Padma Lovelle

## General

Padma Lovelle is the mother of Coriander Lovelle, the spouse of Argyle Lovelle, and a resident of the South Ward, in Waterdeep. She makes her living as a street magic performer and mystic under the alias of "Zoroastra", for which she has earned a pleasant recognition in the South Ward. However, she and her husband moonlight as ardent devotees of the Mithral Break - a network of conspiracy theorists established across the coast. Padma has made it her mission to uncover the hidden truths "They" don't want the public to know, but with each day she seems to meet more resistance than the day before.

Still, Padma is motivated by what is right, rather than what is easy; the more obstacles she finds to the truth, the greater her cunning to reach it seems to become. With her deft hands and penchant for trouble, her intimate familiarity with misdirection, and her ability to think outside the box, Padma is certain to reach whatever truth it is she seeks.

## Description

Padma Lovelle bears a striking resemblance to Coriander, if only exaggerated. She is taller and thinner than her son, with more chiseled features. But unlike Coriander, Padma bears cobalt-blue eyes and deeper, cooler-brown skin. As she has grown older, Padma's hair has begun to gray at the edges - but she is nonetheless never seen without one of her telltale hairbands (held in place with custom, metal pins) wrapped tightly across a mane of curly, brown hair.

The city's extensive pollution has had a weathering effect on Padma's voice: she speaks in a gravellier register than she once did before coming to the city. Still, her Candlekeep accent rings as strong as the day she arrived in Waterdeep.

## Biography

### Backstory

Born in Candlekeep in 447 H.F., Padma Lovelle (née Raung) spent much of her youth in the ancient metropolis, where she made a living providing entertainment for those who found the Great Library "too dry": she would put on street magic parlor shows outside the library to draw in crowds, and would at the same time tell riveting stories of great historical figures (with some embellishment here and there) to keep them engaged. For Padma, it was a fair shake: the library would get a small but steady influx of customers inspired by Padma's stories, and Padma would earn a comfortable wage during these shows.

During these shows, the greatest perk Padma saw in her work was the chance to meet a wide range of different citygoers. And on one such occasion, in 470 H.F., she met a young professor who had come to Candlekeep to gain a greater understanding of the dimensional planes: Argyle Lovelle. The two became fast friends and confidants during Argyle's increasingly common visits to the Great Library, bonding over their shared appreciation of history and the oddities they found in ancient and modern records. It wasn't long before the two became romantically involved, and in short order the two were wed in 472 H.F.

Together the pair departed Candlekeep on a hunch. They believed that a great many of their answers to these historical inconsistencies could be gleaned somewhere in the city of Waterdeep, and so the pair made haste to their new destination. When they arrived in the city and found it a bustling (but otherwise unremarkable) locale on its surface, the Lovelles were undeterred. They began to set up shop, proverbially speaking, and established a small information network (which would come to be called the "Mithral Break" between its members) within Waterdeep to surveil the "big players" who controlled much of the city's workings.

This surveillance was not without its risks, however. The Lovelles came under gang attention, and in short order they were intimidated into a "protection racket" by the Dearth, lest they (and their newborn son, Coriander) find themselves in dire straits. And Argyle found that his daylighting work as a planar professor became more difficult with each lesson he taught; he had met pushback before he found himself in Waterdeep or Candlekeep, but he began now to be thrust out of nearly every teaching position he took these days.

And so the Lovelles would make their living for the next two decades: struggling to make ends meet in this city but with a resolve to know the "truth" that had never been stronger. Something was actively pushing this family from what they sought in Waterdeep, and by 497 H.F. the Lovelles believed they had finally put a face to it: Watchguard Management & Solutions.