Kinlanna
Kinlanna was the gwerin wife of Hvang Ssa'ka and sister to the Dark Lady. Wracked with guilt over the actions leading up to the re-emergence of the Towers of the Sun, Earth, Moon, and Stars and redeemed by love of her husband and children, she enabled the Catalysts to enter her sister's fortress through the Portal Network there and delayed her sister's response until the party could disable her ritual. At the very end, she sacrificed her own existence to seal a breach in the Crystal Sphere torn by her sister's dying curse. She is still revered among the people of Asai'ka as a patron saint although there is nothing left to return the patronage. The people do not know that she was the Dark Lady's sister and confederate for many years.
Life before the Cataclysm
Kinlanna was a high-house researcher and Head Librarian of the Tower of the Stars (the library tower at the Towers of Sun, Earth, Moon, and Stars. Non-political, she focused most of her efforts on her library and had little to do with the outside world. She bore the requisite children by a pair of contract marriages early on in her life, but had little or nothing to do with them or their fathers later. Her primary confidante and support was her sister, now only known as the Dark Lady.
At the time of the Cataclysm, she was relatively young at about 350 years old (remember that pre-Cataclysm gwerin lived to at least one thousand years). Considered beautiful, she put minimal effort into her dress or accoutrements. She wore simple robes whenever possible, and her hair was tied back with a stick. Never the most powerful mage, her specialty was in archiving and organization rather than arcane might.
The Cataclysm and Catastrophe
When the final battle of the Cataclysm War was looming, the administrators of the Towers decided to activate their last-ditch defense mechanism--a highly-modified shield system developed from research into the concept bombs. This device was designed to wrap the towers in a bubble of Shadow, effectively placing them out of reach of mortal hands in a pocket universe. It worked perfectly. Until the planar realignment in the wake of the Cataclysm. As a result, the Shadow Shield failed to unwind, leaving the towers stuck in a bubble of space-time and unable to reach the mortal realm. What's more, the attempt by the Tower of the Sun's personnel (in charge of power generation) to bring down the Shadow Shield also failed and the feedback destroyed that tower.
Without stable power, the towers became a madhouse of suspicion, paranoia, and hoarding. The Dark Lady took command, although she was the most paranoid. Eventually, she convinced Kinlanna to put the Tower of the Stars into stasis, knowing that that would kill every living being inside. Following her sister's lead and feeling incapable of resisting, she also participated in the ritual to summon and bind a demon of rage to fuel the Portal Network so that they could make their escape into the Mortal world, at the cost of all of their colleagues and friends in the Tower of the Moon.
Living a Double Life
The pair arrived in the Stone Throne roughly in 200 AC. Over the next 10 years, they infiltrated that society. The Dark Lady, now pledged to the White Skull, took control of the Southern District by killing the dictatorial Phraya and pretended to make the lives of the people better, while building a ritual to convert their souls into power. She sent Kinlanna to Asai'ka to seduce Hvang Ssa'ka, the Phraya of the Central District to provide a bulwark against threats from the other two districts. But Kinlanna made a mistake at this point. She fell in love with that ancient alchemical monster, and he fell in love with her despite knowing her goals. They had two children together.
For the next 11 years, the pair of sisters ruled and lied. Steadily, Kinlanna became burdened by guilt and the knowledge of the atrocities her sister was planning. For her sister had one fatal flaw--she was paranoid of everyone except Kinlanna. She trusted Kinlanna with everything, every plan and every horror her mind could conjure. But Kinlanna was trapped--she had no one to turn to. Her husband was confined by Stone Throne law and unable to intervene in another district's business without permission of the priest-bureaucrats, who were also actively promoting demon worship.
The Catalysts Arrive
When the Catalysts arrived in Asai'ka, Lady Kinlanna saw her light at the end of the tunnel. She summoned them and told them everything she knew. Thus armed, they defeated the High Priestess in the Holy City of Ar Salem Dolem and freed the Queen Ascendant from her demonic chains. With that obstacle down, she provided them the access key to the Portal Network node in the Dark Lady's fortress and undertook the riskiest lie of her life. She visited her sister and distracted her in talk and amusement just long enough for the heroes to arrive with a full combat squad drawn from across the newborn Federated Nations. Finally understanding the nature of betrayal, the Dark Lady stabbed her sister and left her for dead before heading off to her confrontation with the heroes. But Kinlanna wasn't quite dead yet. With her last strength, she followed her sister, arriving just after the Dark Lady used one of the Fangs of Resolution to sacrifice herself in order to open a breach in the Crystal Sphere and light a beacon for the Awakener. Burning her own life force, Kinlanna took the party out beyond the breach; there they defended her from the threats from Beyond until she could conjure a patch made of her own soul for the breach. Thus ended the life of Lady Kinlanna.
