Olvari Plateborn
Olvari Plateborn was a woman as steadfast as the rocks she quarried. With dark hair that she always kept braided back and piercing amber eyes, she commanded the Plateborn Quarry with the same tenacity as her sister Arlene, though Olvari’s spirit had a more tempered edge. She was a practical and careful leader, always mindful of the balance between the land and its dangers. Unlike her sister, who seemed to live and breathe the quarry’s dust, Olvari had a quieter ambition. She took pride in her work but often dreamed of a life beyond the walls of Black Barrow, a place where her family could be free of the hardships the land imposed on them.
When the rains came—first a drizzle, then a deluge that seemed to never end—Olvari tried to keep the quarry afloat. For three years, the Black Barrow region was ravaged by unrelenting storms, turning the land into a swampy mire. The quarry, which had always been their lifeblood, became a deathtrap. Flooding was a constant threat, but Olvari pushed on, convinced she could outlast the weather like she had so many other challenges.
One fateful night, a flash flood swept through the quarry with the force of a tidal wave. Olvari, caught in the rising waters as she worked late to salvage what she could, was lost. Her body was never recovered, claimed by the mud and stone. Arlo, her nephew, had already been reeling from the loss of his mother Arlene to a landslide when he heard the news of Olvari’s death. It felt like the end of the Plateborn legacy, as if the land itself had decided it was done with them.
Arlo, believing his family’s business was doomed, was ready to abandon it all when fate took another turn. His cousin Oli vanished, leaving Arlo as the unexpected inheritor of the Graybore lands in the Firefang Jags. With this newfound responsibility, Arlo was thrust into the volatile world of the volcanic highlands, where the legacy of both the Plateborn and Graybore families now rested on his shoulders. Olvari’s dreams of a better future may have been buried with her in the floodwaters, but her quiet determination lived on in Arlo as he sought to carve out a new life amidst the ashes of the past.