Veve Hao — Full Campaign Arc

Origins and Early Delves (Sessions 1–15)

Veve Hao enters the campaign as Otari's resident street bard: broke, charismatic, and resourceful. Her backstory establishes an orphaned upbringing following a political conflict, a childhood kidnapping, and a subsequent bond with a fey rescuer whose language she learned — a detail that makes her the party's de-facto Aklo speaker and gives her an affinity for fey that her companions tease her about throughout the run [S1, S20]. From the first dungeon sessions she fills the party's healer-and-buffer slot, keeping compositions running (Courageous Anthem, Lingering Composition) while hurling improvised projectiles — chairs, glass shards, rocks — whenever a weapon would serve better than a spell [S6, S14].

Her early sessions are also marked by absence and substitution. She misses the river-drake delve entirely (player absent), and Venris goes back to retrieve her [S8]. When she does attend, her lack of darkvision is a recurring tactical liability in the vault's deep, unlit sections [S5, S26]. She retrains spells with some frequency — swapping Concordant Choir for Invisibility, and converting Panic the Dead into Healing Hands — reflecting an ongoing search for the right support loadout [S11].

She earns income through pub gigs at the Crook Snook and Rowdy Rockfish, and through occasional guard patrols; the money disappears almost immediately, often spent on potions to rescue others [S11, S34].

Social Presence and Urban Interludes (Sessions 17–29)

The city arcs reveal Veve as the party's loudest table energy. She burns a necromantic tome and identifies the songbird ring [S17], receives a prophetic glimpse in the workshop, and is referenced as having a -4 Diplomacy penalty against Carman, who openly dislikes her — though her social roll ultimately calms him anyway [S19]. She teaches Aklo to Abbas in a language exchange and owns a ventriloquist's ring [S20].

Spending patterns dominate her downtime. She window-shops obsessively, eyes scarves and relics she cannot afford, befriends a wealthy dying old man and refuses his coins to preserve a social tie, and gets lost in the city after using Invisibility to support Venris's break-in [S34, S35]. She performs for coin in S39, triggering a long rules debate about whether her instrument's virtuoso bonuses apply to earn-income checks — a very on-brand moment [S39].

In S29 she negotiates with bookseller Morblint for a recommendation letter to the Anathenaean Archives, and (in her capacity as the party's prepared divine-adjacent caster) ultimately cures quarantine victims with Cleanse Affliction [S29].

Possession Arc: Britney (Sessions 30–33)

The campaign's most character-defining sequence begins late in S30, when a Boneyard-tied Tengu ghost seizes Veve's body mid-dungeon. She loses control, begins speaking Dwarven and Tengu, and the session ends with her mid-possession [S30]. The exorcism in S31 reveals that the spirit — quickly nicknamed "Britney" by the table — is not hostile but tethered to the Boneyard crypt. Veve calms Britney through an occult attunement (Spiritual Attunement), allowing consent rather than a fight [S31]. By S32, fully possessed throughout a brutal encounter that drops her to dying two, she consents to Britney's continued presence and at session's end receives three spells from the departing spirit [S32].

The aftermath is quieter but persistent: S33 finds Veve restless and anxious, unable to access the gifted spells, grumbling that she "can't read dreams" while helping assess Venris's nightmares [S33]. The possession's long shadow — occult attunement, the Boneyard connection, heightened ghost-hunting competency — shapes her kit trajectory for the rest of the campaign.

Oracle Archetype and Mid-Campaign Expansion (Sessions 36–50)

S36 is the mechanical turning point. Veve completes the Oracle of the Cosmos archetype, unlocking Spray of Stars (a fire-focused 15-foot cone), Oracular Warning (which grants temporary HP and buffers incoming hits), and the curse-bound mechanic — her oracle abilities are powerful but cause cumulative physical and mental penalties until she refocuses [S36]. Oracular Warning immediately becomes her default initiative call, and Spray of Stars finds creative use: in S53 she ignites a room to flush an invisible mummy via smoke, and in S62 she uses it to cauterize hydra heads [S53, S62].

Her spell list continues to broaden. By the mid-campaign she carries Haste, Dispel Magic, Shared Invisibility, and Chromatic Ray alongside her core bard kit [S46, S52, S56]. In S49, described as a "frail psychic" build, her curse applies a -2 to attacks but she dispels the Leng curse from Doriana and telepathically hurls a plushie to crit Cid — a perfect encapsulation of her chaotic support style [S49].

Player-substitution remains a recurring table note throughout this stretch: in several sessions another player runs Veve's sheet alongside their own, or the GM voices her when her player is away [S44, S48]. The character's presence and contributions remain consistent regardless.

Doriana Arc and Cursed Ruby (Sessions 50–54)

A focused sub-arc sees Veve personally invested in the fate of the cursed child Doriana. She watches over Doriana at the Menhem manor, cuts open a stuffed lion to retrieve the ruby that keeps spawning inside the child's dolls, and Diplomacy-charms the half-asleep Doriana into surrendering more dolls [S51]. She drafts a letter to a wealthy theater contact in Absalom as a longer play [S51]. In S52 she stays up the entire night investigating the cursed ruby with Occultism, eventually landing the Dispel Magic counteract that breaks its active effect [S52]. In S54 she attunes directly to the ruby, divines the name Yazongleer, and unlocks a 5th-level Locate — then joins Venris in smashing Yazongleer with a chair [S54].

She carries a small empty soul-collecting doll as a running bit throughout these sessions, openly stating she intends to fill it before the campaign ends [S53].

Final Vaults and Endgame (Sessions 55–62)

The deepest vault sections push Veve into more aggressive roles. In S56 she provides the Silence that shuts down the witchfire's casting and casts Shared Invisibility during the party's escape — only to be grabbed by the grave knight by the hair anyway, taking 14 bludgeoning plus cold damage despite invisibility; the table describes her walking away with a "bald spot" and thoroughly shaken [S56]. In S57 she spots a hidden chest under a hostile NPC's sauna bench and weathers that NPC (Merchan) repeatedly demeaning her as "little lady" while the party navigates the encounter diplomatically [S57].

S58 establishes her as the party's communications anchor: she alone claims she can sense the other PCs inside the teleportation portal-space and insists on following them, relaying information via a Message-cantrip telephone chain. She is afraid of bugs, so she pretends to search the maggot-covered room and finds nothing [S58].

In S61 she headshots Dreshkans with her longbow, is savaged in the face by a Zebub devil (sickened, possibly scarred), and deploys Invoke True Name to debuff both the forge-master and the Oscelus — her player dropping in and out for technical reasons while the party holds the final door for her return [S61].

As of S62, the most recent recorded play, Veve is wielding the borrowed Hellforge glaive (noting her "Asian roots" flavor for martial weapons), spotting suspicious doors and glimmering gemstones, handling a hostile imp with Diplomacy, casting Spray of Stars to cauterize hydra heads, and sustaining offensive/defensive bardic compositions. The soul doll running bit resurfaces. She remains the party's social and sonic spine [S62].

Flooded Chamber Addendum (S63)

The underwater star-glagon fight shows Veve's late-campaign support kit at full strain. Her premonition warns that something is wrong as Venris reaches the submerged bracelet [S63, 00:32:57], she keeps defensive music running through the awkward water rules, and her Ocular Overload blinds the creature hard enough to wreck its attack sequence and leave it fatigued [S63, 01:37:19; S63, 01:42:18]. When the monster destroys the folding boat, Veve ends the fight with a critical Telekinetic Projectile through an arrow, killing the star glagon and letting the party recover the fourth fragment [S63, 03:06:30; S63, 03:08:57].

Doriana's Secret and Absalom Letter Addendum (S64)

S64 does not reopen the Yazongleer curse; it shows what Doriana's recovery leaves behind. Veve privately witnesses Doriana levitate a plushie, encourages her to practice, and keeps the moment quiet, turning their existing bond into a new psychic-powers thread [S64, 00:51:55; S64, 00:53:31; S64, 00:54:06]. During the town day she restocks with silver and cold-iron arrows, earns a small amount of downtime coin, and receives an unread letter from an Absalom friend that the table defers to later [S64, 02:12:19; S64, 03:29:25; S64, 03:31:54].