bardic inspiration

* dossier . name. nepharia graylock. nicknames. if she had friends, they’d probably call her neph. species. cambion. half tiefling / half succubus. class & specialization. warlock ( the fiend ) / rouge ( criminal ). age. 45 ( baby demon owo ). gender & pronouns. cis female ( though, succubi can change their sexual organs at will ) / she, her. orientation. pansexual. height in tiefling form. 5’6”. height in demon form. 5’10”. hair. slightly wavy, light gray & silver, just below her shoulders. eyes. light gray - blue, almost white. complexion. her skin is almost colorless, a pale, gray color. she has a few patches of light freckles speckled upon her nose, shoulders, back, and hips. distinguishing features. she is marked in abyssal language upon the left side of her face, given to her by her patron as a symbol of ownership over her. demon form. in her succubus form, she stands a bit taller at 5’10”, and her claws grow longer and sharper. the whites of her eyes turn black, and the pupils become a bright, glowing white. her teeth come to a sharper point, and of course, she sprouts dark, veiny, fleshy wings with a span of four feet in each direction. her claws are nearly unbreakable, and can penetrate and slice through thin metal. her bite force is also incredibly strong, matching that of a displacer beast. piercings. her septum. alignment. chaotic evil. alt. faceclaim. samara weaving.

cambion / succubus abilities. as a succubus, nepharia can kill with sexual intercourse, but she can also choose not to if she is so inclined— but nepharia sustains herself on mostly mortal souls, and her favorite prey are those of the male persuasion. most cambions are capable of soul absorption in some way, and this is nepharia’s way. souls make her stronger, even without killing her prey, a portion of their essence is enough to get her higher than any drug known to man, and she is quite addicted to it. enhanced empathy. nepharia is able to sense heightened emotions in the mortals around her, fear, lust, anger, sadness. regardless of this, she still has trouble actually empathizing, especially with people she perceives as prey, and she very much enjoys being feared, as much as she enjoys being desired— she feeds off of the lust as much as the souls themselves. energy manipulation. nepharia can quite literally cause a shift in the atmosphere, releasing natural pheromones that make her more difficult to resist, more powerful than your basic charm spells. she can also shift from tiefling form to her demon form at will. inter-dimensional travel. nepharia can travel to and from the hells through a portal she has the capability of opening, but it takes a lot of power and energy and mental focus, and she can’t do it more than once per day without a full rest. telekinesis.

* backstory . nepharia was born into an extremely poor family, and her mother died giving birth to her. her father always hated her for this, and eventually sold nepharia to a rich and powerful man who owned a tiefling brothel at the age of only fifteen. she also was born a pale, gray color, whereas both her mother and her father have crimson colored skin, her father always assumed her mother had been unfaithful to him, and also resented nepharia for this. unbeknownst to nepharia for many more years, or her father, she did not in fact come from his seed— but an incubus, one nepharia never meets. nepharia was never shown parental love, or love at all, for that matter. she was never shown guidance, and the more her fiendish and wicked qualities began to blossom, the more her father despised her. he thought she was evil, a curse on his miserable life. he sold her off easily.

nepharia spent another decade under the abusive ownership of theodor, the owner of the illegal brothel tailored to the elite, forced to be with countless clients though never touching any of the coin made from her labor herself. eventually, people started to complain about feeling abnormally sluggish and weak after buying an evening with nepharia, and she was even the reason many warriors fell in battle -- after a single night with the succubus, the strongest of warriors could meet a bloody end. before too long, after enough complaints, nepharia was punished by being offered to the more -- rough -- clients of theodor, clients he always promised she wouldn’t have to deal with. over the years, nepharia got smarter. she betrayed other girls to get closer to theodor, slowly but surely building his trust.

nepharia started to get visited by a regular client at least once every week. this customer never wanted sex, in fact, he only ever talked to her during their sessions, telling her that she was far more than just a tiefling to be beaten, used and discarded, but mostly speaking in riddles the first few weeks. this client eventually revealed himself to be a devil, residing in the depths of the nine hells deep in the abyss, and he craved the lifeforce of rich and powerful men in the mortal realm to ascend, but retrieving their souls was difficult. but it wouldn’t be for nepharia, all she had to do was what she’s been doing since she was a young teenage girl.

when the devil offered her great power to slay her captors, nepharia was so desperate and broken that she didn’t even hesitate to agree. the devil laid his hand upon nepharia’s face, and she winced and yelped at the searing pain burning into her. as the devil pulls his hand away, she’s left with a mark in abyssal, saying that she is the property of ‘zymimor’ for the rest of eternity. after that moment, it was as if the fires of the hells coursed through nepharia’s veins, triggering her true form. she stood taller, her fangs and claws grew slightly longer, and wide, pale wings sprouted from her shoulder blades. she never knew she could do that, just as she never knew she was a cambion to begin with. for the first time in her entire life, she had power. but the devil made it a point not to tell nepharia about this until after she agreed to the deal, for she had the power to escape all along.

she hid within the wingless form she was used to until she could get theodor alone. she seduced him, almost eagerly, and now she knows what she could do. using an abundance of charm magic, she managed to convince theodor to take her out, away from the brothel, just the two of them. he of course brought a few guards along, but agreeing to it in the first place was everything she needed. he took her to an nice inn. and as she gave him her body, she drained every ounce of energy from his, absorbing his lifeforce into her until there was nothing left, and he was just a corpse beneath her. she escaped through the window afterwards, taking flight into the night, never to return.

for about a decade after escaping theodor and the brothel, nepharia enjoyed the power and the freedom. no one could fuck with her, she felt invincible -- like a god. but she was feral, and terrified of the men around her. in order to feel less afraid, she would make them afraid. zymimor, her patron, always had work for her, and in return made sure that she was well paid. there are few empires who know of the true nature of what nepharia is, and in those areas, she’s already assassinated many a king and dictator, emperor and ruler, with her abyssal body alone and her fiendish, deadly charm. zymimor eventually taught her how to travel to the abyss, where she is to bring back the souls of the men she kills for her patron to absorb.

recently, though, nepharia is getting... depressed. she fell in love with a man by the name of tomas, and that ended in brutal heartache and she hasn’t really been herself since. he was kind, and gentle, and he trusted her. her patron order her to kill him because he didn’t want her getting distracted, but also she thinks he was testing her, to see if she would obey him regardless of how difficult it might be. he called her feelings for him a weakness. she’s deeply sad, deeply broken, deeply conflicted and lost. she craves love, something she’s never felt once in her entire life, but she’s convinced that she doesn’t deserve it. not after everything she’s done. not when she kills the people she loves. she wants to believe she’s “free”, trying to convince herself every day that she’s not still a slave, afraid of the person who commands her. she knows love is something someone like her gets to feel. so she secludes herself, not allowing herself to get close to anyone, and just doing her job -- and doing it well -- it’s all she’s ever known.

then, after years of her only regular social interations being when she’s trying to seduce her prey, the nautiloid wreaks havoc outside of baldur’s gate where she is abducted in the middle of a hunt for her patron, a hunt to seduce and kill a man by the name of enver gortash. nepharia hides the fact that she’s a cambion from everyone in the party, as she needs these people to trust her so that she has a chance of surviving the tadpole, which makes her feel far less capable in combat in the beginning.

* companion character information .

neph’s whole thing is that she has to fuck and kill powerful people for their souls and deliver those souls to her patron ( this crazy old, super powerful incubus ). her patron promises to free her soul if she fulfills their deal and hunts for him, never failing until the day she dies ( and she can’t kill herself to try and get out of it that way ). she is unaware that her patron is actually her birth father, an incubus who has been conceiving cambion children all over the realms for centuries to locate them at their lowest points, convince them to sell their souls, and then make them deliver souls to him in mass. he wants to use this mass of raw power to ascend to some sort of godhood. her quest in the very beginning is to locate, hunt and kill gortash on her patron’s orders, and she’s abducted by the nautiloid close to baldur’s gate.

neph still meets at the very least lae’zel on the nautiloid and gets the daunting information that she’s gonna be turned into a mind flayer in a matter of days, so obviously she’s fucking freaked. after the crash, she just assumes she flies to safety ( she can shift from her tiefling from to her winged cambion form ) and couldn’t remember doing so. she doesn’t know where she is or what to do, the only thing she can think to do in her panic is to try and complete her quest within the days she has left and deliver the soul to her patron so that he might help her. so, she flies away from the crash site and gets out of range of the artefact and falls under the influence of the absolute.

and it’s as though she just knew what she needed to do. she found herself at the goblin camp, completely forgoing her patron’s quest. in her mind, it didn’t matter anymore. she was perfect. she was needed now for far more important things, things that would make her far more powerful within the embrace of the absolute. nepharia can be found by the others here, as just another true soul boss, and she probably wouldn’t be hiding her demon form. i imagine she would be helping minthara try to get information about the grove, torturing that one guy way better than the goblins were ( dude wasn’t even missing any body parts lmao ).

however, when the others do come and she is in range of the artefact again, she is going to immediately have questions for whoever questions her. she would have learned at this point that she can use the tadpoles to poke into other peoples’ heads and man does she use that a lot. it’s a thing she practically abuses and doesn’t get better about for a long time. she would probably immediately do just that with the group, probing them for anything they might know. she would recognize immediately that her insane devotion to the absolute wasn’t of her own volition, she’s never worshiped anything but herself. she would never forsake her life, or her eternal soul, for some god. i guess it would be up to the player to decide whether or not they trust a devil to join them ( but she’s hella powerful as a cambion, and her demon form shreds lol ), and she would no doubt demonstrate just how useful she can be, helping them fight their way through goblins and true souls to free halsin for answers.

her main goal throughout the game is to get to baldur’s gate, because she still has a quest to complete for her patron, but that changes later once she finds out the truth about her patron. i mean, she’ll still kill gortash and the others, but not for her patron. she could go one of two ways, though:

there’s the evil path. she takes the stones for herself, dominates the elder brain and takes over the world with enough power to kill her patron and free herself. i’ve done this way and can do this way, for sure, but as much as it fits her chaotic evil vibe, i want the best for my demon baby <3