Brynn

(a.k.a. Lonelei)

Brynn was a shy, studious elf and scion of a dynasty of elves that sided with Antecea during its early expansion and became a prominent influence throughout its history. With little say in the matter, Brynn was shipped off to the Arcanium as soon as he had completed his preliminary studies. Young, even for an elf, Brynn was something of a loner until he found himself adopted by who would quickly become his two best friends, a human called Tovenaar and a tiefling called, at the time, Benevolence .
The trio would get up to all kinds of nonsense during their stay at the Arcanium, enough so that they would eventually be kicked out entirely. A testament to his character, Brynn chose to lump himself in with is friends when he could have easily distanced himself from the pair's exploits. If he had, he likely would have gone on to live a quiet life of luxury and contentment; basking in the old money of his family's connections throughout the empire. Instead, for better or worse, he chose his friends.
And so together, the three friends embarked on a journey with the hopes of winning back the good graces of the Arcanium, but instead set in motion a series of events that would lead to the Fundamental Avatar, Cataclysm, being set loose on an unsuspecting world.
During their first encounter with the creature hellbent on destroying the world, Brynn offered his life in exchange for Benevolence's. In so doing, Brynn bound his soul to Cataclysm, but fortunately for him, reinforcements arrived just in time to drive off the malevolent spirit.
In the years that followed, Brynn became an accomplished mage, following a quasi-religious philosophy that venerated the Magical Weave as an all-encompassing and uniting force throughout the world as well as a training regiment that honed his body and mind into a fine-tuned instrument of focus and energy. His knowledge and skill was put to great use when Cataclysm again revealed himself in the burgeoning civil war breaking out across Antecea. Through it all, he forged a fierce bond with his two friends. At their height, it seemed they would be able to shape the very world with their influence.
But all good things must come to an end; sometimes quite abruptly. After Cataclysm's apparent defeat, Benevolence discovered that Tovenaar had instead captured the Fundamental Avatar's essence and had been coaxing him for lost knowledge. The pair had a violent falling out, and in an attempt to stop them, Brynn was killed inadvertently by Tovenaar with a spell intended for Benevolence. It was then that his years-old pact with Cataclysm came to collect.
Brynn's soul was brought to Limbo, the Plane of Elemental Chaos, where he was entrapped in the currently vacant fortress of Cataclysm himself. This would have been the unfortunate end of him, but Tovenaar was privy to Brynn's pact thanks to his conversations with Cataclysm. In the midst of his conflict with Benevolence, now calling herself Rapture, Tovenaar (who now was called Shepherd by his followers), sought out his old adventuring allies to free Brynn's soul from Limbo. Ultimately, they succeeded.
But Brynn was brought back far too late into Rapture and Shepherd's conflict to find a peaceful resolution to the one-time-friends' bitter war. He was shocked to see what had become of his friends in his absence and new that the people he loved had given way to rage and hatred; they needed to be stopped before they sank an already fractured Empire into oblivion. Together with his adventuring comrades, Brynn formed a faction of his own that came to be known as Night Blades, as they used guerilla tactics, espionage, and sabotage to protect innocents and disrupt the War for the Eye in anyway they could. In the end, Brynn fashioned a magical artifact of his own, the Rod of Neutralization, to counteract Shepherd and Rapture's Oculus Infinium halves. In the final battle between the pair in Shepherd's fortress high in the mountains, Brynn used the Rod to turn the Oculus' power back on the pair, destroying them both; at least, to an extent. Brynn could not bring himself to fully destroy Rapture and channeled divine magic into protecting her from a lethal blow, instead sending her into a magically-induced coma. Meanwhile, Shepherd had already taken steps to achieve lichdom, and merely reformed within his lair a few days later; entrapped within as Brynn had reversed his magical defenses after the battle.

After the War for the Eye

Believing his friends to be gone, Brynn, now having taken on the "adult" name Lonelei in keeping with elven tradition, turned his attention to repairing a wounded Antecea. He called on his old family connections, and in time, became a prominent leader within Antecea's senate. Meanwhile, he and his Night Blades continued to keep a watchful eye out for Cataclysm and his ilk, knowing that any outside influence could shatter the tenuous peace they had achieved.
Unfortunately, Lonelei soon learned the same lesson that hardened Benevolence's worldview years back during the war: Antecea's corruption was its own doing; Cataclysm merely used it to his advantage. Despite this, he worked his hardest in order to honor the memory of his old friends. What's more, he didn't do it alone.
He quickly made the acquaintance of a woman called Numeria Carina. She was stubborn and fierce, but held a deep love for her nation; or more accurately, its potential. Their shared drive for a better nation brought the pair together first as allies, and then as romantic partners. For forty years, Lonelei and Numeria fought side by side against Antecea's deep-seated corruption. They made some headway, but they also made many, many enemies.
On one fateful day, Loneli returned from a solo excursion to find that an assassination attempt meant for him and instead found Numeria, and in those days, no decent assassin would leave a body in condition to be magically resurrected.
For Lonelei, Numeria represented everything about Antecea that was worth saving. With her gone, so too was his will to continue the fight.
And so he left.
He set out on one final adventure with a handful of followers and comrades for a Mystic Isle said to exist outside of time and natural space. He found it and fully intended to never step off of it again, until the return of a dear friend he thought long, long dead found him in his solitude.

The Extinction War

Lonelei was brought suddenly and shockingly back into conflict with Cataclysm when Benevolence, now calling herself Echoless, found him on his island after having narrowly avoided a direct confrontation with Shepherd and a stint through the Abyss. Their reunion was one of stark confliction: on one hand, Lonelei was deeply moved to see his old friend safe and sound as well as no longer on the path of rage and vengeance, but the news she heralded was darkly troubling. He had assumed that Cataclysm's prison was lost to the ages along with Shepherd, but now it seemed both had returned.
Now bound to the confines of the island whose magic sustained his body, Lonelei offered any assistance he could. He gave Echoless the motivation she needed to get back in the fight and sent her back to the material plane with some of her old equipment he had kept safe through the ages. Later, a comrade of Echoless', the mystic warrior Ximon also found his way to the island. Lonelei shared with the boy all he knew and became something of a mentor to him. He even restored life to Ximon, who until this point was being animated by the vengeful rage of a revenant.
He aided the adventuring party Echoless and Ximon were a part of when they went to retrieve his Rod of Neutralization, which had been absconded with by mindflayers of the Underdark. Later, his island was the rallying point of a counter-attack on Shepherd's fortress. When the battle was resolved, the party brought Shepherd's amulet shard (which was also his phylactery) back to Lonelei, who had requested that the party spare his old friend. He hoped that without the corrupting power presented by his amulet, Shepherd could be reasoned with and brought back into the light, at least to an extent.
While the party dealt with the troubles brewing in Requiem, Lonelei spoke long and deeply with Shepherd, and the two of them came to an understanding. They would work together to aid Echoless and her comrades to find and thwart Cataclysm "the right way." Meanwhile, Brynn's island became something of a hub for those who would aid in their fight. This culminated in the arch-wizard Aefaren Thrangur approaching Lonelei on behalf of Echoless in regards to the White Tower Alliance, which was to be the world's best hope against Cataclysm.
Ultimately, despite his long life, Lonelei --or Brynn as his friends (and by proxy their comrades) still call him-- still feels intense responsibility for his role in Cataclysm's re-emergence and will do whatever it takes to see the Fundamental Avatar dealt with permanently. For most of his life, Brynn felt his only purpose was introspection and contemplation on the nature of the cosmos on his isolated island. With the war he thought long past him brought to the forefront, he is again filled with a youthful fire and determination to fight his old foe. Despite this, he is still keenly aware of his unnatural age, and will happily lay down his life if it means victory for the next generations.
At the conclusion of The Extinction War, Brynn felt the one thing he'd never again feel: satisfaction. All regrets of the past had melted away in seeing his old friends unite once more to finally see an end to the enemy that had defined all their lives. With the magic of his island quickly depleting, Brynn could face his departure from the mortal realm with a smile on his face and his friends by his side.

Life

125 1221 1346 years old

Brynn's Island

The island that Lonelei and his followers reside on has existed in folktales and legends since even before Antecea's time. Though to his knowledge, he is the first to settle on it. The island is one of many spatially and chronologically unique realms that can be found in the far-flung places of the world. It exists as a sort of demi-plane; adjacent yet separate to the material plane like the Feywild or Shadowfell. Like the Feywild, the island's domain exists in a sort of timelessness, though it does not exist "outside of time" like many of the tales suggest. Enter the island's perimeter in February and stay for a month and you'll depart in March like any other place on Earth. Instead, those who dwell on the island experience a form of conditional immortality: the island's magic sustains the soul, keeping it tethered to the body even as it ages (which also occurs more slowly than it would elsewhere thanks both to the magic of the island as well as the mindful health practices of those that live on it). 
It is likely that the magic of the island is tied to its Foci, which exists within a small reflecting pool in a cave beneath the monastery Lonelei constructed with his original followers when he came to the island. Unfortunately, the Foci was disrupted when Palios Pseftis came to the island along with the rest of those who would join the attack on Shepherd's lair. Cataclysm's mortal persona "corrupted" the Foci as he had done to countless others, and over time, the island's magic began to wane; first removing the pool's ability to be used as a scrying focus, and then erasing the boundaries between the island and the Material Plane.
This also puts a palpable time crunch on Lonelei's continued longevity. Once the island's magic is fully gone, Lonelei will be at the mercy of mortal time once again. It is likely that his aged body will not be able to sustain itself for much longer without the island's magic. It is his only wish that he is able to live just long enough to see his friends through this final conflict with Cataclysm. If he can do this, he will be able to pass on in peace and without regrets. 

The Night Blades

Lonelei's Night Blades remained in the Material World even after their founder departed for his self-imposed exile. Whether or not Antecea existed, they knew that supernatural threats would be an ever-present danger to mortal civilization under any banner. And so they lurked in the shadows and made bases in distant lands far away from the epicenters of men. They survived Antecea's Apocalypse and continued to ply their trade in one form or another through the millennia, and though their organization is unrecognizable to what it once was today, the core tenants and dogma are still there. Through the ages, they have been called Night Blades, the Night's Vigil, the Nightguard, Vigilant Knights, Songbirds, and most recently, the Night's Song.