Adona

“So you want to know how it all fell apart huh? Well you bought the drinks, I suppose I owe you the story. I doubt it will get you the answers you are looking for though. I was there. I lived it and I still don’t know for sure what happened.”

“What I do know, and Mika thinks I am crazy for saying this, is somehow that old woman that worked in the kitchens is responsible.”

“Stop fucking laughing Mika. I know what I saw. You weren’t there. I swe-”

“What? Oh right. Yeah. So things were fine. You probably already know, but we had holed up at that island with his lordship to wait out the war. He never took sides in all the time I worked for him, but this was the first time we ever left the city to hide out. From what I hear, things got bad when the new Emperor made landfall.”

“Anyway, it was a bunch of us, his household, and the locals. A couple of fishing villages of people. Some sheep herders. Local magistrate. Small place. Jeka called it idyllic when we hit the shore.”

“That was his youngest. My charge. She was a sweet, sweet kid. I… I don’t want to talk about her. Sorry…”

“So. Right. There we were. A couple of months, things are running fine. We formed up a little militia just in case. Trained local kids who didn’t have any other options. Something to keep us busy and to get us some extra muscle in case his lordship had to pick a side. It was nice… until it wasn’t.”

“It started with small things. Rumors about his lordship started circling. Nasty shit. The kinda stuff that is so wild and awful everyone automatically starts to believe it. Led to some insubordination and desertion with the locals.”

“There was the poisoned food incident down in one of the villages. That kicked off some violence. Not much more than a tavern brawl, but a well liked local was found dead. That led to more violence. It was maybe, what Mik, a month after that before we locked ourselves away to try and cool things down?”

“Yeah, so, then people started showing up dead, then sometimes not. His lordships’s valet, we found him strangled in the wine cellar one night. Then, a week later, Jeka swears he was the one she saw pouring some nasty shit into the staff’s stewpot. He was already buried in the lichyard mind you.”

“The old woman? Yeah, that was when we were trying to get the kids out during the attack. His lordship trusted the three of us to get the three of them to safety. There were passages to a secret boat docked a mile away, and when the locals started breaking down the doors he gave us money and sent us down with them.”

“So, little Asna tripped on something, and Jeka stopped to pick her up. Mik was on lead and I was in the middle, so I pushed the other two kids between us, and then heard a sort of gurgle. I looked back and saw the old kitchen woman cleaning her knife on Jake’s shirt. Asna was lifeless in Jeka’s arms…”

“I… I wanted to scream, but no words came out… I just stood there staring in horror as I saw her face become Jeka’s face. Then… Then she smiled at me and waved before she turned around and walked back towards the manor…”

“Yeah, we got the other kids out. Even got a letter from his lordship asking us to bring them back… Everything is fine he said…”

“Hell no. Not a chance. That’s why we are here in Kos. Figure if the kids are going to be safe anywhere, it is going to be here with the spooks in the Red Towers. That ain’t their father, whatever wrote that letter.”

~ From Taubha’s Lesser Book of Names

Adona sits in the middle of the hierarchy of the House of Ghoregh, delighting in causing havoc across Yggdrasil. Scholars believe that they were an actor prior to the onset of the Madness that reshaped them, but there is no true evidence to support it. It is simply conjecture based on about their ability to take the shape of any mortal they have ever encountered. At their advanced age, the people they can become is nearly infinite.

They never operate out in the open, and always work to manipulate the circumstances from behind the scenes. Typically they infiltrate a space in one form and build trust over time before they begin to take on the shape of others to carry out deeds in their name. It is unclear what motivates them as sometimes they remain in a guise for decades, living the life of another, and other times they flit from place to place, sowing chaos.

When using Adona in your game, they work best as a puppeteer rather than a boss to fight at the end of an adventure. If there is a boss at the end of the adventure, they most likely will have been manipulated into that position to die at the adventurer’s hands.