| History: Selia's story begins one hundred and sixty years ago on February 14 at about nine thirty at night. Records speak of an unnatural phenomena in the sky, which was starless save for one bright star that shone bright enough for most of Liaku to see ....thing is, this star was blue and so was the light it gave off. Everything was bathed in blue light. After she was born, Selia's birth ceremony was held ...a birth ceremony is a festival celebrating the creation of a new life during which a priest will perform several rituals to determine what destiny has in store for the new child. The Ritual of the Destined is an old practice that only priests of the old ways remember but it is being taught to younger priests. During the ritual, only three people are allowed to view the results ...the priest, a witness, and the child. In this case, the witness was another priest. The ritual called for a small collection of bones to be tossed onto a table for the priest to read. In Selia's case; destiny heralded her to be a 'natural', someone that combat comes to naturally with little instruction, and that meant that she would be a great warrior. Selia spent the first fifty years of her life training for combat, mostly because she wanted to. Selia is highly skilled in any form of combat and can use virutally any weapon. By the time she finished, she had matured into the beautiful young woman that she is. Several elven nobles tried to ask her for her hand in marriage and she refused every one of them. When Selia was seventy, she was tested for the Night Elves. The Night Elves were a group of elven warriors that were special in some way or another ...they were the elite of the elite in the military. Unlike most elves, which focused their magic power on healing and defense, Night Elves focused their magic to acquire certain abilities. Among these abilities is the ability to become invisible at night (as long as they aren't moving), the ability to communicate with the creatures of the night (owls, bats, wolves, etc.) and the ability to enhance their vision and hearing. Selia passed her test with flying colors and was taken into the Raikotusen ...one of the four groups that comprised the Night Elves. Among the Night Elves, only forty were combat-able while the rest worked as scouts and negotiators (usually veterens). Once inducted into the Night Elves, Selia had to go through a series of tranditional rituals, one of which was a naming ritual in which she was named Selia of the Blue Star (because of her birth). Another ritual required all Night Elf inductees to cut their hair and dye it purple, black or dark blue. The Night Elves work primarily at night where blond or light brown hair reflecting the moonlight could give away the position of a moving elf. Selia chose to dye her hair dark purple. These rituals lasted a week and, by the end, Selia was a Night Elf. Most of her missions during the war were raids, ambushes, rescue missions ...small scale attacks. Night elves rarely fought with or commanded an army. Selia was one of the few who did. At the age of 128, Selia commanded a small army that had to stop a human army before it got too close to any civilians. The human commander was a nobleman that mocked and taunted her because she was a girl. This angered her and she told her army that no one was to touch the commander, she would deal with him personally. In the end, the human commander had been killed and few human soldiers survived. Reports and rumors of a female elf fighting in the war began to spread from army to army. Soldiers that had seen Selia in combat and lived to tell about it were both mystified by her fighting style and enchanted by her beauty. Selia was becoming a respected warrior and her father was becoming upset because his daughter was walking the path as he did, although, Selia made sure her legacy was different from her father's by becoming a Night Elf. The major question here is what would drive a warrior of her caliber to just quit the military and disappear. When Selia was 150, she was on a scouting mission by herself when she came upon a small elven village under attack by a group of humans. The defenders of the village had no chance and were forced to surrender but the humans began to murder everyone ....men and women, children and elderly, soldier and civilian ...it made no difference to them. Selia had heard of groups like that, they were rogues ....former soldiers removed from the army because of such acts. As much as she wanted to, Selia was unable to help and was forced to watch the slaughter. Then it hit her ....she wasn't that much different ....all her life, she had been trained to kill and didn't realize it until now. She was trained to deal with the deaths of soldiers on her conscience but not the deaths of innocent people, that training was reserved for later. Letting out a scream of pain, guilt, and sadness ...Selia fired off a single arrow and fled into the forest. That arrow killed the leader of the group. For the next ten years, Selia lived with nature as she had always wanted. During this time, she befriended a female snow owl and a male gray wolf. The wolf, which she named Tilandro (or Til for short), was of normal coloration with black on the tips of his ears and was seven feet long from his nose to the tip of his tail. The owl, named Elinda (Eli for short), was also of normal coloration. Using the skills she learned as a Night Elf, Selia could talk to the pair ...or at least understand what they were trying to say. Also during this time, her hair began to grow back so she tucked them into two small buns on the sides of her head. When Selia turned 160, she met a maiden that told her about Hiketsu. Selia agreed, on the condition that she could bring Til and Eli with her. When she arrived on Hiketsu, Selia was awe-struck and felt a burden lift from her heart. Selia now desires to relieve herself of the guilt she has built up over the years, she has seen the darkest sides of war and she wants to escape her past as soon as possible. Selia has offered to take a guard position if one of the other guards is sick or injured. She can usually be seen in the garden and has even offered Tilandro and Elinda to keep pests such as mice and rats out of the garden. During the ten years she lived in the wild, Selia took up singing to help pass the time. When Tilandro and Elinda talk to Selia, it is a telepathic communication that only they can understand ....unless there is a person who can understand animals present. |
