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NAME. Evanuris AGE & BIRTH DATE. Ancient & Unknown GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/Her SPECIES. Daemonfey ( Drider ) OCCUPATION. HandmaidenFACE CLAIM. Natalie Kelley

BIOGRAPHY

( tw: death, violence, war ) The silver sands of the Evermeet Isles were where Evanuris was raised, the shores of this tropical paradise were the pinnacle of elven innovation. Home of the Miyetari’s Royal Empire, the proud Sun Elves were among the most expansive, their Celestial father Saelethil had hoarded power for generations. Evanuris was the youngest of Saelethil’s twelve daughters, of the Sun Elves the Miyetari were at the pinnacle of achievement, blessed patrons of Hemera and Aether, their glories were without bounds. When Evanuris was small her sister took her to the docks, to watch the fleet sail away to achieve more success in the Miyetari name; an endless point of pride, Evanuris imagined the sort of stories that her father would tell her—romantic notions of battle, conquest, intrigue, and mystery.

There were few differences between Evanuris and her sisters, at least physically. Beauty was everyday on Evermeet Isles, among the Miyetari and the noble houses beneath them, Evanuris was doted on and given every advantage. The condition for this was politeness and manners, sitting perfectly still, speaking only when spoken to, and always smiling without being prompted. Architecturally the illustrious isles had been raised from the sea via magic, the structures were of the purest crystalline design and carved from raw aether itself. Her Kingly father was magnanimous and generous, the nobility of the isles wanted for nothing and were free to travel to and from as they saw fit. Evanuris was raised on their successes and tales of their lessers, the noble houses beneath them, and the rivals within their own Sun Court. The Miyetari Empire was vast, but they weren’t without enemies—the house of Vyshaan among them, with the celestial Queen Sune at its illustrious head. The Vyshaanti were their greatest competitors, though Evanuris’ youth consisted of diplomatic exchanges, playful interactions, and events hosted by the Evermeet Isles so that Saelethil could lord his power over the House of Vyshaan.

Evanuris’ grew in posterity and strength, a curious mind who lived between the endless stacks of books that doted the great house. Within them was filled with the rich history of the elves, a more fanciful story that painted the illustrious Seldarine as the greatest of noble heroes. Their power was their inheritance. Evanuris watched, and her sisters occasionally sneaked out to the barracks to watch the royal guards as they practiced their great magic or potent techniques. Neither Evanuris, her sisters, nor their mother were permitted to train in such matters; their royal birth and status prevented it. Made the entire notion quite foolish, why would they ever need to learn how to fight when the Isles and Saelethil provided them with so much protection?

Elsewhere from distant realms under the Miyetari’s Sun empire were great vessels, new inventions, and potent new spells. Revenants and subjugated spirits. Guarded at all hours by Protectorate Aasimar, even in solitude Evanuris was never alone; in her daydreams, though she would be worlds away. She’d be in a laboratory welding bright and shiny new concepts together, or at the depths of the sea discovering new species of fey life. Evanuris’ mind would transport across the Astral Sea, to a faraway world that was entirely new. A battlefield somewhere, something romantic where Evanuris would be the heroine of her story or perhaps another’s story.

Evanuris was still shy of her prime when she met a noble son of a family upon the isle, he was kind, and generous, and the pair enjoyed each other’s company. Klaerwyn, was her friend and nothing more but Evanuris’ father wouldn’t tolerate this; like with so many things she was forbidden from spending time with him. She would someday enter a marriage that was political in nature, something that furthered their position and further solidified the strength of the Miyetari Empire. Saelethil had designs on the Seldarine, he wished to deify himself and the breadth of his power had brought him so close to achieving a goal that was tens of thousands of years in the making.

Over the years Evanuris continued to see Klaerwyn in secret, she’d bribed the aasimar, Ashryn, charged with her protection and appealed to whatever humanity rested within the loyal and dignified soldier who’d followed her since birth. Evanuris watched as the eldest of her sisters married a woman that she did not even like, then next was made to marry a man that was more boar than person. The youngest of twelve, the final jewel in Saelethil’s perfect, matched set, there was no appeal to her mother, Imryll, there was no appeal to anyone. They were resolved to obey the edicts of the Empire, and Evanuris, too, was resigned to her fate.

Yet, Evanuris continued to rebel in some small way until Klaerwyn and Ashryn were gone one day. Saelethil arranged for Evanuris to serve as a Handmaiden, he presented it as a gift; this great boon was an opportunity for her to travel to another realm. Not even at her first century, Evanuris was still a child and could not see the sentencing for what it was. She was to be sent away from her family, friends, mentors, and everything she’d ever known in the wake of the sudden vanishment of those closest to her. Saelethil said that this was the nature of things; truly, Evanuris was inclined to believe him. She’d grown up knowing that there were many duties in their great empire and that serving elsewhere could be nothing but a privilege.

Evanuris boarded the vessel, unaware that she’d never see the silver sands of her home again. Her mother, Imryll, wept, and the sisters who remained behind darkened with a somber air that Evanuris could not place. This image would be ingrained in her mind, until she finally saw Saelethil again, and then for many more years to follow.

She was fated to serve at the hand of a woman her age, a young girl named Araushnee who, like her, was the heir to a celestial elve and his chosen patron. Aran was the starborn son of celestial parentage in the court of ascended Lunar Elves; their cold exterior was opposite to the nature of the Miyetari and her home on the Evermeet Isles. Their patron Sehanine Moonbow was a sacred patron, ancient and ephemeral, the Seldarine doted upon this particular house and wove a prophecy that someday it would be this great house that sparked the downfall of an empire. Araushnee was born from the union of the celestial Aran and the lover he’d married in secret, Iavas. Even in those early days, Evanuris saw the spark of what was more, the beginning of a spirit so different from that she’d known.

Araushnee and Evanuris were fast friends, in the quiet of the night they walked the world of a lunar empire. A moon that orbited a crystalline world below, cold and desolate, for all its beauty Evanuris thought that it appeared to be little more than a dead thing. When she’d ask after it, the generals would go quiet, but in the short hours, Araushnee whispered what she’d overheard her father speaking of. Death was the inheritance of the elves, that one did not ascend without the fall of not just a few, but many. Naturally, Evanuris did not believe it. Saelethil had achieved his power as a celestial by way of victory in wartime, she recited the noble passages of their history with an eagerness and a vigor that was indicative of a religious fervor.

The two grew into their maturity and Araushnee’s handmaidens each became friends, yet, when Evanuris sent word to her father for the chance to revisit her home, she was refused. Moon Gates connected the many realms together and for the elves they were free to travel; Araushnee was not raised in the same manner of Evanuris and when she was old enough, and with a proper escort, she had the agency to see the world as she wished. Evanuris spoke often of the prosperity of the Sun Court, their great empire was the product of virtues, hard work, and belief in a greater purpose. Araushnee introduced Evanuris to a different life.

Together, in secret, they traveled to a dying world. Under the guise of ordinary elven women without any virtuous name behind them, they were nothing more than refugees with tattered cloaks and worn clothes, they ventured towards the fringes of one of the Sun Empires’ many colonies. There was nothing illustrious about it, Evanuris saw her people living in squalor, she saw the airships and weapons of war bearing her house’s crest above; the next destination of their pilgrimage had them traveling a short way through the Astral, to a realm under the Sun Empire that had exhausted any use or purpose. Telperion towered into the sky, withered and dead, fruitless and stripped bare. What was once the ground was dead aetherite, pale, and crystalline; within were the bones of a realm’s worth of elven blood. Evanuris had known the name of this domain, though she’d not known that it had simply fallen from the world tree. Araushnee explained that in time, a new realm would grow in its place, a new home for elves to dwell upon, cultivate, grow, thrive, and pour their song into. Evanuris knew this name because it had been where Saelethal had sent her oldest sister; a bargaining chip for a lesser house—a veiled promise of prosperity. Alongside her bones were that of Klaerwyn, her dear friend who’d been sentenced to die, and Ashryn, the aasimar who’d dared to disobey.

There was a reason why Araushnee was privy to this when so many Elves lived in ignorance, these secrets of the Seldarine were safely guarded and reserved for only the most ambitious and those that Corellon Larethian deemed worthy. Over the many years, there would be many rebellions as the truth of how to achieve godhood eventually spread, but Aran and Iavas’ uprising was the first. The Lunar Palace was their home, the first that was taken, and Evanuris stood excitedly at Araushnee’s side as a promised change swept over them. Hope was a dangerous thing though and the House of Vyshaan came to meet the rebels. Spirited away, Evanuris, Araushnee, and the handmaidens were not privy to what happened next, but in the years to follow they heard that the uprising was put down with brutal force. The moon they’d called home disappeared, and the aetherite realm below drifted into the Astral Sea.

It was Aran who’d encouraged Araushnee to wield a blade and to use the magic within her veins, Evanuris too, learned that there was significant power within her royal blood. All her life she’d believed herself unfit for battle beyond the idle dreams she’d had in her childhood, but the blade curved through the air like an extension of her being. Fire spilled from her tongue like she’d been born part dragon rather than the delicate porcelain doll her father labeled her as. Evanuris longed to return to Evermeet and to see her sisters again, to break her mother out of a marriage she only remained within for obligation’s sake. Where Aran’s rebellion had been brought down for its presence and sheer force, Araushnee was more cunning, and all the seeds she planted were to bring her closer and closer to the serpent’s head: Corellon Larethian and his pantheon were responsible for the deaths of so many. Some like Aran were born into divinity, others were chosen, and others like the Vyshaanti were fed it from birth, but those like the Miyetari stepped on countless to achieve it.

Together alongside Araushnee’s handmaidens, Evanuris weakened the Miyetari and fed the flames of rebellion as the young elve blossomed from celestial to divinity. A remarkable beauty, Corellon Larethian was taken by Araushnee; her grace, strength, and the celestial power that flowed through her veins. Among the Seldarine stood Saelethil and when Evanuris graced the shores of Arvandor she greeted him like the godly father that he was; offered him fealty and worship to feed the ego of the creature who was just arrogant enough to believe her. Many centuries divided Evanuris from her family now but her father appeared unchanged, if nothing else, he seemed all the more youthful. From Arvandor she could peer in on the many realms below and when the opportunity arose she turned her gaze towards the Evermeet Isles. With fresh, matured eyes, the silver sands seemed less illustrious; now when Evanuris gazed upon the realm she did not see the wonder that had built an empire, but the backs that her royal family stood upon. She pitied her sisters and motherless and hated her father even more.

Still, Evanuris had learned long ago to smile in the face of despair and to walk as if she were the very sun itself. Araushnee’s plot was quite simple, she’d risen into the ranks of the Seldarine and now permitted Corellon’s courtship; all that remained was for her to bring others to her side as well. Evanuris was at Araushnee’s bedside when Eilistraee was welcomed into the world, young and screaming, born with silver hair, she was a Godling that would someday come to be a protector of both women and the dark elves who sought freedom—a rebel after Araushnee’s own heart. Conspiratorial and resolved to whatever means were necessary, Evanuris followed Araushnee with religious fervor, alongside the other Handmaidens they aided in opening the doors of Arvandor to foreign Gods—ancient enemies in the form of The Great Old Ones and Elder Evils.

While Araushnee failed to kill Corellon Larethian, Evanuris did not fail to kill Saelethil. Her father was butchered in his bath, left in a pool of accursed ichor before Evanuris fed his essence to Araushnee as a tribute to the Weaver who’d done so much for her. Their rebellion sparked countless more across the continent, and the empires of the Lunar, Dawn, Sun, and Dusk courts began to quake as they trembled beneath the flames of uprising. Aasimar revolted, and the lesser species that had been subjugated began to break free as Giants and many more joined in rattling the foundations of the elven regime. With Saelethil’s death and Hemera’s departure from patronage, the Miyetari fell under the press of the House of Vyshaan and their patron of love, Sune.

Within the Abyss, Evanuris awoke. Her features changed as she stood as a dark elve; her loyalty to her Weaver had saved her from the sands of Death’s Duat and the fate of the Void that awaited her essence. Araushnee was abandoned, and a new deity stood in her place; dark, beautiful, and absolute. Lloth’s decree was organized chaos, where some saw her as evil, Evanuris saw her as the opportunist who would someday topple the Seldarine. A patron of dark elves, a Weaver of Fates, when Lloth leaned towards the Graeae, the Three Sisters listened.

Lloth gathered those jilted by the Gods, elves who swore vengeance in life came to stand among the proto-drow. Evanuris and her fellow handmaidens spoke the dogma from the demonweb pitts of the Abyss, they drew upon infernal magics and used them to wage war; though as the spellplague encroached across the continent it ravaged their forces. The blight would have returned to Lloth if the Handmaidens had not acted appropriately. Their army was culled, and Evanuris stood among the carnage and blood of it all. Daughter of an Emperor, daughter of a God, there was nothing romantic about the battle; that was a lesson she’d come to learn long ago. Evanuris watched men drown in their armor in fields of blood, and saw seasoned soldiers soil themselves as they went face to face with a towering giant. The vicious, cunning, and ambitious survived. Whatever was left of Evanuris that had been innocent had died when she’d resolved to butcher her father, when she’d committed patricide, and then deicide.

For her victory, Evanuris was given a boon; Lloth’s flesh saw the dark elve ascended as her royal blood married with the infernal power of the abyss. A daemonfey and a drider, a Handmaiden to serve at Lloth’s side as she descended into a self-induced Uthenera to protect herself. Evanuris never saw her sisters or the Evermeet Isles again; the Miyetari Empire crumbled and faded into obscurity, she was the last of her dead family line.

PERSONALITY

+ dogmatic, uncaring, fanatical – thoughtful, patient, sophisticated

PLAYED BY SHANE. EST. She/Her.

#takenc #takenf #the handmaiden #takendaemonfey

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