How Elgaladwen came to Dwell in Xenobia

            I have not seen the home where I was born for many, many decades… Nor have I seen my family for almost as long. This I know: I had a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister. I have learned since that none of them roam the confines of this world any longer.

I hardly knew my brother and sister; I was much older than them, by nearly two hundred years.  I left home long before they were born; I left to learn herb-lore, to become familiar with any and all ways of healing, and to, if possible, become a high-priestess of the Druidic Order, thereby devoting my live to that art and ritual. I had planed to return to my village, once I thought my training to be complete. I wanted to become the healer, for my mother was the village healer, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps, and become even better at the art. I also wanted to lead those in my village spiritually. As it turned out, I was not able to help the village at all.

I did return to the village once. It was near the end of my training, (Though truly no one ever halts in life’s training.) and the village had changed, though not fearfully much. I was glad to meet my siblings, which were both young, even by human standards. It is heavy on my heart that they had to die so, and oh, how I miss them! I taught my sister to create simple mixes with herbs. Ones to induce sleep, others to wake… She was young, so young… My brother could have been great, too. When I last saw him, he was already training in weaponry. I showed him what I knew of fighting with staves.

I should never have left… There would have been nothing I could have done, probably, except have my powers stripped by the mage, and get raped by the raiders, but I still wish I could have made their destruction harder. I left for six months, such a short time. I came back, and found nothing. Not a single whole house, or even a wall was left. This thriving village that had been in this spot for centuries was quite suddenly gone. The only things left were the remains of what were once people. Skulls, decaying flesh, charred bones, and bits of hair that swayed gently in the wind as though life was within them still… To this day, the sight of death and decay anger me beyond words. The only bodies that I want to see are of those who kill for no reason, and who upset the basic balance of life; weather the claim to be evil, or good. Those are the ones who deserve to be corpses, and nothing more.

I found out what had happened from a neighboring village. A small boy had wormed his way out of our village during the attack, suffering grave injuries in the process, only to die despite the attempts of the village healer. Before he was claimed by death, however, he told of the horrors that he had seen. Human raiders, not so horrific in themselves, but horrific in the fact that they were accompanied by a very powerful mage, leaving all of my people, and all of my family powerless to do anything to save themselves. I would have thought the village could pull together, if only it had not been such a surprise… I had a hatred for humans for a very long time, even after I came to Xenobia. I must have sounded arrogant indeed the way I spoke of them.

After visiting the neighboring village, I returned to the spot where my village had stood, one last time. I did the only thing I could do; I healed the charred, blackened ground. I poured all of my energy into making the soil fertile, and into coaxing tiny flowers, and long vines grow over the bones of my kin. I uttered prayers to bless that spot, and let their souls rest in relative tranquility. I do hope it worked…

My name was not always Elgaladwen. That was the name my mentor gave to me, after my fondness of being under the stars. Wilrayn was her name; it was she who taught me most of what I know, and she who listened to my untamed laments after the village was gone. It was then that she gave me my name, and advised me to start a new life. I would rather have stayed with her, at the time, in her small house in the woods. It was so serene, so perfect. Much like the Sylven woods that grace our land here. Wilrayn would have none of me staying. She said that she saw great things in my future. I doubted it then, and I still do to a degree, but one never truly knows what might happen. I took what things I had, and traveled to the largest city in out area. I lived there for many years, offering my skills in healing in return for small amounts of gold. I watched the ships leave from the port that was close to my home, and wondered always what lands were beyond the sea.

I knew this life was going nowhere for me, so I paid my gold to a ship’s captain, and left on a ship bound West. West we went for three months, until we arrived at a land quite unlike the land where I had come from. One of the sailors, a kindly man, who I had been peppering with questions about this new land, told me it was called Xenobia, and we had landed in the port of a city called Oceancrest. The city was wonderful, it was cleaner, and more pleasing to the senses than any city I had yet been to.

I learned that a city to the north was the major trade center of the region, so it was there that I headed. I was surprised at the number of peoples who called this area home, never before had I seen this many races living together. There was tension, but between the races themselves, there were not full-out wars of hate crimes, as I had seen else ware.

Further north, was the place that made up my mind to stay in Xenobia. The Sylvan Woods was like another world. The wondrous smell of the wet earth, and young leaves; The feel of the warm sunlight, filtering bright green, through the upper foliage of the trees; The wise, gnarled trunks, rough to the touch; The sounds of the birds, and the whispering of the conversations of trees, the occasional leaf drifting from the heights, through the pure, clean air. It was and is perfection itself. It was here that I met others of my faith, and it is here that I now call home.