Saretha

Information

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Saretha owns a small collection of robes almost synonymous with mages, distributed amongst varying cool colors. She also tends to keep a smooth metal staff, a gift from her father as his blessing for her to start her studies at the academy she was starting.

Other: She’s a rather thin for her height. Not to the point that it is unhealthy, but it is noticeable that she has a complete lack of notable upper body strength whatsoever.

She’s struggling through her studies of the arcane, only just managing to keep up with the work being done. Her mind is inquisitive, yet very slow and investigative, which has her falling behind at times in an attempt to fully understand and comprehend the work being done, the things being learned.

Personality

Saretha, though she is clever and studious, works quite slowly, as she tries to take her time to fully, completely understand a concept from every angle before she is satisfied. This can sometimes be observed when she is out in public, when actually trying to socialize. In conversation, she’s very analytical and inquisitive, and tends to ask many questions. This sometimes leads her to appear prying, though she doesn’t mean to look like it.

Saretha can sometimes be a difficult person to engage in conversation, as there are times she’ll be lost in a book or tome or manual or anything of the sort that she will be flipping through , studying with most of her concentration, and will oftentimes forget that the world around her is still moving, that there are people around. It doesn’t take much to snap her back to her environment, but it’s proven to occasionally be an irritation to people trying to get her attention.

Saretha’s interest in the arcane is not one for the interest of violence. She does not want to learn to control magic simply so she can light someone aflame, or freeze them in a giant block of ice. To her, magic is a curiosity to be studied and unraveled, perhaps to find more to be learned than the masters both of her time and before have already discovered. She understands that some use it as a means of offense and defense, and she is willing to learn the basics of using it as such, but simply is not interested in learning to create a bolt of Frostfire to bring harm to people.

Saretha knows when she’s struggling to keep up with her studies, and is well aware that she has limitations. Too often is she tempted to crack into crystalized arcane residue to try to give herself a quick boost of arcane ability to try to push herself forward, and even further, there’s an ever present temptation for her to try working with Bloodthistle, though she knows it’s not a good idea, as the signs of Bloodthistle use are easily identifiable and she’d most likely be kicked out of school, if not shunned by everyone for abuse of the magical herb. Additionally, she doesn’t want to suffer from the immediate effects of withdrawal from Bloodthistle, after its beneficial effects wear off. She’s heard talk, biased as it was, that looped Bloodthistle users in with the Wretched in terms of respect. It only serves to feed an addiction to magic that the blood elves suffer from, though the restoration of the Sunwell has provided a much needed release from the drawbacks of the addiction. She knows Bloodthistle will not be a terrific idea in the long run.

Saretha is practically oblivious to social matters. From something as simple as an acquaintance to unspoken romantic feelings towards her, Saretha is just completely unaware of how other people think and feel. This, more than anything, is stemmed from her obsessive amount of studying and a general lack of exposure to socialization and friends over the years. It particularly set in after the Sunwell invasion, when what few relationships she had were ended due to the demise of a friend, or the drawbacks of the destruction of the Sunwell, or simply falling out of touch with people in the wake of the swathe of destruction the Scourge caused. After the damned swarmed Silvermoon and cut a scar of death into the land, Saretha basically lost all touch with the social world, and, while she does not avoid social relationships, as it may seem to the eye of a stranger, she simply is not involved in socialization. The basic fact is, she just doesn’t pick up on social queues. There are times when she will be caught off guard by someone trying to engage in conversation with her to the point that she’ll stare blankly while her brain tries to tell her what on earth she is supposed to be doing.

This is not to say that she doesn’t have a desire for social interaction. Far from it; she enjoys what she does manage to keep together. The problem is her distinct social awkwardness. She does however, relish what friendships she makes, and does her best to keep people happy with what limited data her brain can give her on how to behave around other people.

Of all the magical arts, Saretha shows a definite preference to the arcane, though she understands the usefulness of the others, both as tool, weapon, and survival skill. She shows as much natural ability in the other two trees as she does with Arcane, that is to say, slim to none, but she puts her mind to studying the Arcane tree much more and much harder than with the other two. Apart from lighting a candle or lantern, and cooling down a hot drink, Saretha does not find much use for the Frost and Fire trees of magical evocation.

Besides her interest in the arcane arts, Saretha shows a genuine interest in the study of life as we see it. When faced with a wild animal (one whose first instinct isn’t to try to rip her throat out), she will sometimes sit, take out a notebook from her satchel, and just watch it, taking notes on the thing, learning about it, and trying to take in knowledge from it, simplistic and in depth information alike. This, more than anything, shows an intellectual side of Saretha’s mind that doesn’t just want to learn how to cast petty spells simply for the use of petty spells. Saretha has a true desire to learn, study, and gain knowledge.

Alignment: Neutral Good

History

Journal of Saretha No’Felo, Sin’Dorei, former Quel’dorei. Year 30, Modern Era

I find it should be beneficial to my studies to detail the legacy of my own existence, even if it be only myself who desires to look back on it and reflect.

Thirty one years ago, I was born in Silvermoon City, to Niala No’Felo and her husband Aeron. Before baring Aeron’s child, Niala, my mother, was a housekeeper for a local inn, keeping the rooms clean between tenants and making sure the living areas were inhabitable. Aeron, my father, has been an alchemist since he was old enough to be taken on as an apprentice Neither of the two were particularly wealthy, by the standards of the High Elves, though they made a living enough to support a family of three, and were at least comfortable with what they had. After I was born those thirty six years ago, my mother took leave of her occupation for a short time to keep better watch over my growth and development, as between the two, my father had a greater, steadier income. Amongst the wealthy and poor alike, an Alchemist was always necessary for something, from the basic Silverleaf painkiller to a potent elixir intended to bolster one’s magical ability. Someone would always need something, because there was always something new to be done where someone would need to be ready, or something to be done where one becomes injured and finds themselves in need of such things. Housekeeping, on the other end of the spectrum, was a slow occupation, and between the two choices, the most expendable from the income of my family.

Mother watched over me as I developed as a young girl. Perhaps a might early in my life, Father had begun to take me into the shop with him, to relieve Mother of the boredom and strain of living at home all day, so that she might be able to return to the workforce. I didn’t see much difference at that age, between cleaning up after a child and cleaning up after strangers, and for a short while I felt affronted that mother would prefer to be out there than at home with me. But I was a little girl. Selfish, arrogant, and naïve.

I believe more than anything that Father taking me to his alchemist’s workshop was the start of my desire to learn. Being a young, questioning child, like many, I questioned all that crossed my eyes. I asked what this and that did, why sometimes the mixtures smoked and bubbled, why people needed them, and what happens if you mix X with Y. My father, patient man that he is, would answer my questions if he could, hoping to satisfy my curiosity. It only helped to expedite my desire to explore and learn by process of trial and error. When Father’s back was turned, much to his annoyance and behest, I would play with some of the unmixed herbs in the store room, and occasionally cause small disasters in the back. More than once, Father told me I had contaminated the rest of his ingredients in storage, though I had my skepticism at that point in my life. The room was well vented, and I did not appear to have created anything that would foul the air. I believed that Father was simply trying to discourage further ‘experimentation’ while he was dealing with customers and in the midst of his own creations.

The experiments in the alchemist shop were likely my fuel for interest in things I did not yet understand. I began to take note of things going on in my surroundings. How the sun rose and set on a daily basis, how animals seemed to behave, how people fell into almost ritualistic routines day by day, doing the same damned thing like gnomish automatons. All the while, I sat back and watched, drinking in every last morsel of detail I could process, things done by the masses and unique anomalies among my peers alike. As an extension of this, I discovered a truly magnificent marvel. Magic. I knew what it was from a young age, the High Elf society being so based around it, but until I saw the unique, indescribable mystery of the arcane with my own two eyes, I took it for granted, assuming it was just something else done by the robotic masses that made up the high elven society, just like eating, sleeping, and doing whatever mindless profession the people had taken up.

Once I saw the incredible anomaly though, I knew that the assumption I had made when I heard about it from Mother and Father was entirely incorrect. This, more than anything, was something to study and learn about. A mystery in my own mind, something to unravel and discover. It became all I thought about. It became my soul purpose for leaving the bubble of my childhood and reach out to outside society.

When I inquired my parents about how I could become an apprentice to the magi of the high elves, they always told me “When you’re older.” It became a Light damned automatic response from them, year after year. Eventually, when I finally reached a publicly acceptable age, the tone changed from “when you’re older” to “We don’t have the money.”

I had set my eyes on a particular academy in the area, Starblood Academy. It was not a place of magnificent repute like the Duskwither Spire or Falthrien Academy, but it had a focus on the arcane studies, and came recommended from a customer with whom I had begun a conversation, despite my father’s protests and standing orders to never bother his customers. Looking back, it was almost certainly foolish to base life decisions on the recommendation of an irritated stranger who, more likely than not, simply trying to tell a pestering youngling what they wanted to hear in an attempt to make them shut up. I wanted nothing to do with the schools of the slums though, if such a thing existed in high elven society. There was not poverty as known by some other races among my people, but there were some viewed by our own biased standards as poor. While my family did not fall into that category, though we were seemingly close, from what I could tell, I had no desire to be in a school for those who did. My fear, silly as it was, was that we’d simply learn to Blink in order to break into a house and steal someone’s goods, or something like that. I had my eyes set on a particular school, one that I had heard of from my eavesdropping on people that passed by the alchemist shop and home. Research into it, however, proved my family to not have enough money to begin my studies in the arcane there.

And so it was that my dreams got shattered. In my infinite self-importance and childish views on the less costly schools, I simply refused to enroll in them. Instead, I apprenticed myself, in a manner of speaking, to my father. I had no real talent in the field of alchemy, but I took on a job more closely related to what my mother did. I did the more menial tasks my father required. When something needed to be taken from storage, when the day’s coin needed to be counted, when deliveries needed to be made, I was the one my father reached out to. I was basically the cleaner, errand girl, and courier for the shop. I wasn’t very happy with what I was doing but, I was still rather young in the eyes of my peers, and I hadn’t the money to go do what I really wanted to do. I tried not to gripe about it, especially not to my father, who dealt with my presence in the form of a menial laborer. I didn’t bother to learn much about the alchemy trade. In the back of my mind, I always hoped that I’d one day come into more money and be able to afford my schooling, and leave that shop behind for good.

As it were, over time, I began to take an interest in what my father was doing. As I started to mature, I began taking note of the properties of the alchemical mixtures my father threw together for his customers. Pain killers of Silverleaf, and elixirs of Briarthorn said to extend one’s arcane longevity, so they can continue to cast without exhausting themselves as quickly. I was actually becoming happy. Or at least some semblance of the emotion. Honestly, I’m not sure that I can feel it any more.

But, something I’ve taken to think of almost a scientific law at this point, something obviously had to go wrong. The Third War started rolling around, and the humans and their alliance needed help fighting themselves. Cultists following some light forsaken sycophant of a necromancer who in turn was in the command of some Lich King who even then was only under the thrall of Dreadlords. It was a fantastic chain of command where everyone we thought was the ultimate overlord of that damned plague turned out to be just someone else’s lapdog.

And everyone with a brain knows how that worked out. The Third War. This time not so much against the human alliance and the Orcish horde, but everyone against the dead. Or the undead, as it were. And then the human prince, the bastard Arthas Menethil, betrayed his own people. A Paladin slayed his own brothers, and became servant to the undead he once fought.

And then he turned to hit us. Stormed the gates of Quel’Thelas, and tore a wretched scar of death into the elven lands. He tore down our Sunwell and used it to resurrect the necromancer Kel’Thuzad, who was the start of this whole damned war, servant to the higher powers as he may have been. We were decimated. Cut off from the source of our arcane power, turning into wretched, violent beasts going through the withdraw of what developed into an addiction to the arcane magics.

Looking back, it was a fantastic spectacle of violence, power, and valor, in the end. I find that the vulgar display of power Arthas had showed off was one of the flaws that lead to his eventual downfall, dramatic as this may seem. He showed his hand very early in his career as a Scourge champion, before even he merged with the Lich King. And the acts of slaughtering his father and assaulting Quel’Thalas only heped show his hand further, to show what he was willing to do, how far he was willing to go, and he showed quite many of his Scourge’s capabilities. Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel that our knowledge of what we were fighting provided a significant tactical advantage against Arthas and his men in the continent of Northrend.

The loss still devastated my people, though. Many who did not die during the siege had devolved into addiction driven beasts, the Wretched creatures who still stalk the woods as lone, dying people whose minds are lost forever to that unending thirst for the arcane. They’ve been hunted to near extinction, but few lone ones still wander, I hear. Skulking through the woods, defiling the elven lands with their presence.

Luckily, soon after, the remaining mages had tapped a new source of power, though it was apparently abhorred by some of the more devout Light followers. It was the only tangible source of power to try to tame our magic addiction though. Fel. Our eyes now burn that verdant green, one of the defining characteristics of the physiology of my people. We went from the High Elves, the Quel’dorei, to the Blood Elves. Sin’dorei.

It didn’t take long for the mages to grow accustomed to this new source of power. The city was rebuilt almost overnight. The walls restored, the gates risen from the ashes to defend us once again. Though, I suspect it will never truly be finished, nor the same as it once was. The attack has scarred the Sin’dorei, and that scar will be there for the rest of our existence, much the same as the blighted scar the undead left through our lands, from the aptly named Ghostlands straight up to Quel’Thalas and the Sunwell. I once heard a saying that the passage of time heals all wounds, but this was a deep rooted wound in the history of my people. If it were ever to heal, I’d find myself quite shocked, to be frank.

Personally, I think I came out of the siege better than some. My family survived, and bounced back well enough once society’s lives returned to normal. I didn’t really have any friends to be lost in the attack, and I myself survived, hiding in the ruins of a home already torn down by the undead abominations. They weren’t the brightest bunch, the undead. Didn’t seem to check the wreckages for survivors. Probably the only reason I survived. My parents did the same thing. Just hid themselves away, praying not to be seen. It worked for them, though whether it be an answer to their prayers or a weakness in the mind of a husk of a man with neural atrophy from decomposition is debatable. Mother likes to think it was an answer to her prayers, but I find myself skeptical about the whole issue of the Light protecting us. I can’t deny its usefulness against the undead though. They didn’t take well to being burned by the holy magics of the priests and paladins of the Alliance of Lordaeron.

In the wake of the invasion and growing fears for the rest of the third war, once my father found himself back at work, it seemed that business had picked up exponentially. The elixirs and potions of healing and all the more combat effective brews my father created seemed to be leaving the shelves almost faster than he could produce them. He took on a few more apprentices. Actual apprentices, who made the concoctions alongside my father.

Even as years passed, and the Scourge fell, and Arthas was beaten in his home of Icecrown, business never failed to continue coming in. Whether it were a lingering fear of things to come, or worries over the supposed cataclysm that had shaded the world from the wrath of Deathwing, I still am not sure.

I felt left out, to be honest. The workshop became crowded with people working behind the scenes to supply the demand. All the while, I was doing next to nothing comparatively. I was just a child sitting in the back of my father’s shop, being absolutely useless. I started to resent both the other workers and my own lack of measurable skill.

Things, at that point, finally turned around for me though. The pickup in my father’s business had brought in a substantial increase of profit, as the most basically intelligent would be able to surmise. More business means more money.

Then, not even a year ago, a day came when my father pulled me aside just before the evening’s supper, wanting to speak to me privately. I thought I knew what was coming. He was going to tell me I was becoming a waste of space in the workshop, and he wanted me to bide my time elsewhere, or find a job to do.

The conversation that took place though, it changed my life. Every last detail is engraved into my mind. I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

“Now, Saretha…” he began in that gentle, subtle voice of his. He always spoke like that when he had something important to discuss. “I know for the last few years, you’ve been looking for ways to get money for your schooling.”

At this point, I had become slightly more excited. I thought that maybe he was telling me he had an opening in the shop, or knew another way I could earn some money to finally go into Starblood.

“Now, your mother thinks it shouldn’t be as simple and easy as this, but I’ve convinced her to give her blessing on this and well… you know that we’ve been doing well for ourselves at the store, so… I’ve been saving up what I could of the excess, and… Well, we’ve pulled enough together to get you started.” This was the first time in my life I could consider being truly happy. Well and truly happy. Every expectation I had of that conversation had been exceeded by an unfathomable amount. I was finally going to go to the school I always wanted to join. I was finally going to learn the arcane arts.

It didn’t take me long to make my arrangements. The next round of applications and acceptances for the upcoming semester in Starblood came and went, and I was over the moon happy to find that I was going to be allowed to study there, and take all the classes I desired.

Basic academics, as well as Theory of Evocation and Practical Uses of the Arcane were among the courses I had managed to get myself into for my first semester at Starblood. And then, in deference to my father, and the time spent in his shop watching both him and it grow, I added in two extra classes during what free time I had. Identification and Harvesting of Flora, and Uses of Flora in Alchemy.

My father was pleased to see me overjoyed, and was proud to have inspired me to take the additional classes in the alchemical properties of plants. Mother was just proud to see me going off to do something with myself, something as big as the magical academies. It wasn’t exactly sending me on my way to be a Magister in the Court of the Sun, but it was something. It was something to be a part of, and it was more than she was ever able to do with herself. I left home with her blessing, and her love.

I integrated myself well enough into the studious environment, as far as I can tell. My lack of social connections going into it made it easy enough to focus on my studies without the added bother of trying to balance friends, and as was the case with some of my classmates, romance. I was unrelentingly dedicated to my studies. I still am.

Though I will admit, I’m having some problems keeping up. My life, until then, had been entirely devoid of all environmental exposure to the arcane. Others in my class had picked up some inherent ability from their parents, or had been minutely taught by others outside the school before they were able to even begin their studies.

Even worse still, one classmate in particular, already had a mastery of magic that had me green with envy. He had taken classes prior to this in the more violent of the magical arts. He is a master of fire and frost first, taking the classes in the arcane as an afterthought. He’s more interested in using his ability to smite the enemy of the Sin’dorei (or so he claims) in a sea of fire and ice. He isn’t exactly the most humble either. He boasts his ability at every turn. Though many of my class do not care for his kind, they can’t help but to admire his quick mastery of the concepts we learn.

More recently, I’ve found myself more tempted than ever to illicitly slide my way through the classes. Bloodthistle grows wild on the edge of the forests only the hunters venture into for hide and meat, and crystalized mana essence can be harvested from the wraiths and wyrms, the beings of arcane energy. I’ve managed to abstain from it so far, for fear of the drawbacks, but… eventually it may go from push to shove, if I want to truly come through with these classes.

I’m hoping that maybe, after I read back over my life, I’ll find something to help me. Though I doubt it. I really need to just knuckle down and kick into overdrive if I want to keep up. I’m not having problems in the classes of Herbalism and Alchemy, but I’m slipping in Practical Uses of Arcane, and my grades show it.

Hopefully I can turn things around.

Saretha No’Felo, Year 30, Modern Era.

Saretha

Information

Contents

Appearance

Personality

History

Navigation menu

Page actions

Page actions

Personal tools

Navigation

Tools

Search

Tools