#the emberlight

[izulde]

I actually managed to visit the Emberlight on my last trip to Alberta. The mist is not the Fade, but smoke from forest fires in BC. 

[izulde]

The Emberlight is a long sprawling province of the Kingdom of Quel’Thalas, found within the most southern reaches of the Ghostlands. Nestled into the Amani Mountains, the Emberlight is a series of valleys and pine vales that stretch from the heart of the Ghostlands to the Forbidding Sea. It is a land of misty mountain passes, tall gray pines, roaring waterfalls, and haunted forests. The name of the province comes from the consistently overcast skies and the harsh winters. Unlike other provinces of Quel’Thalas, the Emberlight is not blessed with eternal spring.

[thegildedlady]

A Challenge

It had scarcely been two days since Ciaragan arrived at the Netherholde, and she already knew she should not stay any longer. The Bishop was officially the guest of its overlord,  Izulde Netherstar, and had tried her best to make herself comfortable in the sprawling fortress during her brief stay, although that was proving harder than it looked. 

While she and Lord Netherstar talked about whether or not his house would play a role in her latest project, they also discussed the Emberlight as a whole, and the pieces that make it up. She would need to know as much as possible about the houses within the Emberlight if she planned to approach them with the same request she had proposed to House Netherstar. She already had some experience with House Blacksun- Ciaragan herself fought to defend the Blacksun Gate, and recalled with great ease the strength and tenacity of its soldiers. Lord Netherstar had mentioned the hydromancers and sea-gods of House Blacksquall, and the Bishop mentally noted to scratch them off her list. She wasn’t a fan of the sea, or any gods therein, and wasn’t about to try her luck in unfamiliar territory. Then of course there was House Silverdawn and their lynx. This house seemed more reasonable than the last but still would be a hard sell. Nothing in the Emberlight was easy or without complication, and Ciaragan hadn’t expected it to be any other way. Still, if you begin with your toughest challenges, you’ll appreciate completing them more, and will find rewards in easier tasks. Or at least that’s what she told herself.

Although the head of House Netherstar had been a very gracious host to her, Ciaragan was still unnerved by her role as ‘guest’ in a noble house. She had observed the pleasantries of court, toured what she could of the decadent grounds, partaken in delicious meals, and briefly glimpsed what the life of nobility could be like, but it had all brought back a flood of memories she had been so rudely reminded of just days before thanks to the Spectre’s sharp tongue. Ciaragan had wanted all of these things for herself once, a long time ago. She wanted to be so much more than a poor farmer’s daughter living far, far away from the city. She wanted to be like the aristocrats that she saw during festival season, some of which- in retrospect- may have belonged to House Netherstar. Partaking in it now- now that she had built a name for herself from nothing felt... wrong. It was as enticing as it was terrifying, for she saw how easily she was swept away by a world she was never meant to be in. It was time to get serious again.

Setting forward on the path which lead north into the mountains, the Bishop and her small traveling party made their way towards Lynx Home and House Silverdawn. The trek through the mountains wouldn’t be an easy one, but again- nothing in the Emberlight was.

@felthier and @jessipalooza for mentions 

[starcunning]

By request! felthier / izulde Also mentioned: forever-afk, shirexia, baenling

—————

If Iphrea Blacksun had poured honey in one ear, Vaelrin Firestorm had whispered poison in the other. And Solyaris had sense enough to know a shrewd player when she heard of one—there was little doubt Izulde Netherstar was exactly that.

If she had not been born in the southern reaches of Quel’thalas, she had grown in its soil and reached toward its tempered sunlight just as the poplar saplings rising in the ashes of groves that once were. By the time she became Solyaris Ashveil, she deserved it; it seemed to her if Izulde Netherstar came too recently by his rain-wracked holdings, he likely deserved them, as well. Still, for all the favor Iphrea had shown her, an audience with her liege-lord was never among such things.

Not ’til Iphrea Blacksun stood on the shore of Perihelion and asked her friend to come to the defense of her homeland. Solyaris had agreed readily—too readily, with a reach beyond what she truly commanded, so certain that Vaelrin would deny her nothing. He rarely did, after all.

Still, in the end it was Iphrea whose entreaty moved Lord Firestorm to the defense of the Emberlight, where his bride’s father reigned. And when she retired herself to sleep aboard the Cursed Revenge, Solyaris and Vaelrin remained above, discussing how best to loose the snares that entrapped him. She would learn later that Exarius Blazewing had been employed to the same end.

When, a few days later, Solyaris saw them all adjourned to the Netherstar-Blacksun war camp, the Magistrix was not glad of the threat to the Emberlight, but for the opportunity to take the measure of a stranger she already considered an enemy.

She flew on his orders to protect a Shrine of Belore, and would be glad to remember nothing more of that night. Only there was too much that pressed on her: the lich that had slain the acolytes of the Eternal Sun and the rage it had stirred in Iphrea’s breast; how ready she had been to give the last breath of her lungs to protect the daughter of the Blacksun; and how it had not been the Twin Suns that had fallen, but Firestorm himself. She remembered how the sun’s flame had welled in her then, and when it had left her, how hollow and ashen and dead she had been inside.

Thus harrowed, she had her first opportunity to speak with the Lord of the Emberlight. “Cidifus is dead,” she had greeted him. “His acolytes are dead.” It was not the most auspicious of beginnings, but fatigue and anxiety had robbed her tongue of all its politeness. “My heart,” Izulde named the dead man then; “my teacher, my brother.” What followed was a cruel illumination: the Sunguard had failed Netherstar, and if Izulde had lost a man he esteemed enough to name kin, another had resurfaced: a haunt that profaned the body of some other brother. Solyaris wondered which of them Lord Netherstar had regarded as a truer relation. She felt for him a pang of sympathy. “Would that we had served you better, Lord Netherstar,” she said, and was surprised to realize she meant it—and not for the reasons which stirred most obviously within her breast. Vaelrin was suffering, to be sure, but there was no Dawnmender in their cadre who could mend the blow dealt at the Shrine of Belore, nor the wounds that had shattered the blood mage’s early composure. “Serve me in the morning,” he commanded. “That shall be our truest test of resolve. Please, leave me to mourn my dear friend.” Such a gentle request she could not ignore.

When the reveille sounded to muster the Sunguard once more, Solyaris found she had slept little enough, and had to rely on other means to find peace: in the words of her Archon, and those of the Ranger-Captain, when he was lucid enough to give them. In the words she had put to paper to call Vaelrin’s family to his side; in the quiet strength of Shadenii Firestorm, who she found she admired.

But she had pledged her aid in this battle, and with tired eyes she went. If Izulde Netherstar’s words the night before had been gentle enough, his action upon the battlefield displayed the full force of his fury: at the invasion of his homeland; at the loss of the shrine; at the coming of the mandrakes. At the death of Cidifus Dawnspeaker. Never trained in the paths of blood magic herself, Solyaris nevertheless knew a potent mage when she saw one—and Izulde Netherstar was that, and a deadly and shrewd commander of his loyal forces. He acquitted himself well in the defense of his homeland.

And when the battle was ended, he came to the infirmary to call upon his son-in-law. He made a liar of the Magistrix in his coming, who had sworn to keep him from Vaelrin’s bedside. “It pains me to see you like this, regardless of our past,” Izulde Netherstar said to the injured Captain, and Solyaris found she believed him. And with a few words more, the Lord of the Emberlight made it clear he was aware of the reasons Lightward Ashveil had been so difficult to part from Ranger-Captain Firestorm’s bedside—reasons that had little to do with the medical reports she was dutifully filing under the Archon’s supposed injunction. “See if the Dawnward has made some progress” was an order that allowed a great deal of latitude, after all. “I’ll let you know if anything changes” was a promise that served Solyaris’ own needs as much as the Sunguard’s.

Still, Netherstar knew her for what she was, and she had lifted her chin with cold hauteur, but the imprecations she might have expected never came. “If her presence will accellerate your healing,” he said, “then let her sit beside you.” He spoke of her as though she was absent, ’til he said “I came to thank you both for your service.” It was little enough.

It was more than she expected.

“I was honored to serve,” she said, but when Izulde Netherstar left the room and Solyaris went to write another urgent letter to Exarius, it was less to do with the fact that the intelligence the rogue would sell the Lord of the Emberlight was outmoded, and more to do with the fact that at least she knew what to do with Exarius: hate him, and not let that hate be tempered by pity.

If she had come to the Emberlight to measure a monster, why had she only found a man?

[starcunning]

As a resident of southern Quel'Thalas, did Solyaris have an opinion of the people of the Emberlight prior to fighting a battle there?

Solyaris lives on the western coast, some distance away from the Emberlight, so the concerns of that region have not always been her own. Too, they have distinctive cultures. However, her connections through others to that region did offer her some insight.

Solyaris and Iphrea Blacksun met a decade ago, when both were defending Silvermoon City from the coming Scourge. That shared service blossomed into a deeper bond of friendship, so for many years, even as an outsider, Solyaris saw the Emberlight through the lens of Iphrea’s experience. While this had not made her privy to all the land’s secrets, it has lent her some insight into certain matters—the praxis of the Priests of Belore was an occasional topic of discussion between them, and Solyaris knew some surface-level detail about that (just as Iphrea is privy to some surface-level understanding of the Mysteries).

Solyaris also understands somewhat about the Blacksuns, and the seriousness of the causes they dedicate themselves to—it is no accident, therefore, that when Iphrea wrote to tell her friend she was taking service with the Sunguard, Solyaris herself began making inquiries that would eventually lead her to do the same.

Which led her, eventually, to her other source of insight to the Emberlight: Vaelrin Firestorm. Shallowbrook is no closer to the Emberlight than the Veil was (in fact, it borders her enclave to the north), but Vaelrin had personal dealings with the ruling Lord, Izulde Netherstar. Thanks to Vaelrin’s opinions, when Solyaris did ride to the defense of the Emberlight (at Iphrea’s request, ultimately—as did Vaelrin), she was laden with a great deal of expectations where Izulde was concerned.

Most of them turned out to be misplaced.

[izulde]

Mandrakes, are the product of the curse of the Emberlight in full fruition. As the elves of the vale die, their spirits are cursed to wander the haunted forests of the Emberlight for eternity unless guided into the afterlife by the Priests of Belore. Most funeral rituals include a priest performing a rite of passage, and guide a lingering spirit into the void. For the unfortunate souls that cannot be guided, their spirits will continue to haunt the Emberlight itself. The longer they haunt the more corrupt the spirit becomes.

Over time, these spirits will turn into beings of malice and hate of all living things. It could be that they are envious of the life they once had or that the very land itself seeps a latent evil. Soon these spirits will attach themselves onto a living person and slowly begin to consume their minds. Most victims are unknowing that they are being haunted, but as their dreams turn into nightmares, and their thoughts are consumed with malicious intent, the victim would easily know they are a slowly being consumed. By then it’s too late.

Soon the spirit overwhelms the person and binds itself to their soul. What happens next is impossible to explain, but that person is forever changed and they are born into the world as a Mandrake. Their hair is rumored to become bone white and their eyes solid red. It’s not known if the spirit completely takes over its host, or that its corrupting influence binds the person together. What is known, Mandrakes are scourges of the living and their immortal lives are spent bringing nothing but pain into the world.

[felthier]

The Emberlight, before I start adding in the towns.

Key things to note:

The tight narrow pass in the center is where the Blacksun Gate will sit. The large plains to the east of the gate are the holdings of House Netherstar. To the north is a large wooded clearing is House Silverdawn (New!) makes their seat. 

To the south you will see the blighted vales of Zul'Gamni, a northern province of Zul'Aman. 

[thesunguardmg]

The Emberlight is a cold and dark place. Nestled into the great peaks of the Amani Mountains, this vale has been the home of several highborne houses since the founding Quel'Thalas. Here the pragmatic, ruthless, and cunning House Netherstar have their seat. Their people are elusive and dangerous. Weary of foreigners, they hold little loyalty to the Regent Lord in Silvermoon. Instead they follow zealously to the noble houses that have kept them safe for countless years. A gaunt and slender people, the Netherstars have always made excellent pyromancers and spellbreakers, and even more so are prized for their cut-throat politicking. 

As more geographically part of Zul Aman than Quel'Thalas, the elves of the Emberlight have continued to war against the amani trolls to the south. To defend themselves they have erected a great gate in the narrowest place of the vale. This massive fortress is the home of the militaristic House Blacksun which has guarded the inner vales of the Emberlight for centuries. The Blacksuns are close images to the Highborne of Queen Azshara's court and kept their spirited silvery hair. Eight out of ten Blacksun children are women, and they pride greatly in their beauty. Make no mistake, the warrior women of House Blacksun are some of Quel'Thalas most prized warriors. Men who marry a Blacksun girl normally take the name of their spouse.