Berzeli, Wood Elf Druid

**Berzeli** the wood-elf is a former member of the Crimson Company and was in better times the only elven member. She is a druid specializing in the circle of the land, focusing primarily on healing. Raised apart from the elves by a human druid, Berzeli knows very little about her elven heritage. She is currently in Allahorn to visit and to seek aid with the understanding of the green Tellenmae crystal. At 70 years old, she would still be considered a child by elven standards.

### History

Berzeli was found as an infant by Breizer the Healer in the forest of Allahorn, far away from the city of Arwyr. Her only possession apart from a blanket she was swadled in was a medalion in the shape of a sun made out of some sort of metal. Breizer sent a message to the elves asking them if a child had gone missing but was told that no wood elf children that age were missing and that the child might be half elven. Breizer decided to keep the child with him, raising her as a daughter and training her in the Druidcraft, to which she had a natural affinity. He named her Zeli, to be her child name as is the tradition of the elves. Since he himself studied Druidcraft in Allahorn, one of the few humans ever granted that honour, he knew much of elven lore and language that he taught his adopted daughter to give her a connection to her people. Zeli however always felt rejected by the elves, deciding to focus on her life with the humans.

Breizer had spent the latter half of his life living in the forest near the little town of Blue Crest. As a skilled healer, Breizer helped the townspeople with all their ailments and as Zeli grew up she worked alongside him, gathering herbs and roots in the forest, treating the sick and wounded and attending school with the human children in the town. All that changed one night when Zeli and Breizer were woken up by a terrified villager begging for their help. The town had been attacked he told them, and half of it was on fire. The attackers had left, pulling off people in to the night.

For hours Zeli and Breizer helped pull people out of burning buildings and heal the sick. They found a woman trapped under a collapsed building, and Zeli managed to climb in to aid her while they waited for help to arrive. When she was under the rubble she could hear screams, and as she crawled out again to see what was going on she saw Breizer collapse to the ground, an arrow in his side. The burning of the village had been a trap, aiming to lure out people from the nearby settlements for the second raid. As Zeli tried to get to Breizer, she saw him mouthing at her to stop and stay hidden. Realizing how outnumbered she was, she stayed where she was and watched as the orc chieftain finished what the arrow had started and slit her fathers throat. Zeli stayed hidden that horrible night, watching helplessly as the people she had lived with her whole life were slaughtered. The women and some of the girls were pulled away and captured, but all the men and boys were killed on sight. The only thing Zeli managed to do was pull people to safety in under the shattered buildings, healing those who were injured as they waited fearfully, expecting the marauding orcs to find them any minute.

By the next morning, the orcs had left and the few survivors emerged to the nightmare sight that was the former home. Of the 3000 people who had lived in the village, 100 were still alive. As Zeli cradled Breizers dead body, finding that the tears would not come, she vowed to avenge her town and free those who had been taken captive. It would take her 3 years to track down the orc tribe and find a way to destroy them. Sneaking in to the camp in the form of a mouse, she dropped Aelin root powder in the stew the orcs were preparing for their dinner, giving them all a painful and slow death. She tracked down their chief and killed him herself, telling him 3 words: Blue Crest, Breizer.

Of the 632 women and girls that had been taken hostage, only 463 were still alive and several of them were carrying half orc children. Rather than try to reestablish the town, the people scattered for the wind, settling all across Theland and the neighboring duchies. Zeli decided that in spite of her short life, she had lived enough to consider herself an adult, and gave herself the adult name of Berzeli, honouring the man who adopted her. After this, she roamed the world, hunting orcs and helping people in need of a healer, but she never settled anywhere or let anyone get close to her again, until she joined a mission at the temple of Ted which put her in the middle of a group of odd people who she would be unable to keep from getting under her skin.