RACE


CLASS Shield Dwarf


Appearance


HISTORY


Skills

RACE


CLASS


Appearance


HISTORY


Skills

Born under an auspicious sign, beneath bright stars and a cloudless sky, Thia is a high-elf unhappily resigned to her destiny. From birth, she was one of the youngest members of House Amakiir, a cadet branch of the ruling Silvermoor family that held sway in the Verdant City. Her mother, Eilrel, was a famed wizard, a noted practitioner of the School of Abjuration. Her father, Ianberos, was a successful merchant dealing chiefly in wholesale of exotic spices. Her older sister, preceding her by several decades, Nuala, was a well-regarded harpist. A distant relative of the current Silvermoor ruler of the Verdant City, Finarfin Elendar, Thia was fortunate enough to be raised with some of the wealth and splendor afforded to Elven royalty.

Distance to the main Silvermoor bloodline ensured that her house lived free from most of the politics that afflicted the major Elven houses. Over the passing centuries, House Amakiir had grown comfortable in the Stormshade, the roots of her family tree intermingling with those of the ancient trees. Thia grew up in a happy household. She was close to her parents and closer to her sister, who taught her to play an endless constellation of instruments. Thia still carries the hand carved flute that her sister gave her on her twentieth birthday and it remains her most cherished possession.

Her ancestors were respectable elves, upright citizens, known for their worthiness. A long line of wizards, culminated in a exceptionally talented cousin, responsible for a number of advancements in the arcane arts. Several more renowned musicians were scattered throughout the long memory of the high-elves and Thia would passionately argue her sister to be among the finest of this esteemed collection. Heroes from House Amakiir, the kind commemorated in songs older than the Verdant City itself, existed in fewer number, but Thia recalls unerringly the story of legendary paladin, Haera Amakiir.

Surrounded by the ancient forest of the Stormshade, Thia's early years were pleasant and marked by patient learning in the old elven tradition. She was taught the many languages of the elves, humans, and other common races. She studied the histories cherished by the elves. She practiced the artistic endeavors so beloved by her kind. She learned to wield bow, blade, and other arms, as expected of any elven noble. Thia showed little interest in the mercantile career of her admired father, accompanying him on trade expeditions merely to satisfy her growing wanderlust. Likewise, the spellcasting of her mother, grasped but the surface of Thia's attention, she was more interested in the stories, the histories that her mother would tell. A gift for music was marred only by a growing interest in the faith that held sway in the Verdant City.

There was no singular vision, no great spiritual awakening that drove Thia to seek out the Temple of Zray. Instead it was a series of moments, small encounters with death that shone with profound meaning and augury before building into a final divine revelation. The death of a beloved pet and the ghostly visage of it she saw before it peacefully faded. The untimely death of a cherished cousin, lost in a great storm at sea, a favored song sung by the young woman that Thia heard in the twilight. The death of one of her tutors, a grizzled soldier, a dwarf who fell in battle, arriving for her usual instructions she saw him sitting there smiling, unharmed, vanishing only when he had offered her a final lesson. Observing a solemn ceremony to mark the passing of an aged high-elf stateswoman and beloved great grandmother, Thia encountered a strange young woman, a human no older than herself. Though she felt grief at the loss of her kin, her conversation with the human woman touched on matters of life and death, leaving Thia with a feeling of unexpected joy. Unable to find the human thereafter or discover any trace of her presence in the city, Thia came to believe that it was an aspect of Lady Zray herself that she had conversed with.

Embracing the merciful faith of the Goddess of Death, Thia sought to follow her own path, seeking out the clerics and paladins of the Temple of Zray. It was a surprising choice to her family, uninvolved as they were in the Temple of Zray. Her decision was a short-lived curiosity among her other kin, forgiven rapidly considering the relative unimportance of House Amakiir. It was not unheard of for high-elves, even highborn elves, to worship the goddess of Death. Although in truth, many treated this religion merely as a formality, forced upon them by ancient accord and numerous failed rebellions.

Received as a novice at the temple, Thia was accepted as an apprentice of the priestess Farryn Wranrora. Introspective and full of deep thoughts, even for a high-elf, Thia adjusted well to life as a religious acolyte. As she came to be initiated into the mysteries and rituals of Zray, Lady of Death, she found new confidence. Under Farryn Wranrora's careful tutelage, she learned to channel the divine magic of their mistress. Invocation of these arcane energies came easily to her. She found strength in the teachings of the temple. She found comfort in the compassion that Lady Zray offered to all mortals, no matter status, achievements, hard to define concepts like honor, or even goodness.

There was a welcome peace to be found in the services the temple offered. To keep the graveyards that the temple kept was to learn the stories of the dead and to provide comfort for the living. Guarding the shrines dedicated to Lady Zray and the hallowed dead furnished blissful moments of quiet contemplation. Thia learned to be a record keeper, recording the births and deaths that occurred under her watchful gaze. She studied the holy book, the Tome of Scattered Bones, said to have been transcribed at Lady Zray's insistence, furthering her knowledge of burial rites, the prevention of undeath, auguries, and other such matters. She participated in funeral rites, helping to peacefully guide the recently dead onwards. In time, she came to conduct these sacred ceremonies herself, leading the dead to their deserved rest. Along with her brethren, she prayed, offering chants and songs to celebrate the circle of life and death.

Pleased as she was with her progress as a servant of the Death Goddess, Thia found herself enthralled by the paladins attached to the Temple of Zray. Divided into distinct orders, they existed as groups of a thousand names, a thousand shapes, and a thousand colors. Each built upon a different set of decrees and striving to achieve a particular purpose. United one and all in preserving the fragile balance between life and death, the thin thread of existence the world depended on.

Still a child, by the elven measure of time, she joined the Order of the Pale Light, a fabled order known for the peerless warriors the order produced and the fanatical devotion to the delivering swift mercy to the undead. Among the members of the selective order Thia found comrades in arms. Fellow truth seekers, dedicated to the cause of righteousness, aflame with the pure fire of faith, and endlessly strengthened by their belief. An able student, she showed a gift for spells to protect and vanished. Her heart beat with new joy, for she had found the place where she belonged. Under the gentle care of her superiors and older acolytes, she opened up and shared.

Far from a woman to her kind, but close to the eyes of humans, she served as a page, accompanying the knights of her order on their holy quests. At first, she engaged in menial tasks. Taking care of horses, sharpening weapons, maintaining armor, mending fabrics, and assisting the paladins as they prepared for battle. However, in time, she would join them, standing alongside them in desperate battles, facing horrors conjured from behind the grave.

She stood unchanged, but two years older, when her order judged her ready and assigned her further training to a knight. Her steadfast dedication and gift with arms saw her placed under the stern gaze of the knight, Paelias Meliamne. An accomplished swordsman, a wood-elf in his 250th year of life, Paelias was a harsh teacher, famed within the order for the elaborate calisthenics he forced all his squires to complete and the strange, unorthodox style of fighting that he espoused. Where some wilted, breaking under the wood-elf’s heavy hand, Thia thrived, growing from a green sapling into a mighty oak.

Seasons passed in multitudes, before she was knighted by Paelias himself. Years she fought. Years she traveled. Crossing the realms more times than she cared to count. Always following the sensation, the guiding feeling that the Lady of Death supplied to her ardent disciples. She earned a name, a moniker for her prowess, the Dusk Blade. Knights began to speak of her with pride evident in their voices. Commoners knew of her, viewing her with fear and cautious respect in equal league. Nobles, particularly her high-elf kin, could see some value in striving for perfection, even if they found little appealing in skulking through dark tombs that smelled of death.

So content was Thia, that she could have spent several more centuries unchanged. The Fates had other plans for her however…

Words, at first fearful whispers, arrived by foot, horse, and at last raven. A darkness hung heavy over the Fells of Oughild. A vile sorcerer, a necromancer was said to dwell in the tomb of Almar Mara. Amassing an army of undead, the necromancer had come to threaten the silver mines of Zhadenit and the outlying towns. Mournful ballads sung in the great banquet hall of the Order of Pale Light tell of the company of death paladins sent to eliminate the necromancer.

Mournful songs sung in the great banquet hall of the Order of the Pale Light tell of a company of death paladins sent to capture a necromancer. Famed knights, named knights, brave soldiers with the experience of many years and campaigns. Thia was proud to count herself among them.

Driven from the foul, cursed barrow, the necromancer was cornered in the small town of Tanyth. Surrounded, the villain summoned a greater undead, a monstrous lich to aid them in their evil work. Battle unfolded with no opportunity for an evacuation of the peasantry. Death cut down the old and the young, weak and the strong, the cowardly and the brave. Before the necromancer was slain and the conjured undead dispatched, more than a hundred innocent souls were lost and a great part of the company of paladins lay dead. It was little consolation to Thia that she had cut down the necromancer and seen the lich banished. The smiling head she carried back to the order brought no relief. Her superiors praised her, welcoming her back as a hero.

Thia felt no such joy, falling instead to a deep despair. She saw only the faces of her lost friends. Remembered only their voices, happy memories marred by final moments ended with cruel violence. She had squired with several. She had fought battles with many. She had saved them in the heart of a desperate battle. They had saved her from the wicked blows of the unrighteous no fewer times. They had shared hardships in the field. They had bled together more times than she could recollect, she could trace the scars and remember. Zray had delivered only what she had promised. Death did not spare the good, the honorable, the brave, or the kind. All were hastened to the Lady of Death and all were warmly welcomed.

Thia had known that this was true. She had always known this to be true. It was the foundation of her religious education and pillar of her faith. Cracks appeared, not subtle, jagged lines beyond detection, but deep fissures that threatened to collapse the fragile structure that her belief had been reduced to. The final words of the necromancer haunted her. The laughter that rang out as Thia had beheaded the iron crowned figure, tolled in her head like an accursed bell. To accept the injustice of it all was at last impossible.

It was not hard to find the ancient tome, the grimoire hidden beneath the temple, locked away in a warded vault. She had been there many times. She had brought arcane artifacts there before, cursed objects and forbidden things best kept far from the reach of the wicked. The scrawling elven script was etched in silver, words from a time that challenged even the long memory of the elves. Powerful magic swam in the darkness before her eyes, each page was a revelation, and an offering that she could not refuse. Symbols carved into stone. Patterns painted on fabric and wood. Shapes drawn in chalk. For a fortnight Thia labored, interpreting the mysterious book and preparing for the ritual. Rare ingredients were specified, the sort that of components that lead to questions. Questions from her fellow paladins that Thia quickly dismissed. They had no cause to doubt her. They saw no shadows in her eyes.

On a cold winter's night, pale moonlight shone down on Thia, the wind creaking through the snow covered trees. Her wretched dreaming brought only suffering. The ritual failed. And instead of a reunion, Thia found only violence, ambushed, she fought friend and foe, living and undead. Fresh wounds covered the high-elf when she emerged from the forest glade and scattered graves, her halberd was broken, shattered in two, and her armor was splintered. However, it was her heart that ached, her soul that wept. She could feel the judgment that had fallen upon her, the doom she had wrought. It was her choice. She had always known the consequences. And yet she could not bear it, the emptiness she felt.

Unable to face her brethren, knowing well her own ruin, Thia fled wordlessly, leaving behind only a broken amulet bearing the holy symbol of Zray.

Far stories began to speak of a grim knight soon after. A figure clad in blackened plate, marked and dented by countless blows, adorned in the pallid vestments of the grave. A cold lantern flickering in the darkness, offering no words and no prayers. A horror that for all this, seemed to deliver mercy and charity to the innocent. If such stories are uttered within Thia’s sensitive hearing, she is quick to explain that there are many wandering hedge knights dressed in plate armor cast in a dark shade, and assuredly any such tales celebrate one of these no doubt noble pauper knights.

How long Thia would have wandered, how long she would have fought, before she tired, before she faded, is impossible to say. Yet the Fates conspired against her. Lady Death once more chained her. The bright moon hung over her, ash bone painted with streaks of black. An ill omen, she knew. The old tomb, a crypt from a distant age, was full of whispers. She found no one. No living. And no undead. A skeletal figure sat unmoving, as if waiting for her, a great halberd, untouched by rust, unchanged by time, rested against the shoulder of the armored knight. For it was a knight, she saw, the heraldry decorating the armor was familiar, but she could not place it. The script was elven, from a kingdom or empire long since swept aside by the wind. Compelled by a force she could not identify, a compulsion that arose from deep within, she reached out to touch the halberd.

Darkness swallowed her as she felt cold metal meet her fingers. She awoke to laughter. She awoke to back and forth banter. The ethereal voices of the three Fates greeted her, welcomed her, and soothed her anger. For a time. She would not forgive. She would not forget. She knew the trap that had been laid for her. She could sense the hand of her lady, the subtle forces at work, and her fury returned undiminished.

Keannan: 2E8B57
Sun: FFF79A
Moon: C0C0C0
Earth: FF7F50
Forest: 6B8E23
River: 7EA7D8
Wind: 82CA9D
Wildfire: DC143C

We'll see if I ever actually use any of them except for Keannan's especially Wildfire, I'm mostly just doing the extra ones because I'm weird and like the extra touch.