Uncovered in the yellow journal the party discovered in the hold of the Bloodwind, much of the history of Weiralai between 4660 and 4718 A.R. was revealed in Act III Interlude 2:
The writing is chaotic, and the Tongue of Leng is literally nightmarish—reading it causes a slight headache—but a narrative is pulled out of the yellow journal.
Three men made a Choice. And that choice shaped the lives of all who followed.
So, this caravan the Last Chancers attacked was the property of Weiralai. She was not the Stranger yet, not in that life. And she was not a slaver yet, in that life. But she was working on the edges of the nascent Technic League and she was stockpiling and selling technological weapons in and around Numeria. She’d kept her operation quiet for quite some time, but she finally got too big, and the bosses took notice.
Weiralai didn’t typically travel with her caravans—but this one was too big for her to let go without her. Because she was moving her ENTIRE stockpile. The northern forests of the River Kingdoms had been a safe place to keep them hidden for a time, but in the growing chaos she needed to find a new home for all the Androffan weaponry she’d dug out of the caves and caverns and canyons and hid as she sought the highest bidders. So she was present this night, when she wasn’t expected.
This caravan held ALL of her worldly wealth. And Gavrony, Nicholas, and Mej just claimed it.
There were SO MANY TECHNOLOGICAL ITEMS. More than the three were expecting. More than they could even figure out.
But they’d be damned if they’d NOT try to figure it all out.
So, they got to work.
Gavrony, Nicholas, and Mej were master torturers. And as if close up, down-and-dirty torture isn’t awful enough to picture… just imagine what they could do to a living being with fast healing. With the medical know-how and the magical means to keep a living, sentient being perpetually hovering at death’s edge… perpetually suffering… perpetually healing just enough to keep the torture going… FOREVER… just imagine what three of the most brutal sociopaths could do to someone who didn’t want to give up her secrets.
Weiralai’s suffering was beyond description. And it lasted longer than a mortal could possibly withstand. But eventually, she gave up the details of each and every single one of her atom guns, and plasma throwers; her force field generators and gravity clips; her hemochems and nannite bombs.
And when Gavrony, Nicholas, and Mej finally had the information they needed, they killed Weiralai.
Or, at least… and this is the piece they knew nothing about… they sent her back to Leng.
And thus began her Quest for Vengeance.
It took her ten years of Waking Time—thus, who knows how many decades or centuries in the nightmare—for her to make her way back to the Material Plane, unknown years of further agony and humiliation in the slave pits of the Moon-Beasts, but return she did.
And then she began hunting down her torturers.
She learned eventually that the three men had split their haul and gone their three separate ways.
Gavrony Stoicu abandoned his given name and used his share to build the Drozha Clan into a sprawling crime empire in Varisia. He became the Serpent of the Lost Coast. The Triad.
Nicholas Murea abandoned his name and used his share to claim dominance over one of the worst cells of the Technic League. He became the warlord known as Feshka Nellit and claimed a vast chunk land near the Blackpipe.
Mej One-Eye kept his name, but used his share to return to Garund, kill the chieftain of his old tribe, and take it over. As he took over more and more tribes during his brief ascendency, he became known to outsiders—and the Gnolls of the region—simply as the Conqueror.
It took Weiralai nine years after her return to the Real World to hunt down Nicholas, aka Feshka Nellit, and she arrived just in time to witness his own child murder him in his own throne room. A knitting needle, through the eye, into the brain.
Her rage at her Vengeance being stolen from her was blinding as a sun, but a seed of something new blossomed as she realized she might be able to visit Vengeance not just upon her torturers, but upon their Entire Lines. She could enslave and corrupt and eventually kill her killer’s children—maybe even grandchildren—for as long as she could get away with it.
Nicholas was gone, she could no longer hurt him directly, but…
She took Anathema—eventually known as Thema— into custody.
She knew now that her work was going to be on a much longer timeline than she’d anticipated. She needed resources. This is when her path to becoming the Stranger began. She couldn’t build up technological wealth anymore—the situation in Numeria was much different than it had been decades ago—so she turned to the other industry she knew like the back of her hand: slavery. She built up her empire in the Inner Sea region, and in her free time she continued to search.
Gavrony was nearly impossible to find. He was a ghost. And he never used a single name more than once. Mej, she could trace to Garund, but his whereabouts got lost in the desert, and she wasn’t able to connect the name “the Conqueror” to him for many years. But she continued her search.
And during this period of time, she met Nemira Lowls and became initiated into the mysteries of the King in Yellow.
The worship of Hastur proved to be a potent drug for her. The promise of Answers for the pain and suffering she had been subject to. The promise of Power to confound and destroy her enemies. The promise of a true, mighty, eternal Shepherd into whom she could funnel her pain and rage. His promise that all mortals would one day—perhaps, if the whispers were true, someday very soon?—that all mortals would be subjected to enslavement, debasement, and devouring… it was all too appealing.
It took 17 more years to track down who Gavrony had become, and when she did put the pieces together, she discovered that he and most of his family had died several years earlier from some plague that had swept through the Lost Coast.
The Red Death.
But she eventually found his sole surviving nephew in an orphanage in Riddleport.
Seeing how miserable he was there, she waited until he was nine years old—exactly as Thema had been—before claiming him. She liked the symmetry. Numbers hold a powerful attraction to creatures from the realm of nightmare, and to devotees of the Dark Tapestry, as symbols and portents. Three killers, three children, three times three. Nine years to find Thema, the first nine years of Thema’s life. It all amused her. She even saw patterns in what was purely, objectively, coincidence: Gavrony became known as the Triad, Nicholas had a counsel of advisors called the Trident, old One-Eye had three sons. On and on.
So, at what he thought was his lowest moment of horror and solitude, she took Viktor—now calling himself Rony—into custody. Little did he know how much worse was to come.
After 3 more years… perfect!… once he, too, turned nine, she found, and claimed, the Runt, Riptusk.
For a time, she tried placing them in various different kinds of captivity—Rony and Riptusk wasted away years in Biting Lash’s grim granite fortress—but by 4703, 15 years ago, she had all three children of her tormenters enslaved and debased in the Lowls estate. All three manipulated, used, and brainwashed. All three with the arc of their lives stolen from them and twisted into a path of servitude of her own dark god. All three scheming, and hating, and miserable. Murdering and stealing. Plotting against each other. None of them knew hope. None of them knew love. And all of them working with the idiot Haserton on his adorable little project involving the God of Shit that her god had shit out.
Three men tortured and murdered a monster.
So that monster enslaved, and tortured, and planned to murder their children.
The trauma left in the wake of those three villains spawned a whole new generation of trauma. And that new generation delivered so much trauma onto each other and everyone whose path they ever crossed.
Finally, in her last entries in this journal, Weiralai had decided that the decades of emotional torture had been sufficient and satisfying and she was headed back to the Lowls estate to begin the final physical torture—and murder—she owed each of them. At last.
She was on top of the world.
After 58 waking years… and untold centuries in the dream… her vengeance would be complete.
And nothing could take it away from her.
Except, as it turns out… Haserton Pragmus Lowls IV.
First Reference: Act III Interlude 2
Other Notable References: —