Eamuria

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Information

  • Character Full Name: Eamuria Feandrelle (Eh-MOO-ree-ya Fehn-DREH-lay)
  • Character In-game Name: Eamuria
  • Nickname(s): N/A
  • Association(s): The Highborne
  • Age: 12,241
  • Gender: Female
  • Hair: Snow white, though as a mark of birth rather than age – as is common for night elves. Eamuria usually keeps it loose.
  • Eyes: Silver
  • Weight: 95 kg
  • Height: 204 cm
  • Alignment: Neutral

Skills and Abilities

For a Highborne, Eamuria is of average strength at best – a fact she has long since come to terms with – but that still leaves her with a considerable amount of power, and she would never think of wasting any of it. Over the millennia, the woman has, through great amounts of research, become well acquainted with every branch of the arcane arts bar Necromancy, though her natural strengths lie in but three of them – Eamuria is marvellous with an ancient form of Enchantment, with Transmutation and Abjuration as her two somewhat less pronounced talents.

Though Eamuria’s knowledge of Enchantment is as broad as it is deep, she has always been focused on a particular aspect of it – her true speciality, the Highborne would say, has always been the making of items of power; the woman is particularly skilled at crafting objects that use the arcane. Her experience is very wide-ranging here as well – over the years, Eamuria has forged as many tools of war as she has made water-warmers – but she has delved particularly deeply into the making of what she was taught to call amplifiers, items that modify a person’s strength with the arcane. So far, however, Eamuria’s creations have only been of moderate power – in the age before the Sundering, she had not the permission to work with the greatest marvels of the time, and the secrets of their making have been lost since then.

Another thing that might be worthy of note is the fact that Eamuria’s actual techniques are nothing like those of modern magi – the foundations of Eamuria’s knowledge recall a very different age, when the arcane flowed in ways now unimaginable and its wielders suffered none of the limitations of today. She has, of course, adapted to suit the change in the energies, but her ways still remain steeped in the ancient secrets of the Highborne.

Appearance

Eamuria’s wardrobe befits a woman of her stature in its richness, with each garment gaudier than the last – she has dresses and gowns and robes in dozens upon dozens of different cuts and fabrics and styles, some brocaded and others smooth, some plain and others embroidered, some snug and others airy and flowing. What ties this great jumble together, however, is their colour – Eamuria Feandrelle seems to favour regal purples and crisp blues and deep reds, with thread of silver and thread of gold reserved for embroidery.

Other: Eamuria has begun to show the first signs of aging – fresh wrinkles crease her face around the eyes and the mouth.

Personality

Without a doubt, Eamuria Feandrelle is Highborne to the little hairs on her arms – keeping herself on a firm foundation of arrogance – one that has her hovering a foot above the grime of life – the woman tends to look at the world as if she were but a watcher from above, an impassive observer that involves herself in low matters only when she has a mind for it. The years of her youth were the years that marked the insurmountable heights of Highborne power, and that bygone age has left on Eamuria an impression too strong for even countless millennia to dull – an impression that was only made more vivid by her recent discovery of how lowly the world had become without her noble kind to hold it in its grace. And thus, the woman puts herself above most of the rest – now no less than before – with her interest and her attention reserved for the precious few things that she deems worthy. And yet this arrogant way of hers has very little to do with pride – some of her closer familiars may say that for a Highborne, she is on the humble shore of the Well, and they would likely have the truth of it. To Eamuria, her higher status is in no way a personal pretence; Eamuria accepts it as a fact of life, as simple as it is undeniable – the Highborne are powerful where others are not, they possess grace and sharpness of mind where others have tangled yarn for wits and the elegance of a tauren in a cupboard; that is the way of the world, and a woman might as well question why water is wet.

This vision of the Highborne as unsurpassable beings that Eamuria has lies at the roots of many an aspect of the way she acts and sees the world. One of these is her odd version of recklessness; the woman has neither sense of nor concern for her personal safety – not two pinches worth of either – and it shows not only in the way of life that Eamuria has chosen for herself, but also in any situation that she may face. She seems to think herself untouchable, if not exactly invincible, and all because of the utmost faith in the superiority of her kind that is ingrained in her blood – the Highborne would caper into the heart of battle without a care in her mind if it caught her fancy, and expect to come out victorious – likely through ordering everyone else into submission – as well as unscathed.

Another manifestation of this self-idolisation is Eamuria’s belief that she is always right in everything she says or does and those that disagree are but misguided children foolish enough to question the authority of their mother, and while this sanctimonious attitude is, in fact, true to every creature capable of thought, in this woman it is tenfold too strong. The Highborne is so set in her habits and her opinions and her ways that she will not pause for a moment to consider the views of others, and instead proceed to aid the lost, as she sees it. Another woman might call it browbeating; a very subtle and controlled – perhaps even unintended – kind of browbeating but browbeating nonetheless. And so, Eamuria goes about life with her head full of self-righteous thoughts, clinging to her truths no matter how strongly the truths of the world declaim against them; some may name it obstinacy, but it is not precisely that – there is no stubbornness in the woman’s mind; what she does, she does because her logic and her sense demand it, and she is simply incapable of perceiving the possibility of her instincts being wrong.

In the eyes of most, all this amounts to a somewhat illusory air that Eamuria carries about her. Indeed, it would be not at all unreasonable to say that the grand memories and dreams and myths of years gone by that fill Eamuria’s head have lifted her above the harsh realities of life – more often than not, the Highborne seems trapped in her own world, where her ideas of what should or should not be dominate and dictate the way of things, where her dreams and ideals are every bit as tangible as the earth beneath her feet. However, though there is, indeed, a disconnect between what Eamuria wants life to be and what it actually is, it does not mean that she is childish in her ignorance – spoilt, perhaps, but childishness would truly be an impossible thing for a woman of her age. The truth of the matter is that Eamuria is, in fact, able to put her truths aside and do what the moment requires her to, but only when she is convinced that it is absolutely necessary. And herein lies the heart of the issue – convincing Eamuria usually takes more than life or any single person is willing to offer.

Though apparent dreaminess and idealism may seem to hide this, there is much darkness in this Highborne. Eamuria Feandrelle is a deeply vengeful person – one of the marks that the corrupting powers she wields have placed upon her, perhaps – if not exactly in the traditional sense – she is far above trying to exact petty revenge for every single slight that may have been visited upon her, but she still welcomes ideas of retribution into her heart too easily, and when she does, she can be very deliberate and thorough in following through with them. As with all other things, there is no anger or hatred in her actions here – Eamuria is as old as time itself, as she likes to say, and while that is quite an overstatement, the point is the same, and it takes much to truly rile one as ancient as her – but that does not mean she takes vengeance lightly.

Another shadow that darkens the Highborne’s person is her odd kind of ruthlessness. Eamuria’s distinctly inhuman sense of morality is her own, and she is not unwilling to stretch and bend its boundaries if she believes it may aid her or whatever cause she has set her mind to. The woman is not a murderer – not unless she has to be – but the value she places upon the sentiment or wellbeing of others – low-born others especially – would not exactly befit a kind person’s mentality. Eamuria succumbs to these ice-hearted urges much too easily, and when she does, she has a destructive tendency to go much further than needed – a fact she is almost painfully aware of, and considers to be a great flaw.

History

Eamuria Feandrelle first saw the light of the world some twelve thousand years ago – a much different light and a much different world they were then, perhaps to her misfortune. That world, it was beautiful, and Eldarath, the city of her birth, was a fine testament to that – a masterwork of what must have been every art the Highborne had ever tried their undeniably gifted hand at, it was a marvel of pearly palaces and fluted columns and spires that defied the laws of nature – of lights that rivalled the stars in their brightness and sky-bound statues that rivalled the moon in their gleaming, pristine whiteness – and one of the most beautiful cities the Kaldorei had – and still would – build. And the light that bathed it, it was not the light of the moon or the light of the sun, and not the autumnal light that would paint the land brown and the trees yellow millennia in the future; no, that light was the light of the Well of Eternity – unseen but surely felt, it permeated the air even here, and it was wonder given form. Yes; it was all beautiful.

But it was cold.

Born a sickly child, Eamuria was a taint on the bloodlines of Feandrelle and Anderath, and a disgrace to her siblings – all twelve of them powerful and healthy elves, bred specifically to be potent wielders of the arcane – as well as her parents in the calculative and superficial society of the Kaldorei’s higher caste. Disgrace, disappointment, shame – her family had all those things to deal with, but it was all buried deep beneath layers upon layers of propriety. The girl was not shunned or disowned – no, her familiars were much too prim for that, and Quel’dorei society much too judgemental; she was raised as well and pampered as much as any other child in those days, but there was a disconnect between her and the rest of the family, and Eamuria could feel it. There was a gap – there had always been a gap – and it found ways to open its maw eventually, be it through indifference – perhaps even inconsideration – that shone through in times of stress or the artificial air that surrounded every supposedly caring gesture. It was a gap the girl could not bridge, and that did some breeding of its own – it bred heartbreak and confusion in her heart and mind both. Fortunately for Eamuria, neither of them would plague her for very long – the ice around her had a way of freezing all that it contained eventually.

Yet all that was below the surface, and very few wished to dig that deep. Eamuria was distraught, but that neither inhibited nor hindered the flow of her nights. She had everything a child wanted to have – a dream included. Her dream was a fairly common one in that age – the girl wanted to work with the powers gifted to the Highborne by their Well, thus fulfilling the will of the Queen, may her star be eternal, and not to dabble like some did, but truly master all that those elusive forces contained. This dream of hers, ordinary as it was, was fulfilled with great eagerness – her mother, plagued by her daughter’s weakness and unwilling to train the girl herself, hurriedly found another mage to take Eamuria as an apprentice. Her new tutor was a strange man characterised by his unpredictability and his caprice – and, unfortunately, his brazen manner. Before their first session together could properly begin, he told the child what her family hadn’t – that she would never be strong – and it tore her apart, but all that was below the surface, and very few wished to dig that deep.

All that was below the surface, and Eamuria trudged on, and moon-turnings went by, and years went by, and Eamuria excelled, and eventually, her studies became the only aspect of her life – well, the only one that mattered. Eamuria Feandrelle, now a young lady but not yet a young woman, was lonely, but that did not bother her too much. She was not a recluse – not exactly – yet she was reserved, mostly keeping to herself. Her mentor was the only one the Highborne spoke her mind to with any semblance of regularity – the only one she spoke to at all with any semblance of regularity, perhaps – and even though he did not seem all that engrossed in the tales she spun – they came from too deep below the surface, likely – she liked it that way. There was something about committing her feelings to that impassive wall that touched her, something like her early years – something almost nostalgic. None of this interfered with her studies, however – she progressed steadily for one of her ability, and completed her basic training soon enough.

By the time that happened, Eamuria was considered a woman, if still a trite young, and an urge was gnawing at her from inside – an urge to see things, to see the world that the Highborne had carved out for themselves. She tried to dismiss it at first, of course – it was a dangerous thing, that urge, a danger to her purpose, an echo of things long gone – but soon the elf saw that she could no more ignore it than she could flap her arms and fly away, and so she left for Suramar, which turned out to be just as well.

Eamuria had thought that Eldarath was a dream given form, but Suramar, proudly displaying every ounce of grandeur fit for a city built upon the banks of the Well of Eternity, took all that and increased it tenfold, with the sacred Boughs of Azshara at its heart and architectural wonders around every other corner, and the Well – the Well! – was something else entirely. This place of legends was where Eamuria continued her explorations of the arcane arts, torn night after night between Suramar’s fabled academies and the unmatched Izal-Shurah. Years flew past her, and, the Highborne was surprised to note, with the Well of Eternity in such close proximity and some of the most genial minds of the Empire working with the students of the academies, she moved forward in her studies faster than ever – much faster than she would have back in Eldarath.

Once her official studies with the great masters were finished, Eamuria stayed in Suramar, which was where she eventually dove into her own research. There was no place better suited for that, after all – no place she had the right to go to, at least; the arcane was almost alive this close to the Well – it cracked and it sang and it writhed, and it flowed so easily that Eamuria almost thought that it must be eager to serve her. No, there was no better place than Suramar, and in Suramar the woman started her independent studies. And yet all was not well within her – for the second time she felt something gnawing at her from inside, an uncertainty of some kind. She was settled in the heart of her beautiful world, and that should have been enough to calm any concerns, but the beauty of the world was a cold thing, and it only deepened the worries of her heart. The world was beautiful, but something was wrong; the Highborne built greatness and unfolded secrets – cities more like works of art sprawled over their land and power shone in all its garish brightness – but there was a gap. Here Eamuria was, snug in the heart of the Kaldorei lands, but she was part of none of that. The majesty of her race was visible just about everywhere, that was the truth, but it still went right past her. Eamuria Feandrelle may have been weak, but she was Highborne, and she longed for that current of greatness, and she had to have it, and she would crumble if she did not have it, and it made no difference that all that was too deep below the surface, and then she saw her place. Of course, Eamuria’s talents had been discovered centuries in the past, when she was still but a fumbling apprentice, but it was only now that the woman, pushed by this passion of hers, found where her heart lay – her true penchant in the arcane arts, she realised, was the creation of items of power, a craft of which her kind were unsurpassed masters. She felt that this craft was what would give birth to legends as time went on – even now the Highborne made artefacts that could shake the world, even now their arcane-infused cities were the ultimate mark of beauty, and there was no telling what was still to come, with so many of the Well’s mysteries still sleeping in its depths. This craft was what would open the doors of power to her – to a weakling.

And so the Highborne worked and built and forged her way up through the ranks of the magi until one particular night set her on the course toward her dreams. That night, with the sun already trying to claw at the horizon, Eamuria found herself standing before a man she did not know rather than sleeping in her bed, and she found herself furious – the privacy of her home had been breached, after all, and at such a mooncursed hour! – but her anger faded when she found that this unexpected guest was a messenger bearing an invitation from Zin-Azshari – an invitation to join the somewhat finer circles of researchers working there. Sparing not a moment for thought, Eamuria accepted, and left her life in Suramar for the capital soon enough.

Surrounded by like-minded Highborne, she was quick to build a new life there and resume her research. For many years that new life was a satisfying one – free to pursue her craft as she wished, Eamuria furthered her knowledge of the arcane smoothly, and although one thing did put sunlight in her nights then – deemed far too weak to accomplish anything significant, she was denied the right to work with the greatest constructs of the age – she learnt to accept it and enjoy the power within her reach.

Time went on and Eamuria continued to strive, and eventually, her passion drew the eye of those above her a second time. The steady flow of her life was once again broken by an unexpected and almost forceful invitation – this time brought all the way from distant Eldre’thalas, and at a far more reasonable hour of the night, too – that granted her permission to go and delve deeper into her craft with the magi of the Shen’dralar – a Highborne sect that, not unlike many others, had its own share of secrets shared only with the Queen, may her star be eternal. It pained Eamuria to leave the life she had built again, but that force pushing her forward – that thing deep below the surface – had no mind to give her heart rest otherwise – she may have been humble for a Highborne, but that still left her a woman of sufficient ambition – and so she left for the south.

Suddenly moving away from the Well of Eternity proved a hard thing to do, but Eamuria was an adaptable woman back then, and it did not take her long to find stability again – with the secretive Shen’dralar functioning as a highly valuable source of knowledge, Eldre’thalas turned out to be nearly perfect for her research, and, after all, her research was all that mattered. Truth be told, the arcane was not as easy to work with as it had been back in Suramar and in Zin-Azshari, and Eamuria did find that jarring for the first couple of years – truly but a pebble on the flagstone-paved road of time, less than a blink of the eye in the ancient Highborne’s mind – but that went away and her nights gained speed soon enough, gentling the woman into a sense of peace.

Yet outside the walls of Eldre’thalas, all was not well. The sky up north grew thinner and thinner by the day, and people whispered, and there was a bad feeling in the air, and those whispers grew louder, and a shadow fell over the land, and whispers gave way to shouts, and then the waters of the Well began to churn; at the heart of the Empire trouble brewed, and soon a war unlike any that had come before or would ever follow broke out. They came with shadow and fire, heartless creatures that broke all order and killed all green things, killed all heartbeats; eldritch abominations that made the earth shake and left nothing breathing in their wake. Word took its time travelling to Eldre’thalas, and by the time whispers of Azshara’s betrayal made it inside the city’s pearly walls – but no, it could not be, Eamuria knew; not the Queen, may her star be eternal, never the Queen, may her light never die – roars and voices and laughter like dead worlds crashing together had burned away all illusions of safety in flames of green. The ground groaned and cracked and broke, and Eldre’thalas rose to fight, and Eamuria fought with it, and they fought well, and the roars quieted not a whit, and suddenly the stars seemed so distant, so cold, and then something changed – a new roar cut through the cacophonous sheet of noise like a smooth knife parted coarse fabric, through clangs of steel on steel and through the rumbling of the earth, except it was too high and too clear to be a roar, except it was more like a howl, and then the wheels of battle turned again. A creature straight from legend, a thing of myth, a great wolf the colour of pure white moonlight loped through the ranks of the Kaldorei and into the heart of darkness, and he clawed and he ripped and he bit and he tore, and he howled, and Elune’s light followed, and Eldre’thalas stood, its walls and its streets bathed in blood.

And then the world broke. If the sky had seemed to thin earlier, it shattered like glass now, and so did the earth. One thing was followed by another and then another and then another, and they were but jumbled pieces of a puzzle that Eamuria could not quite envision – it still lies a jumble in her mind, the time of the Sundering – but at the end of it all, some things were certain, and all things were dark. The Well was gone – and oh, how they all wept! – and the Highborne were stripped of their power – stripped of their world! – and it was not long before the bleakness set in. The Highborne of what had once been Eldre’thalas and was now a dark, brooding, forlorn place – a ghost from the past, much like the memories that still dwelt there – began to drift, each caught in the stream of their own grief, as if an inexorable wave of apathy had washed over the remnants of their society and filled the cracks within with sombre water that now flowed and pushed further and further apart whatever fragments were left. Some were washed away, but most stayed – they were Highborne, after all, and Highborne persevered – which turned out to be just as well. With Prince Tortheldrin, the highest among them, as their guide, the Quel’dorei, now a withered echo of a bygone age and yet still a symbol of grace and grandeur unmatched in Eamuria’s eyes, soon found a way to adapt to the change in the stars; seeking a new fount of power to replace their dead Well, they built a number of arcane-infused pylons – a project Eamuria gladly took part in – and, using the forces these constructs wielded, imprisoned the fiery monster Immol’thar, a demon of terrible strength, channelling its energies as their own. Eamuria did initially feel a touch of disgust at that, but she was quick to dismiss it – it was a source of power like any other.

And so years passed, and centuries passed, and Eamuria, her mind-wrecking thirst satiated, slowly found peace in her new existence, diminished as it was – in her mind, her kin still shone brightest of all, a pristine beacon of light in an otherwise grimy, shadowy world, and that brought a sense of stability, a sense of certainty that all things that were wrong would right themselves eventually. And so, with her mind no longer troubled, time sped up for Eamuria again, and she lost herself in its flow – it carried her down through the millennia, past discoveries and failures, each no different than the one that had come before and the one that would still follow, and it carried her and it carried her, until darkness came again – though not from the outside. The powers that fed the Highborne of Eldre’thalas began to wane and their precious pylons began to weaken, and once again the beloved Prince rose to be their saviour – this time, however, his brilliant solution was betrayal. It was all done in secret, of course, but rumour was a wild thing, and soon enough every Quel’dorei in Eldre’thalas spoke of the same thing – Tortheldrin was killing his own people. Naturally, Eamuria dismissed it at first, much like she dismissed everything else that bred worry in her heart – it was all hearsay, of course, and it was all ridiculous, and it couldn’t be, not the Prince, never the Prince, just like it hadn’t been the Queen, never the Queen, may her star be eternal, and it was wrong, and it would right itself any moment now, and there was no need to fear, but where had her serenity gone, oh where – but a part of her believed, and before too long, that part won.

Eldre’thalas fell in Eamuria’s eyes then, and she retreated into the ruined city’s deepest shadows with all of her creations. Using these artefacts, she erected shields and walls of illusion to mask her presence, and was able to hide from Tortheldrin’s agents until word reached her that a number of her kin were heading north, to the lands of the lowly Kaldorei, seeking to rejoin their society. It perplexed the woman that the noble Quel’dorei wished to unite with such ungrateful mongrels, but she was done with huddling in the darkness and jumping at every other sound, and so she slipped out with them.

When they were welcomed into Darnassus, however - it was a welcome, if a cold and grudging one – Eamuria did not pledge to the night elves’ cause. Uncomfortable around these low-born rustics and silently unwilling to stand in the shadow of their banner, Eamuria Feandrelle soon left the savage forests, and set out to see the world that she had been isolated from for so long. She travelled and she travelled, hoping that this new freedom would bring her peace, but that was not meant to be. She hoped to see great cities and marvels of art, but all she saw was a fallen world, a world weathered by age and weakened by the foolishness of those that inhabited it – a world that had gone right to shambles without the Highborne to guide it. A new purpose settled into her mind then – Azeroth had belonged to the Quel’dorei once, and by the light of the moon, she would make the youngling races see the right way once more, and she would do it through her craft. And so she travels still, searching for relics from a distant age and making new ones, gathering power both real and perceived, with only a vague dream in her mind – a dream to bring her kind’s forgotten glory back again.