“My people are no more. I am the last of the Blood Ghost Clan, and here I lie broken. Ketheptis, the One-Eyed Crone, claimed us. My father was the greatest of our war chiefs. He single-handedly smote the cloud giant warlord, Darkrond, and claimed the skulls of his sons as well. But the Crone devoured him as casually as a man might eat a morsel of cooked pig. She feasted upon our people, and she took both my legs. She spoke to me in a voice like a great wind thundering through the mountain passes. She told me I was to be spared as a harbinger to the rest of the drow. I am a living omen of my people’s doom. I gazed into her unflinching eye and beheld a hate so deep no mortal could comprehend its awful power. I serve little purpose now, my body tattered by her unforgiving talons, but I can at least warn any who venture toward her domain. Turn back. The Crone’s fury is eternal and merciless as winter. She cannot die.”
—Jarkilos, last of the Blood Ghost Hunters
High along the jagged crest of the Bluespine Peaks lairs the mighty Ketheptis. The Crone turns her one eye upon the many drow tribes of the jungles north of the Bluespines. Her gaze festers with hate, and an ancient vendetta crouches in her icy heart.
Ketheptis came to Xen’drik a newborn silver wyrmling, in the care of her parents, Lehtokorathil and Baasrashal. The family of silver dragons made a home in the lower peaks of the Bluespines, but their predations on nearby drow soon drew the attention of a powerful band of Sulatar. The fire-wielding drow trapped the elder dragons in their lair and slaughtered them.
Ketheptis hid in a high alcove and looked on from her vantage point as the drow butchered her parents. She roared in terror as her mother was burned alive and her father’s head was cleaved from his neck. One of the drow put an arrow through Ketheptis’s left eye, nearly killing her, but the wyrmling escaped and crawled away into the snow-shrouded heights of the Bluespines.
Hate is a powerful force, and it ate at Ketheptis’s heart. She decided centuries ago that she would see every drow in Xen’drik dead. She pursues this plan of genocide today by various means.
In her youth, she flew at drow tribes in the throes of fury, which nearly got her killed more than once. Ketheptis’s tactics matured as she did. She went down among the drow tribes in the form of a one-eyed dark elf crone possessing magical powers, and she poisoned their leaders’ hearts against one another. The crone watched as brutal warfare broke out, encouraging escalation and horrific atrocities on all sides. Some of the savage practices of drow tribes that Khorvairian explorers decry—cannibalism, maiming the children of their enemies, slowly eviscerating prisoners alive—actually spawned in Ketheptis’s twisted mind and were spread by her evil influence.
After the tribes in any one region are sufficiently weakened by this ploy, Ketheptis sheds her guise and slaughters the remainder, often leaving a single maimed survivor to tell the tale. Her hubris and need to inspire terror among her prey now work against her. Tales of her vile deception and secret war of genocide have spread, forcing her to pursue other avenues of eradicating her enemies. Most recently, she has developed virulent plagues intended to reduce the drow population of Xen’drik to a mass of rancid corpses. Ever single-minded of purpose, Ketheptis cares little if these blights decimate other races as well.
Description
Ketheptis never sought to regenerate her missing eye, preferring the ugly wound as a constant reminder of what the drow took from her. On occasion, she mounts the skull of a particularly formidable foe in the socket to terrorize her prey. Her entire left side sets the vacant eye against a grotesque backdrop: The once-shining scales along her left flank are rent, and several scorch marks are a souvenir of a particularly painful foray against the Sulatar. An experiment in vile magic gone awry twisted her left talon, leaving it forever gnarled and blackened, and her head crest is tattered from constant battle.
As Ketheptis’s weathered wings unfurl, countless drow skulls and bones dangling from them clatter unsettlingly. Though maimed, her physique is prodigious for her age, and the still-gleaming silver scales of her right side ripple with the movements of powerful muscles beneath.
Minions
Ketheptis is paid homage by a sizeable clan of frost giants whose ruler, Thraalgrum, shares her purpose. The primordial (SX 81) frost giant scoured the frozen citadels of Everice for clues to his ancestors’ downfall. His interpretation of the evidence tars the drow as well-cared-for slaves who turned spitefully against their benevolent masters.
Thraalgrum readily pledged his loyalty to the mighty silver dragon, and their shared hatred led to fleeting romances in the frost giant’s younger days. Two such liaisons bore fruit in Letho and Baasra. The half-dragon frost giants serve their mother’s whim. Baasra dotes on her aging father, but Thraalgrum disgusts Letho, who views his father’s obsession with their giant ancestors as folly. His patricidal intentions are stayed by Ketheptis, who still has use for his sire.
Thraalgrum is lithe and tall, with large oval eyes and a smooth, hairless body. He has stood by Ketheptis’s side for nearly a century but now grows decrepit with age, his deep blue skin stretched tight over bone.
Baasra takes after her father, viewing knowledge as power; her frame is underdeveloped compared to that of her massive brother. She dabbles in the Prophecy. She enjoys nothing more than capturing dragonmarked humanoids, whose minds she pierces with spells before she peels away their dragonmarked skin for preservation.
Letho is as brutish as he is stupid. He takes perverse pleasure in maltreating his father but obeys Ketheptis’s every word as law.
Ketheptis’s newest minion is an ancient elf vampire named Dekaraz, whose prisonlike tomb was excavated beneath her latest lair. Frozen in the deep ice long ago, Dekaraz is a forgotten horror of Qabalrin, whose deeds were so black they earned him banishment even among his own vile enclave. Dekaraz skillfully feigns amnesia and pretends to serve Ketheptis faithfully. Secretly, the vampire collects information concerning the fate of his shadowy civilization and the rising Blood of Vol. For the time being, he finds his position at Ketheptis’s side useful.
Allies and Enemies
Enemies of her enemy are Ketheptis’s friends. To this extent, several giant tribes at war with the drow find a ready ally in the One-Eyed Crone, though these giants often end up expendable pawns in her long-reaching plans for genocide.
Ketheptis has recently acquired a powerful ally in House Lyrandar. Her mysterious benefactor contacts her through intermediaries, but his commitment to “the solution of the drow problem” seems unquestionable. The ally claims to have lost his young wife to a particularly vicious drow attack, and this traumatic experience led him to paint the entire dark elf population with a broad brush. Ketheptis suspects the Lyrandar’s interest in her efforts against the drow are more financially motivated, but she finds the assistance of this new ally agreeable enough.
All drow and any who aid them are Ketheptis’s enemies. Among the dark elves, none pose a greater threat than the Sulatar, who have rebuffed her personal attacks on many occasions. The burn scars from one ordeal are a reminder not to treat these fire-wielding drow lightly. The recent rise of the Umbragen darkens Ketheptis’s mood as well. So desperate is her quest for genocide that she even seeks allies among the foul denizens of Xoriat to expunge the Umbragen for her.
News of her plans to wipe an entire race off the face of Eberron has begun to reach her ancestral home of Argonnessen. Such tales could draw the concern of other dragons, who view such a vile act of destruction as cataclysmic to the Prophecy’s current course.
Hooks
The PCs could become embroiled in the age-old conflict between Ketheptis and the drow in a number of ways. Perhaps a friend or relative of theirs visiting a drow community was killed when Ketheptis attacked, or was taken prisoner by the dragon. If the PCs have allies among the drow, the dark elves might entreat the party to end the One-Eyed Crone’s genocide. Other possible hooks include the following.
Outbreak: A dread plague spreads fast across Xen’drik, drawing closer to Stormreach with each passing day. The PCs must unravel the source of the contagion and seek out Ketheptis’s lair. Only there can the plague be undone.
Spoils of War: Ketheptis possesses an awe-inspiring collection of seized drow artifacts and relics, and the PCs might be contracted to steal a particular item of legend from her hoard.
Origins of the Blood: If the PCs are entangled with the Emerald Claw, they learn of a potential agent among Ketheptis’s minions whose knowledge of the Blood of Vol’s dark past could grant the rising cult greater power. The party must find Dekaraz and destroy the vampire before agents of the Emerald Claw help him escape.
Lyrandar’s Secret: PCs involved with House Lyrandar are asked to investigate strange correspondences between a Lyrandar enclave and an unknown party in the Bluespine Peaks.