Leif Kalanchoe is an orc druid of the Unending Sky Clan who make their home in the Purodetapo Forest, just north of the War Rock Mountains (south of the Terget Forest). While life in the forest isn’t always easy (even the vegetation has teeth!), Leif has had a comfortable and happy life thus far. He lives with his extended family of parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, and 3 younger sisters who he would do anything for. While he isn’t caring for his sisters, he’s often practicing magic with his beloved grandmother, perfecting a recipe, or meditating when he can find a quiet moment alone.
Leif has always been a bit of a homebody, but a recent mysterious illness affecting his sister’s mind has set him off on the road to The Academy of Arcane Arts, where he hopes to find a diagnosis and cure. His grandmother trained him in druidic magic and gave him a ring of twigs to aid in healing before he departed. (This is the story Leif tells — but it is a ruse; see The Warlock Reveal below.)
Companions
Howl - Leif’s owl companion, found injured in the Purodetapo Forest and now understood to be his Pact of the Chain familiar. The Whispering One spoke through her in Session 8, and Aleister the Invoker recognized her on sight in Session 11. She also brought Leif the glass orb he uses as a focus. (Revealed in Session 12: Howl is a servant of Sorath, Leif’s patron; beyond that, nobody knows what she is.)
Session Events
Session 0
Leif boarded a ship heading to Artmegía where he met Red, bonding over their shared druidic practice. Red offered him some homemade whiskey—Leif failed his Constitution check spectacularly. At the village inn, Leif noticed Drolta’s fangs when showing his neck scars from a carnivorous plant attack.
Session 1
At camp, Leif was shy about sharing stories, saying his experiences felt like “memories, not stories.” He mentioned having an uncle who is a traveler and tells wonderful stories when he returns for winter. He shared that he follows Neptune, the Agent of Life—his clan honors Neptune through their actions.
Leif pulled Drolta aside and confronted her about the fangs he saw. Drolta revealed she is a dhampir—not a full vampire, “something in between.” Drolta asked him to keep it between them for now, and they agreed to let Úlfr keep his wrong assumptions about them. Drolta called him “little one” and patted his head.
In combat, Leif cast Fairy Fire on the goblins (affecting 4 of 5) and finished off the last goblin and a giant centipede with a life-draining vine spell—vines grabbed the enemies, drained them, and bloomed flowers around Drolta to heal her. His grandmother’s ring glowed during the casting. Howl was killed by a bandit’s scimitar during the cave fights—Leif can re-summon her but was saddened by the loss.
At the potion shop in Thornvale, Leif learned that Professor Lang at Witherbloom College (a satellite campus to the south) may be able to help with his sister’s illness. Asha overheard this conversation.
Session 3
At the Academy, Leif used a cogwork archivist at the Biblioplex to find medical texts on maladies of the mind (ostensibly for his sister’s illness — in truth, research into his own condition; see The Warlock Reveal below). Befriended Ersmatok Rostch, an orc Witherbloom student who works at the campus magic labs and is in the Fantastical Horticulture Club — a genuine plant-nerd bond.
Session 4
Leif freed Drolta from a Giant Frog’s stomach with Ice Knife, cutting the frog open. In the Lost Library of Leith Chantos, he used Speak with Animals to negotiate passage through a brown bear’s cave. When he tried to persuade the bear to let them take a magical amulet from a skeleton in the stream, the negotiation failed catastrophically (d100 roll: 1) and the bear attacked.
Mystery: Red, Asha, and Drolta each independently noticed something unusual about how Leif casts Starry Wisp — it looks different from how other druids cast it. Each received private DM messages. Leif insists it looks the same as always.
Session 6
In the Lost Library of Leith Chantos, Leif tried on and kept Leith Chantos’s black robes of mourning (the party later realized these were Leith’s garments mourning his dead wife Una). During the spider pit fight at Una’s grave, his Entangle locked down the remaining giant spiders after Drolta eradicated the swarm. The party reached Level 3 after returning to the Academy.
At Myrna’s safehouse in Lathen, the S.A.T.O. revealed Simone’s enchanted-sand map of magic. When the green (fourth-magic) sand spilled, grains crawled toward Leif — just as the divine sand crawled toward the Golden Chalice — exposing his secret. (See below.)
The party urged Leif to commune with the voices to learn the truth. Drolta, a fellow warlock, offered to help him, but warned she can’t come between him and a patron if one exists. The next move is to take the Golden Chalice to the White Forest — and Leif’s own homeland sits in the Great Cataclysm’s path. Leif joined the party in adopting the name The Fallen.
Session 7
Still processing the reveal, Leif described his patron to the party: he hears whispers in a language he cannot understand, occasionally, in his head — that is all he knows. Aren doubted any cleric could heal a warlock pact, but had no objection to Leif himself (“he’s fully living… he’s not broken”). Leif and Red reconciled over the deception — “still staff bros.”
Earlier, Leif had asked Úlfr to name his unknown patron. At dinner in Lathen, Úlfr delivered: he named the entity The Whispering One — a working name, drawn from his people’s belief in a time before names when older, vast powers spoke the world into being. Drolta offered to ask her own patron, Nephthys, for more information about it. Leif recognized the Unseen Servant spell used by the butler Archibald over the meal.
Session 8
At the Level 3 reintroductions, Leif declared himself plainly: “a Warlock who has accepted it,” Pact of the Chain, with his familiar Howl. In the bandit ambush he shut down two enemies with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter (dropping one out of a tree) and picked away with Eldritch Blast.
A troubling dream deepened the Whispering One thread. In his recurring nightmare, everything turns yellow and he hears the patron’s untranslatable voice — but this time the voice came from Howl, and the owl’s eyes went completely yellow. Leif now fears the Whispering One may be trying to reach through, or take, his familiar. He confided this to Drolta on the road (bonding over shared warlock prejudice they’ve both had to unlearn); she urged him to make consulting Nephthys a priority. Leif joined the climb into Morgana’s tower at Freedale.
Session 9
Warlock solidarity, in practice. In the basement’s first fight Leif’s Eldritch Blast crit killed the second ghoul in the same round Drolta’s dropped the first — the pair ended the encounter before it properly started (“Warlock power”). He put another 12 damage into the ghast in the second fight, with Howl running the help action.
His table-side moment came in Morgana’s workroom. Examining the symbols chalked on the floor, Leif worked out that they aren’t merely abjuration marks but an infusion circle — something placed at the center gets imbued with protective magic. Morgana had been warding something in her final months, which reframes her last year from research into preparation.
He also spent part of the session working out aloud how warlock casting compares to the party’s other spellcasters (“we get all these spells back on a short rest and we literally only have two spell slots”), and rolled poorly on the night’s dream check, taking a level of exhaustion into the arrival at Nephthys.
Session 10
Leif established where they weren’t. His investigation of the misfired teleport’s landing site — soil, flora, and a certain amount of literal dirt-tasting, from a warlock who insists he’s “pretty much a druid” — returned a firm negative: this is not Artmegia. Later, watching the Endymion Empire column split east and west at a crossroads through Bama’s eyes, he was the one who read the maneuver as a pincer.
His market conversation was the session’s best piece of luck. At the glassware stall he met a young woman who turned out to be a Freedale refugee — and who knew Morgana by name. From her: glass works as a spellcasting focus (Madame Verre’s own staff is glass), Morgana kept a list of safe havens among covens and guilds that saved her family, and Morgana had worked with Madame Verre in the past. Leif bought a plate, cutlery, and a glass goblet for 3 gold — the woman’s first sale — and showed her the glass orb on his staff, which she couldn’t read.
He was then conspicuously cheap about lodging (Aren had to sponsor his room after the barkeep refused to let him sleep on the deck), drank out of his new goblet all evening, and rested well with no exhaustion.
He drank from the chalice and conjured a second Golden Chalice — the one result that suggests the cup’s objects may be genuinely real, and the origin of the party’s plan to leave decoy chalices behind them.
Session 11
Leif rolled a natural 20 on Persuasion and it wasn’t the roll that mattered. Arguing for the WitchCrafters to house the party, he caught Madame Verre’s eye — and what she was actually looking at was the glass orb on his staff. Asked about it, he explained it was his spellcasting focus, that he’s “technically a warlock, although I’m coming to terms with it,” and that Howl brought it to him in the Purodetapo Forest. Verre went still, said “the Purodetapo Forest, you say,” and told Marka to give the party whatever they wanted. Free lodging, no further discussion.
He worked with Haine and Pittore on what the chalice’s conjured objects are made of — his claim on the job being that the duplicate Golden Chalice was his — and opened the montage with a natural 20 on Perception comparing the two cups.
Then he made the trade that defined the session. Verre sent for him alone, cleared her office, asked him whether he’d told her “everything ever,” asked a great many questions and answered none of them. He came away with an agreement that she will look into The Whispering One — free, unrequested — and left her his staff and orb for study. He also, in that conversation, told her about The Fourth Magic, entirely of his own accord.
“I just felt this desire to be honest with her, since she’s been so accommodating.”
“Was that your desire — or was that a…?”
The party’s response ranged from concern to open accusations of being an imposter. Aren dragged him out and bought him a dagger, over his protests that he still had his magic stones (“you’re just holding some rocks”) — the most words Aren has directed at him in the entire campaign, which left him visibly shaken.
Two mornings later that dagger was the only weapon he had. Howl bolted down a back alley and led him to Aleister the Invoker, whom she reacted to with rage — and who, on looking at her properly, said “oh, I do know what this is, then,” refused to explain, and announced he would be visiting the Purodetapo Forest. Leif threw his hand forward to cast Eldritch Blast and nothing happened: his focus was in Verre’s study.
He fought the rest of the encounter on druid spells only — a ruling that his druidic magic predates the pact and needs no arcane focus — plus thrown daggers and magic stones. His Ice Knife did the fight’s heavy lifting, since cold damage was the one thing that slowed Cocytus. One of them also caught Red in the blast radius for 5.
(Bookkeeping: his D&D Beyond sheet was missing its druid features, and Magic Stone was mistakenly taken as a warlock cantrip — corrected at the table, freeing up a warlock cantrip pick.)
Session 12
Leif came out of the alley badly shaken, apologizing over and over for running off without his focus and putting everyone in danger; the party told him he was being too hard on himself. Howl landed back on his shoulder and, asked how she knew Aleister, whispered “Bad man” and told him the rest privately.
He got his staff back. When Madame Verre heard the party’s description of Aleister, she vanished to go examine Cocytus’s corpse, reappearing just long enough to toss Leif his staff and orb across the room. “I’ll never be without my staff again.” He then tried to return the dagger Aren bought him; she told him to keep it (“Never leave yourself defenseless”). Leif admitted that when his Eldritch Blast fizzled, “I felt the spirit of Aren telling me, I told you so.”
The private audience. The morning after the chalice report, Leif went to Verre’s office with Aren, who stepped out when Verre asked whether he wanted company; Leif chose to have the conversation with Howl present (“I think it’s time that we knew each other more”). What Verre learned from the orb itself has not been disclosed. What Leif came out with, he shared with The Fallen in a private room with the water running:
- His patron’s name is Sorath (as heard — unconfirmed), and Howl told him. Howl is Sorath’s servant.
- Aleister has fought Sorath before, which is why Howl reacted to him with rage and then submission. “I don’t know if he’s also my enemy, but now he’s really my enemy.”
- Per Verre, he unknowingly made a pact with something not of this world, which is probably living in the Purodetapo Forest, the same forest he told Aleister about.
- He can contact Sorath “at another time” through Howl, if he opens his mind. He admitted that in most of his dreams he has been trying to run away.
- The Great Cataclysm was caused by people opening a portal to another world. Verre told him not to share this; he told the party anyway, and it is kept within the party at Verre’s request.
At the fireworks festival he found Verre in a good mood and asked the follow-ups he’d been too stunned to ask (“Listen, I was very stunned”): the Cataclysm began in the northern mountain range of what is now the Endymion Empire and traveled southeast; the rift was sealed by the Magistus, which Verre let slip (“Ooh. I don’t think I was supposed to say that”); and the leftover green magic is from the original leak and still present across Astrodia.
Leif’s Patron — The Whispering One
As of Session 7, Leif’s patron is known within The Fallen by the name The Whispering One, coined by Úlfr. (Revealed in Session 12: its true name is Sorath — spelling as heard, unconfirmed.) What is established:
- It contacted Leif while he meditated in the Purodetapo Forest, in the Great Cataclysm’s path.
- It speaks a language matching the creature imprisoned in The Orb, tying it to The Fourth Magic.
- Leif hears it only as untranslatable whispers; he never knowingly agreed to a pact.
- Drolta will consult Nephthys; Úlfr prayed to his own goddess for its true name.
- As of Session 11, Madame Verre is investigating it — at Leif’s request, for free, in exchange for nothing, holding his staff and orb while she does. (Staff and orb returned in Session 12.)
- Session 12: it is not of this world, per Verre, and probably came through the Great Cataclysm’s rift; it probably lives in the Purodetapo Forest; Howl is its servant; Aleister the Invoker has fought it; Leif can reach it through Howl “at another time” by opening his mind. What it wants is unknown.
The Warlock Reveal (Session 6)
Leif’s secret was exposed to the party in Lathen when Simone’s map of magic reacted to him. It is no longer hidden within The Fallen — though still not public knowledge beyond them.
- Leif is secretly a Warlock (he took a Druidic background as cover). Simone proved it by commanding him to cast Eldritch Blast, which worked.
- He has been hearing voices he cannot understand — in the same language as the creature trapped in The Orb. The voices began recently, after meditating in his home Purodetapo Forest, which lies directly in the Great Cataclysm’s path.
- He fears he made a pact unknowingly — that he contacted something while meditating. His grandmother taught him magic; he has told almost no one.
- The “cure for his sister” story was a ruse. The illness “affecting his sister’s mind” and his hunt for a diagnosis at the Academy were a cover to disguise the truth: Leif himself is the one hearing voices and losing his grip on what’s happening to him. His Session 3 search of the Biblioplex for “maladies of the mind” was really research into his own condition, not a sibling’s.