Due to her flawless, almost supernatural beauty, Valerie has been at the center of everyone’s attention ever since she was a child. Born into a noble Brevic family, the young girl soon became a shining star of high society. She quickly had to learn to resist the unwanted advances of countless admirers, and she found that a combination of cold arrogance and impeccable, distant manners created a welcome shield. Her father had chosen a great destiny for Valerie: she was to become a champion of Shelyn. However, the teachings of obedience and humbleness before the goddess of beauty and love appealed to Valerie no more than the adoring pursuit of unwanted courters. For many years, she struggled with her desire to respect her father’s wishes and leaned into the martial aspect of her training. Yet one cannot force devotion, and it was only a matter of time before Valerie’s patience expired and, in a fit of frustration, she railed against the traditions of Shelyn’s teaching, denouncing the concept that beauty and art could ever serve as anything more than hollow praise and delusions of fulfillment.
 
While this act of rebellion and blasphemy certainly wasn’t the worst the faith had seen, it was more than enough for her superiors to cast her out of the church. Having publicly rejected Shelyn’s teachings, Valerie left her home and traveled south into the Stolen Lands. Today, none would guess that she grew up as a noble’s pampered daughter. Serving at times as a mercenary for the Swordlords and at others as a freelance bounty hunter, and having traded in her immaculately coiffed hair and silk dresses for short tresses and steel armor, she believes she’s broken all ties with her past. Yet unknown to Valerie, one person in particular has never been able to recover from what he continues to view as his failure to keep Valerie in the church. This man is Sir Fredero Sinnet, a zealot whose inability to let Valerie go caused him to be cast out from the church as well. Today, Sir Fredero believes that if he can track Valerie down and bring her back to the fold, he will be reinstated as a champion of Shelyn, yet the increasingly poor choices he’s made in service to this short-sighted goal have pushed him ever further from redemption.