Agnès D'Éclatte

**Agnès D'Éclatte**, or **Aginclatha** in her fey form, is a Sylvan elf druid who is the Solstician of the Everlight Gathering of druids in Acqua Vecchia. She is an archdruid of the Circle of Wildfire. She has a longstanding relationship with the fire giants below Acqua Vecchia.

She believes in natural destruction and renewal. She does not see war as overall a bad thing. Nature is pitting people against each other to humble them.

## Description

### Appearance

D'Éclatte is an elf woman of powerful build with striking red hair who wears mostly red garments to accentuate her fire magic. She wears leather riding boots and feather earrings made from red hawk feathers. She wears a golden tiara that symbolizes the sun and the fact that she is the Solstician.

### Personality

D'Éclatte is described as a stubborn and sure-minded leader of the druids. She has a fiery temper and bossy way of doing business. This can be attributed to the fact that she is nearing her Transcendence as an aging elf. D'Éclatte is also very flighty and likes to keep hidden and isn't fond of dealing with less powerful and short-lived peoples.

## Biography

### Background

D'Éclatte was born in 1264 A.R. in Sylva during the Magisterial Age, and the time of her early life was a golden age for the elvish Kingdom of Sylva. D'Éclatte was born a serf bound to work on a noble's land, but she found a way to become an apprentice to a brick mason, and learned the trade and fired bricks in kilns and built great structures. But she became disillusioned with the tendency of civilization to destroy nature in order to have room for itself, and so she fled to the Sacred Forest where she spent many years learning from the druids who practiced there.

She gained great knowledge of the druidic Circle of Wildfire, and as revenge for her upbringing in serfdom and the destruction she saw from civilization, she went on a campaign of arson against towns and cities across the Kingdom of Sylva. She was eventually caught an imprisoned for many years and then the authorities attempted to burn her at the stake, but she survived the burning and when the ropes around her burned off, she fled. She found refuge away from her kingdom in the Fang Mountains, where the giants made their homes. There she learned the customs and language of the giants and helped them to rebuild many of their fallen buildings and monuments using her knowledge of masonry and construction. She was adopted into the fire giant kingdom as an honorary Jotunild.

It was during her time with the giants that she learned the civilized world had been struck by the Affliction, in the early 1400s. The portals to the planes had, after more than a thousand years, been opened and dark forces emerged in Elderland, including demons who tried to eradicate the giants. She helped the giants win the battle and ultimately subjugate the demons, but she thought that the greater civilization deserved the punishment of the Affliction for how they had defiled nature, but not the giants, and certainly not herself and she was scared of becoming afflicted as an elf, and losing her natural long life. She learned from giant elders that an ancient dark power must have gotten hold of their long-lost artifacts, the Chains of the Seven Earthly Elements, and used them to unseal the planes and unleash dark fury onto the Material Plane.

### The Chains of the Seven Earthly Elements

D'Éclatte learned that in ancient times, great giant forgemasters had crafted seven chains as a symbol of the link between the ordning of the Jotunbrud and the elements they represented: the lowest on the ordning but most connected to earthly life were the hill giants, then the stone giants who represented earth, then the frost giants representing water, then the fire giants representing fire, the cloud giants representing air, and the storm giants representing the power of nature to reap disaster and death. The last elemental giant was not placed on the ordning at all, but existed to tie the giants together through space and time. These were the firbolg, who could turn invisible and were said to be able to manipulate time and were usually members of the shamanic order.

### Scholarship

For centuries, D'Éclatte has been the most studied scholar of giant-kind in Elderland. She holds several of the Secret Keys into different giant kingdoms, including the fire giant kingdom of Ildenbrand and the cloud giant kingdom of Skyrjall. She has written on the origins of the giant-forged Chains of the Seven Earthly Elements and as part of a pact between the giants and druids, the druids are charged with keeping safe the Chains. As an elf, D'Éclatte has also dedicated significant study to her race's ties to the natural realm and place as a progenitor race in the universe.

## Death

### Everlight

Failing to uncover Grimalkin's elaborate plan to steal the seven Links of Power using the unwitting Endurables group, Agnes was caught by surprise when she and her archdruids entered the Cathedral of the Ancient Waters to find an ambush of seven powerful vampires waiting for them. The vampires were none other than their Dominici benefactors, who had been funding the Wardens for years. She had no idea they had been working alongside Grimalkin the entire time. The vampires fought the archdruids and dispatched them all with powerful magic, while the Endurables fought a tarot card creature in the piazza. Agnes followed Grimalkin through a portal that led to the belfry, where another ambush was waiting for her: Baron Zalgrado Dominici, who revealed that he was none other than Dalk Dranzorg in a new form.

The baron sliced across her neck with his ancient riteknife, hard enough to behead her. Then Grimalkin took her Link of Power. Agnes' soul was trapped in the knife and she experienced a confusing and painful liminal existence within the Ethereal Plane. She witness from the plane that the seal had been broken as great explosions tore through the gray fabric of the plane. But her soul could not exit as she other ghosts doing. She was trapped in the knife. But she felt that Nemja had somehow obtained it, and she called out to Nemja in her dream to find a way to stop the new calamity by finding Ingrid.

### Feywild

Nemja released Agnes' soul that morning, and she floated out of the Ethereal into the Feywild, which was a bittersweet experience. She had for so long been disaffected because Ingrid told her the planes could never be opened again once resealed because of the dark forces that outweighed the light. Thus the elves and all other mortal beings could never reach their gods and the world would be effectively devoid of divinity. Finding herself dead and her soul transported into the Feywild, she experienced the place she had wanted to go since venturing there with Ingrid during the Affliction. It was beautiful and she was briefly happy, but she knew she had to honor her lover's demand and find a way to reseal the planes.

She learned from the Florid Court that over the 500 years since the resealing, the fey had failed to revive the dead Celdarine gods to life and had failed to contact the astral elves in the Astral Sea. A portal between the Organal Plane and Astral Plane was too difficult to open due to their distance from each other. Therefore the Feywild, still godless, was racked by political struggle and squabbling feudal lords known as archfey matriarchs. She also learned, as she feared, that Ingrid's soul had not returned to the Feywild upon her death in 1418. Because she was a vampire at her death, her soul was likely bound to the Astral Sea by draconic curse, and it was possible her soul had been corrupted into evil because of vampirism. Agnes would not hear this, and left the Florid Court to cry for many fey years in sadness.

Agnes' afterlife form became known as Aginclatha, a spiteful brooding fey who grew phoenix feathers over her body. Aginclatha found she did not fit in with the fey creatures of the plane because while they were fans of tricks and mischief, she was very broody and disaffected.