Lady Alvana Edrys

Alvana Edrys er matriark av Edrys-familien, og ein av dei mest suksesfulle forretningsfolka i Toirecíud. Ho er aleine ansvarleg for at Firen-Lic sine tradisjoner og moter har spreidd seg, takket være hennar innflytelse på adelsfolk og hennar gavmildheit til fellesskapet. Ho er ansett som inteligent, vakker og sosial.

Age: 779
Date of Birth: 23rd of Service 287 Pre-Imperial Age
Gender: Female
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black with streaks of grey
Skin Tone/Pigmentation: Tanned
Height: 5 ft. 3 inches
Weight: 109 lbs.

Appearance

Mentality

Personal history

Alvana Edrys was born to Eadleth Edrys, and from a very young age she was brought into the family business of killing Daemons. She was told that her ancestors had been sinful, and that it was their lot to fight against the wages of their sin. So she spent many hours in training, perfecting the art of the blade, bow and spending countless hours studying her enemies.

Before she was even forty she had already helped her uncle in hunting down daemons, monsters and cultists. As she entered her first century, she also entered the party scene of Toirecíud. She was charming, pretty and ruthless, and her fellow nobles could never have been ready for her. Her conquests in the sheets were many, and her hunts of cultists in the Thunder city were even more. During the day she talked to courtiers, charmed diplomats and amazed onlookers with her dancing, painting and singing. During the evening she went to great gallas, threw parties and made new friends every day. During the night she made love with whoever she had found worthy of her time. And after that, when her chosen partner for the night was asleep, she took her sword, her hand crossbow and she set to work with her bloody business.

After some time however, she found that this life was rather pointless. She had fucked everyone worth fucking in the city, but that wasn't really the problem. Whenever she fought she had finally dealt with a cult, or a monster or a daemon another one always took its place. She felt that her family's strategy of containment was pointless, and she told her mother as much. She was berated, and a schism grew between mother and daughter. In the end, Alvana decided to go to someone who could teach her how to hunt and kill better and more quickly. Researching in the Thundertower, she discovered that the Crimson Hand order had a chapter deep beneath the city. So she took her blades, some coin, her armour and began making her way into the underdark.

It was a long and arduous journey, often nearly resulting her death, but she finally came all the way down. There she met the Crimson Hands, and petitioned to join their ranks. She told them of her desire, told them that she wanted to learn the skills needed to finally cleanse Toirecíud and wipe the black stain of daemonic influence from her family banner. The Crimson Hands, seeing her fervour and skills, agreed to train her.

It was a strange, tough and eye-opening experience for Alvana. She realized that her uncle, whom she had thought to be the greatest daemon hunter in existence, was a mere amateur compared to these drow, and that she herself was a pretender. But she bit down her pride, and learned everything from the ground up. After a century of training, service and hunts she had become a commander of the Crimson Hands. She had become their pride, the greatest hunter of their watchfort in centuries, and she knew it. She was planning an offensive to deal with some gnolls, when news reached her. A sending spell, sent by a raven priest, told her that her mother had passed away and left everything to her. Alvana was shocked, and felt a pang of regret in her heart that her last words with her mother had been spoken in anger. Eadleth Edrys had died surprisingly young from occular cancer, which she had managed to keep hidden until her death.

She left her post among the Crimson Hands and hurried to the surface, finding the journey far easier on the way up. When she resurfaced just south of Toirecíud, the noble community was shocked and delighted. She told them that she had spent a century soul-searching, and received many awed glances at her percieved depth and wisdom. She took command of an Edrys ship and travelled to Firen-lic, where the people were surprised and happy to see her. Most people at least. She found a letter from her mother amongst the possesions left to her, telling her of how things had gone and what her mother hoped from her. First and foremost she hoped that she would not simply vanquish daemons, but also rule and protect their people. Protection of innocence was just as important, she wrote, as destruction of wickedness.

Alvana took those words and kept them near to her heart. She had neglected her other duties in her pursuit of hate, and now wished to do some good for her people. She took the crown as countess of Firen-lic, and set to putting the island on the map, while giving her people riches, fame and status. But she never forget her old tricks, and always practiced her old trade in the shadows and hunted daemons and daemon-worshipers.

Her return from the depths, seemingly coming back from the dead, had given her a lot of fame in Toirecíud, fame she wasted no time in using to her benefit. She travelled to all the parties in Toirecíud, drawing on her old contacts to arrange great concerts, art exhibitions and performances. Soon the fireni culture, sponsored as it was by the mysterious, beautiful and intimidating Alvana Edrys, became chique and fashionable to all the elven nobles. They spent great fortunes to get fireni dancers to perform in their courts and teach them how to dance, while building new museums to house fireni art and ampitheaters to have fireni concerts.

Fireni art, in all its myriad forms, spread through Toirecíud like wildfire, guided by Alvana's smile and waving hand. The nobles soon found that just experiencing fireni art wasn't enough, and they would much rather be part of it! Thousands of exquisite masks were bought in short order, becoming the height of fashion for centuries in Toirecíud.

Alvana soon found herself in posession of more money and influence than any Edrys lord or lady before her, and she used her resources to improve her home island, beginning trade with the other nations of southern Dain. While she never could, and was banned from by law, fight against the monopoly of the Shalasis and Ashans, she could create an empire of cultural dominance.

It was in this time that she first met Saerun Sylvaranth. Sylvaranth was a young fireni actor and playwright who had a knack for organizing cultural activities, charming nobles and generally being an excellent second-in-command. Alvana was so impressed with Saerun that she took her under her wing, and together they continued building the empire. They grew to become great friends, Alvana entrusting many of her secrets with Saerun, while Saerun came to rely on Alvana's wisdom and focus.

After many years of this labor, Firen-lic had become the heart of Toirecíud's cultural life, and Saerun and Alvana were invited to all parties and balls. While this had happened, the cults had slowly grown more and more quiet, with Alvana concluding that they had finally lost traction in the fireni spirit. She was planning an early retirement, and perhaps finding someone fitting to have children with. And then Philomela arrived in Toirecíud.

Philomela was the prodigal daughter of a mighty noble house of the elven homeland, whose capital city had been ravaged by the daemonic Young King. She came with little more than the clothes on her back, her golden lute and some twenty thousand gold. She was, in a word, stunning. The whole city completely lost it for her, as she was the first contact they had had with the homeland in millennia. She was invited to many parties and began moving in the highest echelons of Toirecíudan society, stealing some of Alvana and Saerun's thunder. Alvana too was enraptured by this woman, and the two of them danced on many occasions, laughing together and smiling as they made conversation.

The elven high noble found that there was something exciting and intruiging about this masked woman from the south, with her tales of wars against daemons and lewd suggestions, and the daemon hunter turned countess finally found someone with enough wit, fearlessness and willpower to match hers in this runaway socialite. Together, after a few weeks spent in private in the Thorn Court, they were partners. And they had the city around their little fingers.

Toirecíud was theirs. They earned the nickname "The Gold and Dark Queens", as they just about came to rule the city by popular acclaim. With money from their endeavours, Philomela built a fantastical elven party manor on an island off the coast of Toirecíud, and dedicated it to her love, Alvana. Alvana was incredibly happy, and would gladly spend the rest of her life with Philomela.

One night they had invited many of the young nobles of Toriecíud to the party of the milennia, with all the fireni entertainers one could desire and food, narcotics and alcohol enough to last many lifetimes. It would be extravagant, the single most expensive party in Toirecíudan history. Philomela and Alvana were drinking wine and enjoying themselves, waiting for the party in earnest, when Alvana recieved a secret missive from Saerun. Something had happened, something that required Alvana's urgent attention. She excused herself and travelled quickly to Firen-lic, hoping to be able to get back to the party.

There Saerun met her in the caverns beneath the Thorn Court. Alvana had grown uneasy, as this was not like Saerun, but she trusted her and was willing to see what had happened. When she came to the caverns, Saerun stood in the traditional garb of Graz'zt worshippers, with a daemon-mask on her face. Her stomach turned to ice as Alvana began to understand what was happening. Saerun explained that she had been working for the Eternal Thirst all this time, having labored in the shadows to hide the cult's tendrils from Alvana as it spread its wicked claws into Toirecíud, converting ignorant high elves to their cause. And now that Alvana had been distracted with Philomela, leaving the running of the business to Saerun, the cult had reached its greatest number ever. And tonight it would reveal itself to the world, and the harbinger of its coming would be Philomela's island.

Alvana understood then that something was horribly wrong and quickly began to leave. Saerun laughed out, saying that the ritual was already complete and that Alvana would never see Philomela again. She would claim Philomela for herself as reward for her contributions when the rituals were over. Alvana ran out, consumed with worry for Philomela, and set course for Philomela's island. But she would never arrive. Whenever she came close her boat would suddenly turn around in freak weather, which nearly capsized the boat. But she was close enough to hear the screams coming from the island, and see the familiar sight of abyssal energy encapsulating the island. She threw herself on the ground and wept, looking at the island with the ove of he rlife. Then something inside her woke to life again, renewed and remade. Lightinng flashed across the sky as she turned her gaze to Toirecíud. She wouldkill them all, uproot their taint and bury their pathetic remains six feet in the ground.

She grabbed her weapons, put on her armour for the first time in a long while, and threw herself into the work she had neglected for far too long.

The first to suffer were the new cultists in Toirecíud, whose profane rituals were interrupted with terrible and swift retribution, while their fanes and temples to cthonic overlords were burned to the ground. Later Toirecíudan records would name it as a freak arsonist accidents. And when she had interrupted the Toirecíudan rituals, killing dozens, she turned her gaze towards Firen-lic. She travelled to the place she had met Saerun and resonated that she must be in the main ritual. And indeed she was, where her and her superiors, old things of bitter spite and envy, were trying to open a portel to the Abyss.

They succeeded, but only because Alvana let them. She hit them the moment after the ritual was over and punished them firtheir transgressions, killing the angels of the cult before their very eyes, before turning her violence on them. When the night was over, the leadership of the cult were all dead. But Saerun had escaped. Alvana would eventually come to regret not being more efficeient in her slaughter.

Then Alvana travelled, broken and grieving, to the Thorn Court. She would never again let something like this happen, and she soon made the cult her top priority.

But in truth Alvana did no such thing. She looked into that portal, into the abyss she had come to know so well through her life, and she walked nito it. She would bring the whole fucking empire burning to the ground, and kill the cult's fucking god.