Elenar

Elenar is a Guardian who fled home after discovering her parents were conspiring to turn her over to St. Aegolius. She is a member of the Search-and-Rescue chaw, and is disabled in her starboard wing.

## Appearance

Elenar's ragged feathers are a mousy latte-and-cream color, and are more tattered than the typical Barred Owl's. She has eyes like kind pools of ink in her face. Her starboard wing is permanently bent wrong at the shoulder, preventing it fully resting in an idle position. Though she is not fully disabled, flight is unordinarily tiring, and she can only do so with an awkward, off-kilter lurch.

She has never been asked by Parliament to join in battle, so she's more of a contingency plan, but her strategy would hinge around the fact that she can easily make herself dead weight in the air.

## Personality

Elenar often thinks of others' safety before her own. She tends to proceed cautiously in dangerous situations, especially if her actions will have consequences on someone else. She is also somewhat vengeful and can hold a grudge, openly, for a lifetime.

She is prickly about her title, "Elenar the Lame," though she is humble enough to acknowledge when she needs help, and takes pride in how much she's accomplished without any. She is creative when it comes to finding solutions to tasks that would be otherwise easy without disabilities.

## History

### Early Life

Elenar was the oldest owlet in a family of three, with her younger brothers Clagh and Hannick to look after. Due to her aunt working for St. Aggie's herself, Elenar's parents were often visited by members of the organization, with whom they had to plea-bargain and leave the nest fulfilling horrible favors in order for the patrols to spare their owlets. This meant the nest was very often empty, and Elenar had to do the job of looking after her brothers, which was not easy. One night, her youngest brother Hannick tumbled through the canopy while she was branching with him. She leapt after him to try and catch him; he managed to snag a branch and save himself, but Elenar was too old for the small limb on which she landed, and it snapped under her. This resulted in her starboard wing being broken as she hit the forest floor. She was fortunate enough to ladder her way back up the tree, but because her parents were not around, and she didn't know where to find a healer, she went on with her wing in poor condition. The health of her wing only continued to deteriorate as she toughed through the pain and resumed practicing to fly with her brothers, to the point that it eventually set wrong, and became lame.

One fateful afternoon, St. Aggie's arrived again, threatening to take Elenar and her brothers away from her parents by force, claiming they had been given the authority by the Ablah General. To Elenar's horror, her parents finally relented, since they couldn't take the harassment anymore. Determined to get herself and her brothers to safety, Elenar woke Clagh and Hannick with a start, telling them to scatter and flap as far as they could. They were both more able branchers than herself and she didn't want to slow them down with her wing, so she took another route and fled on foot. She eventually found a root system that was too small for the patrol to reach, and stayed there while they searched for her. She was debating turning herself in so that her parents wouldn't be punished, but she'd overheard terrible things about the canyons from conversations between Mum and Da, and the fear of that place her was greater than her loyalty to them. She hoped only that Clagh and Hannick were safe.

### Meeting Vitr / Escaping Ambala

Weeks passed, and although she was still convinced a patrol might appear at any moment, Elenar was doing fine on her own. While out foraging, she stumbled upon a young tyto just barely old enough to fly, pinned to the ground by a Short-eared owl. Though afraid and weak herself, Elenar ambushed the aggressor out of the shadows, and together with the pinned tyto managed to drive them off. Her new companion would later introduce herself as Vitr, a barn owl who had been dropped on the way to St. Aggie's and chased around Ambala ever since. The two of them decided to partner up and leave the forest kingdoms, with Vitr assisting Elenar's flight by the lift from her own wings.

They detoured to search for Elenar's brothers along the way, since she insisted not to leave without finding them. After multiple dead-ends and false leads, they stumbled across Clagh's trail and followed it to a conifer inhabited by many, many crows. As someone in a nearby tree would explain to them, an ambitious young Barred Owl had been branching during daylight not long ago, only to be mobbed by crows and plummet to his death. They had given him a proper burial, but allowed Elenar to see the dead; it was unmistakably Clagh.

She and Vitr departed for Cape Glaux with heavy gizzards. For a few years it seemed they would actually settle there together, until their glade was attacked by tyto invaders in a kind of armor she had never before seen.

### Joining the Guardians

Elenar had heard tell of the Pure Ones from Vitr, but very little, and barely registered that this was what she was seeing. Once again she panicked and fled to a hiding spot.

Elenar noticed that some of the strangers were not tytos, but in fact, seemed to be in conflict with them. She wondered what this could possibly mean, as she had never seen any of these owls before, but wasn't keen on finding out whether they were friend or foe; however, the curious Vitr eventually convinced her to go with her and find out. She and Vitr followed them back to their tree across the foggy Hoolemere, mostly out of curiosity and ignorance as to what the Guardians were. After learning about the Guardians and what they did, however, Elenar was hopeful that she could stay, maybe stop St. Aggie's, and find her remaining brother.

Upon Elenar's initiation, the Parliament debated whether she should not be tapped for Ga'Hoolology chaw instead, since it would not require her to make long flights and she was overall quite experienced with caretaking. However she proved to be quite a wily search-and-rescue owl, as she'd been accustomed to using her wits to get out of situations rather than brute strength, and her ability to problem-solve made up for her lacking flight strength. She and Vitr were both tapped for search-and-rescue, with Vitr being more of the warrior type, and serving as her partner on most missions.

### Present Day

Despite being a Guardian, due to how difficult it is for her to make the flight across the Sea of Hoolemere and perform her job, she often stays in the Southern Kingdoms performing missions, with her base of operations being in Silverveil.

Elenar's heroic achievements include:

* locating a slipgizzle in the Shadow Forest who had gone silent for months
* following a St. Aggie's patrol to discover one of their new outposts
* keeping tabs on crow rookery locations, and rescuing owls who stray too close

One of her driving motivations is to use her job to find her remaining brother, Hannick, who is still missing.