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Silas "Bad Eye" Elaro
"A soldier with a metal arm? You must have seen such despair in the world, yes?" -Agaia Greenteeth in the guise of Maya Gai'oona
Born to a bureaucrat mother and guard captain father, he grew up with a healthy respect for civilization's trappings. Perluxian life for the long lived and properly respectful wasn't hard. When childhood ended, Silas showed no particular magical talent or drive to delve into the arcane, nor did he have the fortune of being landed nobility. So it was either the town guard, the hierarchy administration, a wanderers life or enlistment. Showing no inclination to follow his parents and certainly no fascination with being a vagabond, Silas reported to the nearest Hierarchy garrison to enlist. He struggled with the physical aspects of his training but showed an aptitude for ranged warfare and an inventive mind. He quickly took to the bow (as expected for Elvenkind) and quickly found himself in a unit of a competent formation of ranged fighters.
Minor scrapes and deployments set the tone for Silas' early and middle service to the Hierarchy, eventually rising to command various squads over this phase of his career. Amongst the officer corps he gained a reputation for being a solid choice for a non-commissioned officer. Over the course of a long career, it was inevitable that certain events would come to be defining personal moments.
Upon receiving orders to travel to the Hierarchy's High Command, Silas was given an assignment, simple in concept: Field test the new kind of small man portable cannons with the academics and arcanists. Report back on their effectiveness and ability to replace the bow as the primary ranged weapon issued to soldiers. After a few weeks of being shown how these new weapons worked, how to maintain them, and create ammunition for them, SIlas was to apply his knowledge in the practical manner.
Shortly before the disappearance of the Fog and the coming of the Yuan Ti, it became known that a combination of adventurers, a violent sect of religious warriors, and the Shadehand had funded and built a flying battleship. This threat to Hierarchy supremacy could not be left to stand, Silas' men were ordered to seek out and eliminate the threat. What followed was a costly success.
Silas and the crew of the airship had kept watch from the top deck for weeks as they searched the Perluxian mainland for the enemy skyship. One clear summer morning, the ship's captain spotted a bone white and brass colored armored craft rising lazily out of a forest clearing. Deciding that there was no reason to wait, the Hierarchy airship captain ordered an immediate attack. As the hierarchy airship closed in, the enemy the craft turned to present its side to Silas' ship. Soon the whizzing and hard impacts of the enemy craft's weapons began to get to the soldiers waiting nervously for action. After what seemed an eternity but was likely only 3 minutes, a skyship officer relayed to Silas that the distance had closed enough for the First to make their presence known.
Lore:
During the Epoch of Light, an elven woman on the precipice of ascending to godhood, had foreseen the coming Dawn War. She saw the destruction that would be wrought from the battles between gods and primoridals. If she could complete her ascension in time and perform a great ritual that she saw in her mind's eye, she could prevent it all. After succeeding in her ascension, the new goddess found fifty-two souls with enough will and power to channel her magic during the ritual. Only the thirteen with the greatest arcane sensitivity would actively participate and it was they who had actually selected the other thirty-nine who would remain unknowing conduits of the magic.
The ritual began, and at first the fledgling goddess felt it working, but just after the point of no return she sensed treachery among the thirteen. They sought to siphon the goddess's power for themselves and had sabotaged the ritual by choosing the thirty-nine most treacherous souls they could divine. She aborted the ritual, at great cost to herself, and her divine form was twisted in the arcane backfire. The young goddess' mind had been shattered and history would now know her only as the Raven Queen. She resides in the Fell, and collects memories and mementos from various beings and stores them away. Which leads some scholars in the ages since, to argue about there being a purpose to her collection, or if she is just insane.
As for the thirteen arcane savants who betrayed her, she transformed them into the Nagpa and cursed them to be eternal scavengers of what is left behind. Their only way to gain power of their own accord is to rummage in the ruins of fallen cultures. The treacherous souls they recruited were also cursed. Every three were fused into a single undead monster, a Skull Lord, and set loose in the Fell to eternally squabble with each other over territory while simultaneously betraying themselves at every turn.
The Crowwitch Maugosma is one of the cursed thirteen, whom some ancient texts refer to as the "Thirteen of the Rift". She is a Nagpa who resides in the city of The Derelict, at the center of the Decrepid Saltwastes, within the Shadowfell. She, like the other Nagpa, hides from the Raven Queen while eternally seeking artifacts of great power. The Derelict serves her purposes well as since the curse, the Skull Lords have grown in strength enough that their evil obscures her own, and The Derelict is currently ruled by the Skull Lord known as Chamberlin Skexin. She works out of sight of the Raven Queen, hoping to one day take over The Derelict and use it as a bastion of power from which she could challenge the Raven Queen.