Nika Moonsmith

**Nika Moonsmith** is an NPC and former delivery girl in the town of Whalehale. She accompanies Lapis Emberpike along with Conder Fleetfoot as one of her friends and associates on the journey to locate the unicorn.

**Note: All features below refer to the character as they are in the present. This does not refer to the character as they are in a past sidequest.**

## Appearance

Nika is fairly tall for her age, towering above most of her peers and family. She has a long but athletic build, with slender but toned arms and legs from her day job spent running around and carrying things. Her natural skin is chestnut-colored, but it often darkens during the summer from extended time spent outdoors.

Many freckles are sprayed across her nose and cheeks, which have been described to almost look like they connect into constellations. Her eyes are dark brown with flecks of gold in them and, some say, bits of violet.

On the underside of her left forearm is a long, haphazardly healed scar from cutting open her arm time and time again for blood rituals.

In her youth, Nika kept her hair in dreadlocks up in a ponytail, but now she keeps it in smooth and elegant lemonade braids that sweep off to her right side.

## Personality

Nika is cunning, manipulative, and charismatic. She moves with an energetic, impulsive, and on-the-go attitude that most people can't help but be drawn to, which leads her to be extremely charismatic and an excellent people person. She's the ultimate devil's advocate, weaving words like a web and playing sides to get others to do what she wants them to, working her way into social territory as easily as walking. She can use the power of rhetoric to get people to do what she wants, and she takes great pride in this.

Nika often acts calm, cool, and confident. She almost seems as though she's removed from the world like there's nothing that can touch her that she can't handle. This apathy, however, tends to lead to a sense of deep arrogance, as she typically believes herself to be above those around her. Even so, her ability to not care about many things gives her a good sense of humor, to a point where she is constantly cracking jokes about nearly everything.

However, Nika's charisma isn't met without substance. Knowledgable and a quick thinker, Nika's intellect isn't used for practical things like mathematics and science, but rather analyzing the world around her. Nika is a master planner, coming up with complex schemes that would put the most dangerous gang leaders to shame and impress some of the greatest kings. While her plans may often be knocked off-kilter by her temper, she is an expert at finding shapes in the chaos. She'll find ideas, reasons, and theories from nothing, finding ways to twist them and make them sound exactly the way she wants. When she studies someone, she'll rip them down to their very core to find out what makes them tick and exploit them to her benefit.

With this talent for manipulating, Nika has developed a mindset that is incredibly ambitious. There's nothing she wants more than to be successful; to not cause a ripple on the surface of the world, but a tidal wave. She wants influence and power more than anything else in the world, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to get that. Insensitive and holding a small tolerance for emotion, Nika can often come off as cold and lacking in compassion to anyone who may come across her.

## Powers and Abilities

 Dexterity
 Constitution
 Intelligence
 Wisdom
 Charisma

### Witch

* ***Quickening.*** Nika has the ability to enter into an induced state known as witch's quickening, letting her see what others cannot. By remaining still and concentrating for one minute, she can see into the Ethereal Plane up to 60 feet and gains an advantage on perception and investigation checks.
* ***Witch Circle: Circle of Power.*** Witches in this circle gain their abilities by harnessing the secrets which govern the very basis of spiritual existence.
	+ ***Ancestral Power.*** Nika calls upon the residual power of the individuals whose souls she binds. The save DC of her spells is increased by 2 (bonds filled).
	+ ***Forceful Presence.*** Nika can force a spirit to grant its release effect but retains control of the spirit so that it is not dismissed and continues to provide its passive effect. She can use this ability 4 times (charisma modifier).
	+ ***Powerful Bonds.*** The level of spirits Nika binds are considered 1 higher than the spell slot she used to bind them.
* ***Binding Rites.*** Nike can bind spirits to her service by performing certain rites.
	+ ***Spirit of Hate.*** Spirits of Hate inspire ferocity. When Nika is damaged by a creature, she gains advantage on attack rolls against that creature on her next turn. This spirit can be released during a hit against another creature and deals 5d6 necrotic damage.
	+ ***Spirit of Fear.*** Spirits of Fear bring nightmares to life. While Fear is bound, Nika may add double proficiency to intimidation checks. When released, a number of creatures equal to the spirit level within 30 feet make a wisdom save or are frightened for one minute.
* ***Spirit Ward.*** Nika has the ability to create a spirit ward as an action. The ward has a radius of 30 feet, centered on her location, and cannot move. Creatures inside cannot be charmed, frightened, or possessed by undead and have resistance to all damage from undead sources. If a friendly creature is reduced to 0 hit points inside, the creature becomes stable. The ward lasts 1 minute.
* ***Spiritual Casting.*** Nika can call upon the spirits she has bound to help her cast her spells. She may dismiss a spirit or a number of spirits as a bonus action to recover a single expended spell slot of a level no higher than the combined level of spirits she has bound.

### Spells

 1st Level
 2nd Level
 3rd Level
 4th Level
 5th Level

### Feats

* ***Silver-Tongued.*** Nika has developed her conversational skill to better deceive others. She has double-proficiency in the deception skill, and when she takes the Attack action on her turn, she can replace one attack with an attempt to deceive one humanoid she can see within 30 feet of her that can see and hear her. On a success, her movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks from the target and her attack rolls against it have an advantage; both benefits last until the end of her next turn or until she uses this ability on a different target. On a fail, the target can't be deceived by her in this way for 1 hour.

## Synopsis

### Early Life

In her earliest years, Nika's childhood wasn't a happy one. Her mother, Lyla Moonsmith, was a powerful sea sorceress who rose to power in the capital city of Achalens, at one point living in Armathain Castle with the rest of the royal family of the time. However, her mother eventually fell from grace after her dabbling in the dark arts led her to discover something that she shouldn't have. She never told Nika what it was, but whatever it was, it was evil, and it never truly left.

It changed Nika's mother in indescribable ways, affecting her sanity and leading her to a dishonorable casting out of the royal castle. With nowhere left to go, Lyla traveled aimlessly around Naephemon, slowly losing her grip on reality. Eventually, she came to Whalehale, a town near the sea where her sorcerous origins led her. There, she engaged in a brief but intense three-year relationship with Nika's father, Favroe Nightling before he eventually left after being driven out by her mother's insanity.

After being cast out of the royal court, Lyla wanted Nika to succeed in magic and work her way up to the royal court herself, or some other form of political power. However, Nika wasn't born with her mother's sea sorcery, and as time went on, this slowly became more and more apparent.

Growing up, Nika was subjected to various forms of abuse. Her obvious lack of aptitude for magic led her mother to become violent and hostile with her. On top of that, Lyla's insanity from the creature in her soul had developed into an intense form of schizophrenia, which only worsened her behavior towards her daughter.

Nika would usually be sent out to fetch ingredients for the spells that her mother still cast, often being sent off deep into nature to fetch odd and obscure things. Most of the time, she didn't even know if her mother was going to use them or not. All that happened was that she was nine years old, being sent out on a small rowboat into the ocean to get things that her mother might not even need.

As she grew older, Nika tried to keep her home life and her life in the town as secret as possible. She hardly ever spoke about her mother, putting up walls between herself and her home life. She did receive love from her father's mother, Liris Nightling, but even so, it wasn't enough to keep Nika in a completely stable state.

Nika's early abuse led her to become cold and distant, as well as self-serving and self-reliant. She built up walls around herself which hardened, creating a person that was violent and emotionally cold. As her abuse became more and more intensive, so did her frustration, as well as a desire to hurt others. At a very young age, she was particularly violent with other children and lied frequently, as well as doing reckless and unnecessarily risky things.

At some point when she was fourteen, Nika ran out into the woods after being beaten ruthlessly by her mother. Carrying a knife in her pocket, Nika intended to hurt something—anything. After wandering, Nika came across a large deer with majestic antlers. Without thinking, Nika used her knife to slit the throat of the deer, leaving it to bleed out on the snow.

As she stood there, reeling in what she had done, Nika watched as the deer slowly rose again—or rather, a blue, ghostly form of the deer. The deer, majestic and perhaps even more beautiful than before, stood there staring at Nika for a long time in an almost unnatural silence, before bounding away into the forest and disappearing.

After that, it was as though something awoke in Nika. She began to see blue, ghostly figures floating around her, often staring at her silently and passively. Nika was startled by her newfound ability, and at first, worried that she was going crazy from her mother.

However, a few months after the incident she admitted to her grandmother what had been going on, to which her grandmother explained was something that ran in her father's family. According to her grandmother, Nika had 'clairvoyance,' a gift that ran in the blood of those of the Nightling father. Her father had clairsentience, and Liris had clairvoyance as well.

Nika was stunned upon hearing this, but not exactly surprised, as it did explain many things in her life. However, a few months later her grandmother died, leaving Nika mostly alone in the world. With her grandmother gone, Nika's tolerance towards her mother's behavior worsened.

Finally, when she was sixteen, something inside of Nika snapped. One day, while her mother was screaming at her for her lack of magical aptitude, she hit her in the side of the eye with a candelabra. As Nika's eye bled, a sense of indescribable rage overtook her.

Wrestling the candelabra out of her mother's hand, Nika proceeded to repeatedly beat her mother with it, again and again, until she was lying on the ground. However, Nika wasn't done. Taking a knife off the nearby table, Nika proceeded to stab her mother again and again, until finally, her mother was no more.

In the wake of her mother's death,

## Trivia

* Nika's astrological sign is Gemini, the twins.
* At Hogwarts, Nika's primary Hogwarts house would be Slytherin, and her secondary Hogwarts house would be Ravenclaw.
* Although she has not been formally diagnosed, Nika bears many traits of a common sociopath.
	+ Impulsive actions and failure to plan ahead.
	+ Irritable and aggressive/violent and hostile.
	+ Unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behavior with no regard for the safety of self or others.
	+ Disregard for right and wrong.
	+ Failure to consider the negative consequences of her behavior or learning from them.
	+ Extreme arrogance.
	+ Lack of remorse and empathy for others.
	+ Engages in criminal behavior.
	+ Poor and abusive relationships.
	+ Persistent lying.
	+ Repeatedly violates the rights of others through intimidation and deceit.
* In her childhood, Nika briefly had a crush on Lapis Emberpike.

## Quotes

* (To Erendriel Beiberos) "...you know what, maybe I am a little prideful, okay? Maybe I like to feel good about myself, but is that really all that wrong? I don't think it is!"