Editing Darklord (section)

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''