Septavia

A half-orc pirate-sailor exiled from Brakam, the coastal nation across the strait, who came west with a colonist expedition looking for a place to put down. The expedition found the monastery in the mountains before it found anything else — and tried to barter with the monks who remained, offering up the kind of loot a long sea-voyage produces. The monks they bartered with were already not entirely themselves. The bargain went sideways. The expedition did not leave.

Septavia's body was preserved in the cocoon at the head of the Gestalt's biomass alongside the monks who killed her, and was recovered when the party broke the prison-cage of pylons in the chamber below the library. Helena ate the memory mushroom that grew from her remains and received, in a flood of borrowed memory, the story of the expedition and a sense of who Septavia had been: practical, watchful, not surprised by very much.

In thanks, or in legacy, Septavia taught Helena one of her own habits — Fancy Footwork, the trick of landing a strike and slipping a step away before reprisal can land. Helena can use it once before the memory fades.

Some part of Septavia now lives in Helena.

Brakam: The coastal nation Septavia called home is the same Brakam that has been a quiet presence in the party's growing awareness of the wider world — a country that exiles its troublemakers and sends its colonists west.