Adria, the Red Witch's page

Cantrips
Arcane Mark, Bleed, Dancing Lights, Daze, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Guidance, Light, Mending, Message, Putrefy Food and Drink, Read Magic, Resistance, Spark, Stabilize, Touch of Fatigue

1st Level Spells
Burning Hands, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Cure Light Wounds, Mage Armor, Sleep, Summon Monster I

Few people could truthfully claim to having been born thrice, but were she inclined to speak of such matters, the young woman who calls herself Adria Flamehart could put forth a strong case. A slender lass of perhaps twenty-five summers – with straight, raven-colored hair worn to her shoulders and sharp, steel-gray eyes – she has spent most of her life in and around the village of Blackbriar, a small farming community in western Talingarde, just beyond the southern reaches of the Caer Bryr forest. Her story begins, as one might expect, with her parents.

Alina Mistwalker was a well-known figure amongst the poorer denizens of the community, serving the needy as a midwife and apothecary. There had always been some rumors as to the source of her healing touch, murmurs of witchcraft and pacts with the dark forces, but such had been the way with her mother and grandmother before her – the latter having been an Iraen exile from deep within the Caer Bryr, well-versed in the strange magicks of her people and quick to use them for the benefit of her Talirean neighbors. She was outwardly a quiet and unassuming woman and, though they little understood her talents, generations of good-will had taught the people of Blackbriar not to pry too deeply into her family's affairs.

This was, of course, exactly as she desired matters, for Alina led a double life. She was indeed a witch, and a far more powerful one than she let on, but her darker secret was a long-standing affiliation with the cult of Asmodeus. Cunning and ambitious, with a witty, disarming charm utterly belied by her public face and a thirst for power in all of its varied forms, she had spent years deeply involved in a vast array of subtle plots and had amassed an arsenal of covert influence that could have laid low more than a few prominent figures in Talingarde, had she desired to unleash it all at once.

The arrival of Loras Flamehart marked the beginning of the end for Alina's tangled web – though he himself had little to do with it – for with his arrival came news of the death of King Markadian III and the ascension of his nephew to the throne of Talingarde. A thin, fiery-haired man hailing from Marathyn, Loras was a somewhat eccentric scholar of mathematics and planar cosmology from a prominent university in the Talirean capital, who came out west looking for little more than a quiet countryside homestead where he could focus on his work. Within three months of settling down on the outskirts of Blackbriar, a strange courtship had begun between himself and Alina Mistwalker, leading to matrimony not long afterward and the birth of their daughter Adria a few of years later.

By the time Adria was four, the Asmodean Purges of King Markadian IV had been underway for some time, so it was little surprise to the townsfolk when a band of Mitran inquisitors marched into Blackbriar and began asking questions and making arrests. The vast majority of the tribunals held in the village square were relatively minor affairs, rooting out mundane thieves and murderers rather than the supposedly systemic cancer that was the cult of Asmodeus, yet when they came for Alina Flamehart, the inquisitors came prepared for war.

Bound and gagged, with dozens of swordhands ready to strike her down at the slightest provocation, she was taken away to the keep of the local lord, which the inquisition had commandeered as its base of operations in the region, and held for weeks while undergoing regular sessions of interrogation and torture. What information, if any, they managed to extract from her during this time has never been revealed in public, but when Alina was brought forth again to face the tribunal, the case levied against her was damning beyond question. Names and dates were given, evidence and testimony laid bare for all to see, incontrovertible proof of countless misdeeds that had led, both directly and indirectly, to the ruination and deaths of dozens of individuals from all walks of life: from knights and nobles brought low by scandal, to wandering peasants who vanished in the night.

Her hands had been stained with so much blood, in metaphor if not in reality, that her neighbors named her the “Red Witch” and, by the time they sent her to the pyre, no one save her husband and daughter shed any tears for her. Yet for all their preparation and all their evidence, the Mitrans had little practical understanding of the nature of her abilites and, consequently, they underestimated Alina Flamehart. The tradition of Iraen witchcraft passed down from mother to daughter was one that tied the witch inseparably to her familiar, and the dark-scaled forest serpent that served her in that capacity had escaped capture. Even as the young Adria watched her mother die screaming in the conflagration, the clever creature opened itself up as a vessel for its master, drawing her soul to itself and ensuring that, though her body was reduced to ash, the Red Witch of Blackbriar did not die that day.

After being questioned extensively by the inquisitors over his level of knowledge and involvement in his late wife's secret affairs, Loras Flamehart was eventually cleared and attempted to move past the tragedy by withdrawing ever more deeply into his work. Still somewhat ostracized by the community at large, the family kept to themselves as much as possible and, over the next six years, Adria grew into a seemingly normal child – endlessly curious, occasionally mischievous – though she was raised more by a live-in maid than by her father, save when it came to matters of her studies, which he took charge of himself. When she was ten, however, Adria's father began work on what might have been his magnum opus, wrapping himself so fully in theories and equations for extended periods that the two rarely came into contact. It was during this time that the serpent reappeared.

Alina had spent the intervening years desperately seeking a means of regaining a human form, as life trapped within the body of her familiar had quickly lost its charm. She could leave the serpent's body for a time, allowing her to possess another creature or person and make use of their body temporarily, but she desired a more permanent solution. Traveling deep into the Caer Bryr, Alina had communed with witches and druids hidden in the forest's depths, slowly devising a ritual to achieve that end and ultimately determining that, for the greatest chance of success, she would need a vessel with whom she shared blood-ties. With no siblings and parents that had been dead for well over a decade, that left only one option.

Late one night, when everyone else in the household was asleep, Alina slithered into her daughter's bedroom and spoke to her. The girl was frightened at first, but also intrigued, and over the course of several visitations grew to trust the serpent – by the time she offered to teach her daughter magic, Adria was only too willing to agree. The witch was awaiting a particular conjunction of the stars, and would need an assistant to help prepare her ritual when the time ultimately came, and so for the better part of two years, the young girl studied the foundational principles of witchcraft at night, her lessons held in secret and slowly paced to ensure that she did not neglect her other duties and draw unwanted attention.

Eventually, however, the appointed night arrived. On the serpent's urging, Adria sneaked out of the house after seemingly retiring to her room for the night, and followed her mother into the Caer Bryr, stopping at a clearing a little over a mile inside. Her part in the ritual was short and simple and she performed it eagerly, but when Alina brought the ceremony to its culmination, something went wrong. Perhaps her bond to her familiar was stronger than she had realized; perhaps her years trapped in the body of a serpent had atrophied her powers; or perhaps the magicks she had designed were simply beyond her ability to perform – whatever the case, the transfer of consciousness was only partially successful and the Red Witch's soul was rent asunder.

When Adria awoke several minutes later, she knew that she was different, and in many ways knew precisely how. She retained the memories and curiosity of the twelve year-old girl she had been, yet the venomous nature of her mother had rooted itself deep into her psyche. She did not have the memories of Alina and the elder witch's advanced talents had been lost somewhere in the transfer, but the cunning and ambition that had driven her to those heights of power remained, along with a burning desire for revenge. She saw the serpent that had once been her familiar lying nearby, alive in only the most technical sense, as its mind had been torn apart with its mistress's. Feeling a mixture of disgust and hatred, Adria picked up a dagger that had been used in the ritual and drove it through the creature's head, then picked herself up and started back home.

It took several months before the new Adria came to terms with what had been done to her, during which time she made a distinct effort to keep her inner turmoil a secret. Eventually, however, her father realized that something was wrong and stepped back from his research – which had been stagnant for some time – to take a more direct hand in her life. As her studies resumed, her innate curiosity and newly quickened mind combined to turn formerly challenging lessons into modest puzzles that she would solve quickly, ruminate on for a short time, then move on to a new lesson. As his daughter advanced at a blistering pace, Loras became more talkative about his own field of study – believing that she would now be able to understand some of the more basic concepts – and, to the surprise of both, Adria proved quite receptive. Over the next few years, she delved deeply into books and essays on the nature and structure of the multiverse, and by her eighteenth year she was assisting directly in her father's work.

Even as she quickly became a scholar of planar cosmology, Adria was also busy secretly working to refine the basic skills of witchcraft she had learned under her mother's tutelage. Though not yet advanced enough to be called a true witch, she had reached a point where her studies could begin to be self-driven, and so she was making significant progress in that field as well. Eventually, the two fields began to intertwine in her mind, merging to create a form of witchcraft vastly different and wholly unique from the one her mother had known. A familiar was summoned – an ebon-scaled viper she named Havros – and a pact was sealed with an entity she knows as “The Gatekeeper”. From that moment, Adria became the Red Witch reborn.

The death of her father a few years later took few people by surprise – while still relatively young, his health had never been strong; though if they had known of his growing relationship with the housemaid and of the arsenic that had been slowly finding its way into his food, more questions might have been raised. Adria let the servant-girl go shortly afterward – she never made it to her new position in far-away Ghastenhall, vanishing while traveling across a region of the Talirean Heartlands that was being plagued by a villainous band of brigands at the time.

Adria was careful – exceedingly careful – as she began to test her power, to flex her metaphysical muscles, but some of her neighbors had lived through the Asmodean Purges and remembered her mother well. With her father now gone, it became increasingly apparent to these onlookers how much the quiet, unassuming young woman resembled the infamous Red Witch of Blackbriar in both appearance and manner, and so they grew wary. When a local Mitran priest was killed in an abnormal housefire, a few of these individuals got together and wrote a letter detailing their suspicions to the church, which passed from clergyman to clergyman until reaching a famous witch hunter named Sir Balin of Karfeld.

Sir Balin's investigation was quick, efficient, and subtle – the opposite of the inquisitors of nearly twenty years prior. Adria did not see the trap until she was caught in it, and by that point it was too late. Pages upon pages of detailed notes were rummaged through, containing the beginnings of schemes and theories of how to strengthen her powers – all the evidence Sir Balin could ever need. As she was taken away to make the long journey to Branderscar Prison, Adria watched as her home and much of her work went up in flames. And she swore that she would burn Talingarde to the ground.

Once again, the familiar was overlooked.