"Have you ever heard of an adventurer named Pedro the Bloody? No? Funny, I expect the next person to say the same thing when I ask them about you."
-Levira, during an early confrontation with
the Headhunters
Coy, overconfident, and taking great pleasure in the suffering of others, Levira was an aberration in the guise of an elf woman and a far cry from what she appeared to be. Her true form was a monstrous humanoid shadow that appears to be filled with specks of light, the tormented souls of her victims trapped within her body. She enjoyed extending the suffering of others above all else, but her hair-trigger temper would often go off once a perceived victim stopped being "fun".
Table of Contents
History
Birth of a Monster
Originally, Levira was a dark elf, an ancestor to modern-day Drow. She was one of a minority who fled when Lolth, the Spider Queen and Goddess of Lies, claimed the dark elves as her own. Most of her companions were hunted down by the Spider Queen's worshippers. As she was cornered, she desperately teleported away without a destination in mind, wanting only to escape. Her haphazard spell landed her in the Negative Energy Plane, the source of necromantic energy that animates undead.
In most circumstances, mere seconds in the Negative Energy Plane would destroy a mortal soul. But Levira's sudden appearance attracted the attention of ███████, who seeks to ██████████████████████████. ███████ sends powerful heralds in his stead to prepare worlds for his coming and Levira was a prime contender to join their ranks. It infused Levira with a powerful living shadow, twisting her into something between life and death before setting her loose into the Material Plane.
Early Years on Nexus
Eventually, Levira found herself on the world of Nexus. She introduced herself to Mesogog and proposed an alliance, a marriage to form a union and unite their power. She began to serve as his chief lieutenant but her true goal was to use Mesogog to overthrow Orcus, knocking off a powerful rival to secure ███████ place as the one and only █████████████████.
Her plans were interrupted when a group of adventurers sealed Mesogog away with an imprisonment spell, which Levira did not take too kindly. She spent the next few centuries trying to free Mesogog, constantly thwarted by the thinnest by margins due to interference by the Raven Queen, one of Orcus' chief enemies who sought to keep Mesogog imprisoned. After her failure at manipulating the War of Sea and Sky, Levira began to explore options located abroad.
With the help of her fellow lieutenants, Levira followed a lead to the country of Jezero. There, she and Mira learned of a set of artifacts called the Quintus Gems, including a shattered gem that held power over necromancy. They stole a Seeking Stone that could track the artifacts from an adventurer named Mr. E and used it to find the necrotic gem shards.
The shards had previously been found and reassembled by a mind flayer named Rhith who used them as a periapt to become an alhoon. Levira and Mira summoned their allies and together defeated the overconfident Rhith, causing his spirit to become trapped inside the periapt. They claimed the gem and returned to Lothal, beginning experiments after establishing a new base of operations in the local Underdark.
Levira quickly learned to corrupt normal gemstones into copies of the Purple Quintus Gem, which she dubbed Gravestones. The Gravestones allowed her to empower undead and Void Beasts. Needing gemstones, she instructed her allies to make an alliance with the local duergar while she attended to another matter.
Due to a magical mishap, Levira was able to sense the presence of Leliana, the last light elf hidden away with a hag by Baba Yaga. Largely due to her own overconfidence, Levira was trapped by the hag inside a magic mirror. She stayed trapped there for 16 months until she was able to trick the adventurer Hugh Morris into freeing her, while Hugh's allies battled the hag nearby. Levira thanked him and offered Hugh a favor as thanks, as soon as she was done murdering Leliana. Hugh responded to this statement by attempting to stab Levira.
Levira responded with a powerful blast of dark magic, killing two of Hugh's allies while the third fled. This distraction did, however, give Hugh time to grab Leliana and flee. Levira decided to start using the Headhunters as toys and test subjects for her monsters, as compensation for inconveniencing her.
A Recurring Villainess
She later ambushed the Headhunters, learning that Kiri had become a shadow monk and viewing his dark powers as a rival to her own. She let him live but left him with a cursed tattoo that would slowly turn him into a Void Beast.
Later, when the party battled Moltor, Warlock of Orcus used a spell to banish Kiri into the Void with Levira. While Kiri put up a valiant battle, he was ultimately outnumbered by Levira and her monsters and killed. She decapitated the triton warrior and sent his headless corpse back to the Material Plane as a message to his fellow Headhunters.
Levira next sought a way to harness the necrotic power she'd accumulated. She traveled to an tropical island, home to an ancient dungeon that housed a powerful spell of destruction, the Decay Incantation. On her way there, she encountered the young green dragon Feyrbrand on the island and stole its shadow. She also bluffed that she had reinforcements on the way, knowing the Headhunters were pursuing her to push Feyrbrand into their path. She was ultimately able to steal the spell and escape as the Headhunters spied on her, but not before she launched a magical blast in their direction to scare them off.
Influence on Lothal's History
The Headhunters later discovered Levira had been responsible for wiping out a village where fey and mortals lived in harmony, killing the last followers of the goddess Mielikki, Goddess of Forests, on Nexus in the process. They did not discover that Levira came here looking for Leliana's parents, whom she killed during the attack. Levira also left the Void Beast Thornheart here to kill anyone who came snooping around, though it was defeated by the Headhunters.
Hugh Morris found a book while investigating the destroyed fey village indicating Levira was a dark elf. When he tried to learn more, the images in the book came to life. Levira briefly mocked him through a moving image before an allip emerged from the book and attacked Hugh in the middle of the Adventurer's Guildhall. Levira found this hilarious.
Levira was later scryed by Nadira after the succubus promised to provide "useful information" to Chigiri in exchange for the Grave Orb. Her scrying showed Levira attacking and destroying Chigiri's home village, leading a combined force of aquatic Void Beasts and young dragon turtles she'd allied with.
Shortly thereafter, Levira decided to put one of those aquatic Void Beasts, the Krake Spawn, to use by attacking the Headhunters while they traveled on an ocean raft. Leliana was able to successfully banish Levira during the battle while the rest of the Headhunters destroyed the Krake Spawn, learning that Void Beasts were made from the souls of Levira's victims in the process.
The Battle of Inkhear
With everything she needed in hand, Levira launched a full-scale assault on the city of Inkhear. While her army of undead and Void Beasts, Moltor's Molders, and their duergar allies distracted the guards and adventurers, Levira and her fellow lieutenants headed for Mesogog's prison. They fought their way past the Elemental Guardians, navigated the maze leading to the prison by throwing their minions into its many traps, and found themselves in front of Mesogog's cell. In the time it took them to disable the external defenses, the Headhunters caught up to them.
Although the Headhunters nearly succeeded in stopping her, Levira was ultimately successful in setting her betrothed free. The Headhunter Artie used his magic to get his friends to safety and sacrificed himself in a kamikaze attack, severely injuring Levira and her allies before they could do more damage. Forced to retreat before they could do more damage on that day, she began working with Mesogog side-by-side as they planned their wedding, with the transformation of Lothal into an undead army as their reception party.
Preparing Her Endgame
With Mesogog back, Levira was free to proceed with her own plans in the background while he took the active role to destroy the Adventurer's Guild and conquer Lothal. Step one was to assist Moltor with the creation of the Gravecannon, "discovering" the necessary magics alongside him during research. Once her tampering was complete, she turned the project over to Moltor and began constructing a second cannon in the Morlocks' Underdark base.
She was not spotted again until the Adventurer's Guild received a recording on a crystal orb, featuring Gentleman Jack spying on the Morlocks before Mira spotted him and warned Levira so she could give chase. The footage being days old, Levira showed up in Inkhear around the time the adventurers were leaving to launch their counterattack. This was by design, as she intended to distract some of her foes by making an appearance. When Guildmaster Nergalee and the Headhunters took the bait, she greeted them by revealing that Hugh was the one who freed her from the hag's magic mirror more than a year prior to create distrust among them. She then squished a worm to break the polymorph spell on it and turn it back into a purple worm in the middle of the city before teleporting away with a laugh.
Levira did not actively participate in The Battle of the Prizyrie Mountains, though her Void Beasts and Shadow Skulls supported the Morlocks and their allies. She spent most of the battle scrying to keep an eye on events. She was watching when Chigiri destroyed Mesogog's physical body and decided it was time to move up her timetable. While Mesogog and Moltor were distracting the Headhunters, she set the Gravecannon to overload. It was here she revealed her true plan: to corrupt Urthemiel, the Destroyer into a Void Beast under her control. She then let herself fall into the portal to the Void powering the cannon to begin her final preparations.
A Nightmare Destroyed
With Mesogog dead and Moltor captured, Levira ordered Mira and Nadira to the Abyss to collect demonic reinforcements. She was unaware of Mira's new allegiance to Rhith but didn't factor the remaining Morlocks into her plans too deeply. Instead, she raised a castle armed with a second Gravecannon into the sky. She began to fire on towns and villages, creating armies of undead on her way to corrupt Urthemiel. She seeded the castle and the path to her lair in the Void with Shadow Skulls and Void Beasts, knowing she was likely to face opposition. It came in the form of the Headhunters.
The adventurers fought through waves of Shadow Skulls and a half-dozen Void Beasts to reach Levira, where she awaited with a smile. As the fight began, she held up a shard of mirror she'd previously been imprisoned in to turn the adventurers' shadows into dark duplicates of themselves.
Levira struck out with her wicked sword and shadow magic as the adventurers destroyed their duplicates. Chigiri eventually managed to pierce his sword clean through her chest, and she laughed. The laugh became more unhinged, more twisted, and her voice took on an unearthly tone as a thick shadowy substance started spilling from the wounds on her body. Levira's true monstrous self was finally revealed as she shed the dark elf corpse she had possessed for so many years. As she did, she informed her enemies she'd be using Leliana as her new host as soon as she was done killing them.
The battle became even more intense with Levira's full power unleashed, the shadows themselves grabbing at her enemies and blasts of pure dark magic exploding across the battlefield. It was an intense fight and all the Headhunters were at death's door when Chigiri managed to deal the final blow. His sword Chōmei left a scar of light that stretched across her body as Levira began to face obliteration. In the face of her destruction, she laughed again.
Insanity having fully taken her, Levira gleefully informed her enemies that they hadn't stopped anything. That destroying her was merely a delaying tactic. She wasn't a great conqueror, she was a scout. And that with her destruction, Nexus had attracted the attention of her superiors. Levira's threat was finally over, but the war against ███████ and his Heralds had only just begun.
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