Madam Eva

Roleplaying Information
Resonance. Madam Eva should inspire discomfort with her intimate knowledge of the players’ pasts, gratitude for her dedication to the players’ journey, and reassurance with her confident predictions.

Emotions. Madam Eva’s most frequent emotions are amusement, solemnity, concern, and contemplation.

Motivations. Madam Eva wants to see the land of Barovia healed and freed from Strahd’s corruption.

Inspirations. When playing Madam Eva, channel The Ancient One (Doctor Strange) and the Fates (Hercules).

Character Information

Persona. To the world, Madam Eva appears as a wise, yet maddened crone who speaks in prophecies and riddles. To those she trusts, she appears as a kind, yet frustratingly opaque and stubborn old woman.

Morale. In a fight, Madam Eva would calmly insist that her opponent cease their attacks, then—if her Vistani aides prove unable to stop her assailant—weaken them with the harm spell before demanding their surrender.

Relationships. Madam Eva alone knows that she is an avatar of the Seeker.

True nature [IDEA — NONCANONICAL, GM-only — not to be revealed except through play]: Madam Eva is the Autumn Fane (the Mountain Fane; domain: the future), who survived Strahd’s rise by going into hiding and merging/pact-binding with a mortal woman named Katarina. This is why Strahd, when seeking a Tarokka reading, specifically invokes “Madam Eva” rather than any other Fane name. Her pact’s purpose, from Katarina’s side, was to free her “brother” (Strahd) from the curse of immortality — i.e. release him from vampirism, not kill him. She is capable of restoring her full divinity right now but knows doing so would kill her while she’s this weak alone — hence her long game of maneuvering others (Cassandra, Von Richten, Argonvost historically, the party) into doing the restoration work for her. She does not know her sister (the Spring Fane) is trapped in amber at the Amber Temple — she was occupied manifesting the Katarina bond when that happened and has no memory of it. She sees Cassandra as a potential vessel to help restore the Fanes, possibly a future high priestess or another avatar/conduit for the Mountain Fane — this is her hope, not a settled fact. She secretly seeded the idea of dissipating Amber Shards out of the Temple into Argonvost’s mind during the Silver Age, letting him believe it was his own plan, because her real goal was extracting the Spring Fane piece by piece (see Cosmology). Whether she and Argonvost had a personal history (courtly acquaintance, possibly an unconsummated romance) is an optional, undecided detail. She keeps a Roc as a familiar/mount, tied to a hinted (unreconciled) blood connection between Katarina and the Martikov/von Zarovich bloodline (see Full profile notes cross-reference). If the party ever pursues retrieving the Heart of Darkness for Strahd in exchange for leaving Barovia, she will actively try to stop them (see Strahd’s motivations).

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