Nualia

Nualia, Chosen of Lamashtu, was the villan apparent in the first leg of our friends' adventure.

Backstory
Father Tobyn, cleric of Sandpoint, had raised the foundling aasimar* child as his own. Her childhood made her lonely and sad. From a young age her beauty was considered unearthly, causing her to feel outcast. The other children were either jealous or shy, often playing cruel pranks, and the adults weren’t much better. Many superstitious Varisians saw her beauty as a sort of reverse deformation, a blessing from Desna, and would often publicly embarrass her by begging for locks of her hair and other humiliating requests. By the time she came of age she felt more like a freak than anything else, so when a local Varisian youth named Delek Viskanta began to court her, she didn’t put up much of a fight.

Knowing that her father would never approve of the relationship, the two were sure to keep their love hidden and would often meet in the smuggler’s tunnel below Sandpoint. Before long, Nualia realized that she was pregnant. When she told Delek, he revealed his true colors and, after calling her a slut and a harlot, fled Sandpoint rather than face her father’s wrath. As Nualia’s shock turned to rage, she bottled it up, and when her father discovered her delicate condition, his reaction only worked to further her shame and anger. He forbade her to leave the church, lectured her nightly and made her pray to Desna for forgiveness. In so doing, he unknowingly nurtured her growing hate for everyone around her.

When Nualia was seven months pregnant an ancient power flared back to life. In the Catacombs of Wrath, a minor runewell had reactivated and Nualia’s anger was a magnet to it’s magic. Wrathful energies suffused her mind and she flew into a frenzy. Nualia miscarried her child later that night, a child whose monstrously deformed shape she only glimpsed before blanching midwives stole it away to burn it in secret. The child had been conceived in the smuggler’s tunnels below town, in close proximity to a hidden shrine to Lamashtu, causing the child itself to be deformed and horrific. The double shock of losing a child and the realization she had been carrying a fiend in her belly for seven months was too much. Nualia fell into a coma.

As Nualia slept, she dreamed unhealthy dreams. Fueled by the wrath from below and the taint of Lamashtu, Nualia became further obsessed with the cruel demon goddess and the conviction that her wretched life was inflicted on her by those around her. She came to see her angelic heritage as a curse, and the demon-sent nightmares showed her how to expunge this taint from her body and soul, replacing it with chaos and cruelty. When she finally woke, Nualia was someone new, someone who didn’t flinch at what Lamashtu asked of her. As her father slept she jammed his door shut, lit the church on fire and fled Sandpoint.

The locals assumed Nualia had burned in the fire, a tragedy made all the worse by the death of Father Tobyn. Yet Nualia lived. She fled to Magnimar, where she enlisted the aid of a group of Norgorber**-worshiping killers known as the Skinsaw Cult. With their aid, she tracked down her former lover, Delek, and murdered him. However, his death did not fill her need for revenge--it only quickened her need for more of the same, for Sandpoint and its hated citizens still lived.

Seeing a kindred spirit in the tortured woman, the mysterious leader of the Skinsaw Cult gave Nualia a medallion bearing a carving of a seven-pointed star called a “Sihedron medallion.” Nualia learned that she had a larger role to play, and that her dreams were a map to her destiny. Taking the advice to heart, Nualia returned to Sandpoint and found herself drawn to the brick wall in the smuggler’s tunnels where she and Delek had conceived her deformed child. Nualia bashed down the wall, and in so doing, discovered the Catacombs of Wrath and the quasit Erylium, a fellow follower of Lamashtu. For many months, Nualia studied under Erylium’s tutelage. During this time, Nualia received another vision from Lamashtu--a vision of a monstrous goblin-wolf imprisoned in an underground room. In Nualia’s dreams, she learned that this creature, a barghest named Malfeshnekor, was also one of Lamashtu’s chosen. If she could find him and free him, he would not only help her achieve her vengeance against the town of Sandpoint, but he would be the key in cleansing her body of what she had come to see as her “celestial taint.” Nualia wanted to be one of Lamashtu’s children now. She wanted to become a monster herself.

The first raid on Sandpoint simply served as a test and a distraction for Tsuto while he stole father Tobyn’s remains from the cemetery. These remains were brought to the Thistletop cathedral where they were offered to Lamashtu in return for the first stage of Nuala’s transformation into a demon. It was her hope that using Sandpoint as a burnt offering to Lamashtu would further, if not complete, her transformation into a half-fiend as well as fueling the runewell in the Catacombs below, creating an army of sinspawn under her command.

It is clear that her time is spent here in the dungeons below Thistletop, searching for Malfeshnekor and a way to free him from the prison that has contained him for thousands of years.

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