Bellaca is a tree-bound vampire of the detaching-head kind who rules the Gulthias Tree in Valakhan of the Mist. She is a power of the Weapon Tree that inhabits women: its first host was Lali, wife of Baron Argus; its current host is Kira.
| Type | Character |
| Nature | Vampire (detaching head), avatar of the tree |
| Hosts | Lali, then Kira |
| Spanish entry | Bellaca |
Lali
Lali — also heard as Lili, and underground as Velasca — was the fairest woman of Valdemora, a title she won before turning twenty. Wife of Baron Argus, lord of the castle now sunken in the ravine, she ended as the concubine of Caladan. In her youth, Mirela Valka was her frustrated rival in love.
She was lost during a hunt of Decio, before the valley was called Valakhan. Fifteen years later the Seekers of Ardis Vala found her in a crypt beneath the caverns of the Sunless Citadel, corrupted and held in an intermediate state, “a sleeper who was not alive”. She spoke in her own voice, which Caladan recognized first, but served a new lord, flanked by two whip-armed figures. She said: “no estuviste entonces yo tengo un nuevo señor” (“you weren’t there then, I have a new lord”).
The decapitation in the crypt
Decio said: “You knew she wasn’t alive. She was asleep. Let’s finish this.” He held the blade with both hands; Caladan asked for a moment, which Decio refused. Lali opened her eyes and said: “I knew you would come to do this to me. I forgive you. I have always forgiven you.” The blade fell. The head looked at Decio, then rose and floated while the body flew for a breath and fell into the pit below. From that decapitation Bellaca was born.
Nature
Bellaca is a vampire of the head-that-detaches subtype (the Penanggalan of Malay manuals): the head flies free and keeps the will of the woman she was. Roots grow from her shoulders and anchor her to the tree she governs; she is the conscious avatar of a larger vegetal system.
She rules the Gulthias Tree — a rhizome of the Weapon Tree that grew in the Arcanum Forge on the ninth level of the dungeon, seeded by RAJ-750 — seated among its roots as on a throne. She has fully green eyes and a sweet, almost tender voice. Those who see her, such as the novice sorcerer Héctor Risco, find her terribly seductive. She keeps Lali’s memory and recognizes those Lali knew. The druid Belac, earthly keeper of the Gulthias, is subordinate to her.
The offer
Through Héctor, whom she manipulated psychically, she sent a message to the company:
“Tell them there is no need to fight. Tell them I have weapons for all. That they can be my knights. The Knights of the Weapon Tree. A new order, consecrated by me. I can not only forgive them. I can consecrate them.”
She offers the tree’s fruit-weapons (Weapons of the Tree: swords, axes, daggers, “nameless things” hanging like ripe pears), consecration into a new order mirroring the Knights of the Scar of the Sun, the treasures behind the ravine’s waterfall, and implicitly forgiveness. As an advance she gave Héctor a short black sword with latent veins.
The pit: end of the first host
In the goblin sector the goblins withdrew behind their barricades, and from a pit far deeper than a pit should be rose the voice of Argus’s wife: “Who is it that returns after so long? Who is it that has left me without children, cursed one?” She materialized among plants, vampiric and vegetal, with two reptilian things over two meters tall shaping iron cages around her. She told the Baron: “Caladan gave me what you never could.”
Argus could not raise his hand against her. She embraced and kissed him, draining his blood and strength until he broke free. The others dismembered her in a brutal fight, with demons’ rays involved. On her knees, cut apart and smiling, she said: “The children are not here: they are with Caladan,” and “Bear a fruit here and I will die happy.” Of those dying beside her: “They are my friends.” Her body dissipated downward into the pit. Fifteen years later the tree bore fruit again, with a new host.
Kira
In the vegetal cathedral of the Sunken Citadel, Kira, the half-elf scout of Los Condenados (“the Condemned”), offered herself to the stump: a companion promised to love her in another life too and beheaded her, and her blood watered the roots. She returned with green hair and a detaching head. “Kira is no longer Kira; now she is Bellaca.” The chain is Lali → the tree → Kira, with no sign that it ends there.
Conflicting accounts
- Earlier layers of the record made Lali the wife of Decio and gave him the hunt and the blade in the crypt. A later ratification fixes her as wife of Baron Argus and concubine of Caladan; the earlier layers are kept.
Open questions
- What will happen if Decio — a widower in the earlier record — meets Bellaca, and whether either will recognize the other.
- What will happen when Bellaca meets Caladan, misty darklord of Valakhan, vampirized through the chain of Malakita.