Backstory

In the aquatic realm of Serôs in the Sea of Fallen Stars, the youngest daughter of Triton nobles Cahlas & Lirinen Nuhnaroth was set apart from birth. Born with a skin tone and hair color rarely found among her people, the tribe felt she must have been chosen by Persana himself to be raised as their ultimate champion to send forth by the Law of Duels. She spent her overcrowded childhood rigorously training in combat under the most able Paladin in Serôs, Dhehres Rugerath. Under his tutelage, she gained a great sense of justice and an intense desire to live a life dedicated to the protection of others, though this conflicted with her longing for isolation and freedom from duty.
 
Shortly after taking her Oath of the Open Sea, Ethleryn's mother revealed to her in a Grand Ceremony that her lineage proved the expectations that had been thrust upon her from infancy could be raised even higher. Jhimar, the triton warrior maiden who founded the now Lost Order of the Red Adherents had also been born the youngest daughter & had passed down her coral triton to the same of her descendants for many generations. Lirinen accordingly bequeathed the trident to her own daughter along with a pair of silverweave chausses and a silverweave heartsleeve.
 
Though the young triton Paladin had borne her duties faithfully at the altar of self-sacrifice, this new revelation proved that even her order of birth had robbed her of the freedom to decide her own fate. After a restless night of wrestling with the bitterness that had grown so great inside of her, she sent a letter of desperation by courier to a high-ranking official with a crooked reputation in the Zephalian Republic.
 
For untold eras, the Chandei Quorum & the species that inhabited Serôs had honored a sacred vow to offer up its citizens in service as Keeper of the Lighthouse of Fallen Stars. Though the Keeper was chosen at random, Ethleryn knew it was the only high calling that could relieve her the fate of Grand Triton Champion and grant her the seclusion she coveted above all else. Indebting herself to a staggering compensation after five years of service, she petitioned the official to ensure she would be called to serve as the next Keeper.
 
A year passed without any response when the man who had faithfully tended the Lighthouse for more than a decade died a sudden death shrouded in mystery. To the great distress of every triton but Ethleryn herself, she was, indeed, called to serve next, & though the nobles attempted to dissent, the call was binding. The young Paladin with alabaster skin and tyrian hair found comfort in the Great Beacon of Fallen Stars and all that she had yearned for in her childhood and adolescence of conditioning: solitude.
 
After each night spent as protector and guide of all seafaring folk, at dawn she was at her leisure to adventure among the shipwrecks that littered the ocean floor, to sit silently by the waves & throw out offerings to the hippocampi that visited her with news of Serôs, & to take solace in the seclusion her precious lighthouse afforded her.
 
Five years of passing her time in this way, however, left Ethleryn strangely distant from the fulfillment she thought would come with her independence, & though she had always been sure that she would thrive in loneliness, nothing could tempt her to leave her beloved home by the Sea, whose deep & wild hymns she so cherished. As it were, she would not be tempted, but expelled, when an anonymous letter was slipped under her door that read in an inky black threat: "Time's up."