Golden goddess

THE TROUBADOUR: NIAMH OF THE WHISPERS
Appearance: Niamh is blessed with the body of a goddess. Her golden hair spills down to her waist, and is bound by garlands of flowers. She wears diaphanous robes that shimmer with the colours of mother-of-pearl. Her ears are delicately pointed, and she has oily butterfly wings that are veined like those of a fly. She carries a delicate flute carved from bone.

History: In ages past, when the power of the Shadar pantheon was waning, the androgynous trickster God Sig transformed itself into a songbird and tricked its way into the house of the Three Fortunes for the purposes of ravishment. The offspring was Niamh of the Whispers, a faery princess who was cursed to always fall in love with wicked men.

Blessed with immortal beauty beyond reckoning, Niamh wandered the earth for hundreds of years, her life an endless cycle of heartbreak and woe. Her stories became her songs, and were capable of bringing even the sternest warrior to tears. Famously, Niamh was once persuaded by one of her treacherous lovers to “sing down the walls of Jerubar”: a Shadar Capital in the great steppes that is now known as the City of Ruins. Her voice drifted across the city and broke the hearts of the Shadar army, most of whom fell upon their blades.

Niamh’s curse was lifted when she scaled the Peaks at the End of the World and sang her most heartbreaking song to Sig. As the god blubbered in sorrow, Niamh tore out Sig’s thighbone and used it to beat the god until it agreed to lift the curse on her. She carved Sig’s thighbone into a flute, and wandered the Fabled Lands for many years, singing for a husband. Alas, she outlived all her mortal lovers, and with her own heart broken, she threw herself from Sky Mountain.

Character: Niamh is surprised to be back, and now that she is dead, somewhat embarrassed that she killed herself. She is kind, loving and possesses a pleasant humour. Of all the party, she is the most fearful of the threat to the Fabled Lands.