Pelldea Kiilanerod

Born in the elvish kingdom of Illrya, a small elvish kingdom of forested highlands and verdant plateaus, Pelldea was raised with the expectation common there that she would take on many roles in her long life, and therefore was given a broad education instead of being trained for one task alone. However, she was barely a century old when war broke out between the high elves of Illrya and the wood elves who claimed the forests below, and as soon as she was old enough to take up a blade, Pelldea, restless and wild and filled with dreams of glory, marched off to be a soldier.

The war, elf upon elf, lasted for decades, and when it was over Illrya was a much larger kingdom. Pelldea had not particularly distinguished herself in battle, but she had survived without great injury, either to her body or her soul, and that could not be said of many who had fought. Instead of accolades, she emerged with a friend, another soldier named Andelya with whom she was as close as a sister. With some experience under their belts and the worst of their recklessness knocked out of them, Pelldea and Andelya became mercenaries, fighting together for years more. It was not until Andelya was slain in an ambush that Pelldea gave up the blade, unable to continue fighting without her shieldsister at her side.

Nearly two hundred now, she went home to Illrya to shake off the pain of Andelya's death and devote herself to a new and more peaceful craft. She apprenticed herself to a reknowned herbalist, learning the many healing herbs of the highlands and how to grow, tend to, harvest, and prepare them. While she was taught how to handle each herb from planting all the way through to its final uses, Pelldea spent most of her time in the herbalist's employ tending to his garden, and over time the life flourishing around her helped her overcome her grief. As she recovered, she opened up to those around her, and her friendship with a fellow student blossomed eventually into a romance. She and Vallendel had a son together, a boy they named Coriander, and raised him together before eventually drifting apart, their relationship coming to a bittersweet but mutually recognized ending.

With that ending came an ending, too, to Pelldea's time as a herbalist, for she had learned all that her heart needed, and she had heard the call of the harp. It was fitting for an Illryan elf of middle age to move from practical crafts to artistic ones, and she was now well over four hundred. Pelldea again sought out an apprenticeship, this time with an elven master of music. Though she lacked the acuity of ear to ever become a master herself, she learned to play well enough to please her own ears, and those of uncritical listeners. She plied this trade in taverns and at the kingdom's many festivals, becoming an established face in one of Illrya's most prosperous cities, and found friends--and lovers--at her most frequent haunts. Her son, who visited her often, was growing into a fine man, and Pelldea thought herself settled. She would play the harp until her ears or fingers failed her, in her final years, and then she would sit with her friends and enjoy the beauty of the city with them until the end.

So she thought for almost two centuries, her life falling into a sedate rhythm of pleasant regular engagements and small, bright moments of surprise and delight. Then the dreams came to her. Pelldea had no question as to what the dreams of still pools in the moonlight meant, for there was a sense of calling about them that could not be denied. Leaving her home behind, Pelldea followed the yearning that the dreams had given her until she found the Abbey of the Moonlit Pool, high in the mountains, where devout seers, clerics, paladins, and acolytes worshiped the Lady of the Moon and protected one of Her shrines. Pelldea entered as an initiate, presuming that, with no more than a century or so left to her, she had been called as a simple acolyte to tend to the shrine; the longer paths of the other orders could consume a far greater span than a mere hundred years in service.

But she was wrong. After the fourteen years of study and dedication required of an initiate, she traveled with three others, both very young women by elven standards, to a secret place in the mountains related to the shrine for their initiation ceremony. As they reached the place they'd been sent, however, they were attacked by a band of undead, led and directed by a necromancer who must have been tracking them to find the holy place. The young initiate who meant to be a paladin carried arms, and drew them to defend the others, but she was quickly brought down, leaving Pelldea and the two young seers-to-be defenseless. Harkening back to her long-ago life as a soldier, Pelldea took up the dead initiate's sword and shield and beat back the undead long enough for the cleric awaiting them to be roused by the sounds of battle and emerge to drive the rest of the band away. The necromancer escaped with them, but Pelldea and the others had survived.

After that, there was no question in anyone's mind but Pelldea's what the goddess had truly called her for. With her initiation complete, she returned not to the acolytes' quarters, but the paladins, and began her training as one of them. Her previous experience as a warrior shortened the training and made it less grueling, for when it came to combat her body only had to be reminded of what it had once known, and brought back to full strength, instead of being trained from the beginning. Her study instead focused upon the powers of divine magic and prayer that a paladin might wield. When it came time to take her final vows, Pelldea swore an oath to do good, defend the innocent, and thwart the wicked and undead, in the Lady's name, but vowed also to hunt down the necromancer who had slain the young paladin-initiate she'd replaced and avenge the life lost to the necromancer's cruelty.

In the interest of that second vow, Pelldea left the Abbey of the Moonlit Pool, following leads that the Abbey had collected in her search for a necromancer who would have interest in finding the hidden places of the goddess. She learned quickly that the enemy she faced was more complex than a single figure--the necromancer served or was part of a greater network of vile folk. She was not sure how far the web of darkness extended, for its tendrils were well-hidden and difficult to connect, but Pelldea did not intend to give up the hunt; she only hoped that she would live long enough to complete it.