Miranda DuLaras

Miranda duLaras was a non-player character during the Mists of Cormyr and The Chronicles of Amn campaigns. She served as a plot enabler and love interest for Talis and Asmodian, as well as a narrator for the overall plot.

Description
Miranda was a slender woman, a little shorter than average, with medium-length blonde hair and piercing green eyes. Her body was compact, from centuries of combat training. Her clothes were usually unassuming, unless forced into formalwear for court functions; while she could wear platemail, it was more often than not decorative.

During her tenure in Tethyr, she dressed completely in black leather, save for white lace along her collar.

Personality
Miranda, due to the nature of the game she played, was deliberately obtuse and mysterious. Because of her history, she was slow to open up and even slower to trust, instead preferring to pull strings to persuade or coerce pawns. While not an overtly violent or evil person, she would also let nothing stand in her way -- as Laharl came within five inches of finding out in Thay.

History
Miranda's story is a convoluted and tormented affair, and it begins in a city called Lucheq.

Chessenta and House Karanok
Chessenta in the year 845 DR was a very different world: a rising collective struggling to thrive against the oppression of Unther. The House Karanok were rulers who ingratiated themselves to their Untheric masters ... usually at the cost of friendship amongst their own people.

When Miranda, an unremarkable daughter, reached her maturity, she was sold to the Red Wizards of Thay for an expansive amount of silver; Thayan support would eventually cement the great House as rulers of the city long after a united Chessenta had come and gone.

Thay and Mordeth
In the hands of the Red Wizards, Miranda knew pain and fear and little else. Her body was broken and repaired so many times that, after a while, she scarcely felt the blows. She simply held onto her inner being, the simmering fuel of entropy burning in her gut ...

It was this which the Thayans eventually extracted from her. Her soul was eventually ripped into a thousand pieces and placed in physical shells where ... some of them thrived. Others withered away promptly. The Wizards could not say for certain, just what the difference might be. They were relieved, though, when they discovered that souls could regenerate, in the appropriate environment.

Miranda duLaras died of horrible physical wounds in the Year 901 DR, and her original soul did not return.

The second Miranda, built into an unaging body, was given much the same status as Mordeth. Some records would state that Mordeth was the son of one of her clones and a demon; some would say that Mordeth was the first prototype, with Miranda's travails to follow. Whichever the case, the pair regarded each other with more than a little distrust.

The Matter of Entropism
Miranda was not dismissed from the experiments in Thay; she escaped ... an enterprise which took centuries to arrange and the deaths of hundreds. The experience of fifty lives had hardened her for the task ahead. She stepped into a world, though, which had changed drastically while her back was turned. Chessenta no longer held any of its former glory ... Tchazzar had died not long after the original Miranda (1018 DR, Year of the Dracorage), and without the Great Father, the nation had disintegrated into a collection of petty city-states (1117 DR, Year of the Twelverule). House Karanok, the remnants of her former family, had all but gone mad inside their strongholds in Lucheq; they had no time for old relations, especially relations which had been physically burned off the family tree.

Immortal and alone, Miranda traveled the world ... honing her skills, making innumerable contacts, and plotting. Always plotting. She knew that, if she were to wait long enough, her time would come.

Talis
She was right. She was peremptorily summoned back to Thay, along with Mordeth, in order to resurrect the old experiments at the behest of one Tagreth Cormaeril, a client who would pay well for programmable assassins. She said nothing at the time, of course, but she had known Tagreth when he was a younger man. Old age had robbed him of his eyesight, but Miranda's vision was pulled sharply into focus. She was also the only one who could read Mordeth's expressions ... and knew that the tiefling had plans of his own.

Swearing apparent fealty first to the Red Wizards, and then to Mordeth, she made her way to Calimport. With a bit of nudging, she convinced a man named Raz Mason that corrupting paladins in the Moonsea region might prove profitable. (When Mordeth would suggest it later, he would be surprised to learn that it was already on the agenda.) She then arranged for the capture of one Confectus, dealing first with sailors of the Black Diamond and then with more competent thugs when those proved ineffective.

She then moved to Westgate, where she began mentally reprogramming the lead automaton, one Talis Cormaeril, into becoming the man Tagreth had once been.

She then moved through Cormyr, guiding Talis and his friends as they blundered about. With a few words, she could arrange for the destruction of her House, or the fall of Zhentil Keep, or for assassins to chase them into the arms of the Cormanthor Drow.

As predicted, Raz successfully perverted certain paladins. As predicted, Armen and Mordeth acquired the three crystals needed to facilitate the flight of the Citadel. As predicted, Nassim Molrin enjoined the Zhentarim in battle beneath. Mordeth moved too quickly, though, and Ascended before she could wrest control of the situation away from them.

In the aftermath of the battle, somewhere in the Blood Marshes, she found herself alone with Talis ... and completely at loss for a purpose. Without purpose, she was without identity.

Struggle For a Soul
The pair made their way east, to the city of Phlan, where they took refuge for a time in an Inn that would one day be called The Happy Halfling. Working together, they removed the physical bonds holding Talis in his servitude and buried them into a pair of bracers. Unexpectedly, this transferred most of Talis's consciousness along with it; the resultant body was prone to fits of amnesia and babbling. Crushed, Miranda left Talis's body in the care of the city and made her way south.

She knew, from Mordeth's plans, that two of the elemental prisons were in the Lands of Intrigue ... so she made her way to Darromar, in Tethyr, and pledged her services to the Queen and King. She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a Knight-Marshall in the Tethyrian army in short order. Using this newfound political clout and her old contacts, she was able to locate a group of stalwart adventurers who would work well against the machinations of Mordeth and his servants.

Making Amends
Once the Jade Lion Mercenary Group had succeeded in killing Antheri Grimward, she sprang into action. She delivered the bracers to Asmodian, trusting him to keep them safe; then she freed Confectus from his prison. She gave instructions to the tiefling to lead the stalwarts to his former jail ... not realizing that Dharamon would lay several traps in wait.

She then made her way to Bezantur, keeping in close contact with Harper acquaintances and her associates in the Blue Wizards. When the stalwarts arrived, she initiated the plan that would lead them directly into Thaymount in a run at what she thought to be the last elemental prison.

As Amnish and Tethyrian forces met the last of Dharamon's armies on the plains near Murann, she guided a few souls into Mordeth's antechamber, far above the world. She left the heroes to fight Dharamon, for the matter of the last elemental prison was a problem. It was still feeding energy into Mordeth's waiting body ... and so long as he was gaining energy, he remained impervious.

Knowing it would take something quite drastic to sever the connection, she harnessed her entropic abilities and ripped her soul in half. The resultant sphere of annihilation destroyed the purple receptacle utterly ... and nearly knocked her off the platform. Instead, she was sent hurtling back into the antechamber where Dharamon was busy separating heads from shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she could see it: the silverfire form of Nassim Molrin.

She quickly drew her dagger, as the heroes put Dharamon out of their misery, and stabbed herself in the heart. The death of Mordeth's last worshipper rendered him helpless before the fury of the Lord of the Light ... and Szass Tam would destroy any remaining papers on the process of her creation.