Helisanna Doomfall

Bard/Warlock • Frontwoman of Doomfall • One Woman, Two Personas

Overview

Helisanna Doomfall and Leliana Goldspring are the same woman, played by the same player, Luke Neverisky. Helisanna was Luke's original character: the pale, metal-playing bard/warlock who fronted the band Doomfall and was bound to the primordial patron Y'chek. In Session 34 she split into two people, and from Session 34 to Session 56 Helisanna lived apart from the party as a DM-run character while Luke played Leliana. In Session 57 Leliana learned that the two were never really separate — they are "two sides of the coin", extremes of a single person — and that with her brother's Blue Moon Guitar she can switch between them at will.

Current status (Session 63): Helisanna is a persona, not a separate party member. Leliana can become Helisanna "on the fly", fully one or the other, with no blending yet. The two personas are aware of each other and the switch is, in Luke's words, "very controlled… just flipping a switch". Helisanna mode carries the party's grudge against Captain Steel, who murdered Leliana's brother.

How the Two Personas Work

	Helisanna	Leliana
Race	Human	Human
Look	Pale skin, white hair, dark colours, purple veins	Tan complexion, blonde hair, bright and colourful
Music	Heavy metal on an electric guitar-axe	Mandolin and acoustic sets; now the Blue Moon guitar
Class	Bard/warlock, pact with Y'chek	Bard (College of Glamour)
Temper	Rude, cynical, fame-hungry, vengeful	Cheerful, apologetic ("Oh jeez!"), kind

• Same face, same build. At the split the party saw two women who looked like twins, one pale and one full of colour.
• The switch shows. The DM compared it to a Zelda-and-Sheik transformation (Session 57). How much her look changes depends on how far she gives in to one side; a quick flip shows as a lightning streak of colour down her right eye and a discolouration across her face that fades (Session 58).
• Two sheets, one body. Since Session 58 Luke keeps a Helisanna character sheet alongside Leliana's, with Leliana's as the master sheet for hit points and inventory. In Session 62 he played the barracks infiltration as Helisanna and switched to Leliana to send George a message, a spell only Leliana has.
• What to call her. In Session 58 Bru and Elspeth floated "Anna" as a name covering both, but it was dropped: she is Leliana (or "Lily" undercover) or Helisanna depending on who is out.

Background

Doomfall and the Pact

• Frontwoman of Doomfall, the party's band, managed by Silas Fairbanks. Her Session 1 show at The Little Hovel left audience members' eyes glowing purple.
• Her pact weapon is an axe, which doubles as her electric guitar (Session 11). Purple mist and energy stream from it when she plays (Session 16).
• Questioned by Olivia in Session 23, she said she made her pact in a dark place with purple flames or smoke, with an androgynous, otherworldly being, and received her magic and her instrument through it.
• Her shows produced the purple-eyed ravers of High Forge.

Where Helisanna Came From (Sessions 56–57)

The origin was revealed in the haunted library on the Eldoran back-country road, near where she grew up. As a young performer who "just wanted to be a musician so bad", Leliana was tipped off about the library, lost her favourite birthday card there, and walked through a shining gateway into an abyss where, in the DM's words, she was "rendered from your body and then reformed anew". She made a deal with a monstrous being, and Helisanna was born. Walking the same memories in Session 57 showed what came before: the murder of her brother, Lieutenant Steven Goldspring, by Captain Steel, and his funeral on her birthday, where his Blue Moon guitar passed to her.

The Split and the Years Apart

Session 34 — The Split

Downed in the fight against Crang and his ravers, Helisanna was offered a final choice by her patron: resist, submit, or try to overpower it. She submitted. Then, seeing her pale, purple-veined self and what the pact had cost, she tore at the veil around her — helped by a small dwarven spirit ("let's tip the scales"), an avatar of Tyr working through Olivia's spell. Reality broke with a flash of light, and two women fell away from each other: Helisanna, and a stranger who called herself Leliana Goldspring. Helisanna, now played by the DM, dismissed Leliana ("I'm the better you. I'm a rockstar, baby"), asked what she was doing out of "my prison", and was carried off by her ravers.

In Session 35 the DM ruled that the two were fully separate, with different bodies: Leliana was the idea of who Helisanna would have been had she never gone to meet her patron, grown strong enough to become her own person.

Sessions 35–56 — Helisanna Apart

• Session 36: played her concert in the Great Hall, blasting the Iron Claws while her ravers swarmed them.
• Session 37: appeared mounted on Duncan the black dragon, whose eyes now glowed purple, playing death metal as he attacked Betty the red dragon. Silas pitched her an interview for a stage at the Lotus Casino. Afterwards, soldiers told of "a witch that rides a black dragon in the bowels of the city".
• Interlude XII: she and her ravers took over the Lotus Casino, holding 24/7 concerts and kidnapping Marvin; the casino's reset sent her back to High Forge. Leliana argued against abandoning her: "she did save us".
• Session 38: she was still somewhere in the deep reaches of High Forge.
• Session 56: spoke to Leliana through a mirror-pond in the library, claiming to be "running things in the South" and riding an undead dragon, and warned that digging up the past would destroy them both.

Session 57 — Two Sides of the Same Coin

When the World Tree's roots connected to the place where Helisanna was born, Leliana felt the two of them join. The DM: Leliana and Helisanna "were effectively extremes of who you actually were, the two sides of the coin and that you actually are both of them. And with that guitar, it seems like you're able to switch into either persona whenever you'd like." Asked whether the personas blend, the answer was no — "for now".

Since the Revelation

• Session 58: when George named Captain Steel as a target, she answered in Helisanna's voice — "He fing killed my brother… I'm going to fing rip his eyes out" — the moment the lightning streak down her right eye was first described. Later, told by Olivia they would deal with her split personality later, she replied that there was no split anymore; asked by Silas about her old cult, she remembered it and her dragon fondly and said she was happy to be "another part of the whole".
• Session 60: with Luke absent, the DM voiced her as Helisanna for the whole session, running the meatloaf-cart distraction with Scarlet.
• Session 62: when Silas offered to back her if she wanted to kill Steel, she said it depended on who you asked — Leliana was scared, Helisanna wanted him hurt — and answered, "I'll put on Helisanna mode."
• Session 63: Silas closed the night with "We still got to find another opportunity to get Helisanna's revenge."

Powers and Equipment

• Warlock: Eldritch Blast (with Repelling Blast), Hex, pact weapon axe.
• Bard: Bardic Inspiration, Command, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Dissonant Whispers, Suggestion, Hold Person, Sleep, Thunderwave, Mirror Image, Levitate, Misty Step.
• The guitar-axe: instrument and weapon in one; purple energy pours from it when she plays.
• Smoking Jacket (Interlude II): +1 Charisma.

Relationships

• Leliana Goldspring: her other self. Between Sessions 34 and 56 Helisanna treated her with scorn; since Session 57 they share one body and know each other's minds.
• Silas Fairbanks: her band manager. In Session 57 he told Leliana that Helisanna was "the rudest, most selfish person I've ever met" but perhaps a coping mechanism, and that he preferred the whole person. He has promised to back Helisanna's revenge on Steel.
• Bru: in Session 56 he recalled that Helisanna once made him and Leliana believe they were part of her family, though she never believed it herself.
• Y'chek: her patron. What has become of it since Session 57 is unknown.

Open Questions

• Did the separate Helisanna last seen "running things in the South" (Session 56) merge into Leliana at the revelation, or does she still exist somewhere? Asked at the end of Session 57, the answer was "we'll have to find out"; in Session 58 Helisanna spoke of her cult and dragon as her own memories.
• What hold does Y'chek still have on her? In Session 58: "you'll have to wait and see."

Session History

• Session 1 — Helisanna headlines The Little Hovel with Bru's pyrotechnics and Red's blessings; audience members' eyes glow purple.
• Session 5 — She plays the Forge Heart concert for thousands; glowing-eyed fans join her on stage for the finale.
• Session 23 — Purple mist from her performance turns locals' eyes purple, and she tells Olivia what little she knows of her pact.
• Session 26 — The party finds thousands of purple-eyed ravers under her influence partying beside the resistance headquarters.
• Session 32 — At The Little Hobble she commands the ravers with her music and sends them to prepare a massive concert.
• Session 34 — Near death, she submits to Y'chek and then tears free; she splits into Helisanna, who leaves with her ravers, and Leliana Goldspring.
• Session 35 — The party learns the two are fully separate people with separate bodies and debates whether Helisanna can be saved.
• Session 36 — She plays the Great Hall concert while her ravers swarm the Iron Claws.
• Session 37 — She appears riding Duncan the black dragon and is later rumoured to haunt the depths of High Forge.
• Interlude 12 — She and her ravers occupy the Lotus Casino until the reset sends them back to High Forge.
• Session 56 — Through a mirror-pond she warns Leliana away from the gateway where Helisanna was born.
• Session 57 — Leliana learns she and Helisanna are two extremes of one person and gains the power to switch between them.
• Session 58 — Speaking as Helisanna, she vows to kill Captain Steel, and a lightning streak down her right eye marks the switch.
• Session 60 — Voiced by the DM as Helisanna for the whole session, she runs the meatloaf-cart distraction.
• Session 62 — She infiltrates the barracks as Helisanna and promises Silas to "put on Helisanna mode" against Steel.