Queen Cassandra of Vastwood
The Beauteous Queen, Terisirae's Beating Heart, First Shield Against the Dark, and Daughter of the Vastwood Cassandra Dihena Auraena (a.k.a. Queen Di)
Mental characteristics
Personal history
In keeping with the royal tradition, King Hiyak, the Lively, took his family on a royal retreat in the summer of Y.E. 1057, deep within the Vastwood, directly east of Colum. The only difference between that vacation and the many others he had embarked on was that his wife, Salaar, was pregnant with his firstborn child. Doctors and royal Clerics had predicted the baby would be a strong male heir, powerful, handsome, and preternaturally gifted. A birth like this had not been seen in almost 200 years when Hiyak's great-great-grandfather Velrus was born at the foot of the Green Line. As the first member of the royal family born outside the walls of Colum since its construction, Velrus was given the moniker "Vastwood". To celebrate the stories of Velrus' strength and charisma, the king took his expecting wife to the depths of the Vastwood and awaited his son.
Cassandra Dihena Aureana was born Flamerule 13th. Immediately an oddity, baby Cassandra was returned to Colum where the news of a newborn princess clashed with King Hiyak's promises of a healthy boy to replace him. She would spend the rest of her life fighting up that hill. As expected of Colum's royal family, she received top-quality education in history, mathematics, geography, and war, and was trained in a variety of weapons for self-protection. After her teen years, she studied abroad in Huvora and Kingcardine, where she gained an appreciation for political science and economics. She was also much appreciated by her classmates and received many heartfelt confessions of love from hundreds of would-be suitors. Though she admitted she had a girlhood crush on the great Jester Voss, a role model who spurred her to pursue a fledgling career in adventuring. Cassandra never focused much on the romantic aspect of her life, instead falling in love with roaming the countryside, finding strange creatures, and battling monsters. By the time she was 25, she had gained a reputation as an excellent combatant and a promising guild recruit. Her preferred style of battle included the usage of dual axes and light armor, but she was most familiar with the flow of a sword and shield--a stance that put her guards and handlers much more at ease.
The greatest test of her career as an adventurer was also its last day, the Night of the Winter Flare, Nightal 21st, Y.E. 1088. The previous day was the Winter Solstice, an otherwise uneventful day that came and went, but come the morning of the 21st the sun had failed to rise above the horizon. Earthquakes had begun to shake through the region, but magical sensors and scrying had determined the source of the shaking was a corps of creatures moving out of the zone of Ob-2, 40,000 strong. Dozens of guilds dispatched a few thousand adventurers, but they could only do their best to slow the night horde. Caught unaware during cold, dark day, all of Colum, Kingcardine, Waleah, and Harthwater had to combine their forces to create a pincer that could destroy the advancing army. Among their forces was Cassandra, against the advice of her counsel and the wishes of her parents, she took to the frontlines, alongside Uo Pyregrain and others of incredible power.
Over the course of fifteen hours, the coalition of adventurers was able to whittle the invading forces down. Snow began to fall in sheets, painting the battlefield in white and red. The leaders of the night horde began to emerge, powerful individuals filled with the strength of darkness and decay. A death knight of tremendous might named Qyrdhal led a small army of over 200 undead soldiers, an army that Cassandra readily engaged. Over the course of two hours, Cassandra, supported by Uo and other mages, was able to destroy Qyrdhal’s supporting army and lay him to rest, permanently.
After the Flare, once the army of the night had been completely destroyed, the moon set once again and was replaced in the morning by the sun. The threat had been answered and the world was saved, but Cassandra was left forever changed by the events of that fateful night. She saw a world unprotected with too many vulnerabilities in between guilds who refused to cooperate. As an adventurer herself, she had an understanding of the guild system and how it worked in most places. Local governments would sponsor quests with greater rewards for more difficult missions while guilds authorized individuals with adventurers licenses so they can legally accept quests—and they would also accept a percentage of member rewards for their service. To Cassandra, this system discouraged cooperation at best and was at worst actively corrupt. Local governments would often increase the reward for quests as time went on and the threat became greater, and guilds would play along by allowing missions to amass greater rewards before addressing them, no matter who got hurt in the process.
Anxious to protect Ec’algor from another Flare, Cassandra set forth on her new mission of fixing the guild and quest system through royal decree. In order to do that, she took a husband, Lord Polyck Bindora of Colum, and ascended the throne. She and her council worked diligently to reform the system in unprecedented ways:
1) Gold rewards for quests were adjusted to provide larger benefits when they are first written and to decrease over time. The crown of Colum provides additional gold to all incorporated settlements in Terisirae to supplement the cost of these adjustments.
2) A scale was created to approximate the difficulty of quests as they are written, with a letter grade from E for the least difficult to A for the most, and a number that recommends how many guilds should cooperate to complete it. Additionally, adventurers guilds were required to collaborate on a certain number of quests each year to provide licenses at each grade. For example, to give an adventurer an A-grade license, the guild would need to participate in at least 120 cooperative quests each year.
3) For quests of extreme difficulty, a grade above A was created. Only guilds recognized by the crown with the title of High Power are allowed to accept such dangerous missions. The primary route to be recognized with such a title is through the completion of A-rank quests, collaborative missions with other guilds, and scouting and recruiting talented adventurers. High Powers also enjoy a suite of other benefits to encourage guilds to strive for the status. Benefits like getting first pick on quests before they are made public to all other guilds, being able to write off massive expenses like recruiting and guild upkeep costs, and being allowed to travel freely within Ob-1 and Ob-2.
With these reforms, Cassandra succeeded in creating a guild system that is more interconnected, collaborative, and communal. Many threats have emerged since the Flare, and through the complex and communicative system in place, solutions have always managed to be put into place at just the right time. The world has always been on the bleeding edge, the only difference now is the most qualified people in the world have a reason to care about the people most affected by it.
Education
Cassandra got her primary education in Colum at the Needleheim College. She then studied abroad in Huvora at the legendary Ressex University and Kingcardine’s First Formal Academy, North Division.
Employment
Cassandra held several volunteer roles within guilds across Colum and Kingcardine during her adventuring days, including:
First Rank Sword, Last Chance Lancers
Third Row Battallionman, Rune's Drift
Instrument Tuner, Fanfare
Accomplishments & Achievements
Aside from her domestic reforms, Cassandra also had major victories abroad. During The Three Crown War, Colum was instrumental in the success of the Kelic army and their immediate liberation from Anbhor. Colum had long suffered a strained relationship with its furthest western neighbor and its unsavory taxation policy. Cassandra herself was actually a childhood friend of Ashley Moztel—the two of them met when an LCL quest sent the princess down to Tiriene to deliver rations during a drought. The two became fast friends and kept in contact with correspondence a few times a year. During the war, Ashley pleaded for troops and Cassandra had to face a decision between helping a friend who she felt had claimed the moral high ground and to maintain a long standing trade relationship with a massive and highly economically developed ally. With this impossible decision on the table, after weeks of consideration, Cassandra deployed 6,000 soldiers to support the people of Bearingpool.
To arrive in Bearingpool, the soldiers had to march across Spirix, where the vast majority of them used the city of Crixis as a halfway point to rest and resupply. The presence of Colum and its soldiers in the sovereign territory of Spirix had been a pain point since Crixis’ construction, and this display of force only raised tensions. Protests and demonstrations broke out in the months following the end of the Three Crown War. Cassandra could have doubled down and increased its presence within the city, but instead she withdrew all forces from the desert city. This gesture of good faith won much respect from Crixis’ most important institution, the Church of Solanil. Cassandra provided public support for the return of Crixis to the original people of Spirix and sat on many councils and international assembly’s as it transformed over several years into Des'dorakha. Now the two have a healthy relationship of trade and cultural interaction, and both regions are richer in many ways for it.
Failures & Embarrassments
Cassandra did not end her quest to protect Ec’algor with reforming the quest and guild system. With a coalition of adventurers and explorers guilds, as well as mariners around the Rune River, she created The Dead Sea Project. The projects was a group with the goal of mapping the seas and charting patterns of ocean behavior. Hopefully, by understanding the new nature of the ocean, creating ships capable of withstanding the roiling waves of the Restless Sea would make exploring the Old World possible.
Unfortunately, the Dead Sea Project never materialized. The seas proved much to dangerous for even small sized vessels to brave the waves. The then 6th Staff Master, Yodhal Tari, suggested a submersible vessel that could contain a pocket of air and sink itself deep into the ocean to completely remove the need to resist the force of waves. A novel idea, construction of such a vessel remained purely hypothetical.
Current Location
Ethnicity
Age
83
Date of Birth
Flamerule 13th
Circumstances of Birth
Born to the previous leaders of the Colum Kingdom, King Hiyak the Lively and his wife Queen Salaar.
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
Hazel with flecks of green
Hair
Brown speckled by silver
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark sepia
Height
6'2"
Weight
148 lbs out of Armor, 205 ready for combat.
Belief/Deity
Torm, the True
Ruled Locations
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