Inete was a wizard and diviner of the Temple of Savras in Port Nyanzaru and the granddaughter of its head, Zitembe, who raised her there after her parents died in a fire.123 She first traveled with the party as an acolyte and later joined it in her own right.45 She was blinded by the Beggar King,6 possessed by Obo’laka in the Tomb of the Nine Gods,7 killed by Takhesis Calva in the Cradle,8 and raised the next morning, the first resurrection to succeed since the Death Curse began.9
Zitembe, to Inete in a dream
“Write your own fate.”10
Description
Inete was a petite Eladrin, five feet three inches tall, with light brown skin and white hair.
From the thirty-first of Flamerule her eye sockets were empty.6 After her resurrection she had eyes again, and they were gray.9
She wore her grandfather’s robes from the third of Eleasis until they were destroyed in the Tomb.1112
Personality
Inete was studious and methodical. She copied new spells into her archive,13 rebuilt a partial dictionary of the Omuan language during a rest in the Tomb,14 took a sample of the gray slime of the fifth level for study,15 and, having seen night hags at work while the party slept, wrote herself a note in case they took the memory from her.16
Inete was cautious and quick to move out of danger. She left the sealing chamber at the Tomb’s false entrance by misty step as it closed,17 was the first clear of the gas when the juggernaut was loosed,18 and was out of the control room before the slab came down.15 While Obo’laka was in her this caution became open fear.19
By her own account she was supportive of others and took an interest in their lasting success, believed she had a hard time lying, had trouble trusting, and valued her grandfather’s praise above most things. She wanted to be the best magic user she could to make him proud, and would have cut off a friendship for his praise, though she would have found it hard to harm anyone she counted as a close friend or family. She loved knowledge from any source, was prone to irritation when she watched someone do a thing more skillfully than she could, and had read things she should not have and kept them secret.320
She had a fear of fire, likely related to the deaths of her parents.321
Abilities
Inete was a diviner. She scried with the Goggles of the Diviner,2223 could fix the outcome of a coming event in advance,7 and in the Tomb she was able to see invisible things and look into the Border Ethereal.22425 The Tomb blocked her scrying.7 By spell or by study she told what an object was: an iron flask made to capture and hold creatures,13 and, of the two scepters the party carried in the Tomb, which was real and which a decoy.18
She could read Omuan inscriptions,2627 and she kept a rat familiar that she could send out to scout.17 Spells she was recorded casting include fireball, misty step, identify, knock, enhance ability, Leomund’s tiny hut and disintegrate.2617282921188
Her spellbook was the Aristomancy Archive, a brass disc that unfolded into a floating armillary sphere held in her family for generations and gifted to her by her Grandfather in his final moments.
Possessions
- Zitembe’s scrying dagger, delivered to her after he left the city.30
- Zitembe’s journal.22
- The Goggles of the Diviner.22 They allowed her to see despite her later blindness, with her eye sockets appearing silvery and translucent when the goggles were worn.
- A scroll of scorching ray, acquired in the Grand Souk.5
- The Ouroboros Ring, which she woke holding after a dream of her grandfather.10
- Zitembe’s robes, destroyed in the Hall of Decay.1112
- A ring of protection, the vessel of Obo’laka. Since lost following the harrowing events of the Tomb.7
- The Staff of the Python, taken from a sarcophagus in the Tomb.19
- Two sapphire cords, two platinum armbands engraved with dueling dragons and a topaz belly-button gemstone given by a bottled genie in the Tomb in exchange for its freedom.24
- The Ring of the Watching Eye, claimed on the fourth level of the Tomb.31
- Snib’s Ledger, destroyed in the Hall of Decay.3212 It held tallies of the kills made by the Tomb’s traps going back decades, a file on the party with a projected cause of death for each of them, a page on the end of the Yellow Banner, and the line “Deliveries: lower floors. Recipient: THE MOTHERS.”32
- A glass jar of the gray slime of the fifth level, held for study.15
- The Seer’s Shroud, which survived the Hall of Decay,12 and on which she relied for sight since its acquisition from Fenthaza. 9
- A quill, The Boy’s gift to her.16
Relationships
Zitembe was her grandfather. He left Port Nyanzaru after foreseeing her lying dead with the Eye of Ubtao in her hands,30 and she watched him ascend at the Sunken Temple.33 His last entry in the journal he left her explained what he and Taban Veilthorn had done, and that he had lied to her since the day he pulled her from the ashes of her parents’ home.3334 The entry is given in full under Zitembe’s last entry.
She regarded Zitembe as her father and as her home, and he was what she missed most when she left the city.20
Her parents were Irewena, an Eladrin and a physician, and Sylfyr, a Half-Elf and a historian. They died in a fire when she was eight.320
Obo’laka possessed Inete from the thirteenth of Eleasis until the Cradle.78 The spirit drove off Moa when that god tried to take her as well.19 Obo’laka’s farewell came to her as she was raised: “You wrote your own fate, Inete. Thank you for bringing me upon this journey.”9
On the fifth of Kythorn Taenae tried to kiss her, which left Inete confused, though grateful for the party’s help against the Thayans.35 On the seventh Inete welcomed the party back to the temple and hugged Taenae, but when Taenae returned with a holy symbol as a gift and had forgotten which god Inete served, Inete snatched the amulet and told them to leave.36 When the party came back to Port Nyanzaru the two shared a bottle of wine in Zitembe’s study, where Taenae said that she was looking only for a fling. Inete took it as an insult and ended the conversation, and the two stayed distant the next day.3738 Word of it reached Zitembe and cost the party his goodwill.39 Taenae was nonetheless part of why Inete joined the party on the twenty-second of Flamerule: she wanted to see what would come of the two of them.20 In the Tomb the two of them grew openly suspicious of Takhesis together.2 Taenae later carried Inete’s original eyes until the day she was raised.9
Glade carried her body out of the Cradle, exemplifying the deep bond the two of them built over the course of the expedition.8
Raiketsu was found by Inete in the maze of Unkh’s tomb.40 Counting the Boy’s five gifts and the empty sixth place, she said, “Least favorite in this place is Raiketsu.”16
Eldrin Moonshadow, a scroll merchant of the Grand Souk, recognized her as Zitembe’s granddaughter and was an ally to her.5
Wongo spoke by telepathy to Inete, Glade and Taenae in his tomb, calling them his pets.28
Takhesis Calva killed her.8
Sister Silas raised her.9
History
Before the expedition
Inete was born in Port Nyanzaru to Irewena, an Eladrin physician, and Sylfyr, a Half-Elf historian, and took after the Eladrin side of her blood. Her parents died in a fire when she was eight, and all she knew of it was that the fire took them. Zitembe raised her in the Temple of Savras, where she spent most of her life assisting him in his studies as the Keeper of Portents; the temple and those close to her grandfather became her family. He taught her her magic, and she learned the rest from watching and talking to other wizards. She had adventured before, and took it up again to reach the site of her latest vision, a place she knew as the Snake Temple; the vision had shown her predators, and the jungle itself coming alive and hunting. She did not miss the weight of her responsibilities at the temple.320 Her own account is given in full under Backstory.
The Temple of Savras
Inete met the party at the Temple of Savras on the thirtieth of Mirtul, 1492 DR, and paid a hundred gold pieces to travel with them to the Aldani Basin, where she had seen a Snake Temple in nightmares.14 The party reached the basin at her behest and found the temple of her visions.4 On the sixth of Kythorn she and Zitembe cured the sick soldiers the party brought to the Temple of Savras,41 and she returned to her place there.36
She joined the party in Port Nyanzaru on the twenty-second of Flamerule, driven by new visions of the jungle waking.5 That day she lied to Glade about a Zhentarim sigil she recognized,5 and afterward went to the temple to speak with her grandfather.42 At the gala the following night a fellow acolyte told her that Zitembe had left the city, and delivered his dagger.30 On the twenty-fourth she stayed at the temple performing divinations to learn where Zitembe was and whether he was well.43 On the twenty-fifth, having felt the death tremor, she went with Vogal, Vonara and Glade to the warehouse and down into the Maw Below.44
On the twenty-sixth an adventuring druid delivered a package to her that held Zitembe’s journal. Its last entry read, “Taban was right. The Balance demands sacrifice. Forgive me.” She scried on him with the goggles and saw him deep inside the Sunken Temple, fighting a losing battle with a gaping hole in his chest; he smiled at her through the sensor before the vision ended.22
The Sunken Temple
On the twenty-seventh of Flamerule, crossing the Gorge of Teeth, each of the party was asked by a disembodied voice whether their flight served Order or Chaos. Inete answered Order, for fate.45 In the fight that followed, Taban told her, “Every bandage you apply only tightens his chains, girl. Some wounds must bleed to heal.”33 She then watched Zitembe and Taban Veilthorn ascend in the Sunken Temple, Zitembe into living stone and Taban into smoke and obsidian fur.33 Afterwards the journal in her backpack stirred, and she found a fresh, final entry in it. In it Zitembe confessed that he and Taban had held the Convergence together for seven centuries and had never been enemies, that they had let her believe the temple a prison and Chakuna an enemy, and that they ascended so that Acererak could not feast on their mortal souls.3334
That night she dreamed that she stood beneath the All-Seeing Eye of Savras. Zitembe appeared to her whole and unburdened, told her that he loved her, and gave her a last instruction, to write her own fate. She woke holding the Ouroboros Ring.10 On the twenty-ninth the party learned that the Death Curse had taken three priests of Savras, which struck her hard.46
The Beggar King
On the thirtieth of Flamerule, while the party was in the Old City, a mage hunter sent by the Beggar King entered the Temple of Savras. It told Inete, “Little Oracle. The Beggar King sends his invitation.” She was subdued and dragged into the depths.47
That evening, in the Temple of Euphoria, the party found what appeared to be Inete shackled inside Huskforge, the flesh golem of the Flesh Alchemist, and drew her out of it by a ruse. She was a night hag in Inete’s shape.476 The hag traveled with the party until the next morning, when she stole from an apothecary in Glade’s company and fled.48
The party found Inete herself that evening, one of twelve captives embedded in the living wall of the Beggar King’s throne room, alive and with her eyes removed, and cut her free.6
Omu
In Omu, Inete decoded the inscription at Kubazan’s shrine: “Kubazan urges us to tread without fear and to give back as much as we take.”26 The party rested that night inside her Leomund’s tiny hut near the shrine.26 At Moa’s shrine she spotted an invisible elder jaculi guarding the entrance.49 At Wongo’s shrine Glade turned himself and Inete into baboons; unable to speak, she read the inscriptions and conveyed their meaning to Glade and Taenae by charades, and the three came away with Wongo’s puzzle cube.27
On the twelfth of Eleasis she used the goggles to witness the aftermath of the attack on the Bastion and the mutilation of Elias. She tried to scry on Vonara and caught only a glimpse of her entering the Heart before magical interference blocked the view.23 That night she entered the Fane of the Night Serpent as a false prisoner, shackled and without her gear, with Vogal and Taenae.50 On first watch at the party’s camp afterward she heard leather shifting and movement in the dark and sent out her rat familiar, which found nothing.17
The Tomb of the Nine Gods
On the thirteenth of Eleasis she fixed the outcome of Glade’s dispel magic against a magical darkness, and recognized the first tomb the party opened as Obo’laka’s by its zorbo carvings. She tried to identify the ring inside and was possessed by Obo’laka.7 Later that day she took the Staff of the Python from a sarcophagus, at which the spirit of Moa tried to enter her as well, and she found the secret door that led to the waterfall.19 She cast enhance ability on Glade in the wind tunnel,28 and opened the fight at the forge of the Tomb Dwarves with a fireball.29
On the second level her sight showed her a gray slaad pacing inside a salt circle in Nangnang’s tomb, and a bottled genie paid her in jewelry.24 She saw the Sewn Sisters watching the party from the Border Ethereal, intent on Takhesis, and she and Taenae grew openly suspicious of him.2 She kept the first four hours of the watch that night and heard Tomb Dwarves resetting traps in the dark, and the next morning she watched the Sisters take Takhesis down the shaft.25
On the third level she directed the party’s path through I’jin’s tomb while Glade drew the dial out of its statue by telekinesis.51 She pressed a crystal eye into one of her empty sockets and saw herself from above on a blue grid; Taenae pried the eye out afterward.51 In the Chamber of Opposition she saw a vision of her own beheading, and she opened the fight with the tomb guardians that followed with another fireball.52
On the fourth level she went into the maze of Unkh’s tomb to find her scattered companions and found Raiketsu held there.40 The next afternoon she found an invisible door sealing the pendulum case of a grandfather clock and opened its lock with knock.21 When the party feared a doppelganger among them she was visibly nervous and could not give the party’s password; she proved herself by telling of her parents’ death in the fire and the fear it left her.21 That night Snib’s ledger passed to her.32
In the small hours of the sixteenth her identify showed that the scepter from the crypt was the true one and the one from the throne a decoy.18 In a hall whose reliefs showed kneeling figures with the party’s own faces revering a black sun, she remembered that Zitembe had once told her, “Beware the Black Sun.” She also remembered a rainbow of color from her audience with him after his ascension.18
On the fifth level she began a knock on the slab that had sealed the others in with the rising slime, and Raiketsu punched through it before she finished.15 She and Vonara then worked the control panel while the others mapped the rooms it moved.1512 The robes she had inherited from Zitembe rotted away in the Hall of Decay.12 On the sixth, while the others slept, she saw three figures in the rocking chairs of the Sewn Sisters’ lair, one of whom waved at her.16 Later the three stood up out of the chairs and stepped through, where the whole party could see them.16
Death and resurrection
In the Cradle, when Raiketsu struck the strut, Inete and Vogal stood ready.53 She cast disintegrate at Takhesis without effect.8 In the last round of the fight he killed her with a single blow that took her head.8 Glade carried her body out, and it was with the party when they woke in the jungle on the seventeenth of Eleasis.89
Taenae, in the shape of a quetzalcoatlus, flew the party and Inete’s body to the camp above the caldera, and Sister Silas raised her there that morning. Glade and Taenae could not help with the casting and instead made her the warmest welcome they could. The party laid her original eyes with the body, and the spell grew new ones. Inete chose to return.9
Epilogue
Inete reopened the Temple of Savras in Port Nyanzaru in Zitembe’s honor. She took to bandaging her eyes even though they were restored, never having become used to them again, and relied on her robe for sight. She kept a private showcase, for friends and trusted confidants only, of every item collected during the expedition. She bore a green tattoo of a zorbo for Obo’laka.9
Appendix
Notes
Behind the screen
Inete was the only non-player character of the campaign to become a longstanding player character. She began as a companion run by Patrick, the Dungeon Master, and was taken on by Nibbles in Session 18.
In Session 42 the night hag impersonating Inete was played at the table by Patrick.
Inete’s resurrection was the first to succeed anywhere in Faerûn since the Death Curse began.
Zitembe’s last entry
The following is the final entry in Zitembe’s journal, found by Inete after his ascension, in full.
The river outside Omu runs black tonight. I watched it from the Scales—this poison that seeps from Acererak’s tomb. Once, its waters carried the laughter of your mother when she was a child. Now it carries only rot.
Forgive me, Inete.
I have lied to you since the day I pulled you from the ashes of your parents’ home. I told you Chakuna was our enemy. I let you believe this temple was a prison. The truth is far crueler:
We chose this.
For seven centuries, Taban and I held the Convergence. We bled memories into the Scales—his joy, my love, your mother’s first steps—all fuel to keep Chult alive. We let you think us rivals because the Ritual demands sacrifice, not sorrow. If you had known the cost… could you have watched me walk into the stone?
Omu is dying.
The Soulmonger gnaws at the roots of the world. When Taban tore Valachan apart, it was not madness—it was mercy. He bought us these final months.
Tonight, we offer the last flickers of our mortal souls to become what Chult needs:
Taban, the Storm that Cleanses
I, the Labyrinth that RemembersWe do this not for godhood (a hollow curse), but because if we die as mortals, Acererak will feast on seven hundred years of our pain. He would turn our love for this land into a vile wings.
So I break my final vow
Backstory
The following is Inete’s backstory as written by Nibbles, her player, in full.
Born to Irewena, an Eladrin elf and Sylfyr, a half-Eladrin. Her heritage won out, yielding her all of the benefits of being a full Eladrin. Her parents died when Inete was a young girl, and all she knows is that the fire “took them”.
Birthplace is Port Nyanzaru, where she has remained her entire life. Most of that life has been spent assisting her grandfather, Zitembe (see Notable NPCs) as the Keeper of Portents, inside the Temple of Savras.
All of her skills and knowledge, she owes directly to her loving grandfather, who stepped up significantly following her parent’s demise.
She views the Temple of Savras as her family and will do her best to defend it.
Became an adventurer once more to travel to the site of her latest vision, what she knows as The Sunken Temple.
Beliefs:
Supportive of others, with a great interest in their lasting success.
Believes she has a hard time lying to others
Her grandfather’s praise is worth more than most, if not all, things.Weaknesses:
Fear of fire
Prone to irritation when observing others do something more skillfully than her
Loves knowledge, no matter the source or content
Appearances
Session 3 · Session 4 · Session 18 · Session 19 · Session 21 · Session 24 to Session 26 · Session 28 to Session 33 · Session 35 · Session 36 · Session 38 to Session 41 · Session 43 · Session 44 · Session 46 · Session 48 to Session 54 · Session 56 to Session 74 · Session 76 to Session 86 · Session 88 to Session 91
In Session 3 and Session 4 she traveled with the party as a companion. Mentioned in Session 1, Session 2, Session 5, Session 20, Session 22, Session 42 and Session 87.