About Paracontess Zephiri MariposaHELLKNIGHT RIVAL: Paracountess Zephiri Mariposa
Not merely her fellow nobles, but *any* citizen of Cheliax of higher ranking than a slave! She was also tortured with the very compound she had used to augment her enchantments, exposed to a dose that would normally leave one pleasantly tingling (and, to a practitioner who knew what she was doing, more susceptible to arcane manipulation), and then beaten cruelly, so that even now the sight of the drug, still in vogue among her peers, makes her shaky and fearful, timid as a mouse, afraid that the cat is watching. She finds it difficult to engage in the sorts of parties she used to frequent, and her old friends shun her, not merely because she used her enchantments to live it up, but because she returned six months later a frail and fluttery thing, terrified of her own shadow, and they realize that the only reason the Hellknights released her from custody is to serve as a warning, that this too could happen to them, that they too, are not above the law. Never a large girl, she came out of Hellknight custody almost skeletally thin, her ivory skin stretched like parchment over her bones and her eyes perpetually shadowed, as from the fists of her captors. Her wits and her health had never been able to survive a life of hedonism and drug abuse, and while her body and soul was purged of any desire for such things during the latter months of her captivity, her health of mind and body never returned. All the best places to be seen now have a standing disinvitation for the Paracontess Mariposa, and she feels a social outcast among the society that was eating out of the palm of her hand, in a past that seems distant and alien to her now. And so she sequesters herself in her manor, plotting revenge on those damned Hellknights, who destroyed her dreams, who stomp all over what it means to be a noble. She dabbles ever more with forbidden lore and seeks like-minded souls who also wish to return Cheliax to the old ways, where nobles where the law, and were not subject to being dragged away by overzealous lowborn thugs with pretensions of authority. She seeks allies, very quietly and carefully, wishing to maintain her pretense of being cowed and afraid of defying the Hellknights again after their object lessons, and may use go-betweens to arrange the services of those she does not know personally, sending them on missions to help conceal the improprieties of other feckless nobles, or to reveal the improprieties of Hellknights... Boons The Paracontess is very careful about who she meets, and those who work for her may never know whose interests they serve, as, for all her bravado from the security of her own manor, she remains deathly terrified of a return to the Hellknights tender mercies. Those who serve her interests well may find themselves similarly bailed out of difficulty with Hellknight justice, or, for those who earn her personal trust and have the arts, be trained over three days time in the secret technique that the Hellknights attempted to stamp out of her brain with their brutality, how to combine the use of certain drugs to enhance the effects of enchantment spells upon a subject. In the day, she would leave braziers of a relatively common herbal drug around, and built her magic upon the stupefying effects of the smoke, but she has refined the technique to function similar to the Power Component rules from Adventurer’s Armory. She no longer has to administer the drug to the recipients, but can simply expend it as an additional Material Component, automatically gaining the benefits of the component. [Originally, against those exposed to the smoke of this burning herb, which remains somewhat fashionable at upper-class Chelaxian gatherings, her secret techniques allowed her to either strengthen a mind-effect, or to, in her own words, ‘deepen’ it. If she chose to strengthen it, the spell is harder to resist and there is a +1 to the DC to resist any mind-affecting charm or compulsion spell she casts. If she chooses to ‘deepen’ it, she gains +1 CL to determine duration or other level-based variables. The drug takes a minute to saturate from the air into the bloodstream of those within the affected area, making this tactic not useful in a combat situation, but for subtler machinations, a brazier of incense costs only 20 gp and gives a pleasant smell and a tingly feeling of lassitude to those in the affected area, in addition to making them more susceptible to the enchantments of a spellcaster who knows her secret techniques. With her advanced techniques, the caster simply has to have a dose of the drug in hand and expend it as an additional Material Component.] Due to the Hellknight conditioning, she can no longer take advantage of this technique, but nothing would please her more than for it to be used against the Hellknights by other parties. |
