Labashi the Sphinx

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Labashi is a powerful psionic sphinx and one of the mentarchs of the Mysterium, an order of psions and scholars who operate the Academy and the Tower of Mystery. She is the keeper of a great many of the order’s secrets, including their hidden prison, called the Phrenic Labyrinth. Despite her membership in this exclusive and secretive order, Labashi is far more well known around Palask as one of the Godking’s personal advisors. She has served him for a very long time in this capacity, ever since the two of them met - and did battle in a contest of wits - when the Godking sought to claim an artifact in Labashi’s care called the Sheseptine Enigma, a strange knot of colored ropes which could not be untangled and which is said to contain the secret of immortality within its center.

During most days, she can be found in the Tower of Mystery, asking leading questions to spur discussions with the students of the Academy, or in the Grand Ziggurat giving wise counsel to the Godking and his other advisors. At night, Labashi prowls around the city with an entourage of her favorite philosophers and teachers from the Academy, or else with courtiers and concubines from the Godking’s court. She likes a night on the town as much as anyone, even though most of the drinking halls and taverns of the city are incapable of accommodating her massive size (or her equally massive appetite for wine).

Labashi is a terrifyingly smart creature who enjoys her life very much and does everything in her power to maintain the comfort and status she has earned in Gilgalon. When she looks at you, you can almost feel her eyes seem to pierce you, searching you for both weaknesses and strengths and deciding how best to “make use” of you.

Secrets Under Lock & Key

Labashi has a mind like a steel trap— in more ways than one. She is the keeper of countless secrets: her own, those of the Mysterium, and those of the Godking whom she serves as counsel. In order to ensure she cannot divulge the most sensitive of these secrets even under immense duress, she has perfected a form of auto-hypnosis which allows her to lock certain memories away, only to be unlocked when the person whose secret it is says a special code phrase in her presence (this code phrase is “Alos Karnos”). The memories are once again locked away when the secret-sharer speaks the phrase a second time in her presence.

She only uses this ability with people she trusts a great deal, and only with secrets she recognizes as being too dangerous to risk the possibility of spreading around.