Lady of the Vine

Art by ArtisAllan

The Lady of the Vine is a Forest Walker spirit in the Forgotten Suns campaign.

Personality

Thee Lady's visions of the future distract her from what is happening in the present while she is talking, giving her a detached and somewhat eerie demeanor. She tends to be calm and polite, even when angered.

Appearance

Like all Forest Walkers, the Lady can take the shape of any creature in her jungle, as well as a human of any size. When dealing with humans, she finds it advantageous to use the form of a beautiful naked woman.

History

During and slightly after the First Age, the Lady invested significant effort in wagering with others of her kind, in spite of her distance from the forests of the east. As other forest walkers viewed her jungle with varying degrees of distaste, winning these bets became critically important to the Lady. She struck deals with a number of sidereal astrologers to vary outcomes in her favor. This plan lost its luster when she was double-crossed by one of her fortune tellers who had made a better deal with a rival forest walker.

Soon after, she became obsessed with gaining her own ability to read the future, going so far as to consult with demons, attempting to bargain for knowledge of prognostication charms. This act did not sit well with her superiors in the celestial bureaucracy, who decided to punish her by giving her just what she wanted. They cursed her to see the many paths the future might hold whether she wanted to or not (see sidebar, above).

Though this new sight has proved useful to the Lady from time to time, mostly it is a hindrance and distraction. As a result of this punishment, the Lady is a model citizen of the bureaucracy (with a pair of powerful allies in Yu-Shan) and now avoids the wagers of her brethren. She tends to avoid supernatural control of her jungle, letting it grow where it will.

Though her contact with mortals is limited, she has cultivated a number of small cults along the edges of the jungle. Originally intended as a way to prevent mortals from hacking the jungle away, her cult now blesses her with thousands of worshipers a day. About a hundred of these cultists are fanatically loyal.

Goals

While she doesn't mind the changing nature of the jungle, the Lady works to prevent the jungle from changing too radically, and is always on guard for such threats (a band of solars claiming a manse, or an invading undead army, for example). The possibility of claiming the demense upon which the manse is built interests her marginally.