Ruella

Ruella has felled many foes with her savage bow of bone and sinew, but if one expands the profile of her lethality to include all the kills of those who learned archery under her tutelage, the number is truly staggering. That is why Ruella was among the Mikage Autocracy’s most hated foes during the years of turmoil that led to the ultimate downfall of their state. As one of the first agents sent by the Sylvan Court to intervene in the ongoing rebellion, she furthermore became a symbol to the Mikage Autocrats of the Sylvan’s infuriating meddling. Ruella first won recognition leading a contingent of Shadowbows and Pathfinders patrolling the Mistwood’s borderlands. Ordered to stop the predation of Lizardmen reavers from the Lost Isles, she thwarted their raids repeatedly, and was successful enough to make grisly armor and a lizard-bone bow from the bodies of her slain foes. When she clashed against the Lizardmen one final time clad in their kin’s remains, they were suitably horrified into a rapid retreat. Her success led the Sylvan Court to choose her as a vanguard of their intervention in the Shadowkin rebellion, and dispatch her and her warriors to southern Yakai. In her first action there, Ruella saw swarms of poorly-trained, lightly-armored, and inexperienced rebel levies trying, and failing, to break through a line of disciplined Mikage warriors and their shrewd leaders. These commanders were first to fall before Ruella’s volley of incredibly precise shots, and as rebels and oppressors alike reacted to the appearance of the Elf and her detachment, the Sylvan dashed away and repositioned. The chaos they sowed helped the rebels break apart the enemy formation and overrun it. Tired but triumphant, Ruella stood before the rebels and offered her service. Her performance had won the trust of those present, but the most influential rebel organizers took longer to persuade. Each one wished her to prove her loyalty with Mikage blood, which she readily supplied in a series of further battles. It became clear that she was an excellent field leader, and soon she was attached to companies of rebel archers. Here, Ruella truly shone. She turned the rebel archery corps from a gaggle of duck hunters, hobbyists, and elderly retired soldiers into a fighting force to match or exceed their Mikage counterparts. Years of insurrection passed and more Sylvan arrived in Yakai to support the rebels. But, even as it became clear the Shadowkin would prevail, Ruella grew bored with her tutelary role. She was also suffering from her prolonged absence from the Mistwood, which caused her connection to the great Rhythm – the shared emotional awareness that defines the Sylvan – to diminish. Homesickness clutched her heart in an intense, unique way no non-Sylvan could comprehend. Yet she was duty-bound, and came to have great personal investment in the rebels’ cause and ideals. So she endured. Finally, the last of the Autocrats still loyal to Siroth was overthrown and Ruella was recalled to Nyresa. But the Rhythm she reconnected to was not as it had been before the war. A subtle pulse of militaristic aggression ran through it, mingling with and amplifying her lingering personal frustrations at having missed out on battlefield glory in Yakai. Though only just returned from years of strife, she departed on an expedition to punish her old foes, the Lizardmen of the Lost Isles, despite advanced age beginning to tell upon her. But enroute she vanished at sea, her fate uncertain to this day.