Profiles in History: Elysa Strathelar
Elysa came from the northern realm of Aluvia on Ispar, the Humans' home world. She was the daughter of a scribe, and may have grown up in a noble house, for her earliest memories included scenes of fleeing from the King's assassins. Like so many others, she stepped through a strange purple whirlpool hanging in mid-air, and discovered that it was a portal that had taken her from Aluvia to Dereth, never to return.
Almost at once she was captured by the Olthoi and taken into a dark hive below ground where she was set to stirring cauldrons of fungi being cooked down to soup, to feed the young Olthoi grubs. One day, her captors' attention being elsewhere, she escaped from the hive and returned to the surface. There she met Thorsten Cragstone and his band of guerillas, who had also escaped from the Olthoi and were searching for a way to destroy them. She traveled with them across the surface of Dereth, and she and Thorsten became lovers. They found an underground city on an island where the Prosper River widened out to form Lake Blessed, and the Humans set up their stronghold there.
One day Elysa and Thorsten were exploring a small island off the eastern coast of Dereth. At its top they found a tall tower, with no visible way inside. Frustrated, she pounded with her fist against its side, and found herself once again whirling through portalspace. The portal deposited her in a dark hall. At the other end of it an old man sat upon a tall chair like a throne.
This was Asheron Realaidain, the last of the Empyreans who had once inhabited the world called Auberean: long-lived beyond any of his people, he had lived in the tower for centuries, avoiding the Olthoi and studying them. Elysa begged him for a weapon against the giant insects, and Asheron gave her a vial of poisonous oil with which to tip her arrowheads.
The Humans went back to the hive, and descended into its foul depths until they found the ancient Queen, huddled in the deepest chamber, spawning an endless stream of eggs. Elysa tipped her arrow with the oil and loosed it; but as the deadly shaft pierced the Queen, her sharp foreclaws pierced Thorsten Cragstone.
After the fall of the Queen, the remaining Olthoi were chastened and confused, and did not appear to trouble the Humans again for many years. They buried Thorsten deep in the underground city, and began to make farms and orchards, to build houses and cities. Several months later, Elysa gave birth to Thorsten's posthumous child, Borelean (who's spriit is now trapped in the Catacombs).
Elysa was named Queen of New Aluvia, which was far from what she had intended. As one of the poets has said, some have greatness thrust upon them. She spent many of the first fifteen years or her reign in seclusion, either in Asheron's tower or in her own castle somewhere in the wilds of Osteth. But the recurring crises that marked her reign, including an assasination attempt that nearly killed her, kept calling her back to her place as leader of the mortals.
She ruled for many years over all the Humans, Sho and Gharu'ndim as well as Aluvians. The leaders of the Tonk and Lugians revered her. She never forgot Thorsten, but in later years a brave warrior named Antius Blackmore found a place in her life. She died old and full of years, and--though the record is incomplete here--scholars assume that she was laid to rest beside Thorsten until, many years later, their bodies were relocated to the Catacombs deep before Lake Artefon.
In recent years the Archons drained the lake and broached her tomb. At present her spirit, or something like it, can be found in the Archon Holding; she gives adventurers a Mnemosyne, a memory crystal, with a message of love for Thorsten. Perhaps she is not really there; perhaps it is only the Mnemosyne that speaks.
