The Astrodia Campaign

Verelda

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Verelda — “V” — is a scholar at The Academy of Arcane Arts, based at the Biblioplex and connected to the Quandrix faculty. She was Morgana’s longtime correspondent, collaborator, and friend, and the two of them jointly designed the construct guardians that now stand watch across the Academy. She has never been met in person — The Fallen know her entirely through two letters recovered from Morgana’s tower in Session 9.

The Collaboration

Verelda supplied the theory; Morgana supplied the forge. Verelda’s notes on an “animating lattice” corrected the temperament of their third guardian, which had previously “nearly cleav[ed] the poor delivery boy in half over a mispronounced password.”

The result is not a curiosity. The guardians standing at the Biblioplex — and, per Asha’s history check, posted throughout the Academy — descend directly from this work. Both women deliberately kept the origin quiet:

“Tell your colleagues at the Biblioplex their new watchmen owe more to a witch in the hills than they’ll ever know, and let’s keep it that way — I’d rather not explain myself to a room full of deans.” — Morgana

Neither of them ever worked up the nerve to present it to the Quandrix faculty.

Her Letter (Session 9)

Verelda’s reply to Morgana’s final letter was found still in the tower’s foyer, dusty and undelivered, bearing the seal of the Academy. It is the more revealing of the two documents:

  • She read Morgana’s letter three times and “did not much like what I keep finding between the lines of it.”
  • She did not try to forbid the trip — “You are, as ever, allowed to go and look at things” — but pressed hard: as “someone who has watched you talk yourself into ‘safe enough distances’ before,” she asked Morgana to write from wherever she ended up before doing anything past looking, threatening to send someone after her on a very fast horse, “and you know I have the connections at Quandrix to make that inconvenient for you.”
  • She reported the third guardian holding steady, having asked one of her students “quite politely, to state their business” before letting them pass — “which I choose to take as evidence your correction worked rather than evidence it has developed opinions.”
  • She told the story to Dean Lassette over dinner, who laughed until she had to leave the table.
  • Her closing: “Go carefully. Go loudly, if you can manage it, so that whatever it is knows you were never planning on being quiet about any of it. Write back the moment you’re able. I mean that.”

Morgana never wrote back. The letter sat unopened in the foyer for roughly twenty years while her body lay in the basement.

Why She Matters

Verelda is the party’s most concrete unfollowed lead out of Freedale:

  1. She holds a copy of Morgana’s research. Morgana’s journal: “I’ve sent what I know to Verelda, in case my instruments say more than I do.”
  2. She is reachable — an Academy scholar, at a place the party can get to.
  3. As far as anyone knows, she does not know Morgana is dead.
  4. She understands the guardians better than anyone alive — relevant now that Asha carries a Guardian Command Amulet and the S.A.T.O. may eventually need to move against Academy security.
  5. She names Dean Lassette, a figure the party has not otherwise encountered.

Both letters are undated but roughly two decades old; whether Verelda is still at the Academy — or still alive — is unknown.

First Appeared

Session 9 (July 29, 2026) — named in Morgana’s journal and addressed in her letter, both found in the tower; her own reply was recovered from the tower foyer the same session. (Never met; not confirmed alive.)

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