Rosalind Avon
Queen
The current queen of the Elflands and loyal paladin in service of The Ageless One. She was present at Emperor Polonius III's funeral in 896 when the Temple of the Ageless One was bombed by a freedom-fighting organization known as The Characters, and seeing the writing on the wall she decided to abandon her royal title and begin a life of adventuring beyond the borders of the empire. She was sighted in the Despero countryside adventuring with a tabaxi druid and elven wizard when the Elflands Empire collapsed during the Sunken God's Reign of Terror in 897. In 898 she became the new queen of the Elflands, enacting reforms to dismantle the empire and turn the kingdom into a more equitable (and isolationist) society.
Physical Description
Special abilities
Paladin, Oath of Redemption
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Imperial Years
Growing up in the Globe Palace of the Elflands Empire's capital city of Kassædeia, Rosalind never felt comfortable surrounded by so much luxury. At an early age she started working at the Temple of the Ageless One tending to the poor, and while many of her relatives seemed content with the Empire's status quo Rosalind started to feel that the monarchy should do more to deal with the Empire's poverty. As soon as she was old enough to attend imperial meetings she advocated for social programs to make Elflands society more equitable, but her lobbying fell on deaf ears. Her uncle, Emperor Polonius III, appeared more concerned with threats to the Empire both foreign and domestic. He invested heavily into the imperial military and suppression tactics, fearing any accommodations made to the lower classes would lead to revolts as the people demanded more and more freedoms. After many intense meetings with Emperor Polonius, Rosalind ultimately abandoned her reform campaign and quit attending the imperial meetings (perhaps with some encouragement from her father Banquo, who feared that her fringe policies would hurt his chances of gaining influence and a prestigious role in Polonius' council). She spent more time at the Temple of the Ageless One, swearing an oath to become a paladin in service of the Ageless One. For several decades in the 800's her religious duties had her journeying through the countryside, tending to the needy and laying undead souls to rest. The years of travel exposed to Rosalind the rampant poverty and oppression that plagued much of the Empire, non-elven races forced into merciless subjugation out of fear of revolt. Every time she returned to the capital was a reminder of the stark inequality in the Empire, and by the end the Polonius' reign it had been years since she last visited. She attended Emperor Polonius' funeral out of a sense of royal and religious duty, leading the group of vestals that laid the Emperor's body to rest. Her training as a paladin helped her escape the terrorist attack on the Temple when a band of freedom fighters known as the Characters bombed the funeral service and murdered dozens of regional governors and administrators. Tending to the wounded, she learned from others about the Characters' plans to overthrow the Elflands Empire and create modern nation-states for all the races under imperial rule. Rosalind despised the sacrilege of destroying a religious site, but she couldn't bring herself to outright condemn the group's cause. Empress Ophelia, the new leader of the Elflands, ordered the members of the Avon imperial family to unite and fend off the Characters' threats of revolution. While many family members jumped at the opportunity to lead fearsome armies against these rebels, Rosalind felt more conflicted than ever on the Empire's morality. She spent a full day praying to The Ageless One until she became convinced that it would be impossible to serve as a moral leader in such a corrupt Empire. She could no longer fight for an Empire marked by oppression and cruelty, and in the middle of the night she sneaked out of the capital and fled across the border into the half-elf kingdom of Despero.Adventuring Years
Despero's capital of Havre was a cosmopolitan city where people from all over Pescat traveled to find work, so it was easy for Rosalind to blend into the crowds and hide her royal lineage. Seeking steady work and pay, she joined a freelance adventuring group named Team Jellicle in the winter of 896 and went on several adventures with them. With the tabaxi druid Genevieve Jaun and the elven wizard Erevan, the three of them traveled around the kingdom of Despero to assist nobles and commoners alike in the pursuit of fortune. On one memorable occasion, the three of them worked with a yuan-ti woman named Maris Sissava in the desert town of Anthep to rescue the missing son of a noblewoman. Team Jellicle's adventurers never became legendary heroes like the Royal Knights Brigade, content with their local celebrity status in their home base of Havre. In 897 stories started to come across the border about the collapse of the Elflands Empire at the hands of some monstrous deity known as the Sunken God and his sahuagin horde. Elven refugees began flooding into Despero, Rosalind spending much of her time tending to the wounded and needy by the fall of that year. Team Jellicle went on fewer and fewer missions as the three heroes each pursued their own interests: Genevieve started working in Havre's garment district experimenting with a new fabric known as glamerweave, and Erevan went on solo missions that often took him beyond the borders of Despero. By the time of the Sunken God's defeat in the winter 897 Team Jellicle had all but disbanded. A few months later Rosalind would reveal her identity as part of the Avon imperial family, one of the lone surviving members after so many had been killed by Characters agents or massacred by the Sunken God. Succession laws dictated that she would be next in line for the Elflands throne, so she said her goodbyes to her old adventuring partners and traveled east towards the Elflands' ancestral homelands of the Golden Forests.Reform and Restructuring
Rosalind attended the Treaty of Iverburg in 898, shocking world governments with her announcement that the Elflands Empire would be formally disbanded and split into new nation-states and protectorates. For years Rosalind had seen the excesses and cruelty of the Empire play out thousands of times across the continent, and the chaos wrought by the Sunken God's reign of terror was the perfect opportunity to change the world for the better. Rosalind took the title of Queen and abandoned all imperial claims, overseeing the weeks of negotiations to ensure that the territories of the former Empire would be allowed to grow and rebuild. Moving the Elflands capital back to the ancient town of Henriad, Rosalind underwent a complete reform of Elflands society to make it more equitable and fair. She oversaw the creation of a national parliament to give a voice to the lower classes, stripping the monarchy of many of its absolutist powers. The nobility, devastated by the Sunken God's sahuagin horde, was too disorganized to put up any type of opposition to these reforms and contented themselves to the creation of new businesses and buildings in Henriad. Kassædeia was still haunted by the ghosts of tens of thousands of elven souls unable to find a new body to inhabit, so Henriad experienced a population boom as thousands of elves relocated to the new capital. The first parliamentary elections were held in 900, craftsmen and representatives from the lower classes forming a coalition against the nobility. With Rosalind's encouragement, the new government took a non-interventionist approach to foreign policy and chose to focus on reinvesting in the Elflands. The Emigre Act of 901 encouraged the resettlement of elves from all over Pescaliat into the Elflands regardless of background or nationality to help with the creation of a new Elflands. Elven communities in the Northern Territories and Gameth began to relocate to the kingdom, including wood elves who had long had a ambivalent relationship towards the Elflands. Controversially, dark elves were left out of the Emigre Act's language as a sign of the centuries of ill will between the two races. Rosalind supported the omission to ensure passage of the bill, but she hoped to one day mend the bonds between dark elves and high elves. Queen Rosalind's reforms and Emigre Act helped to completely reshape Elflands society, but tradeoffs had to be made. Resentment was still present over the diverse Characters revolution of the 890's, seen by some as the reason for the Empire's lack of preparedness for the Sunken God's reign of terror. A hardline faction soon emerged in the Elflands parliament, insisting that if the Elflands could no longer determine world affairs then the rest of the world shouldn't be allowed to meddle in theirs. Believing that a unified kingdom was more important than engagement with the outside world, the Elflands officially sealed its borders in the spring of 914. Merchants would be allowed to do business only in Henriad's designated neighborhoods, and special permits would be needed to travel through the Elflands territory. Rosalind had made the Elflands gentler and more equal, but only for elvenkind.Relationships
Current Location
Species
Year of Birth
707
229 Years old
Birthplace
Spouses
Siblings
Coriolanus Avon
(Brother)
Children
Current Residence
Gender
Female
Eyes
Light Brown
Hair
Brown
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Tan
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Ruled Locations
Comments