Adamina

Adamina
Character information
Introduced	Heroes Chronicles: Revolt of the Beastmasters
Class	Witch
Race	Gnoll
Gender	Female
Affiliation	Mudlanders
Occupation	Wisewoman
Appearances
Background
Native world	Enroth
Status	Alive (As of Revolt of the Beastmasters)

""Hope is a dangerous thing," she continued. "Take it from someone and you have already defeated them. Give it to them, and they can do anything! My people are strangers to hope, Tarnum Hopewielder. Proceed with care!""

Adamina is a gnoll witch appearing in Revolt of the Beastmasters, the seventh part of Heroes Chronicles.

Adamina was a retired witch who made herself Tarnum's advisor when he attempted to free the Mudlanders from Erathian slavery. She was a wizened old gnoll, one eye closed from an old wound, the other alert and watchful. She hobbled around camp, her arthritic hands clutching a cane, but the others respected and took care of her. She warned Tarnum not to waste her people's hope, as they had so little of it. When he tried to tell her that they were his people too, she raised one eyebrow suspiciously. "Are they?"

After Tarnum had slain the brutal Lord Onsten, he hid the women and children in the swamp while he battled his next foe, Baron Paglon. He eventually realized that the Mudlanders lacked laws and regulations, and since they had lived as slaves their entire lives, they had no concept of just and fair punishment. He asked the gnoll leader Brellick to gather a few of the wisest members of the camp and form a system of laws, but they did quite badly - at first, they couldn't think of any laws, and then they wrote down hundreds, most of them redundant, or too strict. They had more than two hundred separate laws for stealing, depending on what was stolen, and other laws governing work habits, eating habits, and how much sleep was too much. When Adamina heard of this, she came from the swamp and offered to handle the job. According to her, male gnolls were great fighters, but knew nothing about organization. She and the other women would put together something that would at least make sense. Tarnum agreed, and Brellick was glad to hand it over. It took a long time before she returned with the first draft, but when he read it, Tarnum realized it was similar to the unwritten barbarian laws he had grown up with.

While Tarnum was fighting Baron Paglon, Mad King Gryphonheart placed a bounty on his rebels: ten silver for the head of any escaped slave. The Mudlanders were hounded by murderous rogues and brigands, and the thugs attacked women, children, the elderly, the sick - anyone who couldn't put up much of a fight. In a moment of weakness and anger, Tarnum called out to the Ancestors, asking for just a few seconds with the scum, but Adamina asked him if destroying their enemy would save them. When Tarnum admitted that the Mudlanders would have to find a home and bind together as a community, Adamina pointed out that she recalled ancient stories of a great and horrible barbarian leader who made another choice. Tarnum realized that she suspected that he wasn't who he said he was, but wasn't sure exactly how much she knew.

Tarnum later faced Prince Niven, Mad King Gryphonheart's oldest son. The boy was a great tactician, and managed to defeat some of Tarnum's soldiers and captured the noncombatants that Tarnum had hidden in the swamps, among them Adamina and the witches. He brought them to Earl Rambert's Castle, but despite the Earl's pleas, Niven refused to execute them, and had them imprisoned in the dungeons. After speaking to a friendly Erathian noble, Tarnum realized that Niven could be used as a weapon against his father, so he and the swamp-boy Droglo abducted the prince and showed him the horrible conditions that the slaves lived in. When Tarnum invaded the Earl's lands, the noble fled with his prisoners, settling in a hard-to-reach valley, and offered to trade them for Niven. Niven, who had joined Tarnum's rebels, agreed that the witches had to be saved, so Brellick, Droglo, and Niven went off to trick the noble. Brellick was slain in the Earl's ambush, but Niven picked up a weapon and killed the Earl, saving Adamina and the other witches.

Tarnum was hoping that Droglo could lead the Mudlanders when he had to go back to the Ancestors, so he asked Adamina whether the witches would approve of making him his second-in-command. She told him that Droglo was young, but they would think about it.

Realizing that his Mudlander army was too small to take on the Mad King, Tarnum sent Droglo to hire some nearby barbarians as mercenaries. The cruel barbarians forced Droglo to fight a duel against their best soldier, but eventually agreed to help Tarnum - at the twice the price he had offered. Adamina was upset that Tarnum had made this deal without their consent, and felt that the barbarians were a waste of money, but Tarnum knew that they could turn the tide of battle.

In order to turn public opinion against King Gryphonheart, Tarnum suggested that they should claim the swamps as their own and start a nation, turning the Mad King into an aggressor instead of a King trying to control his own people. Adamina and the other wisewomen decided to call the nation Tatalia, which meant community in a forgotten language that was now used only by witches.

Droglo told Tarnum that Adamina and the witches had named him Tarnum's second-in-command, but no one had informed Tarnum, since the witches were still angry about his alliance with the barbarians and now purposefully kept him in the dark.

When Droglo came across an old statue to the Barbarian Tyrant in the swamp, he realized that it looked just like Tarnum. He later spoke to Adamina about it, and while it's not known how much she actually told him about the past, he had tears in his eyes when he next spoke to Tarnum.