Thracen Valantir

Thracerian Valantir, known informally as Thracen or Thrace, is a former Blood Knight of Silvermoon, and once a commander in The Sunfire Vanguard. Since leaving the Order (and the regiment), he returned home to Fairbreeze Village, serving with the Tranquillien Farstriders as a healer and accompanying Ranger groups on their patrols through Quel'thalas.
His skin is pale enough to see the hints of blue veins beneath his cheeks - a legacy of many nights spent in the Ghostlands. Thracen would be more handsome if he smiled a little more often - with sincerity for a change - and if he could deal with people without always seeming distracted. Along the left side of his face, from earlobe to the corner of his mouth, is an ugly, jagged scar the thickness of two fingers. His left hand, the shield hand, is also unpleasantly scarred, the skin rough from where he was mauled by a wolf before he was able to slay the beast.
His lover is the Blood Knight Soraya Dwin'urdrenn, who lives with him in a modest house in Fairbreeze Village. She has remained part of Liadrin's Order, while Thracen has sought to reclaim some measure of his pre-war life. When he's not patrolling with the Farstriders, he works as a gardener for wealthy families, as well as aiding the restoration of flowers and trees around the Dead Scar.
==History==
All of the following information is available to those with access to the Blood Knight Order's archives, or an ear for gossip.
Thracen is the only son of parents who lived and worked in Fairbreeze Village before the Third War. His father was a carpenter, his mother was a bowyer - both working with the wood of the elven forests to shape into furniture and weapons, respectively. It was from his parents' professions that he inherited a habit of woodcarving, and worked for a handful of years as a toymaker, creating wooden puppets for the children of Fairbreeze.
====The Fall of Quel'Thalas====
In the years before the Lich King's attack on the Kingdom of the Sun, Thracen was working as a tutor, teaching the children of his village to read and write. He was a low-ranking member of the priesthood, which he joined out of a vague desire to learn healing magic that might serve him on a casual, practical basis. Most of his time was dedicated to his garden, and the cultivation of flowers both common to the Eversong and native to other parts of Azeroth. Although he's no herbalist, he has a broad knowledge of flowers and blooms.
After the war, his young wife left him after confessing she had fallen in love with another man - apparently a wealthy older mage of some repute, who shared many ambitions and interests with her. While Thracen never really mourned the failed romance, his former lover took their infant daughter with her. That's a loss that burns to this day.
====The Blood Knight Order====
When the Order was formed from warriors and priests throughout Quel'Thalas, Thracen eventually joined out of an ever-burning guilt. He found himself unable to continue living in the half-peace of the Eversong, while so many others were fighting for the Kingdom of the Sun. Against the advice of his mentor, the blind and ageing priest Cyrith Fallstar, he enlisted and joined the Order to be trained as a Blood Knight.
Throughout his training, Thracen remained more a priest than a fighter. His skills in battle were enough to pass the trials of knighthood, but he walked the path of a chaplain first and foremost: fighting alongside other Blood Knights and offering them spiritual counsel in matters of faith if they asked. He would also find himself ordered to watch his allies for signs of emotional weakness or moral corruption, and deal with them accordingly.
====The Sunfire Vanguard====
The event that saw him consigned to the Sunfire Vanguard came in one of the many moments of civil unrest that plagued Silvermoon City. In a riot of several hundred citizens, Thracen was separated from his regiment in his attempts to keep order. Always preferring to use a living horse rather than a summoned Thalassian charger, Thracen's steed, a mare called Keisha, was spooked by the crowd. She reared up, and her flashing hooves struck down a mother and young daughter.
At his trial, Thracen shouldered the blame for their deaths, and was sentenced to serve in the Sunfire Vanguard: a regiment that still remains banned from enforcing the law or acting officially within the walls of Silvermoon. In the wake of his trial and the circumstances of his crime, Thracen was denied regular meetings with his daughter, Jianna. 
==Recent Events==
While assigned to serve in Northrend, Thracen was one of the regimental commanders overseeing an increasingly 'mongrel' unit, with Forsaken allies and Horde mercenaries joining the Sunfire Vanguard over time.
He had a squire, Irana Azuredawn, who proved difficult to train and less than gifted at following his path as a priest and a chaplain. They became lovers for several months, which added to his failure as a trainer, and he eventually petitioned the Blood Knight Order to have Irana assigned to another master.
In the regiment itself, Thracen had few friends. He was often shy, occasionally awkward when face-to-face, and not a skilled conversationalist with people he didn't know well. Most of his time was spent on patrol, carving puppets to send home to Fairbreeze, or sketching the various scenes he witnesses as Vanguard advanced across Northrend. He was also gathering seeds where he could, and examining local flowers, in the hopes of growing Northrend's blooms in his garden despite the much warmer climate in the Eversong.
Thracen was quietly lonely, silently homesick, and wanted to believe all talk that the war against the Lich King would be over by Winter's Veil. As the conflict dragged on, while he was assigned to command the regiment's destroyer, the Skydancer, his patience broke, finally overriding his guilt. He resigned his commission once his sentence was served, and he returned home to Quel'thalas, where he has remained since.
===Character Traits===
*Thracen has a working knowledge of both Orcish and Gutterspeak, though many words still give him difficulty. Other characters are often interrupted and asked to use simpler words, so he can understand them.
*Thracen's raptor, Vol'rukh, was a gift from the Warsong Offensive. He can barely control it, and it hungrily stalks circles around the other members of his patrols when they stop to rest. In Northrend, Vol'rukh developed a taste for wolvar, which suited Thracen just fine after the furry vermin bastards killed his horse.
*Thracen never wears a helmet. The scar blighting his left cheek came from an axe-blow that crashed into the side of his helm, caving the metal in to ravage his face. Since then, he's been unable to wear a helm without involuntary trembling gripping his muscles.
*He suffers crippling headaches a handful of times a year, where the blood vessels in his brain swell to the point where he will lose his sight or fall unconscious for several days. These fits are calmed by a herbal remedy given to him by his mentor, Cyrith. These migraines are another legacy of the damage to his skull the last time he wore a helm.
*Thracen's daughter, Jianna, is now five years old. He is permitted to see her once or twice a month, though his duty in the Ghostlands limits even that. He writes to her often, with 'diluted' versions of the truth. For example, in Thracen's letters to Jianna, Alsuras is not a madman's walking corpse, but a slender elf who tells jokes all the time. He doesn't kill rats and eat them, he keeps them as pets.
*When in Silvermoon, Thracen sometimes visits the poorer sections of the city, offering his healing to the beggars, whores and impoverished souls who are unable (or might otherwise refuse) to attend to the temple.
==Opinions on Others==
Sithren Strifeheart: We are not judged in life purely for the evil we destroy. I'm not sure Sithren will ever understand that.
Lueianna Amalas: Questions, questions, questions. How can one little girl have so many cutting questions? The greatest mystery of the Sunfire Vanguard isn't how so many of us survived the Lich War. It's how this girl knew all our secrets, when we never saw her face, nor even learned her name.
Junka Blackscar: You cannot use honour. Honour doesn't shelter you during a storm, nor does it feed your loved ones. Honour doesn't make you a stronger warrior, or a better swordsman. It doesn't even keep a realm safe from enemies. So why live for it? Why devote your life to something so worthless?
Soraya Dwin'urdrenn: There will come a day when she has to choose between love and war. And I know her well enough to know she'll choose wrong.
Alsuras: I wonder who he was before he died - before he rose from the grave as this broken, rat-eating madman who keeps saving my life.
Sariella Sunblossom: When the season turns from spring to summer, one in a thousand peaceblooms will darken, as if stained by the brightening sun. That's what a sunblossom is - the rarest bloom among the most common petals.
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