A Biographical Account of the Demon Nikadeamus

Executive Summary (1)
House Malyre is no more. The entire lineage is put to the torch. The estates are seized. The very name is expunged from the register of royal bloodlines. Only she remains, Nikadeamus, the last surviving descendent of what was once the mightiest and most ancient house of the Shadowfell.

As a scholastic, it is certainly not my place to levy opinions on the subjects I document, but only to collect the research data that comes in from the far corners of the multiverse, compile faithful reports, and catalog them in the Archivist’s libraries. I am merely stating facts, therefore, when I say that the demon Nikadeamus singlehandedly (if inadvertently and without apparent malice) caused the destruction of House Malyre. She alone is to blame for the butchering of her kin.

It is said that the Material Plane is no place for weak stomachs, and with the passing of each of its epochs, the history of folly is written anew. Each turn of the cosmic wheel sees its share of mortals who would become demigods in the eyes of the masses, and demigods who would attain something akin to divinity in the Far Realm like . . . well, like the Archivist.

It has been known to us for some time now that _______ (2) found Vecna’s so-called Book of Vile Darkness in a remote pit of the Shadowfell, and used notations in the margins of the pages to breathe life into a demiplane within the Material Plane itself, a false world animated by souls ensnared in a self-perpetuating “reincarnation engine,” with himself propped up as deity.

This artifice is fiercely protected by the blood-houses of the Shadowfell, as well it should be. Never in the recorded history have denizens of the Plane of Shadow attempted such a brazen incursion into the Material Plane. Nikadeamus, being noble born, was well aware of this project’s importance. She knew full well that it wasn’t to be tampered with. The demonic houses of the Shadowfell have placed great hopes in ______’s creation, and do not want to see it fail.

But Nikadeamus is arrogant and impulsive. She is defiant. Above all, she is curious. She went exploring there on several occasions with the help of none other than Titania herself. Imagine that, a Shadowfell darkling making a warlock’s pact with the seelie queen of the Feywild. The demon should have known better. Titania is as capricious as she is beautiful—and not to be trusted. Are we truly to believe that an archfey and sworn enemy of the Shadowfell entered into a pact with a wayward member of its most preeminent noble house merely to aid and abet a handful of frivolous sightseeing trips inspired by, of all things, a chance discovery of some old encyclopedias from the age before the advent of Darkmanse? There is more here than meets the eye. One wonders if this child of the Shadowfell made herself an unwitting agent of the Feywild, sent into ______’s demiplane as an infiltrator, for what purpose we do not yet know.

Predictably perhaps, her juvenile transgressions were found out. The punishment was swift. Nikadeamus was made to watch as her family members were crucified, flayed, and fed to the flames of the pyres. (3) She herself was stripped of her noble rank and sent into exile in the Splinterdawn. Known simply as Dawn to the unfortunates who inhabit the place, the Splinterdawn is still considered Shadowfell in that it is a necrotic echo of materiality, but the materiality in question is a splinter of the Prime Material, a product of some forgotten magical conflagration from ages past, which tumbles endlessly through the inky blackness of the Sea of Night. (4)

Legend holds that this material splinter is home to the fabled lost city of Xanadu, a pleasure dome that many an adventuring party has risked life and limb to find. (5) The Shadowfell echo of Xanadu is the Splinterdawn, a city of vice—and an impossible city at that.

Dawn has been described as a sprawling and sordid Möbius strip, a vast urban assemblage of paradoxical geometry and gravity wells. (6) Nikadeamus was reduced to living as an urchin on the streets. To survive, she turned to prostitution (as well as petty theft and occasional contract work for the city’s criminal syndicates). She persisted in her occult thrill seeking, gleaning what real knowledge she could from slum’s countless fortunetellers, witchdoctors, and street preachers of the ever-immanent twilight of the gods. It was during this period that she attempted the forbidden Carving Ritual, and through it made contact with an entity identifying itself only as NEMO, entering into an ill-advised warlock’s pact from which she has been unable to extricate herself.

It is now a few months since our researchers lost track of the tiefling. Their sources in Splinterdawn believe that this being, NEMO, helped her to escape her magically induced confinement to the city. Johns of hers that our agents have interviewed—all of whom, it is worth noting, claim to be ardently and hopelessly in love with the beautiful if malefic young whore—are of the opinion that she is headed to Darkmanse, impelled there by a dream. Could it be that Nikadeamus has some role yet to play in the Divine Invasion? (7)

This slatternly demonwitch will surely stir up trouble for us if left to her own devices. She must be found. And when she is found, she must be terminated with extreme prejudice.

_________________

1. Author not identified.
2. Name redacted from the report on file.
3. There are rumors that rival houses capitalized on Nikadeamus’s infraction to do away with House Malyre. 
4. May refer to the “between spaces” of the Transitive Planes.
5. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” It is worth noting that the subtitle of Coleridge’s opium-inspired poem states that the work is “A Fragment,” which some view as a direct reference to the prime-splinter. Did Coleridge glimpse the lost city in a drug vision? It is tempting to speculate.
6. For visual reference, see M. C. Escher’s Relativity.
7.  Known to some historical schools as the Darkmanse War, to others as the Greening.