Elaenya Valcoran

Liara Edring

There was so much blood. Red, thick, viscous - it flowed over her arms, her hands, stained her clothes.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t what she had intended.

She could hear the rattling breaths of the man she was trying to hold up. She was too small, he was too large, and her legs were giving out.

She’d never seen someone die before, but she knew instinctively that he was dying, that his life was draining out before her eyes.

She didn’t want this! She didn’t mean to do this! It was an accident! This wasn’t supposed to happen!

And in that moment of desperation, all she wanted was to fix what she had broken. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her short life - more even than her own life.

She wanted. She wanted. She wanted with her very soul.

The weight of her mistake was already bearing down on her when the world became a wash of green light. The last thing she heard was Vermax’s roar.

And everything changed

Appearance And Character

Elaenya is a relatively small woman, with hair of pale gold leaning towards silver, and pure violet eyes. At thirty-four, she has yet to show the marks of age that non-Valyrians seem to exhibit so much earlier. A quiet woman who tends to dress in either black or various greens, she tends to watch silently and only interject if she feels her counsel is warranted. Like many Valyrian women, she tends to dress lightly, without much concern for anything resembling modesty. Despite being less affected by the heat of the Fourteen Flames than non-Valyrians, it’s still too hot to worry about covering up. Due to the rumors that swirl about the nature of her magic, she has variously been seen as a deadly opponent and, in some cases, an object of conquest. Very few know her true nature, much less the truth of her magic.

Perception is rarely the truth of a situation, and the truth is, Elaenya has a deep capacity of loyalty that has not been tapped in years. Her empathy is strongly tied to her Green Magic, and it is a trait she would rather do without, for she worries it makes her soft. More than anything else in her life, she is driven by her magic - a magic that wants to be used, that wants to mend. Denying it is difficult, and yet, it is the path she must walk for her own safety, and the safety of others.

History

Early Life

How can I say this without breaking?
How can I say this without taking over?
How can I put it down into words,
When it's almost too much for my soul alone?

If everything had gone to plan, Elaenya Valcoran’s life would most likely have been unremarkable. Born the fifth child and fourth daughter of Baeran and Daenaera Valcoran, she spent the early part of her childhood in the embrace of her family, such as it was. It was not uncommon to see the small, silver-haired toddler trying to follow her older siblings around. As is the case with many younger siblings, Elaenya was fascinated by her older brother and sisters, and spent much of her childhood trying to be just like them. She was only 9 when her sister Aennyra was mysteriously assassinated, and took the death very hard - not because she thought she might be next, but because she genuinely loved her older sister.

Like the rest of her remaining siblings, Elaenya was schooled in history, numbers, religion, politics, and combat. She proved a quick study under her instructors, though she struggled slightly with her initial forays into combat training.

It was just over a year later when she had the opportunity to bond with a dragon who had just become old enough for an attempt. Elaenya, like her siblings, had already been examined for any hint of magical capability, but seemed to have none at all. So the decision was made to allow her to attempt to bond with a dragon. The dragon chosen for her was young and believed to be a she-dragon due to build and personality, though she was far too young to lay eggs. Vermax had scales in a blush rose color that shifted into gold at her wingtips and tail, and when the light hit her scales at just the right angle, they would shine metallic gold. She had eyes as green as the deep jungles, and her overall build was light, almost birdlike, hinting at future speed and dexterity. Elaenya wasn’t expected to bond with a dragon on her first attempt, not with being so young. But the moment the young Valcoran’s eyes met Vermax’s, that was all there was for the two. Elaenya would later describe it as love at first sight, a notion her siblings thought was ridiculous.

But for her, it was simple fact. Elaenya had never loved anyone or anything as much as she loved Vermax, and she spent many days working with her new best friend. For two years, the young Valcoran and her dragon were inseparable, to the point that some may have been worried at how close their bond was. But Elaenya was happy in a way that was so visible that whatever concerns were had, they were pushed to the side in the face of the obvious joy the young dragon rider took in her companion.

And had this path been the one Elaenya continued down for the rest of her days, her life would have most likely remained mostly unremarkable. Fate, it seems, had other plans, however.

I don't want them to know the secrets.
I don't want them to know the way I loved you.
I don't think they'd understand it, no.
I don't think they would accept me, no.

Around two months after she turned twelve, Elaena was sparring with her trainer in one of the courtyards of the Valcoran estate when a terrible accident happened. Elaenya had been learning a new technique with dual short blades for several months, and her trainer, a man who had been training Valcoran children for decades, had decided that she had learned it well enough to spar. The pair had been sparring for several minutes when the trainer’s guard slipped, and Elaenya - who never expected her trainer to be anything but an insurmountable wall to her efforts - pressed her attack. In a split second, one of her swords pierced the man’s side, driving its way into his lung.

Elaenya doesn’t remember much about the next few minutes, only the blood - on her hands, soaking her leather armor, the smell of it pervading everything. Accounts by eyewitnesses would state that they found the twelve-year old on the ground trying to staunch the trainer’s bleeding while hysterically pleading with him not to die, apologizing over and over again, saying that she didn’t mean it, that it was an accident. The wound was mortal, however, and no amount of her efforts to staunch the blood would have worked.

One of the slaves who had just made it into the courtyard would later say that she saw the moment the young girl realized the futility of her efforts, the moment that Elaenya understood that her trainer would die - and it would be her fault. No one who witnessed the next few moments expected what happened, for a halo of green fire abruptly erupted around the weeping Valcoran - fire that one man at arms described as being the same shade as the eyes of her dragon. The fire burned, licking up the girl’s arms, into her hair, flowing over her hands onto the dying form of her trainer. It burned, but cast no heat.

And as they watched, a mortal wound closed and healed as though it had never been.

Witnesses later said that Elaenya stared silently at her trainer even as the fire was knitting him together, though no one could see her well enough to really make out the expression on her face. One slave swore that he heard her breath catch, and the girl said, “It’s too much. I can’t…I can’t…No- No don’t!” Her head snapped in the direction of a dragon’s road - her dragon’s roar. And then the girl collapsed, the green fire winking out as though it had never been.

It was at that moment that the dragon keepers saw Vermax collapse, and she did not rise again.

I loved and I loved and I lost you.
I loved and I loved and I lost you.
I loved and I loved and I lost you,
And it hurts like hell.

The death of a dragon was the price the Valcorans paid for the birth of a Sorcerer, the first born in decades. It was a trade that the heir to the house, Taeron, didn’t seem to think was a fair one at the time. It was explained by the Sorcerers of the Inaugrion that there was almost certainly no intent on the part of Elaenya to kill her dragon, that this was, indeed, one of the reasons why they tried to catch potentials young when they came from Dragonlord families - because of the danger to the dragons they might be bonded to. However, the future head of the house still seemed to blame his younger sister, a rift that has not completely healed to this day.

But anything Taeron said was nothing compared to what Elaenya thought of herself. To this day, her memories of the first few weeks after Vermax’s death are hazy at best. The sorrow of losing her dearest companion was overwhelming. She became convinced almost immediately that Vermax had somehow willingly paid the price she should have paid. How else could her dragon have been harmed, and she left unscathed? Even when it was explained to her much later that it was far more likely that she unconsciously channeled the backlash into her dragon, Elaenya simply could not accept that - she could not accept that she killed her best friend. Even now, she harbors the belief that her dragon somehow protected her, even though it cost Vermax her own life in the end.

The weight of that guilt is unending. And it is the reason why Elaenya is so very adamant that mages and sorcerers must never be bonded to dragons. The risk is simply too great.

Mentorship and Training

It took a long time for Elaenya to settle in at the Inaugrion, and there is no doubt that the Valcoran considered it, in some ways, an exile from her family. Her brother Taenar and sister Saerra had made their thoughts clear before she’d been taken by the Brotherhood of Mages, and though at the time she did not react to it - for she was too lost in grief to react to much of anything at the time - she remembered their words later. She might have even agreed with them.

Elaenya was allowed to grieve for a time - for the loss of her dragon and the loss (in her eyes) of her family. But eventually she was pulled into a training routine, for the Brotherhood was unwilling to leave the Sorcerer untrained for very long - she was a danger to herself and others if she should unwittingly channel another spell. It quickly became apparent - to the surprise of no one, really, given how her magic first manifested - that her affinity was for fire. But the most unusual thing about the young Sorcerer was that her fire could both destroy and mend. Elaenya seemed to be able to channel normal fire similar to any Fire Mage (though without the requisite sacrifice or physical component, of course), but her true strength seemed to lie in the strange deep green fire she could conjure. Initially, all she was able to do was dull pain, but as she began to test the limits of what her strange magic could do, it quickly became clear that the power she controlled was unlike what any other mage had access to.

Because of this, mentoring the young Valcoran was difficult at best. No one had ever seen the abilities she manifested, and no one was really quite sure how to teach her to control it until one Sorcerer, whose affinity was also fire, got the idea of simply teaching her to control it the way any Mage would control fire - after all, that was how the magic manifested in appearance, which suggested that it was somehow related to actual fire.

Perhaps surprisingly, it worked, and the Valcoran began to blossom under her mentor’s training. Over time, her grief for her family began to fade and she began to see the Inaugrion as her home, and though she would never truly stop grieving Vermax, the pain began to lessen over the years. She developed into a bit of a prankster in her early teenage years, and was punished on more than one occasion for the trouble she caused along with a small group of co-conspirators. Elaenya proved to have a wicked sense of humor, and a rather devious mind. But although her pranks were always inventive, they were rarely malicious.

As the years passed, it became clear that the Green Mage, as she came to be called, was willing to dance to her own tune, and walk her own paths. Though she has had a fair few trysts, she would never classify any of them the love of her life. And those relationships have never tended to last very long. Seemingly as at home by herself in the gardens as she is in a crowd, the Valcoran continues to carve her way through a world that may ultimately prove hostile towards her true nature.

The Nature of Green Magic

In essence, the nature of Elaenya’s Green Magic is such that she can restore health and vitaly in a way similar, yet profoundly different from the way a Blood Mage might do. At its most basic, she can control what a patient feels and experiences through their senses, and as she grew in her magic, that ability expanded to being able to knit wounds and purge the body of infection without harming the one she was treating - or even them feeling any pain at all. Everything from minor scrapes to debilitating colds to being able to examine a pregnant woman and determine the status and general health of her pregnancy. Elaenya is often able to sense the presence of ill health long before it manifests in a visibly observable fashion.

Conversely, the ability can be turned on itself to inflict agony or cause harm - with a touch, Elaenya has the ability to cripple a grown man with pain for at least several minutes, or until she releases the spell. She can twist her magic to open wounds that she might otherwise have closed, and can induce the appearance of illness, though that only lasts for as long as she holds the spell in place and leaves no long-lasting effects. Which is to say, it cannot be maintained indefinitely. Still, if your goal is to get away from someone intending to harm you, having them projectile vomit all over themselves and everyone else with them while you run away is rather useful. This combined with her natural affinity for the fire every Fire Mage had access to makes the young Sorceress potentially deadly in face-to-face combat.

That is, if she chooses to use what she has.

It has taken years of honing her skills and training, but she has grown in her abilities to be able to knit more serious wounds together, even broken bones. But perhaps the most startling and intriguing aspect of her Green Magic is the ability to hold people stable, though only for a finite amount of time. The fight every healer wages is against the loss of blood, the loss of life while they work to heal what is draining out from their patient. Even the most talented Blood Mage healer cannot achieve the insurmountable in some cases. But with Elaenya, they can, for she can take hold of the very life of a patient and simply refuse to let go. It does not appear to matter how badly injured, how impossible the injury seems - if a Blood Mage healer can replace the blood lost and knit together the flesh in enough time, Elaenya can ensure that the person does not leave the mortal coil. This includes being able to save the life of babies in utero - such as in the case of a breach birth, when the risk of the child dying due to lack of oxygen is highest. Elaenya is also able to preserve the life of a pregnant mother in the case of an emergency cesarean, which until her had almost invariably ended in death of the mother. Some have speculated that Elaenya is somehow replacing the function of lungs and blood of the patient for that brief period of time. While Elaenya cannot herself heal the patient while also holding them to life, the time she buys the other healers is invaluable.

But, of course, only for a time. Digging her magical fingers into a life and refusing to let go requires an immense amount of magical power from the Valcoran, and will often leave her drained for days on end afterward. The more at risk the patient, the more power required. And there is always the risk that, due to the nature of her magic, she may one day intend only to save the patient, but instead find herself in their place.

It is not an ability advertised by the Brotherhood of Mages, for the amount of people demanding access to the healer who can prevent death itself (if only for a brief time) would be overwhelming - not to mention the risk to Elaenya herself. Instead, for most people, Elaenya presents her magic as dangerously hostile, not something that could be used to preserve life. Her green flames are believed to cause pain beyond that of normal fire, and a persistent rumor remains that she can use them to infect people with diseases and make them sick, even though this is not actually the case.

Elaenya herself has borne the looks and the fear stoically, despite the fact that the reality is nothing like the rumors. Despite the fact that her magic pushes her to intervene every single time she sees someone in need of healing. Her magic wants to be used, and it does not take to the infliction of pain naturally - oh, she can push it in that direction, but in its purest form, it desires the preservation of life over all else. And Elaenya is sure she knew why, despite having been thoroughly disabused of the notion when she was a grieving twelve year old exiled to the Inaugrion. No, Elaenya still holds on to the belief that somehow, impossibly, Vermax has not left her completely, that some part of her beloved friend is still with her, embodied by the healing magic that had cost the dragon her life. This is the reason, the sorceress reasons, that her magic is so very insistent that she restore what has been destroyed. It has to be the reason why she always feels the echo of Vermax’s soothing presence when she channels her green magic, and why she feels the whisper of Vermax’s innate strength when she channels her destructive fire.

Whether or not this is the truth is entirely up for debate. Elaenya has never shared this belief with anyone after her initial questions as a child. Instead, she has silently protected her understanding of her own magic, rejecting anything that might point to something different. Her belief is ultimately not a rational one, but rather, the attempt of a traumatized child to find a palatable reason behind what she still cannot face.

And so ultimately, Elaenya’s magic presents her with a dilemma - despite being a dragon, Elaenya perceives Vermax calling to her to walk a path she doesn’t understand and cannot truly conceive of, and she believes that her beloved dragon continues to relentlessly pull her in that direction. But to walk that path is to step out of the beliefs she was raised with, to possibly endanger the very people she helps protect by keeping the wards around the volcanoes strong. And so she resists, remaining within the cultural norms and values she understands. For now.

Ready to apply?

Application

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Current Location

Valyria

Year of Birth

4816 AD 34 Years old

Family

Valcoran Family

Parents

Baeran Valcoran

Daenaera Valcoran

Sex

Female

Eyes

Lavender

Hair

White-blonde

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Pale

Aligned Organization

Brotherhood of Mages

Elaenya Valcoran

Strength

0

Dexterity

0

Intelligence

+2

Wisdom

+2

Charisma

+1