Saidra D'Honaire
Saidra d’Honaire grew up on a tiny farm, living alone with her father after the death of her beloved mother. Her father called her “Duchess,” claiming that he was a duke exiled from his rightful home by a vicious younger brother. The young girl took pleasure in lording that fact over other peasant children, proclaiming herself superior by birth despite her present circumstances. Saidra had no friends but many playmates, as she bullied other children into entertaining her.
When Saidra was a teenager, her father married a prosperous merchant with two daughters a few years older than Saidra. Though her father urged the three girls to love each other as sisters, his new wife and her daughters scorned Saidra, mocking her claims to nobility and treating her as a servant. Despite the family’s new wealth, Saidra continued to dress in rags and labor from dawn to dusk, acting as a housemaid to her stepmother and stepsisters.
A harder blow descended when Saidra’s stepmother casually mentioned the death of a duke who ruled nearby. Saidra asked if this duke was her father’s wicked brother, and if his demise meant her father could reclaim his title. Her stepmother and stepsisters laughed at her, and her father admitted the truth. He had been only a servant in the duke’s household and fled when he was caught trying to steal silver from the kitchen.
Saidra refused to accept this bitter truth. Fleeing the house, she went to her mother’s grave and begged the departed spirit to aid her. A kind, grandmotherly figure appeared and granted Saidra’s wish, bestowing on her a magnificent gown and fine jewels to attend the masquerade ball that celebrated the coronation of the new duke. Saidra rode to the ball in a stately conjured carriage, determined to kill the duke and claim his title.
At the ball, the glamour around Saidra made her irresistible to the duke, and they danced together for hours. Saidra began to contemplate an alternative to murdering the duke: she could marry the poor fool and become the duchess she’d always believed herself to be.
But as the clock struck midnight, terror stalked the ball as guests started rapidly sickening and dying. The plague afflicted the duke and Saidra as well. As they lay dying in each other’s arms, the duke gasped a fateful confession: he was not the son of the late duke, but of a servant in the duke’s household. The duke, unable to have children of his own, claimed the servant’s infant son and raised him. Later, that servant was caught stealing from the kitchen and fled the house with his young daughter.
Enraged to discover this “duke” was no more a real duke than her father—and worse, that he was her brother, Saidra drew her blade and drove it into the pretender’s heart. She stumbled out of the palace, but the plague claimed her on the stairs.
What followed many years later was the ressurection of Saidra as a wraith, claiming the mansion she desired as her own and thus becoming a duchess. Her power of undeath brought all who died in the party back to life as various undead, most in service to her. She then decided to make the parties a yearly occassion where all the nobles of Kikoguan were invited, with those choosing to ignore her almost always winding up dead in their homes. It took many years of these recurring parties before a group of adventurers known as the Twilight Guardians, guided by the same hag's who led Saidra to this fate initially, infiltrated her parties to find her brother, later returning to kill her and end her reign of undeath.
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