Lady Greywind
You hear the yammering howl of the coyote. It is the call of Grandfather Coyote, the Trickster. He says, “Hear me! This is my descendant, my heir, a child of the water. In their blood courses my blood, the water of life.”
“Her hatred is
palpable as she senses one of her jailers enter her new prison. The Restorer and
his Druid ally had found her with six other gray spirits in the Mausoleum. She
had yearned for freedom from the enchanted crypt’s confines. The Restorer and
Druid had freed her from the Mausoleum only to snatch up her bones and toss them
into the Forest of the Damned. They thought her nothing more than a minor
vampire, an impotent gray spirit, but they knew nothing of her history. They
simply called her “the Vamp” but they did not know she was the first vampire of
her kind. She is Lady Ardias Greywind, once the matron of her clan, until she
was put to death for the practice of witchcraft. She had surreptitiously
siphoned off the life essence of her hated adversary, the Matron of the Cerulean
Clan.
They had tied a sack of stones to her feet and dropped her into a black watered
pond. She had held her breath for as long as she could. As water flooded her
lungs, Ardrias’ dying breath burst forth. It was filled with a black curse
evoking the dark powers of the Abyss.
In that moment, Ardrias’ life ended but her existence did not. Although
Necronias had not yet shattered the Death Gate, an uncommon thing for that era
happened; Lady Greywind’s spirit lingered with her drowned corpse. She
experienced the soul-death of a vampire but her body, the vessel of her foul
spirit, reanimated itself. Her shambling, drowned form broke free, rose from the
depths of her watery grave and sought out her family manor.
There in a secret chamber, hidden in the manor’s cistern, she quenched her
soul-thirst by drinking the stolen essence of the Matron Cerulean. The temporary
infusion of essence masked the signs and weaknesses of her vampirism. For all
intents and purposes Ardrias appeared alive, but, as the month passed, so did
her seeming reprieve from her death. By the new moon, she appeared undead once
more, and her hunger for blood and essence returned. So it was that for years
Lady Greywind feasted on the blood and soul-essence of the innocent.
For years, Adrias existed in the shadows of society feeding on the weak and
later upon the strong, as she marshaled an army of soul slave minions. She
attempted to raise a legion of soul-vampires to enslave the water children but
was foiled by an avenging descendent of the Matron Cerulean and her soul was
weakened and her body was destroyed. Nevertheless, Lady Greywind’s existence
continued. Her physical body died but her undead spirit lived on and on, as a
vetala, a vampire –wraith. Over time, her spirit and powers dwindles to almost
nothing until she found her gray spirit trapped with six others in the
Mausoleum.
In the few months, she has been trapped in the Forest of the Damned and now that
she senses the Restorer near she will have revenge.