Selephra

(a.k.a. The Bramble Queen)

"Selephra is a wicked and devious Archfey nearly forgotten. Appearing as a magnificent and leaf green-skinned elf, Selephra is ancient and is only remembered due to her love for torture and maim mortals. Her will is enforced in the Glade of Sullen Vines by her Brides of the Forest who appear as beautiful Huldra, humanoid fey with cow and foxtails, and a back made of bark."

Selephra was one of most favored offspring of Oberon, Lord of the Green Fey, and depending on which tale or scholar you believe either one of the first of the ancient dryads, or else one of the race that would become hags, before they were cursed with the hideousness for which they are now known. Selephra was a flighty creature, joyful and impetuous. She held great sway in the Green Court, in part due to her noble rank and many devoted for lowers, in part because of the love and indulgence of her father, though she rarely exercised that power. She preferred exploring the wilds to politicking in the Court of Stars, and dwelling in her bucolic cottage to her father's oaken abode. In other words, she was very much the stereotypical harmless fey, pampered without being spoiled, passionate but without malevolence.

Until she met Torrheval.
Some tales say he was mortal, others that he was fey, still others that he was a mix of both. Some claim they were lovers; others that he was a long-lost half-brother of Selephra's; and again, a few claim he was both, for the ways of the fey are not the ways of mortals.
Torrheval was not the first man to win Selephra's affections, but he certainly was the first she truly loved. Perhaps she was attracted to his rigid sense of honor, for where she was capricious, he was dedicated to duty and his people. Selephra surrounded herself with friends, servants, and petitioners devoted solely to her; but Torrheval, though taken with the fey princess and eager to spend much time in her company, would not schedule his life around her whims. In her love for Torrheval, Selephra found herself maturing as she had not in the many previous centuries. (It must be said that even the wild-hearted Oberon was delighted at this change in his daughter, and he nudged her toward taking a more active role amongst the Green Fey. She, perhaps in tribute to her lover, began to do just that.)
For months, or years, or decades in the Feywild, these are often all the same Selephra and Torrheval rode, and lived, and loved, and governed together. But fate is more fickle than any fey, and even in the Fey-wild, time stops for no one.
There came a time when warriors and soldiers from eladrin courts mobilized for war, to thwart the efforts of Fomorian-led witches in the mortal realm. As one of those eladrin warriors, Torrheval was prepared to lead an entire brigade of Green Fey into battle. Selephra would have gone with him, to fight at his side, but her father forbade her from traveling into such danger. She would have begged her love not to go, but she knew he'd think less of her for asking and she of him if he agreed.
So she stood at the very edge of her wooded home and watched as Torrheval rode into the distance, resplendent in his gleaming armor, mounted proudly atop his snow-white warhorse. For a time, she spent her hours frolicking in the forest or debating in the courts of the fey, but each day she returned to that spot at the edge of the woods and watched for his return.
A few soldiers, and then a few more, trickled back home, telling tales of great battles and vile curses and powerful magic, but Torrheval did not appear. Each day, Selephra spent longer and longer waiting for him to return. She ignored her duties, ignored her friends.
Finally, Selephra would not move from her vigil. She sat at the edge of the woods, her back to an ancient tree, and swore that she would wait there for Torrheval however long it took.
For year upon year, she kept that vow until the branches and roots and thorns of the forest grew through her flesh to wrap themselves around heart and bone. She heard the voices of the animals and the whispers of the leaves, and she came to understand them. Her father begged her to return to him, to return to her own life, but to no avail. She returned only once to court, to steal the Gaia sash.
It was one of Lord Oberon's chief advisors, an old satyr by the name of Enkaros, who finally persuaded Selephra to abandon her vigil. He told her tales he had heard of a mortal sorceress who had allied with the Fomorians and who was said to hold a general of the fey imprisoned within her castle. When Enkaros offered to take Selephra to the castle to learn whether it was indeed Torrheval who was imprisoned there, the princess of the Green Court rose. Roots and ivy tore from the earth and dangled from her flesh as she stood. Supported by unsteady feet and those selfsame vines, she followed the satyr into the mortal realm.
There, accompanied by dozens of fey and tapping into wells of power she had not touched in years, Selephra tore through the castle's defenders and wards. She obliterated whole towers, slaughtered regiments, and slew the sorceress with her own hands.
In an unlocked room in the highest tower, she found her beloved Torrheval. He had grown older over the years beyond the Feywild. When he saw the creature of vines and brambles and recognized her as Selephra, he recoiled.
The decades Selephra had waited weighed on her like an eternity. She had, in her mind, returned from the dead to rescue her love. And he flinched away as if she were a monster! As if he did not owe her eternal penitence for her suffering on his behalf.
Selephra's fury was boundless. This was not the man she loved. Her warrior would have fought the entire mortal race to return to her. This room was a bed-chamber, not a prison.
When Selephra withdrew, no wall of the castle stood upright and no tower rose above the rubble. She returned to the Feywild, leaving only split stone and broken corpses behind.
For a time, Selephra involved herself in the politics of the Green Fey, but she was guided by hatred and bitterness, not joy. She urged the court to move against mortals, to torment and destroy them without cause. Many lesser fey of the court grew spiteful and deceitful under her influence; indeed, it was then that dryads first developed their ability to take on illusory human guise. Many of Oberon's advisors begged the Green Lord to remove his daughter from the court, but he could not bring himself to do so. In the end, he did not need to. Selephra's rage could not be slaked by political manipulation alone. She and her followers abandoned the day-to-day governance of the woodland demesnes. The self-proclaimed Bramble Queen had better things, more awful things, to do with her time. Over time, the sash only amplified this anger.

The Bramble Queen Today

The Bramble Queen has become a creature of hatred and malice. Her most intensive loathing is reserved for mortals, and specifically males, but she despises all creatures to a greater or lesser extent. Her only joy comes in tormenting others. She particularly delights in stripping victims of their loved ones or causing them to become lost in the wild, where she fills their last days and hours with grief and fear before moving in for the kill. While she no longer possesses any ability to charm or dominate such powers were washed away in the flood of rage that made her what she is she enjoys watching while her followers who do possess those abilities turn friends, families, and lovers against each other.
While Selephra is most directly associated with dryads, she has become something of a patron for a wider variety of fey who use illusion, shapeshifting, and similar deception in their hunt for victims. Her followers form a court unto themselves within the Green Fey, consisting largely of dryads, hags, lamias, and Huldra. Even such creatures who are not Selephra's vassals pay her a degree of homage. The Bramble Queen, in turn, asks little of them save that they follow their nature by enticing mortals to emotional slavery or death.
Selephra prefers to wreak her vengeance on the mortal world directly by hunting victims much as her servants do. She particularly enjoys destroying famous heroes or beloved leaders through the pain and grief of unendurable loss. She and her minions have destroyed communities and ignited wars with a few well-plotted murders and kidnappings.
She plays upon the fey's mighty pride and on old grudges to turn otherwise reasonable, peaceful fey against mortal races. She seeks to expand her power, her authority in the court, and her cabal of vassals, all to no other end than the chance to spill more mortal blood or to enlarge her stable of slaves. She bides her time in the glade of sullen vines until the moment to strike.

Selephra before the corruption

Current Location

Glade of Sullen Vines