Leliana Goldspring

Bard (College of Glamour) • The Heart of the Party • One Woman, Two Personas

Overview

Leliana Goldspring and Helisanna Doomfall are the same woman, played by the same player, Luke Neverisky. Leliana first appeared in Session 34, when Luke's original character, Helisanna, split in two: Leliana joined the party and Helisanna went her own way as a DM-run character. In Session 57 Leliana learned the truth — she and Helisanna are "two sides of the coin", extremes of one person — and with her late brother's Blue Moon guitar she can now switch into Helisanna at will.

Current status (Session 63): an active member of the party on its sabotage campaign in the Eldoran capital. She switches between the two personas "on the fly", fully one or the other with no blending yet; the two are aware of each other, and for now the switch is "very controlled… just flipping a switch". She wants revenge on Captain Steel, who murdered her brother, and reaches for "Helisanna mode" when that grudge is in play.

How the Two Personas Work

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

• Same face, same build. At the split the two 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). Her look shifts along a gradient as she gives in to one side or the other; 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 Leliana's character sheet as the master (hit points, inventory) and a separate sheet for Helisanna. Some spells belong to one persona only: in Session 62 she switched back from Helisanna to Leliana to send George a message.
• What to call her. In Session 58 Olivia asked what the party should call her, and she admitted she didn't know who she was at the moment. Bru and Elspeth floated "Anna" as a name covering both, but it was dropped: she is Leliana or Helisanna depending on who is out, and "Lily" undercover.

Background

The Split (Session 34)

In the fight against Crang, the near-dead Helisanna submitted to her patron Y'chek, then tore through the veil with the help of a small dwarven spirit — an avatar of Tyr working through Olivia's spell. Two women fell away from each other, and the stranger introduced herself as Leliana Goldspring: "I live around here… I'm not really anybody special." She had seen everything the party did through Helisanna's eyes, said the choice to make the pact was Helisanna's, not hers, and was glad just to be able to move her legs again. Helisanna, now played by the DM, brushed her off — "I'm the better you. I'm a rockstar, baby" — and left with 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.

Where She Came From (Sessions 56–57)

Leliana grew up in the Eldoran back-country; the schools there had a terrible reading programme but an excellent art programme, and she admits she can barely read. Her brother, Lieutenant Steven Goldspring, loved his electric guitar — the Blue Moon, painted with a blue crescent — but enlisted to "make a difference". Captain Steel murdered him in a research lab when he refused to hand over his research, and his funeral fell on Leliana's birthday; his will left her the Blue Moon guitar, and her father handed her a birthday card signed by her parents and Steven.

The next day, a young performer who "just wanted to be a musician so bad", she went looking for a library she had been tipped off about, lost that birthday card on a shelf, and walked through a shining gateway into an abyss where she was "rendered from your body and then reformed anew". She made a deal with a monstrous being, and Helisanna was born. She had buried the memory; the party walked her back through it in Sessions 56 and 57.

Session 57 — Two Sides of the Same Coin

When the World Tree's roots reached the place where Helisanna was born, the DM told her: "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." Silas told her he had found Helisanna "the rudest, most selfish person I've ever met", maybe a coping mechanism — and that the whole person was the version he preferred.

Role in the Party

Leliana is the party's support bard and its heart: she heals, controls crowds, inspires, and works rooms. Where Helisanna's music drove crowds into a purple-eyed mania, Leliana's calms and clears them (Session 38), and her acoustic concert in Greyport pulled belief out of an audience and hung it in the sky as Luna's new moon (Session 53).

Spells and Abilities

• Healing and support: Healing Word, Mantle of Inspiration, Bardic Inspiration, Intellect Fortress.
• Control: Hypnotic Pattern, Calm Emotions, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Counterspell.
• Deception and illusion: Minor Illusion, Invisibility, Hallucinatory Terrain, Message.
• Skills: Performance, Insight (an Insight of 30 exposed a staged rivalry in Session 55), Deception.

Equipment

• Blue Moon Guitar — her brother's electric guitar, recovered in Session 57; the key to switching personas, and what she flies on (Sessions 61–62).
• Mandolin of Rude Truths (Session 37) — after Session 57 reflavored as the Blue Moon Guitar, which keeps its charges, Fly among them.
• Studded leather armour, bought in Session 35 from "Mr. Purple Bottom", three children in a trench coat.

Relationships

• Helisanna Doomfall: her other self. While they lived apart, Leliana still insisted Helisanna "means well" and was worth saving; since Session 57 she is part of her.
• Silas Fairbanks: in Session 62 he privately offered to back her if she wanted to kill Captain Steel, even if it wrecked the plan.
• Bru: gave her his "emotional support dynamite" before she walked into the library (Session 56). In Session 35 she promised to stay and offered him scritches.
• Olivia Cooper: Leliana spotted her 200 gold for armour (Session 35); Olivia gave her the safe word "pineapple" on the drive to the library (Session 56).
• Scarlet: Leliana braided her a string necklace for her birthday (Session 53).
• George: her psychic link to him in the Eldoran capital (Sessions 61–62).

Open Questions

• Did the separate Helisanna, last seen "running things in the South" (Session 56), merge into her at the revelation, or does she still exist somewhere? At the end of Session 57: "we'll have to find out."
• What hold, if any, does Y'chek still have on her? In Session 58: "you'll have to wait and see."
• In Session 34 Leliana said that "when I chose not to go to that shrine, I woke up inside of that house"; how that shrine relates to the library gateway has not been explained.

Session History

• Session 34 — Leliana emerges when Helisanna splits in two, introduces herself to the party, and stays with them while Helisanna leaves with her ravers.
• Session 35 — The party learns the two are fully separate people; Leliana says killing Helisanna would break her heart, and helps Olivia afford new armour.
• Session 36 — In the Great Hall battle she saves the dying Finnwick with Healing Word and locks down Iron Claws with Hypnotic Pattern.
• Session 37 — She calms a heated argument with Calm Emotions, receives the Mandolin of Rude Truths, and spends the following month helping rebuild High Forge.
• Interlude 12 — At the occupied Lotus Casino she argues the party should still try to save Helisanna.
• Session 44 — She pilots Iro's steamboat, the Iron Maiden, against attackers on a 27 Insight.
• Session 53 — Her acoustic benefit concert at Jasper's brewery raises Luna's new moon over Greyport.
• Session 55 — Undercover as "Lily", she plays a roofied guest at Lord Bradicus's audition and exposes a staged rivalry.
• Session 56 — Near her homeland, her buried memories return; in the haunted library she learns it is where Helisanna was born and speaks with her through a mirror-pond.
• Session 57 — Walking her memories, she relives her brother's murder by Captain Steel, recovers his Blue Moon guitar, and learns she and Helisanna are two extremes of one person.
• Session 58 — Speaking as Helisanna, she vows to kill Captain Steel; her quick switches between personas show as a lightning streak of colour down her right eye.
• Session 60 — With Luke absent, the DM voices her as Helisanna, running the meatloaf-cart distraction with Scarlet.
• Session 61 — Disguised as an orphan, she lends Elspeth the inspiration that gets the party into the barracks and envies the new knights their wings.
• Session 62 — Disguised as a sergeant, she arms a bomb inside the barracks, flies back over the wall on the Blue Moon Guitar, warns George by message, and tells Silas she will "put on Helisanna mode" against Steel.
• Session 63 — She scouts the World Tree in the guise of a child and marks the research tower's collapse with a guitar riff.