Corisande Malveaux [Unique Cursed Human]

Corisande keeps about three dozen severed heads and swaps them to suit her mood, so her face never stays the same for long; her own head is lost and nobody recalls her true looks. She dresses as often and as finely, matching each outfit to the current face. The one constant is a crimson velvet ribbon at her throat, an enchanted band that holds each head on. She never removes it, though she may hide it under a scarf or jewelry. She speaks the tongue of her native vampire-ruled valley, and every head adds its own languages.

Starbite, her prized vorpal sword, was forged long ago from fallen-star iron by the shadow fey, who lost it to her thieving. It works as any vorpal sword, she can wield it whatever head she wears, and she likes to take heads only with its clean cut, though the curse does not demand it.

Each head grants every class and level power its owner had in life: psionics from a psionicist, or any spell a wizard or priest knew, treated as newly prepared whenever she dons it, though she learns nothing new. She also saves as the head's class and level. A swap takes a full round.

The curse gives her 50% magic resistance and regeneration of 1 hit point per turn, which keeps working even after she is slain. Poison, disease and magical paralysis cannot affect her, so cause disease, hold and sleep fail, but charm and similar mind magic work normally. Since she is a living woman, turning and anti-undead magic do nothing. Only burning her original head destroys her for good, and no one, Corisande included, has any idea where it lies.

While the ribbon is tied, nothing can dislodge her head. The ribbon is indestructible, but if it is pulled off the head drops at once and its powers vanish. Headless, her body still acts, sees and hears, but cannot speak.

About two centuries ago Corisande was born to a pair of master thieves in a walled mountain village of the vampire's valley, and soon surpassed them in skill as well as beauty. When the first lines and gray hairs came in her late twenties, she could not bear it.

She demanded the secret of lasting youth from the old matriarch of the wandering fortune-tellers, and when refused held a knife to her throat. The matriarch calmly said the answer lay in the vampire lord's castle library, adding that seeking it was a mistake. Corisande killed her anyway, never noticing the dying woman's grin. In that library the vampire lord caught and nearly drained her, then had her publicly beheaded in the valley town. The fortune-tellers claimed the corpse, worked a week of rituals, and she woke wearing the murdered matriarch's clothes and the velvet band. In her mirror, the old woman's withered head sat on her own young body.

The matriarch's bitter daughter told her the curse ends only when she recovers her own head, at which point her wish for endless youth will be granted. Centuries later it is still missing. Only human women's heads work for her, never men's or those of elves, half-elves or other races, and keeping one head on for over three straight days brings savage headaches. So she keeps killing, choosing heads mostly for beauty and fussing over their hair and paint for hours.

Each day a head spends on her neck adds a year to its age; stored heads do not age, but beauty fades fast and the harvest never ends. Cast-off heads sit in glass cases stacked row on row in the cellar of her lavish house, alive, aware and slowly going mad, so the room rings with screams and sobbing. Seeing them demands at least a fear check, and spotting a friend's head calls for a horror check. Neither she nor her heads need food or drink, but she eats in company to pass as an ordinary woman.