I spent a good long time complaining about how “Spell Games” misused Vajra, who should have been the protagonist of that story. The next tale in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic line, “The Ostus Legacy,” deals with the other heroine in our rotating cast, Kyriani. Like Vajra, Kyriani has some issues because she is a product of a 90s pop culture view on female characters. Ultimately, though, I feel that “The Ostus Legacy” comes to a stronger conclusion and gives Kyriani more agency than “Spell Games” did for Vajra.

And, if I’m wrong, at least “The Ostus Legacy” is two issues shorter.

The Forgetful Wizard

Our story opens with the charming trope of an extremely absent-minded wizard. Parwyyd Hanifar is under attack from some soldiers who have laid siege to his tower. Unfortunately, due to his poor memory he doesn’t even know what spells he has prepared. Luckily, he’s hired a capable halfling assistant named Dunstanny to keep track of those details.

The spell works just as Dunstanny predicted, chasing the soldiers away. But who are these two, and why are they important to our heroes?

An Obviously Cursed Gate

Meanwhile, our protagonists for this adventure are Kyriani and Onyx. Kyriani received a message from her brother Agrivar asking for help, and Onyx tags along because he either seeks to protect the wizard or is simply “pining for adventure,” depending on whose story you believe. (Also, Luna has cut off Onyx’s bar tab again.)

After stumbling through an illusion that sends them tumbling into a ravine, the pair comes across an ominous sight:

Personally, if this was one of my characters, I’d nope right out of this adventure. The gate is obviously evil, and the adventurers have no motivation to open it. Maybe Kyriani and Onyx do consider bailing, but we’ll never know because Parwyyd and Dunstanny show up looking for “the blood of Agrivar.” This leads the over-protective Onyx to immediately lash out, starting a fight that goes poorly for him.

It’s good to know that, even though DC is running with the fantasy genre, they can still nail the superhero trope of good guys fighting due to poor communication skills.

An Incomplete Rebirth

Once everyone has calmed down (really, once Onyx has calmed down), Parwyyd reveals that he baited Kyriani to the area using an illusion of her brother.

“He had a funny look in his eye.” Oh, Onyx. Never change.

Kyriani gives a quick and dirty explanation of her backstory, recapping her unique “birth” for those who didn’t read “The Gathering.” Ostus, however, suspects that there is more to the story than anyone knows. Who is Kyriani, really? Is Cybriana the dominant personality? Is Kilili lurking within, ready to do evil? Or is there something else going on?

Regardless, there’s something more important at hand. Parwyyd was an associate of Ostus Agrivar, Kyriani’s father, and the two created the giant scary door we saw earlier as a means of accessing other planes of existence. The door has remained closed for years, since it requires both Parwyyd and Ostus to activate. And yet…something has set it slightly ajar…and something else is coming through…

The Gate Opens

Ostus needs to work in tandem with Kyriani to shut the gate and keep it closed. But whatever power lurks on the other side has a vested interest in it opening further. This leads to kenkus leaping out to attack.

From a lore standpoint, kenkus are odd creatures to use. I wonder if someone wanted “demonic bird-creature,” realized that vrocks were too powerful (or got forbidden from using creatures previously identified as demons due to the vocal activists who railed against D&D as satanic at the time), and instead settled on the first bird-headed creature they could find.

With Kyriani needed to coordnate with Parwyyd, it’s up to Onyx to fight off the kenkus. During the fight, he dives through the doorway and gets a look at where it leads.

Onyx manages to get back to Toril, but the door decides that it is very interested in staying open and blasts Kyriani with an energy beam.

Kyriana splits into her two component parts: the “good” but naïve Cybriana and the “evil” but wily Kilili.

I’ll delve more into the nature of these two halves and why I like where the story goes with them in a moment, but I really should pause to point out how consistently good the art in this series is. Jan Duursema consistently delivers excellent pencils. The inking duties change from story to story (in “Spell Games” Duursema did her own inks, here it’s Rick Magyar), but always lend a great crispness to the art. The colors (done here by Matt Webb) are likewise terrific, and I don’t think the comic would be as enjoyable if the art wasn’t so consistently good.

Things are Bad All Over

The opening of the doorway leads to creatures pouring into Toril from everywhere, including back in Waterdeep. Timoth and Vajra are apparently drinking the day away at Selûne’s Smile when suddenly the skies open up.

As a side note, it’s really convenient that D&D adventurers tend to do everything but sleep while wearing armor. You’d think that Vajra wouldn’t need to get decked out in chainmail and a breastplate just to order breakfast, but apparently she does. This is, of course, good practice for properly paranoid PCs–it’s when you take the armor off that the DM is going to spring a hard encounter on you.

Meanwhile, back at the gate, the doorway starts moving of its own accord–meaning that the portal it unlocks can relocate to anywhere in the Realms.

Meanwhile, the split between Cybriana and Kilili has some unforeseen consequences–namely, that Cybriana doesn’t have her father’s magical aura.

Instead, that aura now rests with Kilili, who is not particularly inclined to do something out of the goodness of her heart. Moreover, she seems to quite like the chaos caused by the monsters pouring out from the portal.

The Reality of Kilili

Not only does the aura rest with Kilili, but most of what made up Kyriani seems to be inside Cybriana’s evil other. The newly-reborn Cybriana doesn’t remember her previous adventures and doesn’t recognize Onyx. She is, in essence, a pretty face and little else.

This starts touching on the part of this story I like. Very often, fantasy falls into the tropes of light being good and dark being evil. While this tale does follow that pattern, it also acknowledges that Cybriana as the fair-haired “good” twin was basically nothing more than a damsel, and that she needs her “evil” half to be a truly effective adventurer.

Onyx tries to fix the problem by pushing Kilili into Cybriana, but they don’t merge because Cybriana doesn’t want to change. As she said above, she sees Kilili as a deformity come to life rather than a real part of herself.

Of course, it’s hard to want to merge with someone who ditches the group as quickly as Kilili does. She saves Parwyyd from some attackers, then decides that she owes him nothing and flies off.

The art here is nice and subtle. The story made a point of mentioning Kyriani’s ring of telekinesis, then showed it on Kilili’s finger when she split. Here we see Parwyyd grab her hand, and then the ring is gone. I guess the old man must have started his career as a thief before dual-classing into magic-user.

With Kilili gone, Parwyyd is forced to rely upon the incomplete Cybriana and hope she has enough magic to close the door…or at least, that’s what it seems.

Again, the art does a great job of pushing along the story. Parwyyd slips the ring of telekinesis onto Cybriana’s finger while giving her a pep talk. The narration doesn’t draw attention to it, but the pieces are all there for when that ring becomes a focal point in the plot.

Kyriani Reborn

Bolstered by Parwyyd’s advice and Onyx’s support, Cybriana manages to fight off a couple of enemies and get some confidence in the use of her magic before an angry Kilili returns.

Touching the ring has unexpected consequences for Kilili, who thought she would just fly off as her own person. In truth, Cybriana has come to understand herself a little better, and the two merge again.

Thus we come to the climax of our tale, with the moral of the story revealed: good and evil are not isolated concepts that define a person, but rather the results of actions taken. Now that Kyriani accepts the Kilili part of her without being repulsed by it or seeing it as a curse, she can live a life as a full person.

Good and Evil, and their Merits

With Kyriani reborn, the sealing of the gate is rather easy. I don’t have much to say about the climactic battle except that the villainous creature that was trying to come through to Toril looks like the Slurm Queen from Futurama.

The real winner in all of this is Kyriani, who uses her rebirth to become a more interesting character than she previously was (not that she was by any means shallow before).

I like this story less for what is contained in its two issues and more for what it does to Kyriani going forward. Previously, she had absorbed Kilili into her, but not really embraced her. This left her more or less the same as Cybriana, but a little more capable.

With Cybriana and Kilili fully merged, the character moves away from the tropes of “pure pale maidens are good” and “sexy dark ladies are evil.” The new Kyriani is confident and leans into Kilili’s sex appeal in a way that is not shown explicitly on-panel while being useful in stories.

It sounds odd for me to say, “now Kyriani sleeps around, and that’s good,” but it’s a way of knocking down one of the troublesome clichés of media that was especially common in the 80s and 90s where a woman who actually enjoys sex is evil. Even in a place like the Forgotten Realms, which is basically fueled by Ed Greenwood’s kinky fantasies, this held fast–while the male characters have an endless number of sexual conquests no matter how old and unattractive they may be, women tended to be shown as either unwaveringly loyal to one man or outright evil, as is the case with most of drow society. As this comic goes on, Kyriani proves to be an exception to that in a way that is not played just for the cheesecake factor.

Of course, it’s also very possible that the majority of my love for the new, empowered Kyriani boils down to something much simpler: I really like the stars in her hair.

Hey, I’m a simple person who can be amused in simple ways. Even still, that doesn’t mean this comic’s relatively complex examination of good and evil isn’t excellent.

_{Images: DC Comics}