Lanawael Vaelaeli

[Nysh]

((OOC: Lanawael has been roaming the Sword Coast for a week or two now, and since I have a little free time I thought I'd post a few narrated fragments of her life to try to illuminate OOC her, and her personality. Since she speaks almost exclusively in Elven, and also since she tends to be, as a result of her personality and history, extremely defensive and a little passive-agressive, there might be a few players and characters who have found her a little hard to cope with. So, hopefully providing a little OOC background might stir interest? I donno. This is all backstory, by the way. I shan't post a journal of my character's deeds after arriving at the Sword Coast.))



------------------- Broken Arrows and Frozen Tears -------------------

It was deep winter in the High Forest, and the snow ran red with blood. The fire had died down by now, though the coals and embers smouldered still, giving off a little heat whenever Lanawael poked them about with her sword. Her family sat around the fire with her - both parents, her two younger sisters - their heads all slumped to one side on their shoulders as if asleep. Kianaanye, her youngest sister, lay on her side in the snow, head resting on an outstretched arm. Her arms wrapped around hugging her knees against her chest, Lana rocked back and forth, staring blankly into the firepit as snowflakes sizzled in the embers, and gradually wove blankets on top of her still family. It is my fault. I should have been here.

Their skin had paled from a healthy greenish copper, to an almost colourless grey hue. Even Lana's, so cold was the winter air, though her chest still rose and fell with the breath of life. Up here in the North so deep in the dead of winter, even at midday the sun barely even reached above the horizon - the desolate scene of the wood elves' village would have been drained of all colour as if it were twilight, if it were not for the light of the burning huts and buildings all around Lana and her still family. Gone. Ruins. Nothing, now... nothing to live for.

Lana cast an eye to the knife tucked in a sheath at her hip. Numbed by the cold, her hand fumbled at the catch, before drawing it, and holding it up in front of her eyes. It was still crimson-brown with the dried blood of the bear that had attacked her while she was gathering berries for her family's evening meal. She held it with both hands, blade towards her stomach, and closed her eyes - only to find she could not. In the corner of her eyelids, her tears had frozen solid. She dropped the knife, and tried to pick them out. One fell in the palm of her hand - so cold was it, that it just stayed there, not melting. It was perfectly formed, an oval pointed at one end.A perfect teardrop.

If ever in the future, Lana had been forced to explain why she did not go through with it, she would not have been able to give an answer. She looked at the knife, and stood shakily, looking down at it - and kicking it into the fire. She walked to the burnt husk of her family's hut, and picked up the longbow resting against its one remaining wall. Something snapped, under her left boot. She raised her foot. It was an arrow, broken in half.Exactly in half. Perfect.

She looked around her, at her family again, sitting around the ruins of her home. All had black-feathered arrows sprouting from their torsos, in a rather surreal way making them look not like those she remembered so dearly, but like some sort of demented forest creature, an overgrown porcupine. The ground was pure white now, new snow had fallen over the frozen laticework of blood around the campfire. Lana bent, to pick up the broken arrow with the hand that still held the frozen teardrop. She brought it in front of her, opening her palm. She shiverred. Not because of the cold. It cannot be... no. It is. It cannot be anything but...

Her other hand reached to her neck, and tore the little silver crescent moon holy symbol from her neck, snapping the silver chain. A flick of the wrist sent it falling into the embers, lost in the glowing coals. Lana's expression changed from one of sadness, to something more grim, something cold, something hard. Corellon be damned. We loved you... we praised you... we obeyed you... we were soft, weak...

She looked to the broken arrow, the frozen teardrop, and slung her bow over her shoulder. Her face an emotionless mask, she stepped around the fire, stopping in turn at each of her dead family. One hand held them by the shoulder, the other tore the arrows out, sliding them into an empty quiver still slick with her kin's blood. It was surreal, an unsentimental, gory act.

When she left the village, it was still burning. Blood flowed anew from the wounds opened in her family's bodies by the arrows wrenched from them. She had her boots, her leather tunic, her sword, her bow, and a quiver full of bloody arrows to return to their owners.

[Nysh]

------------------- The Grim Task -------------------

The teardrop had long since melted. It had taken a full evening and night's travel, without sleep, without food. Yet she was not tired, or hungry - something black burned within her, something kept her going, fueling desperate fires. She moved faster over the snow than many would think possible, running, never stopping, too afraid to let the trail of blooddrops be covered by the snow. She had passed three bodies by now, wounded raiders that had fallen behind their fleeing comrades and had been left to die.
They reminded Lana of her family somehow - perhaps in the way they slumped lifelessly against the trees as if asleep. Except their skin was darker - it seemed pitch black, so contrasted it was with the pure white snow. Drow.

She had known before she found the first body lying a little way off the trail, curled into a ball. She had known when she had seen the black-fletched arrows that had turned her kin into pincushions. She had known before that, somehow, the first moment she had seen smoke - too much smoke for campfires - billowing upwards in the direction of her village as she returned from gathering food.

She ran on, and on, and on. Hot on the trail, and catching up. She knew, for the blooddrops of the drow wounded in the raid grew brighter, more red, every hour she travelled, as the snow had had less time to dilute it. It was nearing dusk when she heard the first sounds - not the laughs of her wicked blood-sated kin, as she had somehow expected, but a more pathetic sound. A whimpering, from a bush.

She stopped, for the first time in nearly sixteen hours. Her legs felt strange, like they wanted to keep running, so used to the movement had they grown over the chase. Dead still she stood, listening. Silently, she stepped over the snow, boots not even crunching in the snow, so light was her step. There he lay, lying pathetically on his back, a gory stomach wound leaking lifeblood on the snow, a foot at an impossible angle to the leg. Broken, in a fall. He looked up at her with glazed-over, desperate red eyes. She unslung her bow from her shoulder, and pulled a black-fletched arrow from her quiver, still encrusted with her family's blood. The bow was drawn, and pointed at the helpless drow's throat. It spoke, a strange accent to her ears, but in her own dialect.

"Nghhhhhhh.... I..... no threat to you..."

Her words were simple, spoken in an emotionless tone. "Tell me where your party are headed. Tell me how many there are. Do not lie, for if you do, I will come back to kill you."

The drow's eyes widened, as if he could not believe her. "You.... you'll let.... me.... urgh. Live? If... if I tell you?" He narrowed his eyes, not believing.

She gave a curt nod, and relaxed her arms, letting the bow bend naturally back into its normal shape, lowering it. "You are no threat to me, and too wounded to make the trip back into the Dark. If you swear not to harm my kind again." Her voice was flat, expressionless.

It coughed, and stammered. "Sw.... sw.... swear. By... by yo... your surface gods. By Corellon. That you'll spare me." Life in peril as it was, this drow seemed to have forgotten all concepts of blasphemy to Lloth, turning desperately to its mortal enemy's Gods as a source of trust. It was not a deal any drow would normally make, but this one seemed so dazed by blood loss, so desperate, it ignored reasoning, logic, scrabbling at this chance offered by Lana, this chance to stay alive.

Without pause, Lana nodded. "I swear by Him."

"They.... they.... they left me... here... to die.... my ilhar... I.... kill them. I care not.... they.... nghhhh. I.... I'll never return down there, I... I promise. To the caves between the Lost Peaks to the w..... west."

Despite the duplicity expected of them, despite the lies of their kind, this one told the truth. Lana, somehow, knew it. She nodded.

Lightning-fast, she knocked the arrow again, drew the bow, and a "twang" echoed through the snowblanketed trees. The drow's eyes flicked downwards in disbelief at the wooden growth from his neck. He gurgled.

"Ynngguhhhh.... you...." A cough of black blood. "Prom....issed...."

Eyes cold, Lana turned, reslung her bow over her shoulder, and like some automaton, her legs sprung back into action as she ran, even faster than before. She left the trail, down towards a hidden gully. A shortcut. She knew these vast lands far better than any drow.