Priestess of the Moon

> "We are the bearers of the Great Mother's children, the heralds of the Night Warrior's wrath. We are the guiding light of the Moon and the searing fire of the stars. To don the white mantle of our order is to devote your life to sacred service, to your Goddess, to your people, and to your sisters."
>
> - Mother Melara

**The priestesses of the moon**, known also as moon priestesses, are the holy warriors and the spiritual guides of the night elves. They are mighty disciples of the moon goddess Elune and in their devotion they strive to mirror all her divine aspects, from the fearsome Night Warrior to the doting Great Mother. This sacred creed has turned them into peerless healers, dauntless fighters and brilliant generals of their people.

Their chosen mounts are the blessed frostsabers of Winterspring, graceful, immortal beasts that have borne many a priestess to sure victory. Some however prefer to ride astride nightsabers, or even the flying, majestic hippogryphs of Mount Hyjal, keeping their frostsabers only for ceremony.

Since the sealing of the Green Pact of Ysera and the beginning of the Long Vigil, they have vastly grown in number, taking a far more prominent position within night elven society in both times of peace and times of war. Through the Sisterhood of Elune, they have become the main ruling power of the night elves, alongside the wise druids of the Cenarion Circle and the fay spirits of the Court of Ancients.

They are recognised among night elves by their shining silver armour, their pure white robes, and their moonstone diadems.

## History

### **Before the Sundering**

#### **Haidene**

Although the night elves have revered Elune in one form or another for as long as there have been night elves, the very first moon priestess, the maiden Haidene, born in the legendary city of Aru-Talis thirty-thousand years before the Opening of the Dark Portal only became so many centuries after their awakening. Her tale is long and rife with events that came to shape the early history of the elves, for though the night elves ever held profound faith in Elune, Haidene instructed them in new ways of worship, allowing the first chosen women of Elune to channel the Light of the Moon through chant and prayer. She set down the first rites, wrote the first holy scriptures and sang the first songs. From her was born the custom for the priestesses to wear white furs and an embroidered headband adorned with the snow owl's feathers. These early ancient priestesses followed Haidene in her travels, but some walked their own paths and made their own temples, creating new and varied ways to worship the Goddess.

#### **Kalo'thera**

When Haidene was killed in the year -26,000 by the trolls, it galvanised the disparate elven peoples into a single force of reckoning spearheaded by the priestess Kalo'thera and the ancestor of Queen Azshara, king of Elun'dris. The night elves waged a bloody war of annihilation against the trolls and this created a necessity for unity, discipline and organisation, leading to Kalo'thera founding the Sisterhood of Elune and naming herself the first High Priestess, gathering all other priestesses under her banner. By this time, however, moon priestesses did not act as a governing power in their own right. Their authority did not extend beyond their temples as most were dependent on whoever ruled the land they lived upon. The Sisterhood only worked to safeguard a singular faith for all night elves, with a singular ethos and a singular code. Yet Kalo'thera further bolstered the creed of Elune with rituals of war in the age of conflict that followed. She introduced the practice of blood sacrifices, inviting a ruthlessness before unseen among the elves. For millennia she continued to endeavour in not only defeating her troll enemies, but ensuring their extinction. With her aid, the kings of the night elves erased countless ancient tribes of the trolls, razed many of their villages and cities and used their sorcery to cleanse the land so profoundly that no sign of the trolls would remain. One night as she sat in her temple in Hajiri, tidings came to her that a party of tauren had been able to capture the king of Elun'dris in his own fortress, leading to Kalo'thera seething with such insurmountable rage that her heart burst in the year -24,000.

#### **Siralen**

The priestess Siralen was chosen as the second High Priestess of the Sisterhood. She upheld Kalo'thera's violent dogma for many years, introducing the greatest of Elune's blood rituals: the Fal'narath (In Elven: Wind of Ruin). The priestesses who enacted this ritual had to surrender themselves wholly to the Night Warrior's rage, coating a ritual dagger in the blood of their enemies before thrusting the blade within their own chest. If the priestess was able to utter the entire prayer before she died, she would be touched by Elune's cleansing glaive, transforming herself into a living vortex of flame, the heat of which was strong enough to melt stone, allowing the priestess to leave unparalleled devastation in her wake. Many priestesses and common night elves attempted this most sacred and most perilous ritual, most died, though some lived, for it was believed that if the faith of the priestess was truly absolute, Elune would not abide them to die.

It is said Siralen never dared practice her own ritual. She passed in the year -22,000, assassinated in her tent during a siege in Zul'Aman.

#### **Merwenna**

Following Siralen came the short-lived tenure of Merwenna, she was the third High Priestess and held that station for only three-hundred years. During this time, while wars still raged elsewhere, she and her priestesses travelled on many pilgrimages, mainly to the newly discovered Mount Hyjal and its surrounding forests. There, nestled between the northern mountains, she found a sacred valley of white grass which shone bright under the night sky, and within it a crystalline lake that held waters so pure they could not be polluted. She named this lake Elune'ara, and the valley became known as Moonglade. Later, Merwenna also brought changes to the regalia the priestesses had traditionally worn since the times of Haidene: instead of their feathered headdress, Merwenna introduced the moonstone diadem and did away with the cloaks of white stag's fur, making it so that priestesses would now wear a long white silk robe often adorned with pearls and silver embroidery, an attire largely used to this day, though the ancient fineries are still used in some rites and ceremonies.

Ultimately Merwenna and her following vanished without a trace as she led her fourth pilgrimage towards the unknown lands to the south of Llothien.

#### **Arlithrien**

Arlithrien was the fourth High Priestess. She established the Lunar Feast, a time of festivity lasting twenty-seven days beginning with the new moon after the equinox of spring. During these celebrations, priestesses of the moon emulated Merwenna's pilgrimages by leading flocks of faithful through cities, villages, towns and nearby woodlands, these were formalised as a new tradition by Arlithrien and they were known as processions. Arlithrien herself led many of these in the city of Hajiri, but later she moved the seat of the Sisterhood to Galhara, closer to the Well of Eternity, and she had made it a custom to pray on its sacred shores. Arlithrien drowned in a lake in the year -19,000 when she came to the rescue of a fishing boat assailed by murlocs.

#### **Kalnissa**

Rising as the fifth High Priestess, Kalnissa is most known for changing the emblem representing the priestesses of the moon from the Glaive of Kalo'thera to the upside-down moon seen across Temples of the Moon to this day. She fashioned the first statues of Haidene as the Handmaiden of Elune, as well as statues of the Goddess herself. She built many temples, and began the construction of the tower in Suramar that would one day become the Cathedral of Eternal Night. She went on frequent pilgrimage to Moonglade, where travellers had already begun to settle and build the village of Nighthaven. She died there from a sudden illness, on the eve of the foundation of the Kaldorei Empire in the year -16,000.

#### **Ziralla**

The sixth High Priestess was Ziralla. She crowned the king of Elun'dris as Lord of All Elves and first king of the great Kaldorei Empire, swearing her fealty and that of the Sisterhood to his service, ending any semblance of autonomy the priestesses had beforehand. During this period, the night elves finally achieved ultimate victory over trollkind with the capitulation of their last empire of Zandalar. Ziralla and her warriors were the only night elves, and indeed the only foreigners who ever climbed Mount Mugamba, she led her priestesses within the crypts of the troll kings, where they and their followers broke the canopic jars that held the sacred organs of the Zandalari monarchs, they melted their golden graves and burned their remains in the blood sacrifices of Kalo'thera. Although, much to their displeasure, they were never able to find or enter the Tomb of Dazar. Nonetheless they used moonstones to keep the land shrouded in triumphant night for a whole month, they tore down the effigy of every heathen god within the troll city and by edict of Azshara, the new Queen, the priestesses were commanded to search and grind into dust every tablet they could find in the libraries and temples of Zandalar. Azshara had outlawed the Zandali tongue and wished every fragment of the trolls' history, culture and identity to be destroyed. However, unlike Kalo'thera and her ancestors, Azshara did not wish for their extinction, seeing them as useful slaves for her burgeoning empire, and many moon priestesses partly aided in this regard as well, ensuring slaves were kept docile and in health. Ziralla furthermore introduced the practice of branding the upside-down moon on trolls formerly of the priest caste, claiming it was righteous punishment for their heresies, but also an undeniable sign that the night elven religion had won over all other lesser beliefs and now reigned as the one supreme faith.

Ziralla later died of old age in the year -13,000, leading to a young Mother Dejahna taking the mantle of seventh High Priestess by will of Azshara.