Jemara Green

Jemara Green is a small, athletically lean woman who appears to be in her early 30's. The most immediately memorable thing about her is her red-gold hair, and that is how she prefers it.

## Childhood

*"The Greens have always served Gilneas."*

This was the key phrase in young Jem's life. It was her family's honor, duty, and entire expectation. The Greens had served the Greymanes in many capacities over the years, but for many of her line, their official job was not their only job. This was the case with Jem's parents. At first her training was a childish game, teaching her to simply to be observant and how to notice things others might miss: *"How many windows were in the front of that shop? How many steps on that staircase? What does that person smell like? Were they right or left handed?"* Then came more challenging games: *"You're being followed through the market in Duskhaven. Spot your tail without letting them know you know."* Or, *"You have five minutes to copy this letter so perfectly, I can't tell the difference."* Or her favorite, The Floor Is Lava: *"We're going to lock the room now. In three minutes, a grate in the floor will shift open and flood the room with lava. You must escape before then."* (Of course there was no such thing, but Jem liked the incentive story anyway.)

The more serious training--the physical fitness, the combat training, the lessons about deadly poisons and moving silently and how to kill a stronger, bigger opponent before they knew you were there--didn't come until Jem was eight, and her mother died while thwarting an assassination attempt. "Your mother succeeded in her mission," her father said, in the only comfort he offered. "That is the whole reason for our being. We don't do this for fame, or riches, or a soft comfortable life. We serve Gilneas."

## Early Adulthood

By seventeen, Jem was known as an accomplished horsewoman, fearless over the most challenging courses and with a knack for handling high-strung animals. This is probably what led to her earning a position as a courier, free to come and go from Greymane Manor at all hours, mounted on the fastest horses in the stables. This freedom served her well in her true work, as eyes and ears for the Greymanes.

Jem developed several alternate identities as she traveled, each suitable to time and place and need. Her most common alias was Kit Kelly, a young male persona, but she also created the mildly clubfooted charwoman Olive Conrad, aerial dancer Jessibel Jade, and imperious noble Lady Gemma Blakeney. She built up her own network of informants and connections, learned her way around the busiest thoroughfares and darkest alleys alike, learned how to pilot a small boat along the coastline while smuggling things (or passengers), set traps and disarm explosives. In her free time she honed her combat skills, learned about makeup and disguise from actors, studied cyphers, practiced calligraphy and how to imitate another's hand, learned how to appraise goods from professional craftsmen, thieves. and pawnshop owners, and even haunted libraries, challenging herself to find obscure facts on obscure topics as quickly as possible.

If it troubled her that she had no actual friends--just contacts, allies, or targets--she did not let herself dwell on it. The Greens served Gilneas, and it was her duty and honor to follow that tradition. If it nagged at her that Lord Crowley and the Northgate Rebels maybe had a legitimate complaint about their lands being cut off by the Wall, she never shared those thoughts, and told herself that nothing excused rebellion against the crown. And if anyone had known her well enough to ask if it bothered her that she didn't have hobbies, she would have told them, "I don't need hobbies. I have *skills*." That those skills included quietly killing a target without any pretense of honor or fair play--a task she had carried out three times by the time she was nineteen--did not give her pause. Everything she did was for the Greymanes and the ultimate good of Gilneas. In the deepest part of the night, when she was alone with herself and the things she'd done for that ultimate good, Jem pushed aside any guilt with her father's words: *"A soldier shouldn't feel guilty for following legal and just orders. And we are soldiers for Gilneas--except, instead of the sword, we are the scalpel."*

Then came the Worgen invasion. And Jem learned for the first time what it was to have no answer. For all your skills to be useless in the face of an overwhelming force of pure rage, unreasoning monsters that could not be tricked, bargained with, or intimidated. She learned what it was to fight, and run, and fight and run again, and for all your best efforts to end with seeing your father and other defenders torn to pieces. Worst of all, to become one of the monsters yourself.

With the help of Krennan Aranas and his elixirs, Jem regained a measure of control over the monster within, and even came to appreciate the physical advantages that the Beast's form granted: keener senses, increased speed, agility, and strength, claws and teeth as deadly as any man-made weapon. She needed every one of these advantages when the Forsaken invaded Gilneas. She stayed close to Prince Liam's bodyguard in Duskhaven, providing backup and scouting intelligence while the young Prince sought to rally the defense against the Forsaken, a threat worse than the Worgen. Worgen, at least, were alive. To be slaughtered by walking corpses, then raised from your grave into a rotting, decomposing body and set against your own people, was an unspeakable abomination--a violation of all that was holy and natural. The Gilnean defenders succeeded in driving back the undead briefly, but then, as if the world itself wished to rob them of this victory, the land rumbled like an angry giant...and then shattered. The coastline outside Duskhaven crumbled away. Jem worked herself beyond exhaustion, the pads of her feet worn bloody as she ran over broken rocks, helping to evacuate as many citizens as possible. They made it out just in time, just before another earthquake sent the rest of Duskhaven--a place Jem thought of as "home"--into the sea.

After another series of evacuations, the survivors made it to the Blackwald, where Jem and other Afflicted underwent the Ritual of Balance, which brought relief from the Beast's control--but no true rest, as events lurched from crisis to crisis, until finally Jem found herself in the midst of a sprawling battle through Gilneas City itself. Despite the Ritual, despite her early training to never let emotion get the better of her, Jem allowed herself to be her most vicious, her most merciless, cutting down Forsaken and glorying in the revenge. So distracted, she realized too late that King Genn Greymane was engaged in one-on-one battle with Sylvanas Windrunner herself. Even as she raced to help him, she saw the Banshee Queen raise her bow, saw the black arrow, saw Liam Greymane leap to shield his father--and knew she would be too late to stop any of it.

It was the thing she'd been raised for, trained for--the ultimate duty she'd been prepared to face--and she failed.

## More Recently

In the years since the Gilnean diaspora, Jem fell from trusted royal asset to failed and jailed petty criminal, though it was a long and meandering road. But it was perhaps inevitable; Genn Greymane discharged her from his service, saying that the Greens had served the royal family for years, but a king without a kingdom had no right to wield such assets as herself, and she should seek other outlets for her talents, such as SI:7. Jem took the rejection hard, especially the part about going to work for another kingdom. She made the attempt, volunteering for service in Pandaria, Draenor, the Broken Isles, and Kul Tiras in turn as trouble flared up, but each time as peace (or at least equilibrium) began to assert itself as the conflicts wound down, she would find herself bored and looking for...challenges.

Between losing her country, her king, her position, her status, and having to face unpleasant truths about herself, rage simmered in her heart, a rage that grew and festered until it was a consuming hate focused on one person: Sylvanas Windrunner. If not for the Banshee, Prince Liam would still be alive, she would not be dogged by the guilt of failure, the Greymanes would still rule a Kingdom, and the Gilnean dead could sleep in peace. If not for Sylvanas, Genn Greymane would not debase himself by giving his allegiance to a callow youth who, in Jem's opinion, was a poor, pale replacement for Prince Liam. This focused hate and rage gave her a purpose, a dream, a goal to strive for:

To kill Sylvanas Windrunner.

Easier said than done, of course. Jem wasn't about to throw herself blindly at the Horde's new Warchief. Sylvanas was too well-protected, too canny, and too capable of taking care of herself. No, there would be one shot, and no second chance if she missed. But at least it was a goal. The day Jem heard that Tyrande Whisperwind had thrown herself into a portal leading to the realms of Death itself in pursuit of Sylvanas, she packed her kit to go join the vanguard of volunteers.

But instead of justice and closure, Jem found only more frustration in the Shadowlands. Frustration, and uncomfortable questions with no satisfying answers, and she never seemed to get any closer to her prey than if she'd stayed in Stormwind. Then it all ended abruptly. Word came down that the invasion of the Shadowlands was over, and peace had broken out again. Sylvanas? She was out of their grasp. For Reasons. Something about leaving her abandoned in the Maw. Others said she'd chosen to stay.

Denied and defeated, Jem returned to Stormwind. It took several more years for her to end up in the Stormwind Stockades. She took numerous temporary jobs, even legitimate jobs. She resurrected her old aerial silk performer Jessibel Jade, twining and twisting in silken drapes a dozen feet off the ground. She ran a con as Lady Gemma Blakeney, and lived off the proceeds for a year. She smuggled goods, stole information, and sold both. She took a wet work contract in Old Town, eliminating a particularly vile pustule of a gang leader.

After all that, it was a tiny mistake on a forged liquor license that tripped her up.

## Return to Gilneas

Imprisoned and humiliated by failure after failure, Jemara waited in the Stockades. She wasn't sure if she was waiting for a chance to escape, or waiting to come up on the court's docket. But then came something completely unexpected: she received help in the form of Amanthe Bell, a small, unremarkable priestess who offered Jem the chance to return to Gilneas, to a Duchy called Caerseren, where a promising young Duke would lead resettlement and recovery efforts.

Now back on Gilnean soil, favorably impressed by the Duke and willingly entered into his service, Jemara Green looks forward to the future with hope. She hopes to serve again, not because "It's always been this way" but because she's serving a worthy master of her choice. She hopes to be part of a great rebuilding. She hopes to learn how to have friends as well as allies and contacts. Perhaps most of all, she hopes to find balance between the woman who craves challenges and the woman who wants to turn the page on her past and do the right thing.