Araseth of Norreplith

[Akilinia]

Name: Araseth of Norreplith

Age: 283

Race: Elf

Occupation: Hunter and Self Appointed Protector of Nature

Physical Description:

Araseth is not what one pictures when one thinks of an elf. She is very small for her race, barely reaching five and half feet tall, and she appears very fragile. This suits her just fine, because it allows her to traverse the forest more swiftly than a larger person might be able to. Although, even if she happened to be larger, she would have no trouble moving through the forest after spending her whole life in the densest parts of Du Weldenvarden, the largest and oldest forest in Alagaesia. Avoiding briars and branches that threaten to tangle a person unused to keeping a wary eye on the underbrush with the ease of long practice, she weaves in and around them like an acrobat. It is not uncommon for Araseth to forgo travelling across the forest floor in order to swing from branch to branch in the canopy. Her hands are thickened with calluses from her wild pursuits and from using the bow sung for her by her grandmother during her stay in Nadindel. The bow is constructed of a beautiful ebony wood. The stock of the bow imitates the feathered pattern of a bird’s wings, and the ends of it flare out like wings spread in flight. It is nearly as tall as Araseth herself, and she wouldn’t be able to draw it if she was not an elf.

Aside from her bow, Araseth wears very little armor or weapons on her person. However, one permanent fixture is the pair of leather arm guards strapped to her wrists. They protect her wrists from the slap of her bowstring on the off chance that she lets off a poorly planned shot, but more importantly, they help prevent her from skinning her arms on the rough bark of the tree limbs she swings from. Unlike most of her possessions, which are handmade, the leather armguards were a gift from her father when he gave her her first lesson in the art of archery. Back then, she was not skilled with a bow, and would return from the practice field with her arms covered in red welts from where the bowstring had made contact with the soft flesh of her forearm to alert her to a mistake in the way she handled the bow or released the arrow. Her father had considered the painful welts the quickest way to learn to shoot a bow with proper form, and had waited until the first time she returned home without a red mark on her arm to present her with her own pair of arm guards. In addition to her bow and arm guards, she arms herself with a small dagger strapped around her waist. It is a plain affair of black leather and silver, and is applied to hunting and preparing meals more often than self defense. Araseth has always been partial to the bow, and only resorts to her dagger in times of emergency.

Despite her diminutive size, Araseth is not without muscle. She is still far stronger than any human and uses the fact that people often tend to underestimate her strength to her advantage when she finds one in her woods. She prefers not to rely on her physical strength to win against humans. Rather than outmuscle the humans, she prefers to hunt them like they hunt animals. It is cruel, and Araseth is not disposed towards cruelty, but when protecting the Spine she finds that she is capable of things she never imagined. In order to assure that the humans feel just like animals do when they are being hunted, and simply because she refuses to look anything like the race that could have saved her parents, she camouflages herself and stalks them like a hunter would stalk his prey. She understands the necessity of killing for survival, and only kills the humans that wander too far into her domain or kill more than their fair share or kill cruelly. The thing she hates the most about humans, along with their disregard for nature, is their practice of chasing animals with hounds while mounted on horseback just for the sport of it. When she hunts a human like that, she will make sure he knows someone is following him by allowing him to see her a few times, and then she announces that she is closing in on his by making a lot of noise to frighten him like the animals he hunts would be frightened of the bay of the hounds on a scent.

Although most of her body is still that of an elf’s, she has used magic to incorporate streaks of green and brown across her neck, arms, stomach, and legs in order to blend better with the earthy tones of the forest. The uncovered portion of her skin, mostly visible on her face and the undersides of her arms, is the pale white of her kind. Along with changing her skin tone, she has also altered her hair from its natural black to appear like the pelt of many different animals. Throughout the long silky strands, the white speckled brown of deer, the black ringed gray of the raccoon, the wolf’s shades of russet, gray and brown, and many other colors are evident. More often than not, she leaves it down to hang around her face in a curtain. It is a comfort to her to see the colors of the animals she so adores as well as a practicality to be mistaken for an animal when spotted by unsuspecting humans. Additionally, she has changed her eyes into the mild brown color of a deer and can grow a cougar’s strong claws from her fingers and toes at will when she has need of the extra traction they afford to climb trees or jump from branch to branch.

Most of what she sheaths her body in is handmade; pelts from different animals that she kills for dinner. From the hide of a deer, the most useful animal in the forest in her opinion, she created a pair of breeches and a shirt. Araseth prefers to forgo shoes most of the time in order to feel the earth beneath her feet, but in the winter, she creates shoes from wolf hide and lines the insides of them with fur. She also has a cloak of wolf fur that she wears during the winter and odd cool days of the year. Araseth has long since adapted to the harsh weather and prefers to wear minimal clothing until the weather reaches the point where she cannot bear the cold. This practice is to save the lives of large animals that she would have needed to kill in order to make such clothing and for the freedom of movement being encumbered by less material affords. In addition the animal pelts she wears, Araseth often has jewelry of teeth or bone strung around her neck, ankles or wrists. She makes necklaces out of the teeth from every animal she kills to honor their sacrifice. Her favorite, and the one she wears most often, is a necklace of wolf teeth from the first wolf she killed in the Spine. The wolf fur she wears during the winter is from the same wolf.

Personality:

Although she is capable of great cruelty, Araseth is not inherently a cruel person. Her close bond with nature and its creatures has instilled a reverence for life in her that causes her pain whenever she is forced to end a life. Despite her reluctance to kill, she understands the concept of survival and is a firm believer that the strongest survive and the weak perish. This belief extends to cover the human race, who she considers to be among the weak, and just like in nature the weak deserve to die. She believes that if it weren't for their tools and weapons, they would be prey to many of the animals in Alagaesia. She resents them for their ingenuity, and what she percieves to be a place that they stole in nature's hierarchy. However, the real source of her hatred stems from the blame she harbors towards them for the death of her parents, their irreverance towards nature, and the fact that they forced her into violence. Araseth views humans like deaf children. She considers them willfully ignorant and incapable of being taught anything other than the way of brute force. As a result of this, she is resolved to match fire with fire in order to prevent the humans from destroying anything else she holds dear.

In a complete turn from the brutality she displays when concerning humans, Araseth shows creatures of nature nothing but kindness. If she did not consider it her duty to defend nature from humanity's cruelty, she would spend all day nurturing seedlings and helping young animals become acquainted with the world. She is content to a life of solitude. The quiet of nature is as satisfying as the speech one shares with another person. She learned to forgo the contact of other elves in her youth when she told her father about her magic. His anger at her announcement resulted in frequent trips into the forest to explore the boundaries of her magic. She finds nature's lack of expectations comforting. She does not have the mind for politics, and has always been very direct with words. She also finds manners to be a useless affair, and prefers get right to the point. Animals don't mind her lack of tact and plants hardly care for more than sunshine and rain. However, this bluntness and disregard for polite conversation allows her to form judgements of others before she even has a chance to introduce herself. It is ultimately this quality that allows her to pass verdict on humans who enter her woods when she has never even had a conversation with one.

History:

Araseth was born to two nobles, Altorno and Bamorien, in the beautiful city of Osilon before the Blue Divide when it was still the crowning jewel of Du Weldenvarden. Although her father’s house hailed from the isolated city of Nadindel, he left the small tribe of tree singers as soon as he was old enough to live on his own. Altorno had always felt as if he were an outcast in his own family. House Norreplith was renowned for its superb tree singing magic as well as the unparalleled healers it produced. Elves came to them from all over Du Weldenvarden to commission bows and other products from them, or to bring them ailing relatives for healing. It had always been expected that Altorno would take over the family business when Araseth’s grandmother retired, but he never exhibited an aptitude for the magic of tree singing or healing. Didor, Araseth’s formidable paternal grandmother, had always attributed her son’s disappointing lack of ability to his passion for the art of combat to anyone who would listen to her. She ridiculed him for his pursuit of violence and told him that no tree singer or healer could ever be a warrior in the same life time. She forced him to choose, hoping that when he abandoned his sword and bow he would magically inherit the gifts he should have been born with. Altorno chose to leave Nadindel rather than relinquish his passion, and he fled to Osilon where he met Bamorien and fell in love.

As a result of her father’s self-inflicted banishment from his own family, Araseth grew up ignorant of her heritage. It was only when she began to show signs of the gift that she learned of her father’s family and the magic that coursed through her blood. The abilities manifested in her slowly. At first, she was only able to dimly sense the presence of animals and plants, but over time, she was able to communicate with them. It was not necessarily a language. Plants and animals did not speak in human tongue, but with emotions and images. After a while, she realized what it was she was feeling and seeing in her mind and she went to her father and mother to share her wonderful discovery with them. Her father was furious with her. It was a feeling spawned in jealousy and resentment that had formed from his own bitter past struggling to meet his mother’s expectations. He forbade her from using her gifts, foolishly hoping that they would disappear if he ignored them. Conversely, Araseth’s gifts began to grow and after spending a few years in the dense forest that surrounded Osilon, secretly practicing her magic, she slowly began to piece together the different languages of the plants and animals in the forest.

When she turned twenty-five, like all elf children, she was sent to Ilirea to learn magic. It was in the city’s Grand Library that she discovered a text referring to a small, isolated town called Nadindel, in which people with similar abilities to her own resided. The book also mentioned that House Norreplith had produced many famous tree-singers and healers over the generations. Araseth was stunned by her discovery, and wondered if the noble house in Nadindel was related to her. Her father had never spoken of his family, and she had never really thought to question his strange reluctance until that moment. She resolved to visit the city after her graduation.

As soon as she had been released from the magic school in Ilirea, Araseth set off for the tree-singer village. The book had failed to mention the difficulty of the journey to Nadindel, and without her ability to converse with the local wildlife and plant life, she knew she would have been lost several times over. After several months of travel, she finally stumbled upon the village and immediately fell in love with it. The little city was in the oldest part of Du Weldenvarden, and nature’s presence embraced her like a lost lover. She felt a sense of kinship with the trees and the wildlife that populated the dense forest that she had never before experienced, even in her home town of Osilon. She was surprised to find an elf waiting for her at the entrance to the town. The woman bore a striking resemblance to Araseth herself, and immediately she knew that they were related. She could feel the woman’s gift calling to her like a lonely dog seeking comfort. The woman embraced her without comment and led Araseth to the most beautiful home she had ever seen. It was masterfully carved from the trunk of the largest cherry tree she had ever seen, and the architectural design was magnificent: twists and knots in all the right placed and a spiral stair that twined about the house like a lover. The woman welcomed her inside like she had done it many times before and introduced herself as Didor, her grandmother.

Araseth spent the next few decades at Didor’s side, learning the art of tree-singing. She found that she was a natural, and Didor was thrilled to have finally found someone worthy of their bloodline. It was nearly a decade in before Araseth ran into her first challenge. Her grandmother had been trying to get her to heal an injured elf, but Araseth had been unable to. Disappointed that she had failed her grandmother, she fled into the forest and found an squirrel that had tangled with a hawk’s talons and barely escaped with its life. The wound called to her, and without thinking, she attempted to heal it. To her surprise, the wound healed seamlessly. After some more experimentation with the assistance of her delighted grandmother, she discovered that she could heal animals as well as plants with her magic, but she was still unable to heal all but the smallest of injuries on people.

After a couple of blissful decades with her grandmother, Araseth finally decided it was time to return to her family. It was difficult to communicate with others from Nadindel, and she had not spoken with her parents since shortly after her graduation from Ilirea. Even if she felt more at home in a town she had spent only a small portion of her life in than the one she grew up in, and with a woman she had only just met than with the man and woman who had raised her, she still felt an obligation to see her family. She loved them despite their flaws, and her father’s harsh rejection of her magic, something that had become a large part of her identity. She felt the need to see if she could convince him to reconsider his rejection of his heritage and his own family.

Having been in the seclusion of Nadindel for so long, Araseth was unaware of the tensions that had been rising between her people and the humans. She arrived in Osilon to find preparations for war well underway. It was disturbing for her to see her peaceful home turned into a war camp, especially after living peacefully with nature for the last few decades. The thought of violence and the death that would follow sickened her. She went to her house only to discover that her father would be fighting in the battle against the humans. He was one of the more skilled warriors in Osilon, and considered it his duty to protect his own from the barbaric humans. At least, that was what he said when Araseth begged him not to fight. She knew he was a capable warrior, she had seen him on the practice field many times and had learned to use a bow under his tutelage, but a feeling of unease began to manifest in her breast at the thought of him fighting. Unable to bear the thought of witnessing such violence, she fled to the forest to warn the animals to flee and seek refuge herself. For the rest of her life she wondered if things would have turned out differently if she’d stayed to help her family.

When the sounds of fighting died down, she returned to Osilon. Immediately she was overwhelmed by the feel of death that permeated the place, and the cries of dying animals and plants that had been caught in the cross-fire pierced her heart. She made her way through the village, searching for her father and mother. Fallen warriors littered the ground and stained the cool brown earth red with spilt blood, elves and humans alike, and the cries of the dying filled the air. More than anything, she wished for the ability to heal people, but she could not and had to harden her heart against the cries. Finally, she found her parents. Both of them were dead. Their bodies had fallen among a circle of dead humans who they had presumably killed before falling themselves. A hero’s death. Somehow the thought failed to console her. She blamed herself for their deaths. If she had not been a coward. If she had been able to bear the violence of war. If she had stayed to fight beside them. Maybe they would still be alive. She carried their bodies deep into the forest where they had often gone on moonlit walks in her youth and buried them with her bare hands. By the time she was done, her heart had found a new target for its rage: the humans.

They were a barbaric race that did not deserve to live. They were monsters. All they were capable of was destruction. Araseth had seen their cities on her family’s rare trips out of Du Weldenvarden. Their cities were built on carcass of nature. Each one resided on a ruined forest or on a prairie that had been cleared of all life so they could build their ugly cities of stone. They were tombs, not cities. Araseth took it upon herself to put an end to the humans’ disregard of nature. She returned to her house to collect supplies and left Du Weldenvarden for Palancar Valley: the human capital. She was bent on preventing them from expanding into the fertile expanse of land that surrounded the city.

In her eyes her own race was not without blame either. If they had not been so caught up in their Grand Game, their politics, then they could have stopped the Blue Divide before it began. They could have prevented the human race from destroying nature with their cities. They could have stopped the attack on Osilon and then her parents would not have died. The elves were a powerful race, the most powerful in Alagaesia with the exception of the Riders, who were elves themselves. The dragons were what gave Ilirea its power. Even if her own people had failed to put a halt to human madness, the Riders could have done something. Instead, they maintained their neutrality by refusing involvement in affairs that did not directly concern them. Politics sickened her. The idea that ideals were worth more than the lives of others sickened her. Araseth decided that the only thing in the world she could trust was nature. It was pure and beautiful, and would never be tainted by emotions or petty desires. It warranted protection from the cruelty that poisoned the hearts of men. She decided that she would provide that protection.

Upon her arrival in Palancar Valley, Araseth sang herself a small home in a large oak tree and took up residence in the Spine. She took refuge in the legends that surrounded the uninhabited forest. She gave it a physical body to protect itself with. If a human ever entered the depths of the forest, she took it upon herself to make sure they didn’t leave again. She was determined to instill such fear in the humans that they would never dare to venture into the Spine again. She also travels to the Silent Plains and other areas of the valley trying to restore plant and animal life where the humans destroyed it. Ultimately, she hopes humans will reconsider their treatment of nature after it strikes back at them.


Roleplaying Sample: See the thread called Inception in the Citadel in Ilirea.

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