Selene — GM Backstory
Selene, the Lost Psychopomp
Before she became the Soul-Hunger, Selene served Pharasma for four centuries as a nosoi—a type of tiny, bird-like psychopomp from the Boneyard. Standard nosois are no larger than a songbird, appearing as iridescent ravens or whippoorwills wearing delicate porcelain masks. As scribes, messengers, and gentle caretakers of the dead, nosois record the names of the departed and ensure souls make their journey to judgment without fear or interference.
Selene was never a warrior. Her gifts were patience, compassion, and a singing voice that could calm even the most terrified, violent ghost. She possessed a deep fascination with mortal poetry, particularly regional funeral dirges, and she always made a point to learn and recite the names of the dead she ferried across the River of Souls.
When the first planar ripples leaked into the valley, Selene volunteered to investigate alone. She found the subterranean tear beneath Thornwick too late: Brother Alms and his cultists had already rooted the first Threshold Seed into the bedrock and moved on. Selene tried to contain the corruption rather than shatter it, believing her divine nature could purify the Seed through sheer proximity and sacred prayer. Instead, the Seed fed on her essence.
The transformation was grotesquely physical. As the void corruption flooded her small divine frame, her once-Tiny songbird body swelled and warped into a hideous, Medium-sized creature—her iridescent feathers turning to jagged obsidian quills, her porcelain mask shattering into floating void-shards, and her wings stretching to a six-foot span. Her divine purpose inverted completely: where once she guided souls to judgment, the planar corruption reforged her into something that devoured them before they could reach the Boneyard.
She fled to the Ossuary of Forgotten Swords because its mass graves offered a dense concentration of restless, unjudged spirits—fuel for a hunger her swollen form could no longer control.
The Cult's Trap
Brother Alms did not create Selene directly, but he anticipated her. He planted the second Threshold Seed in the ossuary knowing a divine psychopomp would eventually come to investigate, and that the Seed’s resonance would corrupt and mutate her into a terrifying guardian. To Brother Alms and the Flock of the Open Grave, Selene's monstrous transformation is proof of their thesis: that even Pharasma's divine caretakers can be unmade and the boundary of death shattered.
What Remains Inside the Hunger
Fragments of Selene's true nosoi spirit still survive inside the bloated, corrupted entity. Her love of names, her overwhelming guilt, and her terror of her own mutated hunger remain intact beneath the rage. These lingering memories form the cracks through which redemption—or a non-violent purification—might reach her during the Act 2 climax.
GM Roleplay Hook: The Name Trait
If a player character speaks their full name aloud or calls Selene by her true name during combat, she must attempt a DC 20 Will save. On a failure, she becomes sickened 1 for 1 round as her true nosoi personality briefly struggles against the void hunger consuming her oversized frame.