Aren Greycloak is a human cleric of Pluto, the Agent of Death. A former refugee who wandered the Endymion Empire, she found faith after hearing a sermon about Pluto and was granted divine power—including the ability to detect undead via her pendant. She travels the land to rid the world of those who seek to extend life past their mortal time.
Uninterested in making friends, Greycloak understands the safety in numbers and is willing to team up for a time. She prays to her god every night, seeking answers to questions she refuses to ask aloud. For now, her holy rage is focused on cleansing the lands from necromancers and undead, following orders from her potential salvation.
She learned about the Academy’s College of Witherbloom, which teaches necromancy, and set out to investigate and possibly destroy it.
Allies
Drolta - Aren’s pendant detected a faint undead signature leading her to Drolta in a bustling city. After a tense confrontation, Drolta revealed her condition was involuntary and that she shares Aren’s mission to destroy undead. They formed a cautious alliance. Both Aren and Leif now know Drolta’s true nature as a dhampir.
Session Events
Session 0
In a bustling city, Aren’s pendant detected a faint undead signature leading her to Drolta. After a tense confrontation, Drolta revealed her condition was involuntary and that she shares Aren’s mission to destroy undead. They formed a cautious alliance. Aren’s religion check (16) confirmed that Nephthys and the Phoenix faith are compatible with Pluto’s doctrine. At the village inn, Aren physically restrained Drolta when her fangs became visible after Leif showed his neck scars.
Session 1
Aren apologized privately to Drolta for dragging her into the group, but acknowledged the safety in numbers and connection to the Academy. Drolta offered to kill Aren if her curse ever takes over; Aren responded: “You can try.” Aren expressed understanding of being burdened by unwanted curses and promised to help.
At camp, Aren shared her belief that the gods exist and hold sway over life, and it’s important to recognize when they act through others.
In the spider den, Aren impulsively cast Sacred Flame on two wolf spiders on the ceiling—both Úlfr and Leif tried to restrain her but she rolled a Nat 20 and broke free. The spiders turned out to be already dead, riddled with crossbow bolts.
In combat, Aren healed Red with Healing Word after he took a goblin arrow, and contributed Sacred Flame damage throughout. She cast Light on her mace for the cave exploration.
Session 3
Followed Drolta outside the Bow’s End Tavern when her pendant detected a dhampir signature from Aurora. Assumed Drolta was in danger, but the situation was explained and resolved peacefully.
Asked Lorehold apprentices about Red’s dream of 3 orbs (red, blue, purple). They identified the figure as Venus, the Agent of Creation — one of the Hands of the Solemn Pantheon. Showed Red a textbook image.
Session 4
Aren finished off a Giant Frog with Poison Spray at the Fire Jolt Café. In the Lost Library of Leith Chantos, she declined to attack a trapped warg, reasoning it was just an animal, not undead. She healed Úlfr with Cure Wounds for 7 HP during the hobgoblin fight.
Session 6
In the spider-pit room of the Lost Library of Leith Chantos, Aren’s spider phobia triggered violently. She broke free of an attempted grapple on a Nat 20 and opened with Sacred Flame before initiative was even rolled. As a cleric of Pluto, she healed allies through the fight against the giant spiders and the swarm. Afterward the party crossed the chasm to reach Una’s grave.
The party reached Level 3 on returning to the Academy. Aren accompanied the group to Myrna’s safehouse in Lathen, where the S.A.T.O. and the mystery of the fourth magic were revealed, and the party took the name The Fallen.
Session 7
- On Leif’s warlock reveal: doubted any cleric could heal a warlock pact (“a divine deal”), but held no objection to Leif himself — “he’s fully living… he’s not broken.” Her enmity is reserved for the undead, who pervert the boundary between life and death.
- Stayed cryptic about her own deity when Úlfr guessed she serves Pluto — “no real need to concern yourself with that.” (Her devotion to Pluto, Agent of Death, remains known to the reader but not openly confirmed to the party.)
- A native of the Endymion Empire, she supplied the party’s knowledge of Pentamarone and the WitchCrafters, speculating they harness the fourth magic to resist the Empire.
- Recognized the winged statue of Earth, the Agent of Mysteries at the Lathen temple and paid respects.
- Openly floated destroying the vampire dean Professor Valentine at Witherbloom College; the party deferred the trip. Dropped ominous hints of personal experience with eternal life (“it’s really not [all you think]… from what I’ve seen”), fueling the party’s running “portrait in a basement” joke.
Session 8
- Her spider phobia collided with Red’s new form. When Red (now Circle of the Moon) wild-shaped into a giant spider during the bandit ambush, Aren repeatedly hurled Sacred Flame at her own ally — “abominations should not be tolerated” — even after being told, repeatedly, that the spider was Red. She refused every reassurance, and on the road afterward gave Red nothing but “Spiders are abominations. They must be dealt with,” declining to explain the root of it. (See Sessions 0 & 6 for the phobia’s history.)
- Fought the ambush otherwise as the party’s healer, keeping Drolta up (“sisters in arms”) and cutting down the fleeing Cutthroat with Sacred Flame. She noticed the bandit Boss fled with purpose — straight toward someone waiting in the woods.
- At Freedale, she used her pendant to Detect Undead at the wizard’s tower and sensed a strong undead presence buried beneath it — “there’s something unnatural beneath the earth here.” She and Asha were left stranded below when the climbing rope snapped.
Session 9
Aren ran the undead half of the session, and it was the closest thing she’s had to a holy mission.
Stranded at the tower’s front door with Asha, she failed the rope climb twice before Úlfr hauled her up in a one-man tug of war. Once inside, she was the one who sensed necromancy through the barred basement door and volunteered to open it: “I’m opening it, because I will not regret killing whatever’s in there.”
In the basement she opened with Sacred Flame, summoned a Spiritual Weapon for the first time, and took the ghast’s leg off at the knee with it. She barred doors behind the party as they advanced, and re-barred the basement on the way out — nobody knows how the ghouls got in. When her amulet finally went quiet she called it: “We have cleansed this place, as is our holy duty.”
Her religion check identified the roof shrine — nine winged statues, nine Agents — picking out Earth, Saturn, Venus, and Pluto (she spent her inspiration to get there). She then stopped mid-dungeon-crawl to pray at Pluto’s statue, and later paused again at a door to ask Pluto for strength before opening it.
Her most characteristic beat came last. On finding Morgana’s corpse, she ran a medicine check that read the remnants of a prolonged magical battle across the body — establishing the witch died fighting — and then spoke last rites over her so she might rest.
Session 10
Aren asked the question that cracked the campaign’s longest-running mystery. After five months of failed Identifies on the Golden Chalice — and while sitting in the WitchCrafters library with Red’s new Alchemy Jug pouring free beer — she pointed out that a chalice is technically a cup, and asked what would happen if someone drank from it. Red filled it and handed it over.
She drank first. What appeared, all over the guild library, was cats. Solid, warm, real to the touch — and completely inert; held up by the tail, one simply lets it happen. She was delighted, and immediately protective of them (she blocked Úlfr’s attempt to bowl one cat into another).
She also called time on the experiment — after Úlfr punched a conjured horse hard enough to explode it across the room, Aren announced “I think I’m done here” and made for the door, which is how the party ended up paralyzed in the courtyard by Madame Verre.
Elsewhere in the session: she spent the market listening rather than shopping, and overheard a passerby praising a service at a Temple of Venus in Pentamarone — she intends to pay her respects, and hasn’t yet. (The party visited the Temple of Venus together in Session 12.) She was the one who suggested asking the guild for a paid detect magic / identify service in the first place, offered to sponsor Leif’s room out of party funds when he tried to sleep on the boat deck, and vetoed the idea of robbing Genni’s keystone safe (“before we start getting violent and stealing things…”). She rested well and took no exhaustion.
Session 11
Aren invented the party’s first legal department. When Madame Verre proposed borrowing the Golden Chalice for an undisclosed purpose, Aren’s condition was that the party’s warning about the Academy go in writing — an acknowledgment of disclosed danger, and no liability. Verre loved it (“that’s fair, and it makes it quite interesting”), Marka drafted it, and the table’s verdict was “a cleric and a lawyer.” Aren also pushed for an explicit guarantee of no harm, which is in the contract.
She spent the research montage in the books with Genni and Marka, using Insight to sort genuinely useful sources from noise.
She asked after a temple to Pluto in Pentamarone. There isn’t one — the city worships Venus almost exclusively. Two cities running, Aren has found a Venus temple and no Pluto.
And she was right about Leif. When he came out of Verre’s office having handed over his spellcasting focus for nothing more than a promise, Aren’s reaction was immediate:
“Be wary of what she might request of you.”
“In the future, young one, you should be clear when your weapon is no longer with you.”
She dragged him out and bought him a dagger, dismissing his magic stones as “just holding some rocks” — the most she has ever spoken to him, which visibly rattled him. Two mornings later that dagger was the only weapon he had when Aleister the Invoker appeared. He thanked her for it in front of the whole party; she promised to pick him up in a hug next time, and that he would hate it.
She also, in the party huddle, floated using her undead-detection amulet on Madame Verre — a child who has been a child for a very long time. She has not done it yet. (She did in Session 12: no undead. See below.)
Aren was among those who stayed at the guild hall to guard the chalice when Howl bolted, on the theory that a bird running is exactly what a diversion looks like, and so missed the fight with Cocytus entirely. Tommy has promised her and Asha their own scene to open the next session.
(Running gag of record: Aren is not reasonable about spiders. If Madame Verre turns out to be one, Aren has committed to divine smiting her on sight.)
Session 12
Aren finally got her own scene, and came out of it having said more than in the rest of the campaign combined. See Session 12 Recap — Something from Nothing.
She told the WitchCrafters her mission, or as much of it as she ever tells anyone. When Marka asked what had brought her to the group:
“I’m on a mission to cleanse this world of the abominations that are undead.”
“A mission from who?”
“You needn’t concern yourself with that… It is a holy mission.”
“We love a girl with a mission.” The city has never had undead trouble, but the guild has heard tall tales of haunted ruins or a haunted mansion nearby and promised to keep an ear out.
She asked what keeps the Empire off Pentamarone. Genni gave Verre’s version: Rellyona and the Emperor parted with deep mutual respect after the Great Cataclysm, and he has never encroached, to honor her legacy. Aren wasn’t persuaded:
“We shall see how long such respect lasts. You never know what’s in the hearts of men.”
She noticed Genni perk up at the word “monster” when the party described Cocytus, and followed her when she slipped off to tell Madame Verre. Her Guidance helped Úlfr talk his way in behind them. Later, Úlfr passed her a lead from The Sundered Watch: undead-infested ruins far to the north.
She wouldn’t take the dagger back. When Leif tried to return it:
“Keep it. It’s always best to have at least a secondary weapon. More is preferable, though… Never leave yourself defenseless.”
“Safety is an illusion.”
“As long as you do not continuously repeat mistakes, it’s okay.”
Leif admitted that when his Eldritch Blast fizzled in the alley, “I felt the spirit of Aren telling me, I told you so.”
She kept working the archives on Insight through the last days of the montage, and sat on the history team for the report.
The cats were put down. The guild explained, apologetically, that the copies aren’t technically alive. Aren was visibly upset and got even quieter than usual.
She checked Madame Verre at last. When she went with Leif to Verre’s office the next morning and stepped out for his private conversation, she quietly grasped her pendant on the way out:
No undead.
She waited by the door anyway, since she doesn’t trust Leif alone. Then Verre asked for her, and she went in alone (played out privately). What she shared afterward:
- Madame Verre is not undead, in the necromantic sense. Her condition is the result of an experiment in eternal youth that didn’t turn out as intended. “A simple accident. Which we’ll see how long it remains an accident.”
- It isn’t frozen time. It’s more like the hands of the clock were wound back. She is still aging.
- Aren now wants to visit Marseille (heard at the table as “Marcio”; possibly where Marka studied): “I know interesting ways of magic there.” It may hold something useful against her undead problem, though she wouldn’t say more.
Leif was delighted. “The shell is cracking.”
Her fear about the Spoils. When Red’s religion checks produced the theory that each of the Sinful Spoils mocks one Agent, Aren became very concerned that one might rebuke her god, Pluto, and about what a rebuke of death would look like: unnatural, eternal life. That pointed the party straight back at Verre.
At the Temple of Venus she read the entry-hall scriptures with Red, and when the priest described She Who Fell Before the First Fall, Aren had heard of her before. One or two believers turn up in many of the churches she’s visited: an angel, a woman, exiled to earth for something that angered the gods, whose exile provoked the Morning Star’s rebellion. When the temple library had nothing on her: “You don’t need to have evidence to have faith.”
In the library she read about Pluto’s enemies. It was mostly necromancers and things she already knew, with one exception: The Prophecy Destroyer (as heard), an enemy of Pluto in some unknown capacity.