Lani G'Dala

Before meeting the School Band

As the middle child of three, Lani found herself most comfortable in the background. She wasn’t shy, but struggled to handle the idea of spending her adult life fighting to protect a home she didn’t love. Instead, she preferred to fade into the background. Lani kept to herself while her siblings excelled in their ancestral duty to protect their great city from aberrations, absorbed in stories and poetry and dreaming of the world above. To survive, she crafted an identity around those stories. She grew out her hair and styled it the way the prose described, and took pride in fine clothes from tailors her family found wasteful.

After years of experience, Lani became adept at talking her way out of guard duties. Lining the right pockets and embellishing the amount she’d done worked for a time, but when her family found out, they dragged her kicking and screaming to work. No amount of cultivated charisma could absolve her from guard duty that night.

It was supposed to be uneventful. The rift, almost entirely unchanging for decades, fractured. All she saw before being knocked unconscious was a set of six spidery arms reaching through reality, reaching out to her. When she awoke, everyone else was dead, the chamber empty. In panic, she fled back to her family, but the entire clan could sense something dark had touched her. No amount of pleading worked. She was a curse.

After a court case, a mere formality to shame her, they threw Lani into the abyss.

Surviving was a surprise. Unbeknownst to her, the monstrosity that slew her peers had latched onto her like a parasite. It piloted her broken body while she was unconscious, learning the hard way how fragile mortal bodies were and what sustenance they need to live. Dirt was one of the more pleasant things that ended up in her stomach. Still, she endured.

Days later, Lani awoke next to her own cut-off blood-soaked hair, half dead in a place she didn’t know. Adjusting to the blinding light and clear skies took time, exacerbated by her broken bones and tattered clothes, but after everything, she’d got what she’d always dreamed of. She was above ground. Lost, Lani wandered the surface for months. People crossing her path were quick to take pity and offer aid, but caution kept her on the move. When a woman, Isolde, asked a favour offering Lani a place at Adelaide’s Academy for Aspiring Adventurers in return, Lani leapt at the opportunity.

After her favour was complete, however, a lone goblin attacked - without even thinking, she melted its brain in one hit. How would Isolde react? Would she rescind her offer, or worse? While she panicked, Isolde approached; instead of violence or anger, she offered acceptance.

Adelaide's Academy for Aspiring Adventurers

For the first time, Lani was comfortable. Her peers, friends, accepted her magic without trying to kill her, and the school was safe despite Adelaide’s lackadaisical security. Giant spiders and mimics were nothing compared to the aberrations the Argent Clan faced daily. Even arrogant bastards like Cillian were a welcome distraction.

Despite everything, Lani still couldn't rest. Nightmares plagued her. Sometimes abstract, sometimes vivid memories of that night; after everyone she awoke in a cold sweat. Isolde provided her only relief - a heady herbal tea which put her into a deep peaceful sleep. It wasn't a perfect cure, but it was enough relief for her to get by.

The School Band received their first real quest on a visit into Tarrey. A hag had set up in the swamp near the town, and people were going missing. With the help of a slightly suspicious goblin, the party went out to the hag's hut - after a tough fight, she fell. But in her house there was a cauldron full of a strange liquid - on drinking it, everyone (except Wit'nee, who opted not to drink), received a prophetic vision. They also found two cursed necklaces - one with a songbird skull which boosted the wearer's charisma but made them instantly fall asleep in darkness, and one with a rat skull which turned the wearer into a rat person. Atner was compelled to put the rat necklace on - and so Ratner was born.

One quiet evening spent tending to the plants in Isolde’s greenhouse, her teacher confided in her. Her uncle, a powerful warlock, built this castle; but fearful townspeople imprisoned him in the central tower. She had a plan to free him.

Reminded of the fairytales she grew up with and her peoples' reaction to her power, Lani resolved to help Isolde - but the rest of the party weren't convinved. The townspeople told a different story, and everyone but Lani was more inclined to take their word over Isolde’s.

Reluctantly, Lani agreed to wait and visit Crystal Bridge to research the truth of the trapped warlock. However, the night before their trip, Isolde contacted Lani. She was going to free her uncle tonight. Torn, she left behind her new familiar Jellybean and went alone to meet with Isolde. Together, they freed Alistair.

With more sense than his master, Jellybean awoke the rest of the party and led them to Lani’s room. She was gone, and the tower windows glowed softly with candlelight. Lani’s illusory barriers were no real obstacle - they arrived as Alistair awoke.

Alistair wasn’t the man Lani assumed he was, and the townspeople were right; Isolde’s dear, misunderstood uncle was a monster. But the thought of killing him turned her stomach. The rest of the party sprung into action, but Lani managed convince them instead to disarm the warlock with a cursed necklace she’d picked up on a trip to help the townspeople of Tarrey - if they could get the necklace on him and turn out all the lights, he would fall into an unnatural slumber until dawn. They’d have time to think. However, Isolde disagreed and she and Alistair fought back; despite their conflicting ideals, Isolde did her best not to hurt her students.

Over the course of the fight, they extinguished the lights and Alistair succumbed to an unnatural slumber - but Atner dealt a lethal blow to Isolde. With her favourite teacher and the person she trusted most dead, Lani lost control of her powers and the School Band met the Amygdala.

While Lani raged, the rest of the party took down the sleeping Alistair. Liléve and Ves both fell during the fight as well - and they met the enigmatic Briar Queen, Alistair’s own patron. The Archfey offered them a deal - their lives for their service - but they both declined. Isolde, who received the same offer, seemed to accept and escaped with her life.

With Alistair dead and Isolde missing, the party rushed to Adelaide. To their surprise, the headmistress was thrilled, declared her teaching complete. The School Band were going to graduate early!

Prom

By coincidence, prom happened to fall on the night when the fae and material planes are at their closest. Most of the party, accompanied by Millicent, was transported into the fae realm, into a party much like their own. But this party was set to last forever.

To escape, they would need help from some of the powerful fae in attendance. They managed to curry favour with the cats by taunting the dogs and making a fool of them.

Amygdala

The Amygdala, known to refer to itself as Psilocybe, is the eldritch parasite Lani contracted the night she was exiled. Unable to sustain itself in this plane after entering, it latched onto Lani's fear and fed to regain strength.

To assert its will, it lends its powers to Lani. She isn't as cooperative as it would like, but months of feeding on her nightmares have softened her mind. As the Amygdala gains strength, its ability to impose desires on Lani increases; as it hungers, so does she. It has a limiated ability to intervene to change her luck, suggest certain courses of action, and shape the form of her magic.

Over the months of sharing a brain, the Amygdala has instilled some of its characteristics on Lani. Sick satisfaction from seeing people cower; an interest in the macabre. But this goes both ways - Psilocybe named itself, and has begun to probe the dreams of others to live out desires not its own.

One of Lani's spells, Hunger of Amygdala, comes most directly from Psilocybe. It briefly opens a rift to the dimension it used to call home - one of twisted fleshy trees and tangled roots - and feeds directly from anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped within.

Jellybean

After a particularly rough night's sleep, Lani awoke with a weight on her chest - before her eyes focused, he looked like a strange amalgamation of an anteater and centipede, but as she woke, it became clear the weight was actually a small black cat. The newly-dubbed Jellybean became a stalwart companion, a comfort and a guardian with an incredibly useful set of abilities.

Jellybean is a Maere; a small creature which feeds on dreams, also known as a sleep paralysis demon. They have the unique ability to completely immobilise a sleeping enemy, even after they wake, and disguise themselves as innocuous animals to endear themselves to their prey. As a familiar, Jellybean is smarter than most Maeres and has grown stronger alongside Lani, including gaining flight and potent claw attacks, as well as the ability to scare enemies.

The G’Dala family is part of the Argent clan; an offshoot of the more common gold (hill) dwarves whose avarice motivated them to dig deeper than any other clan dared. They found no such riches. In their hubris, they shattered the complex warding spell sealing an interdimensional rift.

Honour and duty bound as dwarves are, those responsible resolved to protect society from the horrors clawing at the rift. To hold the onslaught at bay, the Argent clan spent centuries engineering complex fortifications to direct and disperse incursions; these structures form the labyrinthine city of Seolfor Dædscúa Cofan, the Silver-Dark Caves.

Even the oldest dwarven settlements on the surface have forgotten the Argent Clan; all that remains are tales of peculiar purple dwarves offering to trade precious metals and strange mushrooms once every few decades. Still, they have a rich tradition of storytelling and poetry. Rumours say a goddess of dreaming lends them inspiration.

Traditional plants struggle in the lightless depths, so for food they rely on Rothé that came with them from above and a range of enormous magic-infused fungi. Still excellent miners and smiths, they have access to diverse precious and useful metals. Ironically, the precious metals they sought in their first delve are now almost useless.