Sehriya

Sehriya (alternatively spelled Sheriya) was a lucid elven child spirit who dwelt within the ancient, haunted fortress of the Hand of Sehanine (also known as the Hand of Sehahine). Unlike the vast majority of the fortress’s original civilian and military inhabitants, who were cursed to endlessly repeat their final, tragic moments in non-interactive loops of memory, Sehriya was one of the rare few spirits who retained her sanity, lucidity, and awareness over the millennium following the tower’s fall.

Biography and Role

Sehriya resided on Floor 4 of The Wrist, a location known as the Convergence Chamber. Serving as the central hub of the Hand, this chamber is where Sehriya patiently waited for visitors. When the party finally used the Hearthstone of Vyldara to part the clouds and phase the shimmering fortress into the Material Plane under the light of a full moon, they encountered her sitting on the lip of a broken bridge, swinging her feet through the moonlight.

Ecstatic to finally have someone to play with, she greeted the visitors warmly with a bright-eyed, “You came.” Unlike her fellow lucid spirits—the librarian Gelarith and the gardener Valestis—who believed no one would ever come, Sehriya maintained her hopeful belief that people would eventually arrive. Because of her unique awareness, she acted as an invaluable guide for those attempting to navigate the shattered and hostile layouts of the Hand’s radiating finger towers.

Childlike Insights

In her guidance, Sehriya provided charmingly simple but highly accurate descriptions of the five finger towers and their current spectral states:

• The Pinky (The Gardens): She described it as smelling like “rain and earth,” pointing out that her friend Valestis waited there to tend the withered grounds.
• The Thumb (The Scriptorium / Common Hall): She identified this as “the big thumb” where Gelarith “keeps stories safe, even when people forget them,” which also housed the sacred Moonwell.
• The Ring and Index Towers (Training Grounds & Library of Shadows): She warned that these towers were “strange” because the spirits trapped within them “keep moving and never see you,” admitting that she disliked visiting those areas.
• The Middle Finger (The Observatory): She revealed that her “Father is above, with the stars” and noted that “He’s… unhappy.” This “Father” refers to the tragic Archmage Larellion (or Lorelion), who was cursed to become a mad Baelnorn lich bound to the tower as his phylactery.

Connection to the Curse and Redemption

Sehriya’s presence was a poignant reminder of the innocence lost when Larellion enacted his desperate measures. During the twilight of the Pact of Phandelver, when orc hordes and monsters descended upon the Hand, Larellion cast the Mythil of Moonshadow to escape to the Ethereal Plane, abandoning his dwarven and human allies. Angered by this betrayal, the Prime Deities Sehanine Moonbow and Corellon twisted the spell into a divine curse, trapping the inhabitants in repeating loops of frozen time.

While Larellion’s prominent older daughters Vyldara and Agatha fell to tragic fates as banshees outside the tower, young Sehriya remained inside. Her childlike spirit was essential to lifting the curse. To free the Hand of Sehanine, visitors had to show deep, wordless compassion by performing physical acts to “break the loops” of the trapped, non-interactive souls—such as returning a dropped stuffed fawn toy to a bereft spectral child.

Once the party put Vyldara and Agatha to rest, sorted the Scriptorium, and restored Valestis’s gardens, Larellion repented his grief-driven choices. With the curse finally lifted, the Hand grew warm, and the echoes—including Sehriya—bowed their heads and faded into true, eternal rest under the embrace of the Moonweaver.