Aeshma

Aeshma grew up in a family of locksmiths, and was fascinated by her inherited trade and highly talented. Her skills were further magnified by her minor sorcerous abilities, ones that twinned with her family's trade, allowing her to conjure a key for almost any lock and visualize with absolute clarity the internal workings of any such device. While this could have made her one of the greatest locksmiths in all Anhelt, it seems that fate had other ideas, for while Aeshma was still an apprentice she contracted an unknown and incurable wasting disease. She suffered for many months, until a client noted the bandages she wore and inquired after them. He told her he could put her in contact with a group who might be able to help cure her. Desperate, she agreed, not knowing this was the Knights Revenant. Aeshma's initial dealings with the Cult of K'Leth gave her cautious hope, albeit those she spoke with seemed altogether too earnest and eager for her to join. Seeing no other hope for a cure, she agreed to attend an induction ceremony. The fact that it was to be conducted in the catacombs beneath the ruined city of Narbuk filled her with fear, and as she saw the ceremony starting to play out, those fears multiplied. Believing, correctly, that dark magics were involved, she fled, and became lost in the tunnels. Her abilities preserved her. The underbelly of Narbuk was a maze of sealed chambers but every door Aeshma came across unlocked before her. Searching for a way out, she instead burst into a Soul Shepherd's chamber before collapsing from exhaustion. The Soul Shepherd wondered just how it was that Aeshma had been able to reach him. Intrigued and seeing the afflictions of her flesh, he commanded a fresh body be brought, and was able to extract and transfer Aeshma's soul into it. Aeshma awoke and found herself in a new body, seemingly free of the disease that had beset her. The fear she had felt toward the Knights Revenant faded as she was filled with joy and relief at having been cured. The Soul Shepherd asked Aeshma to arise, and unlock the door to his chamber. As she acquiesced, the key appeared at her fingertips. It was clear Aeshma could be valuable to the cult. There seemed to be no reason for the inner circle to trust her however, until it became clear that her infection had transcended the natural and mundane and followed her soul to a new body. No matter how many times Aeshma changed her body, or bound it up with scraps of enchanted healing cloth, she could never stop the disease from withering her muscles, claiming her sight, and reducing her to a paralyzed wreck. Her only hope was to change body again and again to outrun the infection. That was only possible as long as the Soul Shepherds supplied fresh bodies, and were willing to transfer her. Aeshma was indebted to the Cult of K'Leth, bound to its service for as long as she wishes to outlast her curse. She protects Narbuk's depths and guides the Knights Revenant through its dank, crumbling crypts, fulfilling the role of Mistress of the Keys, a warden and guardian for whom no door remains barred for long. She is a bitter and frustrated soul, ever irritated and terrified by her affliction. One of her very few solaces is that she can pass on her illness with but a touch of her weeping skin. Ever since she took up a scythe she found in the Narbuk tunnels as a weapon and badge of office, she has brushed her skin over its blade before ever using it. A glancing cut can ruin a life and create another being indebted to the Cult.