Byrn Avakiir

### Backstory

Sellathyr is a Kingdom in harmony with the forest, each merging into the other such that there is no visible boundary. Growing up, Bryn spent as much time playing in the trees as on the ground.

She was the privileged daughter of nobles. Her parents were High Wizards to the royal family, and she spent much of her childhod in the vaulted marble chambers of the palace, where golden oak boughs twisted between columns and arches.

She dreamed of following in her parents’ footsteps and received tuition under Sylmaris, an ancient wizard and an elven hero, who had served the Queen for centuries and saved their kingdom in the war against the orcs.

Bryn’s mind was a sponge for knowledge – Sylmaris couldn’t teach her fast enough. At times though, studying in the palace library or reciting her spells, Bryn felt a yearning for the trees.

Sylmaris was a kind, gentle teacher and had only one rule – *do not go into the palace laboratory on your own*.

Bryn managed to restrain her curiosity, for a time.

One evening though, leaving the hall where she and Sylmaris practised, she heard a soft, other-wordly song note coming from the direction of the laboratory.

She followed it, entranced by the music, and it led her to the thick wooden door.

She hesitated. She knew she shouldn’t, but there was a beautiful, desperate keening to that note. Something needed her. Something wanted to be free.

Bryn slowly opened the door. She would just look. Surely there was no harm in looking.

The vast room was tiled and segmented by heavy wooden benches and equipment, all under harsh magical lights.

On the nearest bench was a heavy cage of a material Bryn had never seen before, and within it was a creature she couldn’t have described. It shifted from solid to liquid to gas, one moment a leaping flame, another it was the motion of wind through willow leaves, another it was the burbling froth of a stream.

But always that keening song, crying out for the forest and the open sky.

Something like this wasn’t meant to be caged.

For what felt like a century, Bryn stood, not knowing what to do. But the being in the cage called out to her, and her feet obeyed.

She walked to the cage. She knew, vaguely, that this thing was pure wild magic. It was a force of chaos and creation, of life itself. How had the wizards caged it? Why?

She was mesmerised by the creature’s ever shifting form, by its beautiful, hypnotising song.

She didn’t realise she was lifting her hand to touch it. She didn’t even hear Sylmaris at the lab door, shouting at her to get away.

She woke to choking smoke, the lab on fire, and the wild magic *thing* inside her like a star burning in her chest. Moonlight speared through a gaping hole in the ceiling and Sylmaris lay far too still on the tile floor. Palace guards rushed into the lab at the disturbance and the wild magic erupted in flame and wind and ice. It didn’t want to be caged again.

Bryn did the only thing she could. She ran.

She lived in the forest for a time, lost in her own grief and shame. She couldn’t return – she’d killed Sylmaris and two palace guards. Her parents would probably prefer her dead than to return and bring such shame on the family. And she would have died, but the wild magic wouldn’t let her.

Soon, her curiosity got the better of her and she began to try and understand this power. Could she rid herself of it? Could she control it? Could she undo the horror that she’d been responsible for?

There was only so much she could learn on her own in the forest though. She had to return to civilisation.

Member of the Grand Council of the Republic of the Middlelands.

### Notable Events

* The Removal of the Cult of the Warhawk
* A Brief Visit to Florea
* Reclaimation of Khundrakar
* The Liberation of the Angier manor
* The Eradication of Zagren The Ruthless
* The Battle for Ambroton