[Day 22] Marika, the Blue Lady

Marika, the Blue Lady

Marika is a ghost which haunts Grift, and has done so for several decades. One story has it that she was the lover of a minor noble, and took her own life when she realized she would never be a wife. Another claims that she was a murderess, hung from the bridge as she cursed the authorities and declared her fidelity to Nechrubel.  Yet another suggests that she was a midwife who died from exposure one cold night between deliveries.

Marika is a petite woman with auburn hair and dark eyes which seem sorrowful and tired. Her face is gaunt, and she is always wearing a long blue dress.

Misinformation gathers around Marika, and it seems to be her greatest pleasure to add to it. She will often approach newcomers to Grift and beg them to help her find rest. Here follows some of her favorite schemes.



1: “Please help me! My cruel family will not give my moral remains a proper burial!” Marika will lead her marks to a house where a family is mourning over a dead female relative. She will then wait outside giggling as her marks disrupt the innocent family’s grief.

2: “The baronet Anbaal took me as a lover, then threw me aside. I can only find peace if he admits his misdeed”. This is one of Marika’s favorites, and native Griftians are not immune to it. There is a small but dedicated group of romantics and revolutionaries calling themselves the Vigilantes of Love who scheme to abduct the baronet and extract a confession from him by any means.

3: “I had bequeathed my wealth to Grift’s poor and needy, but my greedy relatives have kept it all for themselves”. She will lead her marks to a villa where her relatives keep her treasures. In reality the inhabitants are wealthy, but have no connection to Marika. The confusion and mayhem is quite real though.

4: “An evil spirit possessed me and made me commit foul murder. I am damned myself, but please save the spirit’s new victim, the archimandrite Denlock”. Of course the archimandrite is not in this way afflicted. Right?

Some say that Marika was never a living woman, but a deceptive spirit from another world entirely. The archimandrite Denlock is among these. The holy man is aware of Marika, since on two separate occasions some of his (now former) acolytes have tried to expel a spirit from him. The archimandrites still have scars.

Marika

Hp 8, Morale 6, no armor, no physical attack
Special: Marika is intangible and cannot by harmed by any physical attacks nor can she affect the physical world beyond very minor effects such as creating a light breeze which makes paper flutter and candles flicker. 

A member of the Vigilantes of Love

Hp 7, Morale 8, leather cuirass -d2, slender blade 1d6
Special: once per fight the vigilante may completely avoid an attack by swinging from a chandelier, dropping suicidally off a battlement or similar impobable swashbuckling. 

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