Kima of Vord

Lady Kheema of Vord is a halfling paladin of Bahamut. Considered one of the more powerful forces of divine good in Westruun and most of Tal'Dorei, Lady Kheema is renowned for her deeds over the past thirty years. She is a former adventuring companion and wife to Allura Vysoren. As an NPC, she is played by Matthew Mercer.

Appearance
Kheema has wavy, dirty blonde hair that she usually keeps tightly braided. She has a darker complexion for a halfling. She also has a big scar across side of her face along with other, smaller scars.

Kheema usually wears gold plate armor with silver and blue details with the symbol of Bahamut.

Personality
Kheema has been shown to be quite headstrong, and often will do things while barely letting others around her know what she plans on doing. She seems to be quite shy as she hardly says anything during a meeting with the Council of Emon. Kheema also has a very bloodthirsty side to her as seen in when she killed a duergar mage by choking him out as well as slowly sliding her sword into his stomach. She values the well-being of the allies that she does meet, as shown when she felt guilt and regret for failing to protect her allies when she was captured by the duergar and when she gains the friendship and respect of Vox Machina, as well as in when she rallies the party together with a rousing speech, and in  when she is reunited with them. She also loves chicken.

Background
Fifteen years prior to the events involving K'Varn, Kheema and Lady Allura became friends when they teamed up to defeat the Scourged Rider. The two of them were offered political positions as members of the Council of Emon for their service, but Kheema instead chose to follow the path of her deity and join the Order of the Platinum Dragon. The two have since remained close friends, and are dating.

While returning from her year long pilgrimage for her growth as a paladin from the Tundra Wastes north of Kraghammer, she went missing. During this time she had a dark vision of evil taking root beneath Kraghammer, a dwarven city northeast of Emon in the Cliffkeep Mountains. Traveling to Kraghammer, she prepared to go into the Underdark, hiring several mercenaries to accompany her down into the mines. While in the dwarven city, she managed to anger Nostoc Greyspine, the mine's owner. When the Carvers attempted to arrest her, she and her companions ran into Greyspine Quarry as she needed to head that direction to find the source of the evil. At some point while resting after journeying deep underground, she and her party were ambushed by duergar and she was taken to Emberhold for interrogation. During this time she was tortured, her tormentors using blades and hooks to cut into her skin. King Murghol, leader of Emberhold, especially enjoyed torturing her. Murghol also had several of her mercenaries and companions killed in front of her in an effort to break her.

Going off of information that Kheema was last in Kraghammer, Allura asked the adventuring group Vox Machina to find and bring her friend home.

Upon arriving in Kraghammer, Vox Machina asked a tavern owner, Adra, if she had seen a halfling come through town. Adra confirmed that Kheema had been staying at another tavern for a few weeks and had gotten into several fights.

After a small skirmish with umber hulks in the caverns below Kraghammer, Vox Machina captured and interrogated a duergar in the hopes of learning the whereabouts of Lady Kheema. The duergar told them she had been captured. While searching the area, the party noticed a couple of locations where it looked as though someone who worshiped Bahamut had made his symbols on several cave walls, as if for protection.

During the raid of the duergar warcamp, the general confirmed that Kheema had been captured and was being held within the Emberhold.

During the infiltration of the Emberhold, the group made their way through the lower floors of the stronghold until they broke into the dungeons. After a fight with several duergar, including a duergar torturer, whom Grog killed by slamming onto several of his own torture devices, they found and rescued Lady Kheema. While trying to decide what to do next, Kheema noticed Clarota was with them. Originally stating she would not work with the illithid, the group was able to forcefully convince both of them that together they stood a better chance of facing K'Varn.



Proceeding through the Emberhold to break the backbone of the duergar assault on the surface, the group eventually made their way to the throne room. After a long fight, during which both Tiberius and Kheema were turned to stone by Basilisks, Murghol was defeated. However, Queen Ulara was able to gain control over Grog and teleport away from the fight after she disintegrated the ceiling, causing the throne room to fill up with lava, resulting in Vax'ildan's foot being horribly burned as they escaped.

After a short rest, during which Tiberius and Kheema were unpetrified, Vox Machina then followed the duergar queen deeper into the Underdark. While traveling deeper, they encountered an underground pass with a floor made up of glass, stone, and bone. Realizing an evil presence was ahead, the group traveled by air for a time until encountering a band of duergar fighting one of K'Varn's "stitch monsters". While fighting the creature, they discovered the field itself was an enemy as it would attempt to pull members of their party underground to join the rest of the dead. The creature was eventually defeated and the group escaped the undead fields.

Eventually, the group found Grog, incapacitated and surrounded by duergar, Kheema's remaining now-brainwashed mercenaries, an illithid, and the queen. A battle ensued, and Vox Machina won, managing in the process to capture the queen. During interrogation, K'Varn possessed the queen to see the people who were interfering with his plans and taunt them before psychically killing her.

The party journeyed deeper into the Underdark, until they reached the home of the illithid. After searching through the massive cavern for supplies and preparing for the final fight, Vox Machina launched a surprise attack on the illithid Elderbrain pyramid in an attempt to both kill K'Varn and free the mind flayers from the beholder's control. During the fight, Lady Kheema was once again turned to stone, but Vox Machina successfully defeated K'Varn.

Immediately after the fight with K'Varn ended, a group of illithid entered the temple, where Clarota communicated with them and was accepted fully back into the colony. The party then barely escaped with their lives when Clarota betrayed them and the entire illithid city came to attack them, with the party doing significant damage to the Elderbrain in the process of leaving. After Tiberius teleported everyone back to Emon, the group waited a day before unpetrifying Kheema while they determined what to do with the Horn of Orcus, the artifact K'Varn used to attain so much power.

Kheema and Allura insisted that the Horn of Orcus be interred at the Temple of Bahamut in Vasselheim. The Council of Tal'Dorei and Vox Machina concurred, and preparations for travel are made. The party boarded an airship bound for Vasselheim with Kheema and the Horn in tow. In the midst of their journey, they were attacked by a band of raiders mounting wyverns and a griffon. The party defeated the attackers and took one of them into their care temporarily.

Upon arrival at Vasselheim, Kheema was initially anxious about returning home. A scalebearer named Yon introduced himself, and it appeared as though Kheema and Yon had a history, as she showed some animosity towards him. Kheema accompanied Vox Machina and the Horn to the Platinum Sanctuary, a very sacred temple of Bahamut, and together they met Highbearer Vord, the spiritual leader of the Order of Bahamut. Vord instructed them to take the Horn of Orcus to the temple's vault, the Hall of the Exalt, and warned them that the vault was very well protected and also infested with some sort of pest. Kheema, Vox Machina, and the scalebearers traveled into the vault and were faced with a gauntlet of trials. They were ambushed by a group of trans-dimensional spiders but dispatched them with relative ease. The Horn was successfully sealed away in the vault, and several platinum golems awoke and ferociously chased the party out of the vault before Kheema sealed the entrance. With the Horn interred, Vox Machina and Kheema parted ways as friends.



When Vox Machina returned to the holy city in search of aid, one of the places they visited was the Platinum Sanctuary. Initially, Highbearer Vord planned to have one of his finest warriors accompany the party, only for Kheema to push him aside and announce that she will be going. After some persuasion and some exposition by Vord, Kheema happily embraced her old friends in Vox Machina (except for Scanlan) and is introduced to Zahra and Kashaw, members of the Slayer's Take and fellow allies. After being told in detail the situation occurring all around Exandria, and that Allura is safe, Kheema rejoined the party in search of the Vestiges of the Divergence, artifacts that might aid them in defeating the Chroma Conclave.

Lady Kheema accompanied Vox Machina into the underwater temple beneath the Marrowglade Loch in search of the Deathwalker's Ward, home to a tribe of kuo-toa and the entity they worshiped: a beholder. In the early moments of the battle, Kheema was hit by a ray of telekinetic force and thrown into a deep pit of kuo-toa remains. Despite the very long fall, she managed to survive. She later accompanied the party to Whitestone, where the refugees from the attack on Emon were staying.

Upon arriving in Whitestone and sitting down with Vox Machina in a tavern, Kheema was informed that Thordak, the red dragon that was sealed away in the Plane of Fire by herself and Allura, as well as Drake Thunderbrand and a few other companions from long ago, was now currently ruling over Emon. This news greatly disturbed her.

In preparation for their return to Draconia to fight and destroy Vorugal, Vox Machina decided to include Lady Kheema among their ranks once more. However, there was a complication: they were also bringing along Raishan, another of the Chroma Conclave, after they were forced to make an alliance out of fear that she would cause Whitestone's destruction. Kheema was not happy with this news, but eventually acquiesced and accompanied them, agreeing to not reveal her knowledge of Raishan's involvement.

Lady Kheema was present for the battle against Vorugal. Despite her inability to fight the dragon while it was airborne, with her divine powers she was instrumental in dealing with the goristro known as Yenk, which the party summoned as part of their plan to bait and ambush the Frigid Doom. Working together with Grog, the goristro was eventually destroyed and the Spire of Conflux, another Vestige, was retrieved after the battle.

As half of Vox Machina returned from looting Vorugal's hoard of riches, Grog presented Kheema with a beautiful platinum greatsword with words written in Celestial engraved into the blade. It was later revealed to be a Holy Avenger. Kheema put away her Holy Thunder Maul and happily accepted the blade from Grog. She then later sparred with Grog while Keyleth revitalized the land for the Ravenites.

Bahamut
Kheema is very devoted to Bahamut, and places nearly all of her faith in her god. She believes that all good creatures, even those who do not believe in the gods, serve in some way to the divines, and vice versa for the forces of dark.

Keyleth
Keyleth and Lady Kheema did not see eye to eye initially. After Vox Machina's assault on the Emberhold, the pair got into a very heated argument about how the paladin's blind faith in her god's protection—in addition to her vengeful desires—put their party in grave peril and resulted in Grog's capture by Queen Ulara. Keyleth also told Kheema that she hoped the paladin would not end up becoming the very thing she was trying to destroy in her efforts to rid the world of K'Varn.

Keyleth later expressed her concerns to the rest of Vox Machina that she did not want Kheema or the people of Emon to gain control of the Horn of Orcus, as she did not completely trust them. After being comforted by Vax, Percy, and Tiberius about the situation they had found themselves in, Keyleth apologized to Kheema, who forgave her earlier outburst, and the tension between them lessened greatly. Keyleth gave Kheema her patience while the paladin gave the party the respect they deserved.

Since, Kheema has earned Keyleth's trust and even her friendship as well. When the paladin was reunited with Vox Machina after the attack of the Chroma Conclave, Keyleth in particular defended Kheema when Highbearer Vord ridiculed the halfling's "foolish impulses" by saying that said impulses were exactly what Vox Machina needed.

Scanlan Shorthalt
Kheema and Scanlan have a rather hostile relationship, mostly due to Scanlan's behavior and actions towards the halfling.

While in the Underdark, Scanlan lured Kheema away from the rest of Vox Machina to let them have a discussion without the paladin overhearing. He distracted her by casting several illusions on himself to give him a third nipple and an enlarged penis, which made Kheema rather uncomfortable.

Scanlan later attempted to cast Suggestion on her to try and to make her attracted to Grog, but she noticed what he was doing and threatened him with violence if he tried that again.

Several months later, Scanlan attempted to cast Modify Memory on Kheema to make her forget that Raishan was in Whitestone and that Vox Machina had allied with the dragon. Finally fed up with the gnome's shenanigans, Kheema took her Holy Thunder Maul and slammed it into Scanlan's head.

Grog Strongjaw
Grog became infatuated with Lady Kheema after the party freed her from a torture rack in Emberhold and she subsequently borrowed Pike's mace to bash the duergar who tortured her into "hamburger meat."

Kheema is very aware that Grog is infatuated with her. However, she has so far found most of the goliath's advances annoying.

Allura Vysoren
Allura and Kheema have a very close relationship. Allura was the one who sent Vox Machina to find Kheema after the paladin failed to return from her vision quest.

When the two of them were reunited, they were very happy to see each other. The two of them embraced as Allura lifted Kheema off the ground and spun her around. With a tear rolling down her face, Allura told Kheema how worried she had been, and the halfling apologized for causing her trouble.

While living in Whitestone, Allura and Kheema shared a house.

Kheema became enraged when she discovered that Gatekeeper Xanthus had cast Feeblemind on Allura. As a group of lizardfolk and wyvern riders assaulted Fort Daxio, the paladin hunted down the elven mage and was disappointed when Vex'ahlia landed the killing blow against him. When the battle ended, Pike used Greater Restoration to return Allura to her normal state of mind. Kheema then ran up to Allura and kissed her.

She and Allura were later revealed to have married in a "very small, very private" ceremony.

Feats

 * Great Weapon Master

Paladin Abilities

 * Divine Smite
 * Lay on Hands
 * Sacred Weapon
 * Vow of Enmity

1st-level

 * Cure Wounds

3rd-level

 * Aura of Vitality
 * Crusader's Mantle
 * Remove Curse

Notable Items

 * Boots of Elvenkind
 * Holy Avenger
 * Holy Thunder Maul

Trivia

 * In the Critical Role Major Arcana Tarot Card Set, she represents VII - The Chariot.