Lyssandra

The Palace of Aravia is no stranger to the beautiful and the powerful. Once in a dozen centuries, however, there may come an Elf who’s beauty and power exceeds that even of their fellows. With royal blood and highly promising magical talent, Lyssandra was bound to have her name carved into the palace’s hall of heroes. As a youth, she was praised for her fair features and elegant manners. While other children spent their time playing, she frequented the hospitals and delivered flowers she had helped grow to the sick. In the gardens, florists prized her budding magic that encouraged flowers to bloom boldly and swiftly, but as an adult Lyssandra chose to dedicate her powers to the restorative arts and trained with Aravia’s healers. She wished to help the sick far more directly. Years passed, yet Lyssandra never seemed any closer to graduating from apprenticeship as her peers did. No matter her devotion to learning and drive to achieve, her raw magic could not be molded into the powers of a healer. She could not mend the injured or cure the ill, and the pride her family held for her faded. Desperate, Lyssandra trained in her every waking hour and pushed her powers to their limits in the privacy of her chambers. She experimented with diseased plants and rodents. She never grew close to her desired results. Withered leaves would not rehydrate and mice would not recover their health. Her only successes remained in how quickly she could nurture a seed to sprout. The night she had felt closest to defeat, when she was prepared to give up her dreams, was when she realized her true potential. After what felt like hours toiling over her experiments, Lyssandra stormed from her chambers to find a new specimen for her research, only to find that mere minutes had passed. Perplexed by this phenomenon, Lyssandra investigated further and discovered a pattern between her perceived time and that of others. When she focused her magic, the world seemed to slow. Or rather, her relative time sped up. Small though her influence was on something as vast as time, Lyssandra’s powers allowed her to distort the it for herself and other living beings, such as helping a plant to mature as if a season had passed in the span of a few hours. Seeing the potential of such a gift, Lyssandra’s family encouraged her to master her abilities and focus on how they might serve Aravia on the battlefield. Lyssandra was made to attend training drills where she would extend her power to effect ranks of soldiers. She could reliably support small groups, slowing their passage of time and making them appear to their foes as dazzling blurs, or contrarily speed a foe’s relative time and trap them in languid motion to render them easy targets. Great as this feat was, it was never enough for Lyssandra’s family. They pressed her to train harder, claiming they’d never be satisfied until she could affect an entire army’s experience of time. All save the kingdom’s ruler criticized her efforts, who watched Lyssandra’s growing power with quiet pleasure. When skirmishes between High Elves and Demonspawn broke out along Aravia’s borders, the monarch bid Lyssandra to accompany a force of the kingdom’s finest warriors to put her abilities to the test. One did not need an army of blades when a swift, masterful few would do, Their Majesty reasoned. On the eve of her first battle, Lyssandra was sick with fear, and her companions berated her pitiful trembling and bemoaned she would surely be a liability on the battlefield. The following day, when steel clashed and bodies fell, Lyssandra wished to use her powers to flee. But when she saw a Demonspawn preparing to strike one of her companions in the back, she instead slowed the monster and shouted a warning to her ally. The warrior cut through his opponent and spun around. Before him was his attacker, seemingly all but frozen. The Elf sliced the monster in two. In that moment, Lyssandra’s strengths became apparent to her fellows. After every raid they were sent to quell, the warriors shared tales of how they had once feared battle, yet no longer did. They invited Lyssandra to sit around their fires at night and shared food and merriment, and trained her to perfect her fighting techniques. Soon, stories of an unstoppable Elven detachment were rife and Lyssandra had forged an unbreakable bond with her fellow warriors. Lyssandra’s skills have only improved over time, and with experience she became one of Aravia’s greatest generals. A graceful leader, she does not shun the meek or cowardly, but bestows upon them a power to inspire their hearts and fight on knowing they can overcome their fears as she did. She knows that with the right support and motivation, anyone can become a great warrior.