Denai Lhe'asea
"Of course I'm terrified! I'm submitting myself to a ritual which will see me lose the ability to dream....we don't know how that truly effects people! Will this work, will I be able to overcome that loss and still be the person I want to be, to help others touched by this....condition, by Arcanis? To help refine the education in my unique way, with my understanding of the all the dialects of Primordial Arcanis, the fact that I see those pictographic languages as clearly as writing on a parchment, even in the Aether, regardless of the elemental force I am conversing with? Will the Silence take that away from me as well as the risk of losing control my unfettered and strange touch gives me, my mutative issue where I don't have a 'lean' to my Touch, I simply handle all the forces of creation the same, they are all drawn to me and flood me whenever I attempt anything resembling arcane magick. Will this merely defuse the bomb that is my existence, or will it cost me so much more?"
Denai Lhe'asea confiding her fears and worries in her best friend and confidante at the time, her mentor Ahri.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Denai was a normal young lady for the first six years of her life. Born to a farming and trapping family, she was always an odd child, and strange things would happen around her. However though her parents had an idea she might be Touched by Arcanis, they had no intention of turning their own daughter over to the Magisterium or worse the Templars.
However the year of her sixth birthday the choice was taken out of their hands, as they must have known one day it would be. A pilgrimage of sorts, regularly sent out from Adra every few years, a rather freshly appointed Templar of the Stars, one of Feyhearts own followers, and a Diamond Magister came to their small village. These pairs would be sent out every few years in an agreement between the church of the Endless Traveler, the Adran chapter of the Magisterium and the Roharan government. Their task? Visit and spend time amongst every settlement in the nation, a couple of weeks, perhaps a month. Seek out children with the touch, bring them forth to Adra to be processed and assigned to an apprenticeship.
Now though this may sound harsh, the Magisterium in Rohara, the chapters and collegiates here were more understanding of the difficulties losing family ties completely might cause a child so young and thusly they would always do their best to assign a child to an apprenticeship within some reasonable distance of their family, so that visitation could be accomplished. Furthermore part of the magister's duty when training an apprentice included helping the apprentice accomplish visitation at least three times a year for no less than four days each. It wasn't much, but combined with exchanging letters, and the occasional visit on market days once a month by her Papa it was enough. Denai was lucky, she was an Emerald, that was the lean of her Touch, and it just so happened in a town called Kinar, a little less than a full day's travel north from her home village of Vinas there was an emerald magister in need of an apprentice. Ne'vi'ahrin Lhe'asea, or Ahri as she preferred to go by. Denai and Ahri meshed immediately and the mentor and apprentice bond was one forged with ease. Over the coming years Denai's days were filled learning of the natural world and its complexities, her evenings oft filled with exploration and tracking, or camping, as Ahri was a hands on sort of teacher. The weekly letters to her family were always filled with joy and love both ways, with Denai loving to wax poetic about all she was learning, about the animals and plants she was studying, or new animal friends she'd made. Overall, her apprenticeship was a textbook example of the value of tact in the discipline as she progressed better than any student Ahri had ever had. The elf could say that with great weight, at almost 400 years of age, she'd had her fair share of apprentices in her time.
However come Denai's 17th birthday, just after it things changed. The first symptom was her eyes, which instead of giving way to some shade of green as would be expected of an Emerald Magister coming into their own, they instead would shift daily, sometimes more than once, between the colors of manna, particularly if she attempted to weave magick. At first the stability of her spell-weaving was unaffected, and Ahri thought nothing of it. However a month or two after her 17th birthday, Denai, in the process of a simple and routine spell-form, merely to detect any wildlife around her she couldn't see.....she near lost consciousness, as burst of manna and energy radiated from her body of all types, almost uncontrollably. Ahri managed to surpress her and silence her temporarily, likely violating the tenets of the Magisterium to do so, likely having used another school of magick, but she'd had no choice. She'd felt the presence of some sort of Void entity diggiing and tearing at Denai's consciousness. From this moment on, Denai's fate would change.
Ahri arranged for another Bonding reading, not knowing what else to do. Heading to Adra that winter, near 150 years ago, it is likely the young Denai was scared, terrified even. What is certain is she could not know she would change history. In the testing that followed upon their arrival, it was determined she no longer had a 'lean' to her Touch and in fact, there was some sort of writhing maelstrom at the core of her essence in the Aethyr, something they'd never seen or experienced before, nor did any records exist of such a thing. Furthermore along the way it became disturbingly clear that she spoke Arcanis, the language of magick, better than even the most skilled Magisters, instinctually giving them pointers in the Aether whilst watching them try to communicate and weave their spell-forms. How was this possible?
Eventually they named it Primordial's Caress, and the debate began as to what to do with her. For months she could not leave the Magisterium campus in Adra, for months she had to wear small obsidian bracelets for her and everyone else's safety making the Aether unreachable to her. This did not seem to prevent her Aether Sight however and she continued to observe the workings of magisters of all colors where she could, consistently correcting and improving their communication with their own primordial elemental force as if she could speak the tongue and dialect better than them.
In that near year, Denai devoured the books in the library at the Adran Magisterium Campus and began forming a new understanding of the situation she was in, but beyond that most every apprentice was in. The system was incorrect, she'd been taught in a way that'd left her open to touching, drawing on and becoming linked intrinsically to, on a magickal level, the other elemental forces. Even Ahri, this paragon magister of the Emerald, simply did not communicate with symbols that only Dulra could understand. The whole thinking of Arcanis was wrong. It wasn't one language and mild dialects. The elemental forces could to some level communicate with each other yes, but it was far from a shared language. It was more like 8 languages with a very crude, basic and simple shared root. As such when any magister learning from the materials of the day wove a spell-form, they'd actually briefly be drawing power from like three or four of the primordial forces of creation, which was far more dangerous. This likely had a huge role to play in the normal apprentice fatality rates, which by the records she saw, could be as high as 50% in some locations.
In her research, Denai realized she could comprehend all 8 language forms nearly flawlessly. She never understood why, and died without that mystery ever being solved, however she knew she could utilize this to help. She had also stumbled across the Rite of Silence. She knew going through it could fundamentally change her, hell it might break or even kill the person she was. The loss of the ability to subconsciously dream, the loss of the subconscious connection to the Aethyr, whilst a defense against the Void, was a gambit. There was no guarantee it wouldn't destroy the person she thought she was. However when called before the Grand Magister and heads of the Adran Collegiate, she pled her case with passion and fervor, explaining all she had learned and without hesitation volunteered herself to be Silenced.
However the year of her sixth birthday the choice was taken out of their hands, as they must have known one day it would be. A pilgrimage of sorts, regularly sent out from Adra every few years, a rather freshly appointed Templar of the Stars, one of Feyhearts own followers, and a Diamond Magister came to their small village. These pairs would be sent out every few years in an agreement between the church of the Endless Traveler, the Adran chapter of the Magisterium and the Roharan government. Their task? Visit and spend time amongst every settlement in the nation, a couple of weeks, perhaps a month. Seek out children with the touch, bring them forth to Adra to be processed and assigned to an apprenticeship.
Now though this may sound harsh, the Magisterium in Rohara, the chapters and collegiates here were more understanding of the difficulties losing family ties completely might cause a child so young and thusly they would always do their best to assign a child to an apprenticeship within some reasonable distance of their family, so that visitation could be accomplished. Furthermore part of the magister's duty when training an apprentice included helping the apprentice accomplish visitation at least three times a year for no less than four days each. It wasn't much, but combined with exchanging letters, and the occasional visit on market days once a month by her Papa it was enough. Denai was lucky, she was an Emerald, that was the lean of her Touch, and it just so happened in a town called Kinar, a little less than a full day's travel north from her home village of Vinas there was an emerald magister in need of an apprentice. Ne'vi'ahrin Lhe'asea, or Ahri as she preferred to go by. Denai and Ahri meshed immediately and the mentor and apprentice bond was one forged with ease. Over the coming years Denai's days were filled learning of the natural world and its complexities, her evenings oft filled with exploration and tracking, or camping, as Ahri was a hands on sort of teacher. The weekly letters to her family were always filled with joy and love both ways, with Denai loving to wax poetic about all she was learning, about the animals and plants she was studying, or new animal friends she'd made. Overall, her apprenticeship was a textbook example of the value of tact in the discipline as she progressed better than any student Ahri had ever had. The elf could say that with great weight, at almost 400 years of age, she'd had her fair share of apprentices in her time.
However come Denai's 17th birthday, just after it things changed. The first symptom was her eyes, which instead of giving way to some shade of green as would be expected of an Emerald Magister coming into their own, they instead would shift daily, sometimes more than once, between the colors of manna, particularly if she attempted to weave magick. At first the stability of her spell-weaving was unaffected, and Ahri thought nothing of it. However a month or two after her 17th birthday, Denai, in the process of a simple and routine spell-form, merely to detect any wildlife around her she couldn't see.....she near lost consciousness, as burst of manna and energy radiated from her body of all types, almost uncontrollably. Ahri managed to surpress her and silence her temporarily, likely violating the tenets of the Magisterium to do so, likely having used another school of magick, but she'd had no choice. She'd felt the presence of some sort of Void entity diggiing and tearing at Denai's consciousness. From this moment on, Denai's fate would change.
Ahri arranged for another Bonding reading, not knowing what else to do. Heading to Adra that winter, near 150 years ago, it is likely the young Denai was scared, terrified even. What is certain is she could not know she would change history. In the testing that followed upon their arrival, it was determined she no longer had a 'lean' to her Touch and in fact, there was some sort of writhing maelstrom at the core of her essence in the Aethyr, something they'd never seen or experienced before, nor did any records exist of such a thing. Furthermore along the way it became disturbingly clear that she spoke Arcanis, the language of magick, better than even the most skilled Magisters, instinctually giving them pointers in the Aether whilst watching them try to communicate and weave their spell-forms. How was this possible?
Eventually they named it Primordial's Caress, and the debate began as to what to do with her. For months she could not leave the Magisterium campus in Adra, for months she had to wear small obsidian bracelets for her and everyone else's safety making the Aether unreachable to her. This did not seem to prevent her Aether Sight however and she continued to observe the workings of magisters of all colors where she could, consistently correcting and improving their communication with their own primordial elemental force as if she could speak the tongue and dialect better than them.
In that near year, Denai devoured the books in the library at the Adran Magisterium Campus and began forming a new understanding of the situation she was in, but beyond that most every apprentice was in. The system was incorrect, she'd been taught in a way that'd left her open to touching, drawing on and becoming linked intrinsically to, on a magickal level, the other elemental forces. Even Ahri, this paragon magister of the Emerald, simply did not communicate with symbols that only Dulra could understand. The whole thinking of Arcanis was wrong. It wasn't one language and mild dialects. The elemental forces could to some level communicate with each other yes, but it was far from a shared language. It was more like 8 languages with a very crude, basic and simple shared root. As such when any magister learning from the materials of the day wove a spell-form, they'd actually briefly be drawing power from like three or four of the primordial forces of creation, which was far more dangerous. This likely had a huge role to play in the normal apprentice fatality rates, which by the records she saw, could be as high as 50% in some locations.
In her research, Denai realized she could comprehend all 8 language forms nearly flawlessly. She never understood why, and died without that mystery ever being solved, however she knew she could utilize this to help. She had also stumbled across the Rite of Silence. She knew going through it could fundamentally change her, hell it might break or even kill the person she was. The loss of the ability to subconsciously dream, the loss of the subconscious connection to the Aethyr, whilst a defense against the Void, was a gambit. There was no guarantee it wouldn't destroy the person she thought she was. However when called before the Grand Magister and heads of the Adran Collegiate, she pled her case with passion and fervor, explaining all she had learned and without hesitation volunteered herself to be Silenced.
"I volunteer to do this so that no master nor apprentice has to go through what I have, and what Ahri did. The guilt, the loss, all over a lack of understanding. I do this with the hope that my theory is right, that my Aethyr Sight will remain, and with the effort of the Magisters seated before me, even Magister Theon Alexander of the Onyx Order, I swear to help correct this unfortunate and dangerous error. I'll stride the Aether and converse with the Primordial forces and devote my life to creating a unique translation codex for each Order to work from with their elemental force. I will not share these secrets outside the Magisterium, nor between orders, I will be neutral, a scholar seeking to aide all magisters and apprentices now and in the furture."
An excerpt from Denai's well structured argument and plea that she presented to the Adran guildmages.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Denai would proceed to, with some difficulties she would detail later in life about the road she'd had to walk, find success in her stated mission and would be the key in developing the Sigil system, a unique pictographic layout and image utilized to help any apprentice or Magister of any order learn and most importantly learn and remember only the dialect and linguistic details of the vein of Arcanis that was tied to the elemental force they were to be maniplating. However it was not easy, and after going through the rigors of being Silenced, in truth she battled many years with loathing, doubt, depression, anger and more. The inability to dream, the inability to have the subconscious just....bring you things in your mind is a jarring transition at minimum and can be out and out traumatizing for others. However she overcame it all, and made her mark on the Arcane arts in a way no one else could have. For though it took her dreaming, the process did not take her Sight, nor could it take her innate understanding of Arcanis.
The changes she went through were not one but many, and at the end of it all, as she finished her greatest research project, perhaps the greatest and most influential and important in the Magisterium's history.....she showed some small spark of something. Was it her subconsicious? Likely not, for Silencing is permanent. But is love, or respect? Perhaps. Whatever it was, at the last moment, so the story goes, as she was ready to submit her findings and finally be the force for change and to set right the dangerous incorrect foundings that the Magisterium operated under up to that point, but a century ago....Denai removed her own last name from her papers. Her family name, her given birth name would appear on many other works. However in this so the story goes, but the night before they would begin the long process of reprinting and shipping new guides and texts to the Magisterium campuses across Valerick, Denai made a single alteration to it all. Instead of her birth name, she changed her last name. To Lhe'esea, to the last name of the mentor and friend that had guided her through her youth, to the confidante she'd trusted all through the years and decades, and even, by some tellings, in the decision to proceed and go through the Rite of Silence. The mentor and friend she'd buried only three months earlier. A flourish, a homage, an inspired choice? By someone with no subconscious or flair for the dramatic left? We will never know. For not long after, Denai herself would pass on, nearly 80, having made a mark undeniable for every magister to come after her.
The changes she went through were not one but many, and at the end of it all, as she finished her greatest research project, perhaps the greatest and most influential and important in the Magisterium's history.....she showed some small spark of something. Was it her subconsicious? Likely not, for Silencing is permanent. But is love, or respect? Perhaps. Whatever it was, at the last moment, so the story goes, as she was ready to submit her findings and finally be the force for change and to set right the dangerous incorrect foundings that the Magisterium operated under up to that point, but a century ago....Denai removed her own last name from her papers. Her family name, her given birth name would appear on many other works. However in this so the story goes, but the night before they would begin the long process of reprinting and shipping new guides and texts to the Magisterium campuses across Valerick, Denai made a single alteration to it all. Instead of her birth name, she changed her last name. To Lhe'esea, to the last name of the mentor and friend that had guided her through her youth, to the confidante she'd trusted all through the years and decades, and even, by some tellings, in the decision to proceed and go through the Rite of Silence. The mentor and friend she'd buried only three months earlier. A flourish, a homage, an inspired choice? By someone with no subconscious or flair for the dramatic left? We will never know. For not long after, Denai herself would pass on, nearly 80, having made a mark undeniable for every magister to come after her.
Comments