Lydia the Deathsiren

The Dreamwalker. It is unclear whether he wanted the War of the Elves to happen, or if he merely supplied all the necessary tools and encouragement to make it possible. He certainly did not act alone – indeed, the Dreamwalker did nothing more than answer questions. It was his answers which latched into the psyche of so many Elves, and drew the Aravians apart like fishhooks pulling open a wound. No Elf asked as many questions of the Dreamwalker as Princess Lydia, daughter of the then Elven king. Lydia was the youngest of her siblings, and she believed her distance from the throne insulated her from responsibility. She felt free to pursue paths considered by many Elves to be forbidden, and to consort with those a 'proper' Elf would find detestable. When the Dreamwalker began his visitations of the sleeping Elves of Aravia, Lydia was one of the first to listen. When the movement whose members would come to be called the Dark Elves crept into existence, she became its loudest mouthpiece, advocating with all the authority of royalty. When the rumors of shadow magic became too many to deny, Lydia was the first to admit that they were true, and argued that shadow magic was not the evil that so many claimed it to be. When the King of the Elves called a Conclave to resolve the Dreamwalker issue, Lydia was there, standing against her own father and siblings to defend the people who were in no small part her own. Her advocacy was so ardent, even when faced with accusations of necromancy, that she was eventually given the name Deathsiren – her song of rebellion and injustice was sweet, but it would prove deadly, for war followed the Conclave. In the conflict, Lydia fought for the Dark Elves. She solidified herself as one of the deadliest and most dangerous commanders of the war and destroyed all remaining ties to her family. When a second Conclave was held to try to end the war, Lydia was one of the loudest voices calling for formal separation between the Dark Elves and Aravian loyalists. When the two sides agreed, she led the largest group of Dark Elves into the cruel Durham Forest, head held high, intent on building a better society than what she saw as the corrupt and stagnant Aravia that she left behind. At this point, Lydia's tale transitions from history to pure speculation. While she was seen by some as the Queen of the Dark Elves, she did not unify her people. Factionalism split the Dark Elves into dozens of different settlements, and their decline from righteous revolutionaries to chaotic anarchists left the Deathsiren's influence smaller and smaller as the years went by. Eventually she vanished entirely, never to be seen again – not even by those who depended on her vision of the future to guide them. Without a guiding hope and trapped in a highly dangerous forest, the Dark Elves twisted into a people who believed in only one truth: the weak are meat, and the strong do eat. Many ask what became of Lydia. Her mastery of magic and warfare should have made her one of the strongest warlords of the Dark Elves – if she could not do so through peaceful means, then she could have carved a swathe through Durham Forest and united its denizens by the sword, but instead she faded into myth. Many speculate that she did so by choice, but they cannot conceive of why. A few say that Lydia still lives. Even hundreds of years after the War of the Elves, rumors of the Deathsiren linger – huddled Dark Elves talk of dark magic and powerful witchcraft under the boughs of darkest Durham, or sometimes even sightings. But the sightings are strange: they say she has black wings, webbed with violent crimson energy. They claim she is a Demonspawn – an agent of Siroth. Was she a servant of the Lord of Shadow all along? Another pawn of the Dreamwalker? Was Princess Lydia the innocent she claimed to be in the Conclaves, or a collaborator with evil? Are sightings of her even real, or are they merely the wishful thinking of a people who lost their guiding light? The Dark Elves may never know the truth. That the Deathsiren does still live, and she does now serve a higher master – one whose goals are as murky as the shadows of Durham. Whether she will come to save her people, or damn them, remains a mystery.