Valai Darkrune's page

Valai is petite and slender, presents a fine example of the classical Elven beauty, and is fairly meticulous about her appearance. She arranges her dark golden hair so it flatters her neck and shoulders. She tends to keep her eyelids lowered, the better to surprise people with her amber eyes when she opens them wide. Her skin used to be pale from long hours spent inside, studying old books, but it is starting to show a light golden tan due to her new lifestyle. While she fosters the aspect of a porcelain doll, she is much tougher than she appears -- a fact she carefully hides from those she does not trust.
The greatest difference between Valai and any other Elven woman lies in her expression and in her eyes. To be precise, her face is usually expressionless, a cold mask that betrays little. Her large, almond-shaped eyes are full of all the seething passions her face does not betray. All too often, those passions are negative and bitter.
Valai wears white robes, hemmed in red. Although she takes good care of them, they are neither fashionable nor flattering, merely functional. The Illusionist cares not, for her clothes amiably suit her purpose for them: that they cover her body and provide her with pockets to put things in.
An oddity about Valai that few ever get to see is the marking on her stomach. Spelled out with runes placed there by Arcane marks is the Elven word for 'Exile'.

Valai was born as one of several daughters in her parents' noble estate. From birth, she was groomed to be the perfect little Elfmaid. Her parents lavished teachers and money on her education, and encouraged her to be perfect in every way. Naturally, because her parents encouraged her to seek perfection, Valai assumed that it was hers to seize -- if she worked hard enough at it.
And so she worked hard; she worked very hard. Weapon drills on the practice court until her bones creaked; hours of study in musty libraries until her brain groaned; countless exercizes in arcane magic; boring lectures on history both within and outside the Elven Kingdom until she feared her head would burst; languages, appreciation of fine arts, she did her best to master everything her noble parents suggested... and then something confusing, no, something baffling happened. Her noble parents started trying to hold her back.
"You mustn't become too mannish," her noble mother said, and took away her sword tutor.
"You mustn't focus too much on magic," her noble father said, and took away her magic tutor.
Valai tried to understand it. Her parents had encouraged her to be the perfect Elf, yet now they took away her tutors and insisted she focus on different, more ladylike areas of study. She concluded, with some hesitation, that this must be a test. They had set a barrier up in front of her, and now it was up to Valai to vault over it! So she persevered in her studies, now all on her own and without the guidance and encouragement of her teachers. She persevered, and she was well-pleased with her progress. Perfection was still within her grasp! Yes, she persevered.
Until that day.
The day that changed everything.
Her noble parents called her into the relic chamber, and there, with the paintings of all their noble ancestors gazing down at them, berated Valai for ignoring their orders and endangering her prospects. Bewildered, Valai asked what prospects these were, and her parents said that of course, she had to think of her prospects for marriage. Was this not what they had been preparing her for? She was to be beautiful and well-groomed, intelligent without being so intellectual that she would threaten her husband's ego, fit but not so strong that she would outshine her husband, knowledgeable in many subjects so she could hold a discussion at parties hosted by her husband, but not so knowledgeable that she would... and so on and so forth.
"But what of my striving for perfection?!" Valai exclaimed, furious.
Her parents were scornful; the thought that a silly little girl like her could achieve anything close to perfection was ludicrous. Her duty was to be married to bring her family prosperity, have many children and conform. Tomorrow, they told her, she would take up cooking and embroidery training. They had spoken, and she would obey.
Except when the servants came to wake Valai the next morning, they found a bed unslept in and a room stripped of all valuables.

Incensed by her parents' expectations, Valai had taken everything she owned of any value, and sold it to buy herself a modest abode and pay to continue her lessons. Her mood had soured due to her experiences; her expression was now distant and abstracted where once she had been enthusiastic and determined; she isolated herself whenever possible, and refused to see any of her relatives when they tried to convince her to return home and talk to her parents. She was coldly suspicious of most Elves, preferring to keep them at a distance and her thoughts private. She scribed scrolls and gave little performances for Elf children to support herself, and for a time she did well.
For a time.

Valai managed to get herself admitted to an advanced class, overseen by a venerable archmage, and she did well 'for her age', as the pompous elder was wont to say. But then came the day when the archmage called his class together and announced that one of his high-level scrolls had been stolen from his study during the night; the study that only he and his chosen apprentices could access. He asked the guilty party to step forward and publically admit their guilt. In return, he would not pursue the matter any further.
Valai stood silent. She had not stolen any scroll, knew she had not stolen any scroll, and resorted to wait until this distasteful matter had been resolved and she could continue with her studies. To her shock and outrage, two of the other students promptly accused her of being the most likely to have taken the scroll. "Were Illusionists not consummate tricksters and deceivers?" they argued. "And was Valai not always keeping herself apart from her fellows, sneaking around and keeping secrets?"
Valai's outrage erupted into outright fury when the archmage agreed with this assessment, and ordered her to hand the scroll over. Valai lost her self-control and hurled magic at her two detractors, actually drawing her sword when her spells ran out. At this point, the archmage stopped and reprimanded her, explaining that the whole 'theft' had been a simple test of character, one he regularly applied to his students.
"You could have wept," the archmage said, his eyebrows lowered. "You could have been brave and maintained your innocence. You could have brought forth good arguments to prove your innocence. You could even have left with dignity. You did none of these things, you resorted to violence against your fellow students, Elves of good families, my loyal apprentices!"
The archmage made it clear that Valai had a choice; she could humbly apologize to her fellow apprentices and continue as the archmage's pupil, agreeing to take additional lessons in self-control and propriety from both the archmage and her classmates, or she could leave.
Valai left, spitting at her tutor's feet before she did. In her fury, she did not deign to notice the distress of the classmates she left behind, nor the pain on her now ex-tutor's face.
After this, nothing was the same again. Valai's once abstracted expression turned into the cold mask she bears today. She was even more short and cold to other Elves, displaying exceptional sarcasm to her fellow spellcasters when she deigned to speak to them. More and more, she withdrew from Elven society, limiting her contact with others to the barest minimum, losing herself in any and all tomes that she could get her hands on. She met even the most well-intentioned intrusions on her privacy with harsh words and threats, and finally, when the same apprentices who had helped the archmage administer the fateful test of character forced themselves into her rooms to offer her an intervention, with violence.
Valai was dragged in front of the court of Kyonin after this, and offered the same choice she had been given by her ex-tutor: repent or depart. Again, Valai made the choice to depart, accepting exile in the extreme of her fury. She scowled her way through the marking ceremony that branded her an exile in silence, and left without saying a word to her tearful relatives or the archmage who had watched the proceedings with every sign of distress and guilt, without meeting the eye of any of the Elves gathered to see her fall.
Since her exile, Valai has been travelling the world. She has scoured the ruins of Thassalonia in search of arcane lore, and bore away a working knowledge of its language. She acts the part of a travelling entertainer, casting cantrips and simple illusions to entertain children and simple country-folk in return for food, lodging and pennies. Many of those who meet her think her nothing more than a hedge-mage. When she encounters people of genuine erudition or places and objects of true arcane power, however, she is a transformed personality. Valai delights in learning secrets, ancient stories and spells, focusing as always on the art of Illusion.
To Valai, illusion is not just a way of fooling the senses. In her mind, reality is a harsh, grey bedrock of rules underlying the world. All people's perceptions of the world are their own way of lying to themselves. Replace a person's own illusions with those you create, and you have changed their whole world. Valai's odd philosophy leaves her pleasantly open to new experiences and strange people - so long as they are not Elves from Kyonin. To her, the distinction between species is just one more illusion, and anyone might teach her something new, either by sharing their knowledge or by providing her with experimental information when she casts her illusions.
If Valai has a goal in life, it is to attain ultimate arcane power; she is willing to travel the whole world over to expand her knowledge and abilities to their utmost. She believes that power over Illusion equals power over all living creatures and their perception of the world, and power over perception equals power over the world itself. In rare moments of introspection, she nurtures bitter grudges against the tutor and fellow apprentices that ruined her education in Kyonin for her, and sometimes a bleak regret for the relatives she has neither seen nor spoken to for many years now.

Valai was raised in the faiths of Calistria and Yuelral, but she has little love for what she perceives as Calistria's flightiness and fixation on physical sensation, and she bears an unvoiced resentment against Yuelral's preference for 'natural' magic over the more abstract kind she favours.
Her tutors introduced her to Nethys, but if Valai thinks of the god of magic at all, it is with a sense of discomfort crawling along her spine; the thought that the foremost power of magic is insane worries her.
Since her travels outside Kyonin started, Valai has been introduced to the faith of Sivanah, goddess of illusion, reflections and mysteries by a human Illusionist she met. The concept of the mysterious goddess, whose goals are a secret even to her faithful, amused the exiled Elfmaid, and even impressed her. At any time that this becomes necessary, Valai may pay lip service to any of these four deities. How grudgingly she does so is entirely dependent on the occasion and her mood at the time. She feels some mild affection for Sivanah, at least, but realizes the power of the other three.