Eltharias

Information

Skills and abilities

Nature's Blade: Although bereft of the magic of his youth and the druidism he practiced for much of his life, Tharias' martial skills are not just intact, but more clearly honed than ever. Clad in robes and half-plate with an axe-glaive in hand, he is a highly skilled fighter, fighting with animalistic savagery tempered by training's discipline and precision. Straddling speed and strength and focusing on neither, though, he can be outmaneouvred by agile combatants in lighter armour and overpowered by those in heavier, and he has little protection against magic beyond the fading enchantments upon his mithril plate.

Survivalist: Athough he's without a magical, metaphysical connection to the natural world, the fact remains that Eltharias still spent nine thousand years of his life as a druid, and as such is extremely familiar with the flora and fauna of the world, able to hunt, forage, track and utilise his knowledge of herbs to create remedies for wounds and sickness. He furthermore has a strong bond with his sabercat mount and can coordinate well with her in the fight.

The Beast Within: Many times in his life as a druid did Eltharias flirt with succumbing to the primal savagery of his bear form, and on one occasion he completely surrendered himself to the beast within. But even if his connection to the Emerald Dream is severed, there remains a raw force of animalistic instinct inside him which can drive him on in battle when he should rightly drop from his wounds. He can call upon it for short bursts of speed and strength if either should prove to fail him, restorative second winds or to release almost ursine roars and bellows to intimidate his foes and embolden his allies.

Appearance

As tall and thick as some great oak tree with his sun-reddened purple skin gnarled and scarred like old bark, Tharias is one of those few kaldorei who has begun to visibly age. His lifestyle's left him gaunt about the face but powerfully muscular where it counts. His movements are slow and deliberate – one could almost hear him creaking – but his step carries a heavy, decisive precision, closer to clockwork than the running water of other kaldorei's motions. His hair has lost much of its lustre over the years, falling in messy tangles to his shoulders strewn with dirt, but his eyes still burn with the amber intensity of a powerful druid.

In respect to garb, he is typically shrouded in a loose, sleeveless robe of thin leather that serves to keep him warm in cold climates and cool in hot, with a similar cloak and shawl over his neck and shoulders. Over this, he wears intricate, ancient mithril plate that encases his torso with pauldrons and gauntlets, as well as a headpiece ornamented with a lesser moonstone and a cloth facemask.

Personality

A quiet, generally passive old man with a streak of solemn introspection, Eltharias sometimes speaks cryptically, seeing little value in idle chatter and instead trying to advise those around him as best he can, whenever he can. This can make him more than a little awkward to joke around with, but he's not entirely humourless: he will at least offer a sly smile or a soft chuckle in response to good-natured antics, and quietly he longs for the days when he had the whimsy, inclination and high spirits to go about such things himself. Acutely aware of his old age, he is committed towards spending his last few years in a way that safeguards younger generations of kaldorei.

Deep down, he is still capable of fiery passion when roused to anger, but this is tempered considerably by his various losses over the years. Put frankly, and although it's hard to tell, Eltharias Everstar is depressed. He has been for a long while. He longs for the Emerald Dream and he pines for his lost love, and he misses his children who've been unaccounted for since Hyjal. He dreads the thought of death by old age and is haunted by the loss of his immortality. His life's a strange one of few friends and much traveling, and he might be construed as listless were he not so adamant and devoted to his duties as a watchful protector of his people and a thankless guardian of the natural world.

Although he is a staunch defender of his people, he is not a fanatic. He will not outright attack magic users for no good reason (he knows this would make him a hypocrite, considering his past) but he will try and counsel them towards caution if they're friendly and to steer them away from more corruptive magics. Clear, unrepentant darkcasters receive no such mercy. Quel'dorei and sin'dorei remind him terribly of what he nearly became all those years ago, but he will tolerate them begrudgingly if they mean no harm and if they steer clear of kaldorei lands. Orcs and trolls he looks down upon as reprehensible savages, the undead as pitiable abominations, but tauren he gets on well with. Humans, dwarves and gnomes he regards warily, but as welcome friends, and he sees much of his own people in the draenei.

History

Born into a well-off family in the majestic capital of a kaldorei empire that stretched across a supercontinent, Eltharias was raised and educated in comfortable ignorance of the decadence that crept through the higher echelons of Zin-Azshari society. Indeed, he aspired to join them - and when his magical abilities were scouted and he undertook formal training, this dream seemed close to becoming reality. He did not heed the neophyte priestess Arlytha, whom he'd grown up alongside, who chastised him incisively for aspiring to such heights when she, as well as many others, felt that he belonged somewhere else, and nor did he heed the allegations of his family that he was somehow 'abandoning' them, or leaving them behind. Their empire was one of superlative glory. It epitomised their divine birthright as children of the stars. And Eltharias was determined to become an integral, wanted part of it.

Combining the arcane expertise he slowly cultivated with skill at arms he'd honed since childhood, Eltharias aligned himself with other sorcerous warriors and committed himself to the defence of the capital, eventually joining the illustrious ranks of the Moon Guard, sworn to protect Queen Azshara and her Highborne. Amongst his fellow sorcerers, Tharias came off as unusually physically active and tactile in contrast to his more scholarly brethren (something which was attributed to his youth and relative inexperience) and subsequently became something of a battle-mage, relishing close combat as much as he cherished the power of the arcane. Sure enough, Eltharias was a reckless, impulsive fool who lacked the discipline necessary to become a truly powerful sorcerer - or at least, to become a truly powerful sorcerer and remain safe while doing so.

Arcane corruption crept into his mind insidiously, and soon he was well on his way to become as haughty and arrogant as the worst among the Highborne. More elaborate and powerful feats of magic became available to him with each passing year, and he delved into them greedily, wielding them flippantly for whatever half-reason he decided to fabricate. He enchanted a suit of mithril armour for his own purposes to wear over his robes and, indulging some whimsical desire to 'reconnect with his roots', visited Arlytha and gave her a similarly-charmed axe glaive as a gift of courtship. Uncertain of how to phrase a rebuke to a decorated member of the Moon Guard, she awkwardly accepted, but soon made it clear to Tharias that nothing would come of it; she had no interest in such a man as he. Childishly, he allowed himself to be incensed by this rejection and subsequently vowed to never again attempt to visit his home or those who lived around it.

When disaster finally struck, it crept up on him like a knife in the dark. Before Tharias knew what he was doing, his Highborne master had assigned him to guard a chamber in which some dark ritual he didn't dare question nor feel the inclination to was being conducted. Around him, war and insurrection swept across the empire, and all he bothered to do was as he was told. It should not have surprised him, in retrospect, when rebels burst into this Highborne's manor to stop the ritual, executing all his guards but one. One cannot fault him, however, for being stunned by the fact that he was the one who wasn't killed, in spite of putting up the most vehement resistance against the attack. Most of all, though, he was astounded to realise that the blade being held at his throat was a familiar axe glaive, and that the fighter who'd mystically silenced him and burned away his mana, hands holding the weapon in a white-knuckled grip, was that very same priestess. It was at her behest that the Resistance didn't simply execute him.

Taken prisoner, Eltharias slowly learned the extent of the Highborne's hubris. Horrified after the outpost where he was being held was attacked by demons, he wasted no time in volunteering to reenter the war on the other side, and after some consideration he was released and inducted into the Resistance. Now, a terrified Eltharias used his sorcery and might to fight for a safer Azeroth, but not out of any sudden burst of altruism, but out of fear. How could he have held in so high regard a kind of magic that led to this? But corruption and addiction still flowed through him and he continued to wield its power all the way through the war.

The Sundering of the World and the loss of the Well of Eternity left him feeling broken and empty in many more ways than one. With the War resolved, the Highborne deposed and a new order headed by the Sisterhood of Elune forming from the ruins of kaldorei society, Tharias again felt an edge against his throat, but this one was less literal. Arlytha had given him an ultimatum - leave magic behind or faced exile, death or worse. With much hesitation, he forswore using the arcane forever and remained within society. He locked away his enchanted armour in a chest and buried it in a ruin in Azshara with the rest of the relics of that bygone age. To help 'rehabilitate' the former Moon Guard, the priestess ushered him under the wing and the tutelage of a disciple of Malfurion Stormrage, and in doing so, Eltharias would become one of the first kaldorei druids, spending long days in the Emerald Dream while emerging irregularly to reflect upon his time within and to spend time with what few friends he had. His natural family remembered his ire for them well, and they recalled how he'd left them behind. Now that he needed their company, they were loathe to offer it.

Suffice it to say, his master loathed the reforming sorcerer's attitude, and they butted heads repeatedly. The druid he studied under was an outdoorsman who came from the very bottom rung of pre-Sundering kaldorei society, and some animosity with an arrogant man who'd enjoyed a privileged place near the top was to be expected. But even as he learned to wield nature's power, pangs of addiction haunted him. Magical secrets remained within his mind and the temptation to wield them nagged at him, and to stave them off he through himself with newfound fervour into his druidic studies, believing that if he could master the wilds, he could master his own raw, animalistic impulses. But mastery, he learnt, was not something that druids sought. In his reckless attempts to learn how to control nature, it seemed that nature gradually strengthened its control of him. The longer he spent in the Dream, the closer he would become to the beasts he walked among. Consumed by anger and resentment with his lot in life, he found the call of raw instinct too strong to resist, and he answered it.

His intervals spent in the Dream became longer and longer, and those who knew him saw less of Tharias in the savage man who emerged each time. Eventually, when the druids were awoken to wage the War of the Satyr, it was found that Tharias would scarcely leave his bear form. He viciously mauled and tore a swathe through the Legion's forces, seeming only barely to restrain himself from turning his animalistic rage against the very kaldorei he fought for. When he retired again to the Dream, he did so regarding those few friends he had who remained awake with the standoffish aloofness of a solitary hunter, and from there on in he'd sleep for more than a full millennium.

When he awoke again - not in response to any call being sounded in the waking world, but simply seeming to slip out of the Dream involuntarily - he was utterly feral beyond reproach, seeming trapped in his bear form. He stormed out of his barrow den, attacking those who dared to approach him, and roamed the wilds of Kalimdor for years, utterly lost to himself and the animal that had risen from the core of his being. Until a familiar face happened across him - his druidic mentor, who recognised him instinctively and saw what had become of his wayward student. He saw what the younger druid has become and while he exulted those who were in tune with the natural world, this was too much. There was a fine line between becoming one with the beast and letting bestial fury control you, and he had crossed it. The only thing left of Eltharias was rage, and it had turned the animal he was practically rabid. Horrified, he subdued the beast and ushered it back to where his family resided, and yet they would still have little to do with him. Tharias had forsook his responsibilities to them and they owed none to him. Short of options, the senior druid turned to the only friend he knew the savagekin could count on - Arlytha, the patient, stern, introspective woman who'd become a respected warrior-priestess of Elune over the years.

With patience and natural magic, the elder druid managed to ease Thar out of this form, and yet even free of it his mind was still addled, having regressed to a savage state that knew only anger and fear. It was under the priestess's stern but considerate care that the druid slowly regained his sense of self and came back from the brink of his wild fury. He was altogether a more subdued, sedate individual when he finally fought his way free of the beast. But much of himself had forever been lost to the blur his mind had become while in the throes of this savage state. Among them, thankfully, was the arcane knowledge and temptation that plagued him, and his time in the Dream had all but flushed his system of the taint of his casting. One thing he remembered clear as day, however - the role this woman'd played in his life and the debt he owed to her.

First, Arlytha'd tried to steer him away from the arcane and the decadence that surrounded it, and when it seemed this road would lead him to certain death she spared him and gave him a second chance. When this magic threatened to burn him away inside out, when it almost saw him forever ostracised by his people, she'd been the one who'd talked him off such a path and given him newfound purpose. It surprised only her when he started calling her his shan'do in private, for all she'd taught him, for all he owed to her, because in Thar's eyes she was all but his saviour. With this gratitude came his affection and appreciation, and between these, over many years, love grew. When he confessed it to her at long last, after he'd resumed his druidic studies in the waking world for years since, she realised how Tharias had changed from the arrogant, petulant child who'd given her that axe glaive years ago. This time, she gradually decided that his feelings were ones she could tentatively reciprocate. Eventually, after centuries, they sealed their bond with a simple kiss, and thus mated, they set on their own respective ways.

When he finally decided he was ready to return the dream, he did so with Arlytha in mind. She became an anchor to him, something that kept him grounded in the waking world when the wilds threatened to consume him once more. Years went by and she became a crutch to keep him upright in his times of weakness, a balm for his wounds, a candle to light the dark . Night elves mate for life, and they live very long lives - as much was to be expected, but Tharias had unwittingly become almost fully dependent on her before they were even mated. In between his long sojourns into the primordial Dream, they would begin, together, a family of their own. Their time together became a rare, cherished thing, almost sacred, precious days and weeks spent in one another's company between decades and centuries of duty and meditation on either of their parts.

Soon enough, after a heartfelt farewell, and content in the knowledge that his children were growing up well, soon to walk their own paths, Eltharias retired to the barrow dens once more to begin a slumber that would last millennia.

Or at least it was intended to. It was cut short millennia early when another call to arms was sounded - a call to arms against the Qiraji, who had risen on the warpath in the southernmost reaches of the kaldorei's ancestral territory. Thus the War of the Shifting Sands began, and Tharias was among many druids, led by Fandral Staghelm, who woke up to fight. And for something supposedly born of the natural world, the silithid he did battle against frightened him deeply. There was nothing natural about the cunning way they hunted, the mechanical way they coordinated, the malign intelligence that seemed to guide each of the insects' actions. Where he would usually relish the waking hours he spent with Arlytha, here, he fought alongside her, and he was ever-anxious to protect her from harm against these foes.

But a day raid of insectoid warriors struck a Sentinel camp as they rested, and in the wake of the attack several kaldorei vanished. Arlytha was amongst them, and the only token of hers that had been left behind was the axe-glaive she didn't even have the chance to draw by the time the silithid were upon her. Tharias was inconsolable in his panic and frenzied rage, and soon enough he rallied his druidic brothers to personally lead a Cenarion attack on the nearby hive to rescue the Sentinels and priestesses.

The attack failed.

To this day, Eltharias speaks precious little of his experiences while in Qiraji captivity, but he does recount that the silithid's dark masters seemed to take sadistic pleasure in breaking kaldorei down to their very cores and reshaping them in twisted ways. He has recounted the sight of dedicated sisters of Elune driven mad by the whisperings of strange crystals and speaking praises to some dark new god that lived in the shadows beneath the earth, of blacksmiths and other support staff who could soon speak in nothing but babbles in a strange, clicking tongue. Tharias himself recalls being bitten by a strange silithid subspecies, the mandibles of which carried a horrible venom that still makes his skin crawl to think of. With its symptoms came unbearable spikes of agony and vivid hallucinations that nearly broke Thar's mind, and if nothing else, certainly broke his long-honed connection to nature that he'd built up over the years.

When he was rescued he found that he could no longer change shape, no longer call nature's wrath into magical form, and when he retired to the barrows after the conflict was resolved, he found that he could not walk among the Dream. Some combination of his experience in the hive and the overwhelming grief he felt at the loss of his mate and shan'do had left him bereft of his druidic bond with nature, and he knew not where to tread from thereon. He was lost, listless, violently torn from both what he felt was his calling in life and the woman who'd made living bearable in his darkest moments. But this time Arlytha wasn't here to save him from himself. No - this time, Tharias saved himself.

It took time and it took effort, but eventually, Tharias was in such a ready that that he knew what he had to do. He rose from the barrow-den in which he'd been staying once more, trusting his children to walk their own paths with the knowledge that their father was asleep, and he ventured back down to Azshara, to the ruin where he'd buried his ancient armour, and he dug it up. The arcane power imbued into the plates had waned over almost nine millennia, and half the suit had outright gone missing, but the mithril remained enchanted enough that he could bearably wear it under scorching sun. Good, he thought. Then it would serve the purpose he had in mind well.

Eltharias strapped the armour on over his robes once more, but this time, they were not the robes of a sorcerer; they were the robes of a druid. Though unable to call upon nature's power, he resolved that he would still serve it with all his might to the rest of his days, and in doing so he would seek revenge for the life of the woman he loved. Taking up her axe-glaive as his own, he ventured down across Kalimdor in self-imposed exile, returning to the sands of Tanaris and Silithus. There, he once more became a solitary hunter, but this time he was no bear, and he did not hunt for prey to eat. Working loosely with the Cenarion watchers who'd remained behind after the War was resolved, Eltharias began to wage a one-man war of extermination against the silithid, scouting their hives and activities and slaying them wherever they could be found, determined to rid the world of such unnatural monsters forever. Sworn to safeguard the southernmost reaches of kaldorei territory, his exploits soon took him against indigenous tribal peoples such as the Grimtotem shu'halo, the Wastewanders and the Sandfury trolls of Zul'Farrak, among certain tribal subgroups of the latter he would attain a semi-mythical reputation as some kind of avenging devil figure or the fleshy avatar of some vindictive loa, who slaughtered their hunters, stole their prey and sabotaged their tents.

But there were far worse foes than the silithid across the worlds, and it would be hundreds of years before Eltharias would realise this. Eventually, however, the Burning Legion would strike at Azeroth once again in force, and only then did he come to know how single-minded, short-sighted and foolishly microcosmic his personal crusade had been. Abandoning his hunt, he rode swiftly astride his trusty saber to reach Ashenvale were the war was being waged, and before he saw any elves he encountered vile, green-skinned creatures whose eyes burnt with the power of demons. He'd waged enough insurgencies against tribal savages and other beasts of the wild in the past millenium, though, that he knew how to fight them. Sequestering himself in the woods, he soon rendezvoused with the Sentinel forces and hsi awakened druid brothers under Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind, and eventually they temporarily resolved their differences with the orcs to fight side by side on the slopes of Mount Hyjal.

Here, Thar would fight demons again - and this time he would fight them without the aid of the arcane sorcery he'd once coveted or the druidic magics he'd taken for granted for much of the past ten thousand years. But as he waded through the mud and clashed blades with felguard after felguard, he realised that there remained within him some primal rage that he could call upon in times of great need. Sure enough, it gave him a much-needed second wind of strength and resolve to continue the fight against the demons until the battle was won. But it was won at great cost - the loss of the immortality that had sustained his people and kept them youthful and strong for thousands of years past.

For the first time in his long life, Eltharias felt his age. And frankly, it felt almost good. The fiery, youthful passion that he'd carried with him for long after his youth had finished finally slipped away completely as he started to feel the strain of his activities in his joints, saw the lines on his face deepen. Though he knows not where his children walk, he sees many more children struggling to survive in kaldorei society - young kaldorei who have lost the way and those who adamantly cling to it alike. Welcoming the integration of Darnassus into the Alliance and their tentative friendship with newfound allies from across the sea, Eltharias has become a nomadic protector, wandering kaldorei lands and doing battle against any and all threats to nature and his people.

Eltharias

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