eyes guttered and flared, casting fractured light across the council table.
Elenya forced her breath even, though every instinct screamed at her to shatter—flee, fight, anything but stand. “Truesight is not infallible,” she said, voice carefully measured. “Perhaps he should question his own gaze before you all question my existence.”
The gamble left the words hanging in the air like poisoned daggers.
For an instant, silence. Then the vampires stirred—shifts of cloaks, the subtle scrape of chairs. Ulvar laughed, soft and sharp, as though the tension were a wine he had been waiting to drink.
“Careful,” Ulvar murmured, eyes fixed on her. “It takes a bold soul to accuse a demilich of blindness.”
Jhaa did not laugh. He leaned forward, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His eyes, painted with lacquered shadow, glittered with an uncanny stillness. “And yet…” His voice was silk dragged across broken glass. “I see him. I hear him. Whatever else is happening, he is Mage Enmas. If there is a discrepancy, it lies not with his words, but in the contradiction between the lord’s sight and ours.”
Ulvar, ever the provocateur, prowled closer. The scent of spice and ash clung to him, his fangs flashing as he reached out and brushed the air where Elenya stood. His fingers touched her shoulder with deliberate insolence. “There is certainly a body here, my lord,” he drawled, “shaped exactly like Mage Enmas, smelling of his obnoxious cologne. No offence.”
“None taken,” Elenya answered smoothly, hand still coiled like a viper around the smoke bomb hidden in her satchel. Her smile was small, precise. “I am not a fan of yours either.”
A ripple of amusement broke the tension, but Rothee Kos smothered it. The mummy lord shifted, his stiff wrappings rasping like sandpaper, green fire smouldering in his hollow gaze. “Contradiction breeds doubt,” he croaked. “Doubt breeds openings. I would know which of you lies.”
The skull spun lazily, but its voice cracked the silence like a whip. “How dare you, Kos! Do not test me. Nothing escapes my gaze. Nothing. If this is some kind of jest, I will strip the marrow from all of your bones.”
Pralvos Willeth leaned forward, his sardonic smile taut as a garrote. “I assure you, Lord Salthir, this is no jest. We all see Vaelrith’s mage quite clearly. He sees us, speaks to us, and bleeds like the rest of us. He is no phantom.”
Kos rasped, “Or a shapeshifter. Wearing another’s skin.”
The demilich hissed, star-fires flaring. “Then I would see the truth beneath. But there is nothing. Worse. This one has found a way to cloak himself from truesight.”
The air contracted. The chamber felt smaller, the torches guttering in unseen wind. The vampires’ eyes gleamed with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with blood. Ulvar’s smile sharpened, fangs catching the light.
Astarion hadn’t moved. His stillness was a storm’s silence before the break, every line of him coiled, waiting.
Elenya felt the line draw taut around her throat. One word too soft, one mask too slow, and she was undone.
Here goes nothing.
“Wait!” she snapped, Vaelrith’s haughty voice slicing through the silence. “He cannot hear me, either?”
Ulvar repeated the question aloud. The demilich’s reply came swift, cold, final: “No.”
“Bloody hells,” Elenya muttered, exasperation laced with cutting scorn. She threw her hands up in performative disbelief. “Of course. I should have expected this. Truesight always was cursed with a… unique perspective. My apologies, colleagues. Our lord simply cannot perceive me.”
The silence deepened, suspicion thick as smoke. But she didn’t let it curdle. With a sharp pivot, she turned to Pralvos, arching one brow. “Ask him if he can see my clothes.”
Pralvos’s smile stretched wider, enjoying the theatre. He posed the question in mocking velvet tones.
The answer came hissing: “No. Nothing.”
Perfect.
With the deliberate slowness of a man too important to be hurried, Elenya unclasped her cloak and let it fall. Embroidered silk whispered against itself as it dropped, landing in a glimmering heap at her feet. And the moment it left her fingers—visible.
Every head turned. Even Rothee Kos creaked forward, green fire flaring, as if sniffing for truth in the sight of empty cloth.
The demilich drifted nearer, sockets blazing. “How…? This fabric did not exist a heartbeat ago. It appeared from nowhere.”
Murmurs rippled like cracks in stone. Jhaa gasped aloud, half-jumping on the spot. “By the gods—you did it. You actually did it. I thought you still needed the Nectolith diagrams!”
Thank every devil, god, and demon for this insufferable fanboy.
But Ulvar’s amusement curdled, fangs bared in suspicion. His voice dropped to a hiss as he stalked nearer. “What is he talking about, Enmas? Answer. Now.”
The air went razor-thin.
Every gaze fixed on her.
And in that instant, she knew: her next words would decide whether she walked out of this chamber at all.
Elenya arched one brow, wearing the mask of lofty irritation as if this interrogation were beneath her. “Well, there you have it. I’m not here. Not really. Or not entirely.” Her voice carried that deliberate note of disdain Vaelrith always had when forced to explain himself. “Most of you know I was pursuing… what’s the word… more esoteric sources of immortality, yes? Something sustainable. Less dependent on dwindling resources.”
She let the pause stretch, savouring the hook before she cast the line. “One of my paths was siphoning from the outer planes directly. Another—Outer Planar entities. That’s where the Nectolith diagrams came in. But—” she dipped her hand into the satchel, casual as though drawing out an after-dinner mint, and produced the folio sketch.
A ripple of unease moved through the chamber as she set the parchment flat on the table. Three overlapping circles formed a gate: mortal, astral, and something unlabeled. At the center, not a sigil, not a rune—only a spiral of eyes, all screaming.
Pralvos’s sneer faltered. His voice cracked sharply. “Surely you haven’t—”
Kos’s brow furrowed, wrappings creaking. “Hasn’t what? What is this?”
It was Jhaa, of course, who burst first, the eager student unable to stop himself. His voice carried the tremor of both terror and awe. “A planar gate to the Far Realm. You— you’re siphoning the Far Realm to maintain immortality?”
Gasps. Whispers. Hunger.
Ulvar, ever sharp, cut in coldly. “Impossible. The Far Realm is chaos incarnate. Wild magic that devours form and mind alike. Even if he had access, that doesn’t explain why truesight cannot see him.”
Elenya tilted her head, and for a moment, she almost smiled. “Thank you for the enthusiasm. But if you’ll allow me to finish—” She tapped the parchment once, talon-sharp, then leaned back with effortless disdain.
“I could not siphon Far Realm energy here. Believe me, I tried. No. I did the opposite. Transference. One of my more ambitious experiments.” She said it like she was discussing wine pairings. “I fused with the Far Realm itself. My essence—lodged there. What you see is a projection, not a body. Much like Abeloth, much like the aberrations born there. In that timeless place, my essence remains untouched, eternal. This projection?” She gestured lazily to her form. “It can be destroyed. And in a few days, Iwill simply send another. As long as my true self remains there… I am immortal.”
A quiet shudder rolled through the chamber.
She sighed, as though bored by their ignorance. “The ritual left me in liminal stasis. Between. Thus, True Sight perceives nothing. Not illusion. Not disguise. Absence.” She let her gaze sweep across the gathered council. “What you see is an echo. A tether. A shadow cast from eternity itself.”
It was a lie. A wild, unhinged lie.
But she said it with such unshaken, aristocratic boredom—such dripping irritation at being questioned—that the silence bent beneath it.
They wanted to believe.
But wanting was not enough.
Kos leaned forward, his voice a rasp like sand through a tomb. “This makes no sense. Why would True Sight not pierce a psionic echo?”
Before she could frame an answer, Jhaa nearly stumbled over his own eagerness to reply, desperate to prove himself useful.
“With respect, lord Kos—aberrations here wield psionics, yes, but nothing in the texts says the Far Realm itself is bound to psionics. Its resonance is… undefined. It bends perception at its root. Sight, thought, time—none of it applies.”
Elenya inclined her head, letting the boy’s frenzy bolster her lie. “Just so.”
Then Pralvos spoke—cold, sudden, precise. His voice cut through the chamber like the edge of a scalpel. “That is not what surprises me. What surprises me is how your mind survived the plane of madness. How you returned with form and will intact. The Far Realm does not let mortals sip from its rivers without… changing them. How did you maintain your sanity in the madness? How are you not already some gruesome monsters?”
The air thickened. This was it. The moment that would make or break the mask. Her eyes flicked to Astarion. He hadn’t moved, not an inch—but gods, that smile. Wicked, feral, sharp as a blade freshly honed. His scarlet eyes glittered like ruby garnets in a mask, and she could almost hear the purr in her mind, curling through her thoughts like silk.
Do your worst, darling. Show me the performance of a lifetime.
Elenya drew in a slow breath. Straightened. Her lips curled into a cold, alien smile, too wide, a grin stretched on the edge of snapping.
Dangerous insanity.
She had a mask for that.
She remembered all of Ethos' tirades about the truth of the multiverse.
She remembered his endless monologues.
I summoned the memory fragment from the Fogrealm and started.
We fused.
Because dread needed a soul to land it.
“Maintain my sanity?” we whispered, voice thin and trembling—before erupting into a jagged, choking cackle that clawed up the walls. “Why in all the Hells would I want to do that?”
The chamber froze.
Our laughter bent upward, high and piercing, before collapsing into a guttural rasp, our two voices grinding through the same throat. We slammed our hand flat against the diagram, nails dragging across parchment until the spiral of eyes seemed to hum.
“Sanity is a cage! Rails to your thoughts, dear Pavlos,” we hissed, words crackling with manic joy. “Rules. Chains. A locked door that keeps you small, keeps you ignorant, keeps you blind. But the moment you step outside—.” We snapped her head upward, eyes blazing, pupils blown wide. “—Oh, the things that see you. The things that teach you.”
The fog bled from our robes in long, shivering tendrils. They didn’t drift like smoke; they twitched, coiled, reached. One wrapped the leg of a chair and pulled tight until the wood groaned. Another traced the air, curling toward the diagram as if answering our touch.
We leaned forward, smile feral, voice rising to a manic crescendo. Scarifications in the form of eyes started to ripple across her skin and move in a hypnotic pattern.
“You call it madness?” Her laughter cracked, shrill enough to make ears ache. “ I call it True enlightenment. A gruesome monster, oh, how funny and quaint. We are every monster. The eye that watches itself. The thought that thinks you. I am the crack in the mirror that keeps reflecting when the mirror’s already gone.”
Our Gaze darted to Kos, unblinking, pupils vibrating in their sockets. “Do you know what they whisper in the dark between the black hand wards? They whisper the names no sane tongue can hold since he ascended. They whisper of the rot in your god past, the hunger contained in the Weave, the thin skin of the spells stretched over an abyss of unsatiated magic. One that wants only to eat you alive.”
The tendrils of fog thickened, writhing now like veins under skin, like something alive was pressing against our form from the inside. our voice dropped low, intimate, intimate enough to crawl down the spine:
“I didn’t survive the Far Realm, Pavlos. I did not try to. I drowned in it. I let it drink me, tear me, break me into pieces until each shard grew teeth. I came back not sane. But that word does not mean the same to my kind as it does to yours. Being insane is to be, not whole, but infinite.”
our laughter came again—high, shuddering, cracking into sobs halfway before snapping back into a grin. We slammed our palm flat on the diagram, and the spiral of eyes seemed to shiver as if it had always been waiting for our touch.
“But worry not, dear colleagues,” we hissed, words overlapping like a chorus. “In breaking, In dying—”
Our head tilted, neck twisting too far. The fog curled tighter, hungry.
“—I saw.”
The silence that followed was unbearable. No one breathed. Jhaa trembled, wide-eyed, pupils dilated as if staring into revelation. Kos’s green flames guttered low, faltering for the first time. Ulvar grinned like a beast at blood, but his fingers twitched at his side, as if ready to tear.
"Now is the interrogation over, or do you all wish to see as well?"
The necromancer stepped closer, hands fluttering with questions. The mummy lord didn’t challenge her—only watched with new, wary respect. Not entirely deceived. But wary.
Ulvar explained the whole ordeal to the demilich, who stood confused throughout the whole thing. The skull drifted and attempted to study the area where it thought Vaelrith was standing.
Maniacal laughter escaped us. The whole situation was ridiculous.
She thanked me as we were unfusing, and when I stepped back into the Fogrealm, I found it almost in shambles. I took too much magic with me.
Worth it.
Her laugh stopped abruptly. And she saw the masked terror on some faces.
And that was that.
The spell held.
By sheer... she didn't know what.
That was close.
Way too close.
She looked at Astarion and saw something that looked like absolute delight. And something else, something akin to ... hunger?
Nonetheless, the council did not eject her. No one unsheathed a blade or spell slung. Except for the occasional divination spell. And the continued complaints of the hovering skull about the impracticality of the whole situation. And Elenya—beneath Vaelrith’s skin—stood straighter than she ever had, the lie resting easy on her shoulders.
She had just met a demilich.
And survived.
Elenya gestured toward Astarion—who had said nothing, done nothing, but whose presence burned like a brand at her side.
“He will interpret for any of you who need me voiced. You’ll find his memory impeccable.”
"You said he was from the boneyard. How do you expect us to trust your associate with Thayan affairs?" Pavlos answered.
" I don't really care whether he comes in or not. It's up to you all, really. I just figured none of you would want to spend the evening repeating what I am saying to facilitate the meeting. Maybe you can assign the task to one of your retinue." She glanced around toward the other spawns. "None of what is going to be said would be a surprise to him either way."
The mummy lord’s voice broke across the chamber like sand tearing against stone. “How does a mere spawn from the Underdark know of Thay’s business?”
The words weren’t a question. They were a hex.
Elenya—cloaked in Vaelrith’s skin, spine straight, face carved from noble disdain—did not turn. Did not blink. Did not betray the sharp twist that coiled low in her gut at the word spawn, flung like spittle.
But she felt Astarion flinch beside her, just barely. Just enough. Every eye in the council chamber turned toward him.
Curious. Measuring.
Predatory.
For one breathless moment, the air felt brittle with tension—like a mirror stretched too tight, threatening to shatter. The vampires leaned in, the necromancer froze mid-note, and the demilich’s deathlight gaze burned in their direction, hollow and ancient.
Elenya did not hesitate.
Her voice slid into the stillness like a blade through silk—sharp, dismissive, just amused enough to wound.
“That you would need to ask the lord's apprentice. From my understanding, many forces are interested in the ring's completion,” she said, lazily, like it should have been obvious. “This one remains close to the lord’s apprentice. Surely you remember the boy—before his regency, before his taste for ceremony dulled his curiosity. My companion accompanied him in the Mausoleum City more than once. He has heard what others were not meant to. At least that's what I have been told when he was assigned to me.”
She let the pause linger, gaze sweeping across the table. Cool. Indifferent.
Then Palvos, still draped in tattered velvet and boredom, tilted his head, a smile tugging at lips far too red to be natural.
“Mmm. True enough,” he purred. “The apprentice did love to wander before he was muzzled by power. I recall whispers that he haunted the Boneyard often before your master decided to close the gates spawn.” His eyes flicked toward Astarion with calculated malice, lips twitching wider. " Maybe this gesture may showcase to you the benefit of collaboration."
Ulvar spoke decisively, “Let the spawn in. We are not discussing any knowledge that anyone wouldn't be able to purchase in the city with mere soulcoin. And I am not spending the evening parroting Vaelrith. ” A beat. “Better to let handsome here speak his words than force one of us to play courier.”
Jhaa, eyes still shining with admiration, bobbed his head like an eager puppet.
Only the mummy lord remained still.
Unyielding.
But here, numbers mattered. And Elenya could feel it—subtle, but decisive. The tide had turned.
“Then it’s settled,” she said simply. “My associate will stay.”
Astarion said nothing. Smart. The performance didn’t need embellishment. His silence was part of it—part of her illusion, part of the structure she’d built around them both.
But beneath the effortless exterior, Elenya’s thoughts roiled.
She had watched the mummy’s eyes. Had measured the intent behind it, the weight it carried in this place.
He was not convinced.
This one was dangerous.
Too insightful.
She saw him cast something twice ,and she recognized the spell.
Divination.
They moved on.
But they were onto them.
Affairs of the Enclave unfolded like an autopsy—ritual inventories, caravan interceptions, which settlements had been stripped for their arcane potential, which failed experiments could be repurposed. The mummy spoke of delaying ceremorphosis through Netherese weaving. A vampire raised a languid hand and inquired about cross-breeding. Disappointment. Collapse. Flesh resisted alteration.
Always flesh.
Always collapse.
Always spawn.
Elenya kept her posture elegant, voice precise. She responded to questions with clipped, strategic efficiency—discussing soul-funnelling, schematics, power displacement rituals for the Dread Ring—all while feeding Astarion just enough phrasing to carry to the demilich.
Because, of course, the demilich would not speak to her. Could not see her.
She had prepared for that. Scripted contingencies. Invented spells that didn’t exist. Crafted a lie about partial transference so absurd it sounded true.
And she’d done it all without blinking.
But now, as she leaned into the next silence, she watched him.
Astarion. Perched beside the floating skull, too still, too quiet, too poised.
His role here was an insult disguised as utility.
The spawn. The interpreter. The shade beside the voice.
He bore it.
Because she had asked him to.
And that knowledge settled heavily against her heart.
Gods help her—he bore it so well.
She glanced at the parchment near her elbow, covered in the necromancer’s frantic notes.
Then let her gaze slide back to Astarion.
And underneath the illusion, the lies, the mask of a dead man long erased from history—something sharp and tender bloomed in her chest.
Not pity.
Not guilt.
But something dangerous.
Something she could not afford—not here, not now—but which whispered nonetheless, soft and persistent:
If I can convince them… how easily could I convince him?
And if he ever realized what she was truly capable of—
Would he still choose to follow?
Or would he run?
Each improvisation sharpened into authority. Each bluff was woven so tightly that it became indistinguishable from the truth. And the others—vampire, mummy, mortal—listened. They believed.
For now.
The council started,
The council chamber of the Red Keep was full for the first time in decades. Every seat at the long obsidian table was occupied. Vampires draped in finery that had outlived dynasties. A mummy lord stiff in ancient linens, its jewelled headdress glowing faintly with infernal glyphs. The necromancer—still mortal, still sweating—sitting a little too upright as though posture could hurry his ascent to lichdom. And, of course, the skull beside me, radiating disdain.
Elenya, bearing the flawless mask of Vaelrith Enmas, sat at the center of that dread congregation as though she’d always belonged. Her posture was regal, one gloved hand resting idly on the lacquered arm of her chair, the other poised just beside a stack of carefully prepared arcane scrolls. She didn't speak often—yet when she did, the room bent to listen.
Across from her, Astarion stood beside the demilich’s levitating skull, acting as her translator. A calculated choice—half honour, half insult. The skull clicked and turned in slow, ponderous rotations, its eyes aglow with sickly embers. The rest of the chamber had grown used to his presence, but Elenya caught the sideways glances—the careful distaste disguised as protocol.
The first hour was devoted to the kind of politicking most would loathe: schedules, rotations, and availability. Who would be present for which rituals, who would travel to Thay for summons, who would provide proxies when their corpses grew inconveniently fragile. Elenya—wearing Vaelrith’s face with unflappable composure—sat through it all with practiced ease, feigning the proper blend of arrogance and disinterest.
Then the true business began.
“Orders from Thay,” rasped the Kos, his voice like a desert storm. “The priority is unchanged. Accelerate all acquisition of arcana related to soul funnelling. The experiments continue with promise. The Inner Ring’s cooperation has been… valuable.”
The necromancer perked up, hungry. “Progress?”
“Specimens prove more pliable under Netherese magical affluence,” the mummy intoned. “Two survived initial trials with remarkable adaptation. We have managed to delay ceremorphosis to nearly a month.”
A ripple of satisfaction passed among the council, though Pavlos raised a languid hand. “What about the large-scale cross-breeding? That was what we were promised, wasn't it?”
The mummy lord’s wrappings crackled as his shoulders shifted. “Disappointing. Less viable than predicted. Flesh resists alteration. The halfbreed collapses too quickly. It seems the Vampiric illithids from the shadowfell were the only viable option for now. ”
“Vaelrith,” purred Ulvar, turning to Elenya. “Your spells for the Dread Ring. We expected updates.”
Elenya inclined her head slightly, cool as moonlight. “They are in progress. But without full structural schematics of the rings, precise calibration is… time-consuming. That said, I have had several breakthroughs that may soon bear fruit.”
The vampire’s brow arched. “Schematics? The detailed plans of the fortress were sent to your Tower last fortnight.”
Elenya didn’t blink. “And I was not there at that time. If they were delivered in my absence, then indeed, it will not be long now.”
They moved on. Affairs of the Enclave unfolded in their grotesque splendour. Ritual inventories. Which villages had been harvested for test subjects? Which caravans had been intercepted? A question of how best to hide their growing resource demands from the Watchers beyond the Keep.
They left the council room and decided to mingle a bit at the informal reception.
The Thayan elite cloistered themselves in corridors of crimson marble and incense-thick air. The whole enclave stands as a grim testament to Warlock’s Crypt’s evolving diplomacy—a walled district where Thayan Red Wizards and foreign necromancers maintain permanent embassies and research outposts under Larloch’s watchful tolerance. Strategically located between vampire estates and lich towers, it facilitates uneasy collaboration, monitored trade, and sanctioned arcane experiments. The enclave fuels the city's undead economy, bringing in many slaves, artifacts, and dark knowledge in exchange for access to forbidden rituals and constructs. Though nominally self-governed, its every breath is taxed by Warlock’s Crypt—teleportation is planar-locked, limited to only a few, the rest needing to pay to use the lich's own teleportation hub. Magic is recorded, and all power is borrowed. It is a double-edged presence: a source of strength and a growing concern. Some vampire lords resent Thayan arrogance, liches whisper of espionage, and Yalthera Voruun, ever ambitious, sees it as a fulcrum for power. In short, the enclave is a volatile crucible where diplomacy, rivalry, and necromancy simmer just shy of catastrophe.
The mages and thayan there moved like gliding knives, draped in silk, smugness, and secrets, their smiles brittle as bone dust. They tilted their heads at her with veiled suspicion, heads cocked like carrion birds. They had barely survived the council, and the rumour of Vaelrith's ascension to an immortal life and Far Realm ties rippled through the circle. Elenya could feel it in the way their gazes lingered too long. The shift in demeanour didn’t go unnoticed by everyone. She was softer now, where Vaelrith had been sharp enough to cut for sport. More decisive—where he had been circuitous, a man who delighted in arcane tangents and intellectual indulgences. She’d tightened him. Polished the shell. Refined him into something leaner.
It unsettled them.
So she met their stares with clipped, clinical explanations and a tinge of derranged madness. Spoke of sudden breakthroughs. Of Profound existential and cognitive changes, due to the recent experimentation. Some truth appeared to him, expanding his understanding. She said it all with the detached reverence of a scholar who had glimpsed something just beyond mortal comprehension—enough brilliance to excuse the tremor in personality. Enough madness to excuse the change in cadence.
They bought it. Or chose to.
Truth was, no one really knew Vaelrith Enmas. Not well. Not enough to know what he sounded like when excited—or afraid or ascended from mortality. He had burned every bridge and bartered every allegiance, until only myths clung to his name like mould on tomb walls.
The talks spread like wildfire. Rumours of his new immortality. Of turning himself into a Far Realm Magic-eating construct bound to a now unkillable flesh cloaked from true sight, travelled to the confines of the keep. Talks of rituals so volatile they seared his mind, turning him to a magical aberration and erasing him from the weave reach multiplied. Aided mainly by Jhaa's fervour. All this added to his mystic and increased exponentially his demand amongst the Thayan. Immortality unbound to undeath was something particularly interesting to the necromancers, who all saw what Larloch had made of some of the most powerful undead in the land.
Puppets.
Furthermore, a certain type of respect, inconsistent with what Vaelrith reported in his journals, appeared in most interactions. It seems no one wanted to provoke whatever he had become.
Too unpredictable. Too messy.
And if some suspicion lingered behind narrowed eyes or failing scryings, it didn’t dare take root. Paranoia was common currency among the Red Wizards. A little madness was expected. A little secrecy was required. All she had to do was be stranger than the truth—and quieter than the danger.
She was good.
Not perfect—but close. Fast, surgical, and terrifyingly precise.
She has always been crawling between monsters.
She was even better at becoming someone else. She wielded identity like a knife, knowing exactly where to cut and where to conceal the scar. She deflected scrutiny with just enough arrogance to feel authentic—an academic too deep in his own brilliance to care for the eyes of lesser minds. A newly anointed monster who rose beyond the herd. She leaned into aloofness when needed, let irritation bubble up in the right rooms. And when all else failed, she drowned them in psychotic abstraction and magical workings that her perfect memory supplied from his notes—threads of theory knotted in obscure runes and constructs that left even veteran necromancers blinking.
Vaelrith has been a frontiere mage through and through.
That's why he was allowed to climb so high in the Thayan hierarchy while refusing to join the undead. Not because he was liked or powerful. But, because he was an innovative genius. Many could have done his research, but few would have bothered. She had that in common with him. And the reaction of his peers reminded her of those of the remaining Avowed.
She could play that role. The outlier arrogant genius.
She played it good.
Not flawless.
But close enough to pass.
Close enough to keep the doors open.
Close enough to make this place theirs.
For now.
They kept gathering intel. Banking favours carefully. Surgically. Never more than the moment would allow.
She even procured what she could—anatomical models of vampire physiology, brittle old notes on blood-curse variances, several banite ritual diagrams annotated in crabbed, ink-bled margins. Also, particular details on an old banite spell rumoured to be able to create a vampire called undeath after death. Not usable since the spellplague, but could give her some insight into the nature of true vampirism itself. She also gathered more details, treatises, the sort of things necromancers shared when they thought they were being generous—or showing off.
Nothing truly groundbreaking. But a start.
The real work—the dangerous work—was kept behind locked grimoires and soul-sealed wards. She knew better than to ask.
Still, she planted seeds.
Questions laced with professional curiosity. Praise wrapped in mild critique. She referenced names that didn’t exist and theories that hadn’t yet been disproved, weaving just enough possibility into her inquiries to spark interest. Make them want to impress her. She asked more questions about other information she required. Mainly regarding those blasted dread rings. Tam's ascension and the illithids' experiments.
When they offered to follow up by sending, she declined smoothly.
Cited a “mindblank effect” granted to Vaelrith “after the rite, for security purposes,” then insisted, with an almost bored cadence, that all future correspondence be delivered via physical missive to the Red Wizard’s tower. She even offered to check the box herself—periodically.
They nodded. Approved. Admired her caution.
Paranoia, after all, was the common dialect in here. And she spoke it fluently.
Astarion helped greatly in this endeavour. For how transparent he had seemed when targeting her. She could see now the deadliness of his charm when wielded against others. His magnetism appeared to be almost otherworldly. He knew what to say, how, and when to open just about any door and distract just about any eyes.
" I am everyone's preference," he had said not but one week ago.
She had rolled her eyes then thinking him arrogant. But now she could see it for herself, no one seemed able to really resist him. Or more accurately, no one seemed interested in trying. Quickly enough, he had ingratiated himself with half the damn thayan they met. And the rest had just yet to talk to him.
It was a good thing she didn’t want. If she did, he would have played her strings like a puppet.
Like he didn’t already, I supplied.
By the end of the night, she and Astarion had moved through the Warlock’s Crypt with surgical precision. They cancelled or completed every obligation of Vaelrith Enmas still lingering in the Enclave ledgers. Left only the matter of the Nectolith trade. The corpse she wore now cast no shadow. No one would look for him. No one would question her.
Or so they thought.