Lydia van Bredevoort was Vilgefortz's assistant and personal secretary, a sorceress, and a painter. She was a woman with a very strange face and very nice, expressive eyes. The lower part of her face was actually an illusion. Four years prior the events in Blood of Elves, Lydia, at Vilgefortz's insistence, had taken part in some experiments conducted on a mysterious artifact discovered in a necropolis. It turned out to be cursed and although it "activated" only the one time, three of the five mages who participated where killed on the spot. A fourth lost his eyes, his hands and went mad. Lydia escaped with burns, a mangled jaw, and throat and larynx mutations that stubbornly resisted all attempts at regeneration. She was left with telepathy as her only form of communication.