Making a Melanie-equivalent for Ham/Steak (i.e. a wife OC but Melanie doesn't fit that role now that Sammy isn't my sona), and came up with Valerie, the Plague Magus. She's based on old concepts of Melanie when she was still a mage and not a wrassler, coupled with some of my other interests. Also, she's a house fly, but I didn't give her a proboscis because i don't know how to interpret that.

A somewhat reserved girl from Choka, she is the first to join Ham's adventuring party after he takes on a job to exorcise a ghost in exchange for a town's heirloom sword. While in reality he expected to execute the last member of a family of village pariahs thought to cause plague by association, Ham figures out that there really is a malevolent spirit. He reveals and slays the ghost of Locusta the Poisoner from the girl, and in the process frees Valerie from her curse.

Hoping to repay the favor for removing said ghost that had made her family pariahs for decades, she also wishes to travel with him to the Imperial Capitol in order to fully cleanse her blood of the curse, either by meeting the current Imperial Chemist or finding Locusta's ancestor.

She's also deeply in love with the ant who saved her, though both her reserved nature from years of forced seclusion and Ham's obsession with swords makes that difficult.