kayla

Description

Kayla was a pregnant human woman from Rockfall, married to a man named Leo (not the PC) and deeply in love. During The Fall, when the people of Rockfall were transformed into monsters, Kayla became a doppelganger.

Escape from Rockfall

The Shadows encountered Kayla during The Fall. She tricked them by transforming into a merchant without wares, and they let her go, distracted by the fighting in town. Still clinging to her humanity, Kayla was desperate to have a baby and fled the Zatar Confederacy to Caspin.

Becoming Quilmyra

In Caspin, Kayla found Quilmyra, a young elf married to a human named Randel Selk. Quilmyra and Randel had moved from Solar to Caspin after her family rejected their marriage. Kayla murdered Quilmyra, stuffed her body down a well, and assumed her identity.

Randel noticed differences in his wife’s behavior — she stayed out later, was less mature, and more manipulative. Kayla, now as Quilmyra, left Randel for Borrin and quickly became pregnant, which was her only real goal.

Leoword is Born

Kayla could no longer shapechange during the pregnancy, as it would have destroyed the baby. The mental toll of her multiple personas and the inability to shift, compounded by pregnancy, led to manic episodes. After Leo’s birth, she became obsessive about the baby.

Borrin, Quilmyra, and Leo had some good years, but as Leo grew into a toddler, Kayla’s doppelganger instincts became a problem. Doppelgangers turn their children into one of them, and that urge conflicted with the other identities she was struggling with. She had to flee to protect Leo from herself until he was too old for the transformation.

The body of the real Quilmyra was found years later, when Leo was 10, stuffed in a well. It was not obvious that the body had actually been there far longer than Kayla’s disappearance. Borrin was convinced Randel had killed her out of jealousy and threw him in the dungeon.

Watching from Afar

Now that Leo is of age, Kayla wants to be close to him again and has tried to insert herself into his life under various disguises. She appeared as Sir Hutchner, approaching Leo with intense personal interest during The Exchange. Sir Hutchner was later found dead in a well.

Death

During the prison break in Caspin, the party encountered a plain-looking young woman in a frenzy in the key room. Upon seeing Leo, she broke down crying, shifting between personas — calling herself his mother, becoming the pale-skinned Quilmyra, then a faceless merchant, then frantically asking about her baby.

In her final moments, her form relaxed into a gray, sexless humanoid — her true doppelganger nature. She cycled through the faces Leo had seen watching him throughout his life: Sir Hutchner, Quilmyra, and others. Her last words to Leo were of love and regret, explaining that she had created him in her borrowed body but wanted him to be his own person. She died trying to rescue him from the prison.