Searsha the Charred Champion Lore
The tragedy of the Mistwood’s lost Heart Tree has left a scar on all Sylvan beings, few more so than Searsha the Charred, the Fae once beloved as the Emerald Dryad. The Sylvan rarely speak of this fallen spirit, for her story is one of many from those dark times and it holds a truth too painful for many to bear: it is among the starkest tales of what was lost.
The Emerald Dryad was one of the most peaceful and radiant of the Mistwood folk. A nurturer of the forest and protector of its creatures, the Dryad spent her early years playing the wind through the trees to friendly spirits in her glen. Naught an evil root beneath her, she never wished harm upon a living thing and loved dearly all that was good and pure born of the Heart Tree’s grace.
So it was all the more terrible that the Emerald Dryad was among those taken by the corruption that came to infest the ancient Heart Tree and spread from it.
The Dryad’s woodland friends wilted and died in the place they had once called sanctuary, at the twisted hands of the one they had once called the fairest of the emerald trees. Never did the songs they had once shared calm her fury, nor did their dying cries move her blackened heart. Some spirits able to escape the corruption believed their lost friends had been veiled in madness and that their true selves were dormant within their bodies, and as such they gave the Dryad’s new form the name Searsha, the ‘lady that is blind’. Though her old friends hoped to restore Searsha’s sanity, sorrowful parts of them wished she was truly lost and blind to her dreadful new existence.
Searsha haunted her once serene glades, led by the ancient Rhythm’s now destructive song. She trampled the beautiful flowers, and crushed the life from any creatures or Fae that ventured into her path.
During the final battle to halt the corruption of the Heart Tree, Searsha’s glen became a site of carnage. Searsha met Sylvan, Dwarf, and Shadowkin warriors with the full fury of her warped soul. In the wider conflict, her enemies were victorious, and they set the Heart Tree alight. The roaring enchanted flames that spread from the Sacred Grove consumed her glen, as they did her body, and her agony was matched only by that of the rage and anguish in her soul at what had happened. Ablaze with the magical flames, the corruption in her heart and mind evaporated, and the fire found an eternal home within her, changing her body forever. The Dryad was emerald no more.
The corruption within her thus quelled, Searsha awoke from what had felt like an endless slumber in the clutches of evil. But to her horror, her violent nightmares of a blood-soaked and soot-covered grove had all been real. She gazed upon the settling ashes of the forest she had cherished so dearly. The wind that she had once duetted with no longer sang its songs of glee, but carried the cinders of her beloved once-dancing trees and smiling flowers like a callous reapen
The once-Emerald Dryad’s wails echoed across the devastated landscape. She wept for the years she had lost, the years she had taken from her friends, for her precious glen that had once been a haven for all that was good and kind, and how she had transformed it into a killing field. The phantom touch of the destructive, corrupted Rhythm lingered in the back of her memory. Searsha remembered how it had called to her, commanded her mind, body, and soul to commit her atrocities. Clenching the ashes of her home in her burning fists, the Dryad screamed of the vengeance she would take on the evil that had tainted her heart and ultimately caused her home to be ruined.
When Sylvan Watchers surrounded her with weapons in hand, Searsha did not attack them. She only demanded they tell her who was responsible for the desecration. The Watchers told her of Siroth and his dark schemes, and dubbed her Searsha the Charred Dryad as her flaming form vanished into the forest’s depths, where she commenced her hunt.
To this day, the Charred Dryad seeks retribution against the servants of evil. The Sylvan tell the young that the forest is safer than it was but warn not to look upon the dark reckoner. The once-beautiful Fae stops at nothing in her quest for revenge and will sear any who stand in her way from the face of Teleria. Above all, they say Searsha the Charred is a terrible reminder of what all of the Mistwood has become; a symbol of a hurt people and all that was taken from them, and the retribution they crave for it.