Dore Hasturway

Dore was born 496 years before-present to the Hasturway family. Famed for their mastery of hunting the more unpleasant residents of Erah, the Hasturways have long enjoyed relative prestige and luxury, and for several generations have based themselves in their ancestral manor in a remote corner of the Tecan Confederacy. Holding true to Blood Elf teaching, and with some famous family members able to tap into rumoured fey ancestry in the bloodline, the family developed a fighting style based on martial prowess, magical augmentation, and raw aggression. Although occasionally contracted by neighbouring powers, the family has for several hundred years preferred to focus on maintaining its territory. This usually took the form of a single dramatic hunt, lasting one or several nights, with months or even years of lull in between. Combined with the mountainous and naturally isolated nature of the surrounding landscape, the efficacy and sense of refined drama perfected alongside these hunts established the Hasturways as the unquestioned authority in the region.

600 years before present, Wilkesh Hasturway inherited leadership of the manor and family. With the region having been rendered safe - and by his estimation, extremely dull - he began pursuing magical research as a means of enhancing the technique and prestige of the family name. During this period, what limited connections the area had with the outside world began to fail, as Wilkesh grew increasingly suspicious of outside Blood Elf society, and disdainful of other humanoids. Hunts became sporadic but increasingly drawn out and bloody as they acted as the testing ground for his new enhanced technique.

Dore was born to a visiting Blood Elf delegate, whose identity she has never known. The third daughter of Wilkesh born in similar circumstances, she quickly adopted and mastered her father’s technique, as well as inheriting his craving to enhance the methodology for the prestige of the Hasturway name. Having no connection to mainstream Blood Elf society, and easily bored by the surrounding landscapes, she spent her upbringing researching and perfecting various methods for combat.

Dore and her sisters eagerly partook in the family hunts, now an unrecognisable performance of violence that left the landscape in fear and ruin. During her research, exhaustive reading of her ancestors’ memoirs brought up a new potential for the Hasturway technique - the ability to manipulate the opponent, even in the midst of combat. She resolved to seek out the lands described by her ancestors and test her technique against new, unfamiliar foes, in the hope of returning with knowledge worthy of the family name. For her father and sisters, convinced that perfect technique lay instead in turning inward and unlocking skills they thought to be hidden within, this was a fatal insult. Knowing this, Dore resolved not to return until mastering new technique that she could teach her family to win back their favour.

During her travels, she soon experienced and became disillusioned with mainstream Blood Elf society, seeing their hoarding of knowledge as stagnation in the same way as her living relatives. Instead she frequently moved between the various regions of the Tecan Confederacy, often visiting the lands her ancestors had once helped protect and in turn helping fight the threats that had emerged during Wilkesh’s isolationism. She made a habit of collecting the scattered history of these ancestors, which strengthened her conviction that true mastery lay in exploring outwards.

After centuries of exploring, Dore succeeded in learning the fundamentals of blood-based manipulation. With this, and a resolve to save her family from their inward-facing obsession and rebuild the connections and renown of the family name, she returned to the ancestral manor. Upon arriving, she found her father and sisters had also had success, in a form - by reaching into their fey ancestry, and making contact with powerful outside forces. Both sides were quickly disgusted with the other, and the ensuing confrontation left Dore presumed dead, after sustaining a lethal barrage of bolts and collapsing in the woods she grew up in.

In the half-light between life and death, with her knowledge of the blood-manipulating hunters of old, Dore was able to call upon and make a deal with the Great Old One, Tindalos. Her resolve to save her family was transformed, becoming a destiny to take revenge and restore the honour of the Hasturway name. Clinging to this, Dore returned to the world of the living and fled.

In the ensuing centuries, the Hasturway manor has become increasingly subdued. Wilkesh, now in his 700s, has largely retired and left hunts to his daughters. He spends his days in the manor’s front room or gardens in meditative rest, occasionally demonstrating his mastery of the crossbow on anyone unfortunate enough to disturb his view out. Rumours suggest this is a front, however - and that Wilkesh maintains the vitality and vigour of a hunter, with lifetimes of experience at his disposal. His daughters continue to explore the possibilities their fey ancestry provides, only carrying out hunts sporadically and with no clear purpose. The surrounding landscape has returned to a normal, if weary, state.

Following her newfound destiny, Dore has continued to explore and hone her skills, travelling beyond the Tecan Confederacy in search of adventure. Still fiercely proud of her family name, and determined to return and exact revenge, she ceaselessly prepares for a battle lying centuries ahead.