Elitheris' Backstory

Elitheris is a character in a TTRPG I am running, belonging to my wife, Erin. Based upon her character, and what she told me about her character, I wrote the following backstory.

Latespring 34, 802 AFE, Tondene Empire, Duchy of Knightsmill

Elitheris had always been attracted to the wilderness. She enjoyed spending hours or even days in the subtropical forests around her home town. She preferred it to the town, actually. The solitude of the deep forests gave her the time for self introspection and the exploration of her latent magical abilities. Her home town of Celumarauca didn’t have any mages, so there was no one to properly teach her, only herself, struggling through learning how to manipulate the mana flows via intuition and risky experimentation. Her parents didn’t approve, citing the dangers, in no uncertain terms, that could be lethal. But she didn’t let that stop her. She would just have to be as careful as she could, and hope that she learned the magical incantations before they blew up in her face. She had the time to learn; she was a good hunter, and brought food and pelts back to the town on a regular basis, and so she spent a lot of time working on her magic.

It had started out as a beautiful, sunny day. Lúmë Morivaiyië, The Hour of Enfolding Dark, had just begun and the sun was kissing the treetops at the horizon. Elitheris strode into town with a dead buck on her shoulders. She had taken it at a range of twenty yards, a clean shot through the scapula and into the lung, just nicking the aorta and causing the buck to die a very quick death.

The town was a typical forest Elf town, made up of a series of finely crafted wooden platforms and flets, with buildings upon them. Many of the buildings had been grown into shape over decades, but the platforms were mostly constructed using more conventional carpentry methods. Lumber was harvested from nearby trees grown in the taurënna ima (“forest upon the hand”) style, where several trunks grow up from a main trunk, much like a coppice. This formed very straight lumber, and allowed the nature-loving Elves to get lumber without cutting down trees.

Surrounding the town were several rows of protective plants, mostly spikevine, but also clusters of whipweed and patches of drygrass. All three types of plants had been developed by the Elves in the distant past as an ecologically-based defense system. Spikevine, a kudzu-like vining plant, was covered in thorns and grew so thickly that it sort of wove together with the plants around it, forming tough “fences”. Moving through them, even in armor, was slow and difficult. Interspersed in and between the spikevines, grew whipweeds. These plants looked like clusters of green vines emerging from a crown of leaves, and used its shallow roots as a kind of sensor net. When something got close enough, some vines would entwine the victim, while the others would lash out and strike the victim until it stopped moving, at which point the tiny thorns lacerate the prey for easy digestion. Intermixed will those were areas of drygrass. Looking very much like light green grass with brown tips, drygrass causes those wandering through it to suffer severe dehydration and tissue damage. Trying to attack an Elven town was more difficult and dangerous than it may have originally seemed.

Elitheris weaved through the forest at the outskirts of the town, following the twisting paths between the dangerous plant defenders that only the local Elves knew well. The platforms and flets were at all levels in the forest canopy, connected by ropes, rope bridges, and the branches of the trees themselves. The primary platform had the central meeting hall and the structure that served as the inn.

It had rained earlier in the day; the trees and platforms were dripping and the ground was wet. The skies were clearing and both moons were visible: the larger Cendinalta was rising, on the horizon, a large mottled orange ball in the light of the setting sun. Calanorië, a bright, tiny disc, was overhead. Normally, Elitheris would just run up one of the inclined ropes that stretched from the living platforms to the ground, but she had a large, unwieldy cargo and the ropes—made of twisted tree silk and hemp fibers—were wet with the rain. So she trudged to the curving stairway, built by the master carpenter Lanilossë, and put in as a courtesy for guests of the township, and made her way up to the primary platform.

She entered the meeting hall, and saw Glórindol, who, among his other duties, acted as sort of a supply master, sitting at one of the tables that ringed the room. He stood as she strode over to him. “Almarë, Glórindol! I have returned with food, and it also has a nice set of antlers. Perhaps Sairamaitar can make use of them for her artworks.”

Glórindol looked at the deer as Elitheris slid it off of her shoulders and onto the table in front of him. “He was a healthy buck, Elitheris, and those antlers are indeed impressive.”

“I’d like a haunch to hang for later,” Elitheris said, “but the rest is for the stores.”

“Fair enough,” he replied. “But let’s move it somewhere where it won’t bleed on the tables.” He grinned at her embarrassed blush as she hurriedly lifted the deer back onto her shoulders. He walked towards the door, beckoned for her to follow, and made his way to the storehouse behind the inn. One of the rooms was a game preparation room, complete with a table that acted as a giant butcher block, with channels for the blood to keep things tidy.

Elitheris dumped the buck onto the preparation table. On one wall was a selection of butchering tools: cleavers, knives of various types, and even an axe. Elitheris and Glórindol systematically butchered the deer into various pieces and cuts of venison. During the process, the two of them chatted about little things, like the waterfall that fell amongst mossy rocks that Elitheris spent time listening to, and the trouble that Ondohonda had getting his students to practice their Carmënenar exercises. They placed the meat off to one side, the bones to another, and the various internal organs in yet a third pile. Many of those would become food, but several were also needed by the alchemists. The pelt, antlers, and skull were carefully placed on a workbench. The pelt would be tanned, and the skull and antlers would go to Sairamaitar the artist, to do with what she pleased. Elitheris’ haunch would go home with her, wrapped in waxed paper. The rest they put into beautifully carved, elegant wooden boxes, and Glórindol marked what was in each box in his flowing Tengwar script. The words, written in glowing violet ink by a stylus enchanted with the Inscribe spell, flashed in the lamplight in the room.

They washed up, then took the collection of boxes into the preserving room. It was one of the storerooms, enchanted with spells that preserved food. A tub sat in the corner, filled to the brim with ice; it too was enchanted, and kept the room cold. Sometimes, on very hot days, in ones and twos, the few children in the town would come and play in here for a while. It wasn’t allowed, but Glórindol would often turn a blind eye to the transgression. So far, the children hadn’t gotten into anything they shouldn’t, so no harm done.

Elitheris was barely out of childhood herself; technically she was still a young woman, and not old enough to have reached her majority. But Elves were a very long lived race, and they aged and matured slowly. Despite her relatively young age of two hundred and ninety summers, she had already begun to shoulder adult responsibilities, mainly training to be a member of the militia, in case the town was ever attacked. It hadn’t happened in centuries, but Elves have long memories, and old habits and traditions change but seldom. And it was always possible that the ambitious non-Elf nobles that ruled the area might decide that their neighbors’ lands were worth fighting for, and go to war, leaving Celumarauca in the middle of a conflict. Even if all that never happened, the training helped her to become a better hunter, which was useful on an almost daily basis.

It was fully dark; the dressing of the game had taken a while. It was dark enough to see the soft pale orangish glow of the night blossoms that grew as parasites on the branches that were woven into the homes the Elves lived in. They had a scent that hinted at jasmine and orange, without being either. They also provided enough light to navigate the platforms and bridges at night.

The town was alive with sound: people talking, moving, singing, laughing. On a neighboring platform a group was dancing to the music of a pair of musicians and a singer.

“Come on, Almáriel! They’ve started already!” Elitheris could hear the young voice urging someone on. When she looked down to where the voice came from, she could see two young Elves, just cute little girls, in flowing dresses that were exactly the same save that one was a pale rose, the other a pale yellow. It was Almáriel and Ancalimë, the twins. Children were born only rarely to a people that lived for millennia, and a twin birth even more so. These two were the youngest in town, a mere twenty years old each, which corresponded to about eight in Human years.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Ancalimë replied. “My ribbon got caught on a bush, and I didn’t want to rip it.”

“But they are already dancing!” Almáriel complained. “We’ve missed the first dance!”

The two girls walked up the rope that led to the neighboring platform where the dancers were, their pace steady and their arms outstretched for balance. They were young enough to not have the full mastery of balance yet, but they were learning. Their dresses flowed about their ankles as they made their way up the slanting rope and up to the platform. Elitheris could hear them giggling as they made their way into the mass of dancers. She didn’t know why the girls were so interested in this dance; Elves sang and danced all the time, just about every night, actually. But Elves loved singing and dancing, and never more than when young.

She watched them for a while, smiling as they capered about with the adults, spinning and laughing as the music played. Being the youngest in the village, they were spoiled horribly by just about every adult, and Elitheris was no exception. The twins had a boundless energy, and seemed to get into everything, but were well-behaved, a testament to their upbringing.

Elitheris made her way to her home, where she lived with her parents. It was a pair of smaller platforms, on separate levels, forming a kind of “stacked” house. There was a kitchen, pantry, and common area on the lower floor, and the pair of sleeping quarters and a bathing room on the upper floor. The two floors were connected by a curvilinear sweeping staircase that led from the common room to the upper landing.

Her mother, Laurefindele, looked up from the bowl of vegetables she was chopping, her golden hair plaited into a single braid that fell to mid back. “Ah, you are home, onya. And with what looks like…” she cocked her head as she thought, trying to guess what was in the package over her daughter’s shoulder, “…boar, or venison.”

Elitheris smiled, remembering the brilliant shot that had killed it so swiftly, “Venison. I got a good-sized buck. Took me a while to get it back to town. It was heavier than it looked.” She was humble enough to not brag about her archery prowess.

“Put it in the preservation box in the pantry, melda.”

“Yes, Emya.” Elitheris did what her mother asked, then came back and asked, “Where is Atya?”

“Your father wasn’t feeling well, and went upstairs to lie down for a while. It’s nothing serious, so don’t look so worried.” Laurefindele gave her daughter a smile, and continued chopping vegetables.

Elitheris woke early, towards the end of Lúmë Métimaliltië, the Hour of Final Dancing. The sun wasn’t up yet, and she could hear rain pattering through the leaves of the forest canopy. It was like music, a series of small percussive patterns, and she closed her eyes and enjoyed the beauty of it for a while. Then she rose, and began her last normal day. She dressed, and went out onto the platform, leaning on the railing and looking out into the area the acted as the town center.

It had rained again in the night, not much, just a drizzle, but enough to make everything damp as the water filtered through the forest canopy. Anardilya, an older woman, was up early as well, and was preparing to light the fire in the town’s public cooking pit: a large, brick oval some eight feet long and three wide. On a stand nearby was a spitted boar; it appeared that the boar would be cooked today, likely slow roasted, and probably as part of some family celebration. Anardilya was one of Elitheris’ neighbors, and she, her husband Lantalassë, and her mother Sanyantë lived on the platform next to theirs.

As she watched, Lantalassë came out and began helping his wife place pieces of wood into the fire pit. When a nice pile was in place, he pulled out some flint and steel and started to strike sparks into the kindling. It didn’t seem to do much; the kindling was damp from the rain.

Elitheris could hear soft swearing from the couple. Obviously, frustration was beginning to mount. She had an idea. “Ariarin, neighbors!” she called down to the couple. “I can light the fire for you!”

They both looked up. “Good morning yourself, Elitheris!” Anardilya replied. “And what idea would this be? I unfortunately didn’t think it would rain last night, and should have covered the fire pit.”

“I have been practicing my spell casting, and I am pretty sure I can make a fire for you. I have created fire in a downpour before, so I think that damp tinder shouldn’t be much of an obstacle.” She hopped onto the railing, took a few steps to the nearest tightrope leading down, and skated down the rope, hopping off at the last moment.

She walked over to the fire pit. “Stand back,” she said. “I am going to create fire in the fire pit, and just in case it gets out of hand, I don’t want anyone hurt.” It wasn’t likely, but Elitheris had always had foresight, and her imagination was good enough to see, in her mind’s eye, a myriad of things that could go wrong. And she certainly didn’t want anyone hurt if the spell went awry.

She flicked her hands, making sure that they were limber. She cleared her throat in preparation of speaking words of power. Elitheris wasn’t a great mage, and the spells she knew were learned the hard way, by herself. She had some books, but most of her practice came from experimentation in the woods by herself, away from anyone who might distract her or get hurt. She could, theoretically, cast the spell in only two seconds. But she was going to take extra time to get it right.

She reached into a pouch at her waist, and took out a pinch of sulphur. She began the casting ritual, sprinkling the powder over the wood, moving her feet in the subtle movements necessary, making hand gestures that involved finger movements that gave the impression of flames, and spoke the incantation loudly and distinctly. She could feel the mana flowing through her body, almost from every cell, up through her torso and down through her arms, and out her fingertips. It felt just as it always had when she had been practicing the Create Fire spell.

On the other side of the planet, the tiny moon Calanorië exploded. A wave of mana energy rushed outward as the moon disintegrated. That wave caused destruction all over the planet, including in the Elven town of Celumarauca, where a novice mage was in the middle of casting a spell that created fire.

The mana spike mixed with the comparatively minute amount of mana that Elitheris fed into the spell. What should have been a globe of fire about two feet in diameter turned into a wall of roiling white-hot fire that spread in the direction of the wave’s propagation with a loud roaring whhoooosh!

Despite moving back from the fire pit, Anardilya and Lantalassë were engulfed in flame, turning into humanoid torches that screamed in pain and terror for a moment before collapsing into shapeless piles of burning charcoal. The flames also ignited their platform and house, along with a half dozen other platforms. Ropes and rope bridges caught fire and flashed into ashes in seconds. Many of the trees that supported the buildings the Elves lived in were ignited, and flames rushed up the branches and burned the leaves. The wall of flames, spreading and by now merely yellow with heat, rushed off into the forest beyond the village, igniting more trees and brush along its widening path.

Screams. Pain, terror, panic, death…Elitheris’ mind couldn’t contain it, couldn’t deal with it. It had all gone wrong! But how? She was sure she did it right! She had done everything she could to do it right! This can’t be happening! she thought, horrified. Oh Galatha, what have I done?

She looked around, wide eyed, stricken, seeing the flaming carnage. The fire was spreading, faster than any fire should have, almost as if the trees themselves had been coated in oil or pitch. Platform after platform went up in flames. The noise was deafening, the fire roaring, and there were screams and yells everywhere. She thought she could see townspeople, covered in flame, leaping or falling off of the platforms, trailing smoke. The heat was unbearable, and Elitheris was forced back, against a wind that had come up from nowhere on what had been a calm, predawn morning.

People from the unburned section of town rushed to and fro, trying to get a bucket brigade together or to try to put out the flames that covered people’s bodies. The trees shed flaming leaves in a mockery of autumn.

Elitheris’ eyes watered, from grief and smoke, and flames were falling upon her, borne on the wind. She thought about her parents. The flames were moving away from her home, but she knew that her parents would know this was her fault...all because she wanted to know some spells. She couldn’t face them; see their disappointment, anger, and sense of betrayal. She had to do something!

She turned, and ran up the tightrope up to her platform. “Emya! Atya!” she called, tears streaming down her face. “It’s burning! Everything is burning!”

Her father looked out the window, assessed the situation, and, in a choked voice, commanded, “Elli, Make sure everyone gets out of the buildings! Your mother and I will help with the water brigades!”

Elitheris nodded, turned, and exited the building. “And be careful!” she heard her mother demand as she left. She ran across the rope that connected her platform with the neighbors’; half of platform was burning, more from the heat of the initial flash than from being in the area of effect. She ran the few steps from the platform’s edge to the door of the house, bursting through it without knocking. Now isn’t the time for pleasantries, she thought. Taurelen and Ercassë, Elves older than the Empire, were in the main room. Ercassë, his health in decline due to extreme age, was struggling to get up off of a padded chair. Taurelen, his wife, was trying to help him get to his feet. She was several hundred years younger than he, so she was still on the spry side. Nevertheless, she was still having trouble getting him out of the chair and on to his feet.

Elitheris got to Ercassë’s other side, supported him, and helped Taurelen get him to his feet. They all moved as a group to the door. Through the windows, the flames were visible, engulfing the crowns of the trees on three sides of the house. Heat poured through the windows in an oppressive way, almost seeming like a solid wall of heated air.

Once onto the platform, and putting the bulk of the house between them and the fire, the two women quickly got Ercassë into the sling-chair his age made necessary. His sense of balance had gone decades ago, and was no longer able to simply run up and down the tightropes that connected the platforms and the ground like younger elves did. They quickly reeled him down to the ground, then slid down ropes that had once been connected to other platforms, but had since burned loose. Once down, they again helped Ercassë get clear of the flaming town. It didn’t take too long; once he got going, Ercassë’s legs worked fine on level ground.

Elitheris turned from the couple and back towards the flaming portion of the town. She could see crowds of people fleeing the conflagration, although she couldn’t hear them over the roaring and crackling of the flames. The town was a wall of fire, and platforms were already starting to fall apart in fiery cascades of flaming lumber and smoking branches.

If anyone was still in that mass of flame, there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. She imagined she could hear screaming, but where it was coming from, or even if it actually existed, she couldn’t tell. Needing to do something, anything, she ran towards a group of Elves making their way from the flames. They were safe enough, but she needed to feel useful, so she shouldered some of their gear and briskly walked with them as they made their way to areas that apparently had become refugee zones.

Out of the corner of her eyes, through the smoke, she could see people trying to put the flames out using buckets of water, passed from Elf to Elf from the nearby stream. It didn’t look like it was doing much. The fire was too hot, too large…and inherently magical, as Elitheris noted, slipping into the Mage Sight that all mages seemed to have. She watched it, transfixed; she could see the mana flows pulling into the mass of flames, feeding them, amplifying them to levels that no wildfire could ever get to naturally.

Her stomach dropped, and she felt sick. Tears tried to flow, but the heat evaporated them before they could fall from her eyes. Emya and Atya were right, she thought, finally accepting their concerns. Experimenting with magic is dangerous. But I had always just assumed that the dangers were to me, not to my entire town! She could—had—accepted the danger to herself. It had all been part of the process of learning magic without a teacher. But the worst that had ever happened to her because of it had been a splitting headache and burned fingertips. Well, and also a rather nasty scar on a rabbit from a healing spell gone a little wrong. But the bleeding had stopped, and the rabbit had run off, and didn’t seem too worse for wear. But this? This was unimaginable.

She slumped down, her back sliding down a rough barked tree trunk in the refugee area until she sat, awkwardly, upon a mass of roots. Perhaps, if they had had another mage in town, the fire could have been put out with a water spell, or rain. But then, if there had been one in town, she wouldn’t have messed up the Ontanár, or Create Fire, spell so badly, and destroyed her home. And hurt or killed the people in it.

The refugees, a majority of the town dwellers, began moving out, all of the survivors of the fire were, apparently, accounted for. They had to get farther from the forest fire, for that is what it had become. The wind, at the moment, was favorable, and was blowing the flames away from them. But that would likely change at any moment, and moving at least a few miles away was in everyone’s best interests.

She gathered her things, and followed the crowd of disheartened people, feeling hollow.

For several days, the smoke from the fire obscured the sky, both day and night. It was almost a full eightday before the smoke dispersed enough for the people to see that the moon Calanorië was no longer a sharp disk, but a fuzzy blob. Even with her Elven sight, she couldn’t see the edges of the shape, it just blended into the black of the night sky. There were a lot of falling stars though. Quite a lot. And it wasn’t one of the Huiva i Elenlanta, Nights of the Falling Stars, which normally happened four times a year. The fiery display was like a memorial of what had happened; Gelanas Orthawodas, the god of the air and stars, was reminding her of what she had done. He was so angry that he was casting down the stars that made up his realm by the double handful.

She prayed, desperately trying to tell him that she hadn’t meant to do it, that it was an accident, how sorry she was, and that she would never do it again. But as was usual with the gods, she didn’t hear any reply he may have given. She prayed to Galatha, the goddess of life and death, love and creation, but she too stayed silent. The gods did not give Elitheris’ pain and despair any solace.

The refugee camp was on the banks of a small lake, more of a swelling of the river that flowed in and then out of it. But the water’s presence gave the homeless people psychological comfort. Lean-tos and tents had been set up, in order to give shelter, and teams of people, skilled in cooking, prepared meals for what used to be the town’s population. A tent had been set up to treat the wounded, although in several cases the burns resulted in death. There were still a few people recovering, however.

Elitheris knew a few healing spells, but not well, and she didn’t trust herself to cast them. Nor, she suspected, would the people want her casting anything upon them. The death toll—deaths due to her actions— had been awful. Thirty three had died in the flames, and twenty-seven others had made it to the refugee camp with burns of varying severity. Of those, eight had died of their wounds, so far. She had known all of them, to varying degrees; her neighbors Anardilya, Lantalassë, and Sanyantë, the young twins Almáriel and Ancalimë, the artist Sairamaitar, and the others. All lost. And all her fault.

The town knew about what started the conflagration. It was written on her face, and her parents knew, even though they said nothing. Elitheris had been questioned by the town elders, including Glórindol, and, not wanting and not being able to lie to them, she tearfully told them everything.

A few days later, they came to a decision. Not being old enough to be of majority, she heard about the decision from her mother and father. Astaldrómar, his strong shoulders hunched in sadness, looked at his daughter with haunted eyes. “Onya,” he said, “The Council has decided on what to do with you.” He paused, swallowing, trying a few times to say the next set of words and failing each time. Tears shown in Laurefindele’s eyes.

“The sentence is exile,” he continued. He paused again, gathering his thoughts. “But they also realize that there is nowhere to exile you from. Celumarauca is gone, and they can’t exile you from the forest.”

“So they are letting you stay!” Laurefindele said, wiping away the tears on her cheeks. She was happy that her daughter didn’t have to leave, but she knew what the sentence should have been.

Elitheris wasn’t sure how she felt. She could see the logic of the final decision. Technically exile, but commutated to what, exactly? Perpetual torture and eternal shame? She couldn’t stay and live with these people any more. There is no way she would be able to function as a person while everyone gave her sidelong looks and whispered behind her back. No one would trust her, or like her, or even accept her. The damage had been done, and although Elves lived for a very long time, regaining anything like a semblance of respect and trust would take an eternity.

She assumed that the survivors would build a new town, growing the houses on the flets and platforms, weaving their branches into walls and partitions. It would take years, even with Elven techniques. But she couldn’t be a part of it. She just couldn’t. So she chose self-exile instead.

It hurt to leave, even if she wasn’t being forced to. Her parents, while disappointed in her, still loved her, and wanted her to stay. They at least realized it had been an accident, as if her intent actually mattered. But she gathered her things, staged them in a pile just inside the tent she and her parents were using, and slept for one more night under her parents’ roof.

By Lúmë Altapalyië, she was gone, into the wilderness.

Elitheris spent the next several decades being a wandering hermit, living off of the land, living in caves, lean-tos, or abandoned structures. She tried to come to grips with what had happened. But the guilt never left her, both of the incident itself, and the thought that she should have tried to put out the flames, and she frequently experienced bad days, filled with tears and depression. Once she had a long run of bad days, and in a fit of anguish and suicidal depression tried to replicate the accident, but to no avail. The spells did only what the books she had read said they would do, nothing more. No explosions, no rapacious fire that burned with the heat of a blast furnace. Just regular flame. Desultorily, she stamped out the minuscule flames her efforts had created. She made herself a promise: she would do whatever she could if someone needed her help. She failed herself, her family, and her neighbors once. She couldn’t let it happen again.

Mostly, she kept to herself, living alone in the forest, staying in one place for a day, a week, or a season, and then moving on to somewhere else. It was like she was trying to outrun her memories, but it didn’t work. Those memories traveled as fast as she did. Sometimes the solitude became oppressive, and she would go into towns, mainly to sell pelts or meat that she had hunted, just to get some spending money to buy new arrowheads or to repair equipment. While she wasn’t very social, she did enjoy, vicariously, the lives of people around her. Perhaps she was trying to get a hint of the hustle and bustle of her home town.

During this time, what had been a moon, then a fuzzy cloud, soon disappeared completely. Cendinalta was now the only moon in Velyri’s skies. No trace of Calanorië remained.

Eventually, Elitheris heard rumors about events that happened when the moon crumbled, strange lights in the sky, a demon gate opening, a man growing to fifty feet tall in a spontaneous growth spurt. She also did manage to hear a few things about Celumarauca and the Túrancalië, the Great Burning. She learned that her town no longer existed, not even as a rebuilt village. The survivors had fled to surrounding towns, choosing to live with relatives, friends, or just starting over in a new place. Perhaps the task of rebuilding was too difficult, too painful, or both. Part of her was disappointed. She had hoped that the townsfolk would show enough cohesiveness to rebuild.

She went back, once, several years after the event. What had been a town, built in a forest, was now an open meadow, filled with grasses, flowers, and a scattering of saplings. The fire had opened a great hole, miles across, in the forest canopy before it burned out, letting in light and giving the understory plants a chance to grow and thrive. A few dilapidated platforms still existed along one edge of the opening, but their condition was poor. Weather and neglect made them unsuitable for habitation, and dangerous to walk on. Soon, the forest would grow to fill that opening, and the saplings would become tall trees. “Namárië, Celumarauca,” she said, wistfully. Her home town existed only in memory now.

Notes:

During her time roaming around the countryside, she stayed with a wood crafter for several months, honing her bowyer/fletching skills, and getting access to some quality tools. It was during this time that she made her bow, taking quite a bit of time to do so. The final result (after a couple of not-as-good bows) was an exquisite bow that is both Fine and Balanced, giving bonuses to accuracy and range.

Elitheris also tends to make her own arrows, buying arrowheads whenever she comes upon a town a handful at a time. The rest of the arrow materials she scavenges from her travels, so her fletching is not typically uniform in color or type, since the birds she gets the feathers from are not always consistent.

Glossary

Almarë “blessedness, blessings, good fortune, bliss”

Ariarin “good morning”

atya “father, daddy”

Calanorië (Kal-an-or-ee-eh) “Racing Light” (the moon Jypra)

Celumarauca (Kel-oo-mar-ow-ka) “Rushing Stream”

Cendinalta (Ken-din-al-ta) “Spotted Radiance” (the moon Kynett)

emya “mother, mummy”

Lúmë Altapalyië (Hour of Spreading Light, predawn to about midmorning) (loo-meh al-ta-pall-yee-eh)

Lúmë Cintavathar (Hour of Smaller Shadows, midmorning to midafternoon) (loo-meh kin-ta-va-thar)

Lúmë Anartainië (Hour of Stretching Sun, midafternoon to sunset) (loo-meh an-ar-tayn-ee-eh)

Lúmë Morivaiyië (Hour of Enfolding Dark, sunset to late evening) (loo-meh mor-i-vie-yee-eh)

Lúmë Tumnaquilda (Hour of Deepest Quiet, late evening to past midnight) (loo-meh tum-na-quil-da)

Lúmë Métimaliltië (Hour of Final Dancing, past midnight to the wee hours of the morning) (loo-meh meh-ti-mal-il-tee-eh)

melda dear, beloved, sweet

namárië (na-mar-ee-eh) “farewell”

onya “my child”

taurënna ima (tau-ren-na ee-ma)“forest upon the hand” (daisugi)

Túrancalië  (Too-ran-kal-ee-eh) “Great Burning”