Nualia

Arao asks Lloyd to take hold of the journal. Talk of demons piqued Guillaume's interest and asks the warlord for a look in the journal. The eladrin picks up the journal for the first time and leafs slowly through the pages. There is something niggling at his mind. The pictures are a little crude, perhaps focusing too much on the lady's "assets" - the work of an infatuated mind, but there is something about her face that is flicking at some ember of memory.

The claw ... nothing ... maybe some demonic transformation. The worshippers of Lamashtu sometimes gain these type of transformations, but it is impossible to know without further research, and, ideally, better pictures.

Lamashtu, the Mother of Monsters and one of Golarion's most notorious deities. After all, she's not just the one the goblins and gnolls and all sorts of other monsters worship—she's the one who MAKES a lot of the monsters in the first place. Among the humans she is known also as the demon who haunts childbirth, and steals babies.

Childbirth ... babies ... suddenly it all clicks into place.

The woman in the pictures looks like Nualia, Father Tobyn's daughter. She was a strange, displaced girl. Some said she was angel-touched, with her silverly hair and the radiant glow that always seemed to follow her around. it was her differences that marked her out for teasing, though, and she was an unhappy child.

You recall a few snapshots from your time in Sandpoint as a close friend to Father Tobyn, and, more importantly, as someone that the young girl sometimes confided in. You were one of the few who treated her well.

You remember many years ago, during your first few visits to the town, the door to the church furtively opens as a beautiful little girl with silver hair and violet eyes pokes her head furtively outside before timidly walking outside. As she daintily walks down the steps, a stone flies out of nowhere and hits her head. Boyish giggling can be heard in the distance as someone yells: “Freak! Go back inside!” Clutching the bloody welt on her forehead, she runs back inside, her face a mask of confusion.

And then the story she told you once, as she sat alone in her garden at night, knees pulled up under her chin, refusing to cry. The same sad, quiet girl sitting alone in the corner, reading a book. Cruel whispering and giggling can be heard all around her, before she gets up and excuses herself to go use the restroom. Three other giggling girls follow behind her and wait for her to walk into the outhouse before piling tables and chairs outside her door. Her father had found her there three hours after the school had closed, sitting alone, her eyes dry.

You recall seeing her bullied as a teenage girl as she walked back home to the church from the school house. Immediately, the air was filled with lewd catcalls and hooting from the adolescent boys (was Jarek and Tsuto among them? you can’t remember) in the area. Extremely uncomfortable with the inappropriate attention placed upon her, she quickly ran back to the church, with her head hung low. You followed her, but she did not want to speak any more. As she grew older, she grew more distant from everyone, and stopped looking to understand her plight.

You heard tales that people would snip her hair off, running up behind her to grab a lock and cut it loose before she could react. The fish-wives said she was an angel-child, and that her hair could bring health. She took to wearing her hair in a severe bun, hidden under a hood. She took to not walking around during the day. She became reclusive.

Her father despaired. You counciled him to be compassionate with the girl, to perhaps take her somewhere where her blessing would be accepted. You offered to travel with her to a church of Desna where she could grow up in sanctuary. At first he refused this idea, but when he finally decided that her coldness to him had reached a limit, he decided, against your advise to force her on her seventeenth birthday to go to the highly prestigious Windsong Abbey to become a nun. He told her that the Abbess expects all young applicants to be perfectly versed in their catechisms, and that she could not leave her room until she had memorized all of the scriptures. This was not what you had meant, this was not the way to do it. You had hoped that she could be persuaded to move with her Father. It was not an abandonment you had sought.

You had heard the rumours. She rebelled, of course, escaped the confines of her father's house, and met a handsome Varisian boy, who had recently arrived at Sandpoint from Magnimar. She ran away with him, for a few nights, until he lost interest in her, and she was forced to return to her by now hateful father.

She was alone. She was heartbroken, and, as only you and her father ever knew, she was pregnant. Father Tobyn was outraged, but he was also powerless. He took to shouting at her every day, as if his harsh words would correct her mistake. You stopped visiting him. He had grown bitter, taking too much to drink, and filling his house with virtiol. You would have liked to have helped Nualia. You tried once, slipping a note through her window to let her know she could visit you.

Eight months later she came to you. She was in early labour, in extreme pain. She came to you at 2am, creeping out of the house, wracked with the pains of labour. You sat with her, bathing her limbs, cooling her brow, talking her down from her fear. She underwent a painful miscarriage. The child was ... was ... a horrific and deformed monstrosity. Still born, twisted, red limbed, almost demonic in appearance. She still wanted to hold it, its tiny, rapidly cooling body, pressed against her. She sobbed. That was the first time you had ever seen her cry.

Two days later her house burnt down, killing her father ... and her?