Birgitta Spire

The Heir Behind the Fireplace

Laidronette is preparing to face the illusion her ancestor Talia left to test her heirs. The workshop lies behind a fireplace in the family home, and Laidronette suspects Nora let you in to help her pass. She calls herself the Witch of Curiosity when entertaining children and says her own magic amounts to enough fire to drive off vampires.

Her birth father died in the rebellion before he could pass down the family’s history, so she asks Muusa to recover it. The Cavendish Sunset and Sunrise Lords inherited an affinity for sunlight and moonlight from Talia, whose spells, Laidronette says, kept Darkovia’s eternal night from spreading across Greenguard.

The Witches on Darkovia’s Border

Talia’s coven took refuge in Darkovia after being exiled for practicing magic. When calamity came, the people who had shunned them asked for their help. Talia joined a prince’s adventures to earn the right to tend Darkovia’s borders. Muusa says the coven held trials in the workshop, where Talia knighted heroes at dawn. She married one of them and hoped their family would see the eternal night end.

Muusa assembles a book from the family archives. The vampires claim Mother Moon shines for them alone, while the werewolves hunt in the name of Father Forest, their All-Father. Talia’s enchantment still changes words and ink to conceal her ties to them.

The Girl in the Red Hood

The book tells of Talia taking a newborn girl from her dead mother’s arms and holding her for seventy nights. She wraps the baby in crimson, lights the clouds and sends her to a village on the west wind. The girl returns in a red hood with flowers, silks and gold, saying the witches can now live inside or outside the forest. Talia sends her back to the human world, but the forest follows her and the girl keeps returning.

In the version Talia’s spell leaves legible, Father Forest begs her to put Mother Moon in the sky so their children can survive. The book links her act to the rise of vampires and werewolves and says Birgitta Spire was built because the family that began the eternal night was bound to end it.

What Muusa Restored

Muusa’s spells uncover the girl’s question about who killed her mother. The forest told her that her mother had been drained of blood. She asks whether Talia sent her away knowing she would kill the people who had exiled the coven, and Father Forest accuses Talia of using her.

In the restored ending, Talia tells Father Forest that Moon will die but his child will live. The trees and shadows draw back, exposing the exiles to the sun. When Father Forest threatens to die with Moon unless Talia saves her, Talia cradles the young woman she once held as a baby and lifts her into the sky. Muusa concludes that the moon is a corpse and that its light draws on those who come to love its children. She asks you to keep that discovery from the vampires and werewolves.

Sun, Moon, and Talia

Talia’s trial allows Laidronette to lend her magic to a champion. You fight the illusion on her behalf and win, giving her full access to the workshop and its scrolls. She has a lot of studying to do and invites you back for Walpurgisnacht during Mogloween.

Sources

Birgitta Spire, Laidronette’s quests, House Cavendish’s origins