Lenna Aelrie

Purifier Lenna Aelrie (a.k.a. Viper)

Lenna was born in the frozen lands of Edhle on the black fortress of Ulyrinar. Born to a rich noble family, her early life was spent being spoiled by her parents. She had a particular love of dancing and had mastered the 12 blade dances when she was still just a teenager. When she was close to adulthood the position of her father in the court of Ulyrinar had been greatly diminished due to a blunder during a raid that saw many Edhelians killed. In order to recover his good graces with the prince, he promptly offered his daughter the temple of Thulmaren. Lenna had no intention of going, she had grown used to a life of debauchery and excess, still, there was no changing her father’s mind, and so she said goodbye to her old life and joined the temple.
Lenna was treated very badly at the temple due to her noble origins, it was very rare for a daughter of the nobility to join the orders, plus she was joining at a very old age. Still, her mastery of the 12 blades proved itself quite useful, for the Edhelians do not dance as we do, their dances are ritualized simulations of combat where a single mistake might get you killed, their dances do not teach how to fight but they do teach every fighting technique that you might ever need. Armed with that knowledge, Lenna survived her initiation and quickly murdered her rivals to ascend to the position of First Novice.
That position assured that she was going to be trained by the Head Pristress herself, she was a thousand years old and much of her life was spent killing, her lessons were brutal but she slowly imparted her knowledge to Lenna, she taught her how to use her entire body as a weapon, how to move silently or loudly, as the situation demanded, she taught her the secrets of alchemy and poison, and the secrets of blood magic.
Lenna was on the fast track towards becoming one of the high priestesses of Thulmaren, as her prowess in battle was only rivaled by her cruelty and bloodlust. Still, deep down she resented the life in the temple, she resented the rigid rules that prevented her from savoring her kills, and that fact that she was not allowed to leave the city. Most of all, through the years there was a grudge that she longed to settle, her father, her coward of a father, that sold her life away to erase his own mistakes in the eyes of the prince and of Thulmaren. He was not what Edhelian nobility was supposed to be, he was soft and weak, she realized that now. The nobility had strained far from their ways since the days of Azorite in the First War in Heaven, their lives should be violence, death, blood, and war. After all, had Thulmaren, their father, not thrown himself into the gates of the underworld so that he might continue to fight his enemies forever and protect the world of Valarien? Was that not the purpose of their race as well? To fight the endless tides of daemons? Yet now the nobility sat idle and attacked those that would defend the world to acquire slaves to sustain their own laziness. That would not do.
Her mistress was little better, she had grown complacent in her old age and while she agreed with Lenna, she nonetheless shut down her ideas. So, Lenna waited. Soon it was Thumaren’s day, soldiers flooded to the streets to protect the wealthy citizens, and mercenaries flocked to the city to protect the lower classes that could afford them. As the edhelians too overcome with Thulmaren’s blood lust flooded the streets in their mad desire to kill, Lenna put her plan into motion. As she approached her mistress room she thought that, for as pleasurable that the Thulmaren celebrations had been to her in the past, this ritual was another symptom of the disease that had taken her people. Was this not another proof that they should be at war and fighting their ancestral enemy? Never had the people of Azorite fought among themselves during the War in Heaven, yet now it was commonplace.
She was brought out of her contemplation as she opened the doors to her mistress room. She was busy sacrificing slaves to Thulmaren, preparing to use their blood to extend her own life even further. She looked curiously at Lenna as she entered, her curiosity turned to rage as Lenna brandished her blades. Her mistress was better than her, but Lenna took her at her most vulnerable moment, she was dead before she could even begin to mount a resistance. Lenna kicked the lifeless body of her mistress into her poll of blood, she muttered a final thank you to her mistress before leaving her behind and making her way towards her father’s mansion.
Lenna crossed the chaotic streets effortlessly avoiding patrols and fanatics overtaken by bloodlust. Soon she was in front of her father’s mansion. Two heavily armored soldiers stood in front of the gates, their lifeless plated masks stared blankly at Lenna as she approached the gates of the mansion. As she got too close they brandished their halberds against her. Lenna used all her agility to avoid the two weapons and her daggers quickly found flesh in the weak points of their armors. She barely scratched them before retreating, but as they began to follow her they stopped, ripped their masks from their faces, and started to vomit blood. Lenna smiled, dragon’s poison was hard to get by and even harder to weaponize, but it was very effective at killing. She moved past the two agonizing guards and opened the gates to the mansion, as she moved towards the building she carefully applied another coat of poison on her daggers.
Lenna used all that she had learned on her many years at the temple, a combination of her prowess in battle, unrelenting speed, poison, and stealth quickly saw her into her father’s bedroom, a trail of corpses behind her. Her father looked at her curiously, he had gotten older, and fat, she felt disgusting in remembering that she had once loved him. She saw something moving to her right, her mother was making her way towards her, she was little better than her father and so she cut her throat in a single fluid motion. Lenna took great pleasure in seeing the calmness in her father’s face evaporating as his wife fell to the floor. He quickly changed his tune, he pleaded for mercy, promised Lenna everything she had ever wanted in her life, but those were the wants of another Lenna, that Lenna had died in the temple of Thulmaren.
Little did her father realize, that every action of his that was not taking a weapon and fighting Lenna only made her want to kill him more. When she had had enough of his pathetic cowardice she used poison to immobilize his body and began to exact her revenge, he would not get a good death as her mother had, he would beg to be killed before she was done with him.
When morning came, the line that had given rise to Lenna was no more. She knew that she could not stay in the city or in Edhele anymore, killing a high priestess was a grave crime, as was killing her own family. Not even the concessions of Thulmaren’s day would absolve her of her crimes. So, Lenna put fire to her ancestral home and quickly made her escape. She had prepared passage on a ship beforehand, she paid extremely well for them to take her to Valante and ask no questions, it worked better than she anticipated, she had half expected to find no ship in the harbor and to be taken into trial for all her murders, but there was her ship. She quickly jumped into it and made her way to the Empire.
Once in the Empire, Lenna’s plan was to find a temple of Ophelia. Surely the servants of the wife of Thulmaren would welcome her help. She couldn’t have been more wrong, she was met with only fear, hate, and, in the best of days, mistrust. She couldn’t settle anywhere, and no one would accept her. Without much choice, she began to live alone in the wilderness. Still, life in the Empire was better than she had anticipated, there were so many monsters, so many things to kill. In her younger years in Edhele she couldn’t wait for Thulmaren’s day, her bloodlust would be so strong she could barely contain it. But here? Wherever she would look there were enemies of Azorite for her to kill, and so she killed and killed. She killed so much that the Empire took notice, they had no idea of who this hunter was, only that he was highly effective and prolific, and that wherever he went the monster’s populations would surely plummet. Soon, a task force was assembled to track the killer down, the hunt took months as Lenna mistook their intentions as being hostile and did not want to kill members of the Imperial Guard, to her, they were in the same side. Yet, the Empire wished only to recruit Lenna to work for them officially. It took a while, but when she finally understood this she carefully made her way towards the group.
The taskforce took Lenna to Batria where she was able to have her choice of work in the Empire, she considered joining the Inquisition as their sole purpose is to hunt and destroy daemons, but she settled for the Order of Kassandra, as their military organization appealed more to Lenna than the secretive nature of the Inquisition. Lenna spent some time being retrained in the Order of Kassandra, she was taught how to operate in imperial cities and how to hunt and destroy the undead, the order’s primary goal. Soon though, Lenna was given the rank of Purifier, the lowest of ranks in the order. Still, that meant that she could go out and hunt once more, and that was more than enough for her.
The population is still extremely hostile towards Lenna and she had found very few people that she could call friends, for the most part, she stays in the shadows and operates outside the usual structure of the city. She has struck a partnership with High Executor Briwala though, they ended up at the same place with different missions, but together they put down a cultist gathering that was worshiping Hurshiltar. Sights like this seem to have become more common in the Empire lately, which has put fear in Lenna’s hearth. A similar increase in daemonic activity was seen before the second war in heaven, could a new offensive be on its way? She gave a silent prayer to Thulmaren and hoped that that was not the case. But if it was, she would be ready to fight. Azurite was still alive in her and she would push the darkness back to where it came from. No matter the cost.

Alignment

Chaotic Neutral

Current Location

Batria

Species

Elf

Year of Birth

632 130 Years old

Birthplace

Edhele

Current Residence

Batria

Gender

Female

Aligned Organization

Order of Kassandra