Selkyon's page

Like most elves, Selkyon was born in Iadara, and his earliest memories are that of the Fierani Forest, so close that songbirds and woodpeckers would sometimes perch on his crib during the day.

The second child of an upper middle-class family, Selkyon grew in awe of his older sister Lassidya, a skilled archer enrolled in the Iadaran guard as a scout. He could imagine no better life than one spent endlessly roaming the elven woods and admiring their beauty -and he wanted to impress her. He followed her path, and was finally promoted to patrol duty. He insisted, of course, to serve under her orders, and she personally trained him to hold his ground in a fight against intelligent plants, magical beasts and corrupted feys. But there was a darker side to what seemed like an idyllic career.

The constant threat of demonic corruption and the ever-growing Tanglebriar had exacerbated tensions. No elf felt safe anymore; and because they were powerless against the evil power of Treerazer, they turned their focus to easier targets.

Isolationism and xenophobia had always gangrened elven politics, and with the capital of Kyonin thus threatened, a minority became more and more convinced that elven territory needed to be kept under control. Within Iadaran's army, a few rangers secretly coalesced into the Winter Guards, a faction that dedicated itself to 'defending elven borders' by any means necessary. Lassidya was one of its leading members.

Selkyon did not realise immediately what he had got himself into. He fought along the Winter Guards and participated in brutal raids, until one particular encounter with a tribe of nixies twisted by demonic influence ended in horror. On that day, the Winter Guards lost one of their members to the feys; their counterattack was one of the worst bloodbaths Selkyon would ever witness. The nixies were beaten up, some mutilated, and their bodies nailed to the trees to make an example. Left traumatized by the experience, Selkyon understood that Lassidya and her troops equalled in their sadism the demons they were claiming to protect their land from. After a long hesitation, he eventually reported Lassidya and her troops for acts of torture and excessive violence; he was the one who was forced to quit. He left Iadara the very same week, never to return.

With few marketable skills and no connections outside of Kyonin, Selkyon earned a living by enrolling himself as a mercenary, usually protecting caravans moving between large cities. It was during these errands that he became acquainted with Herschen, a worldly and sociable half-elf from Nirmathas. Their frequent travels together evolved into a genuine friendship, though when Herschen decided to take a break from mercenary work and return to his wife and child, they parted.

Upon realising that a mercenary life would never provide him with the stable relationships he craved, Selkyon tried to establish himself in Oppara for a while, and even found solace with a gnome woman – an artist. But the human city, just like his newfound love, forever eluded him in some strange way; they changed too quickly for him to grow familiar to them, and they lived according to codes he had not learned and did not understand. His attempts to connect with other elves remained similarly fruitless: they were Forlorns who had never been to Kyonin, or missed the company of other elves, and to them he remained an ‘other’. For a decade, Selkyon delayed the inevitable, but eventually, he left Oppara -and his lover. She had seen it coming, and the separation was sorrowful, but not entirely unexpected.

After that, he wandered aimlessly, for what seemed like forever -taking a few jobs here and there, sometimes staying in the same town for a handful of years- until he remembered that Herschen had offered him to come visit him and his family in Phaendar, if he happened to be passing by. He had not been passing by; but he had nowhere else to go.

It took some more time to locate Phaendar and reach it, and by the time he arrived, Herschen was no longer of this world. Dysentery had taken him, some five years ago; but he was survived by his widow and his daughter, now a grown-up woman with a baby of her own. Selkyon was moved to learn that Herschen had told enough stories about him to his wife and child that they should be able to recognise him as a close friend of their late loved one.

He was warmly welcomed, though he had unknowingly arrived in the midst of the preparations for the upcoming Market Festival, which was creating quite the commotion in every household. To spend some time with Herschen’s family and as a thank-you for having him, Selkyon decided to stay and help out around the house until things have calmed down.

Despite his fine elven features and slender frame, Selkyon is not a particularly attractive man. By the standards of his race, his looks would be considered commonplace, and he certainly shows no particular care for his appearance. Though his clothes and leather boots appear to be well-manufactured, the wear on them is painfully noticeable, and his straight hair, cut at chin length, is in a perpetual state of dishevelment. Though he frequently and methodically washes out his clothes from the filth of a life spent mostly outside, some stains have remained encrusted; his boots are perpetually caked in mud. He has scars left on his face and body from a case of smallpox, which he caught from humans a few years after leaving Kyonin.

Despite his unkept appearance, he carries himself well, is soft-spoken, and makes most of his interlocutors at ease because of his politeness and respectfulness that border on the chivalrous, revealing impeccable manners and a solid education one would not easily suspect in a ranger. He feels great guilt over his association with the Winter Guards, and dreads coming face-to-face with another fey.

Blessed with a life expectancy most mortals can only dream of, Selkyon’s biggest fear is loneliness. It is rare to meet another elf outside of Kyonin, and his life experience has left him feeling estranged from his own race. He dreams of having friends and a family of his own, but struggles to let go of his dark past, that instilled in him a long-lasting fear of being monstrous. Shame has cost him his past faith in Ketephys, though he still keeps a belt buckle in the shape of the god's holy symbol in his backpack -unable to wear it, but unable to throw it away.