Tramaria Champion Lore
Born the daughter of a noble Aravian house, Tramaria was but a child when the War of the Elves began. Her parents were among those renegades who studied shadow magic, and they taught it to her. She proved to have an aptitude for the forbidden knowledge, and soon her skill outstripped that of her tutors.
As the war went against the Dark Elves, Tramaria’s family was forced into exile. They retreated to the fastness of Durham Forest, a place unlike any she had ever known. She had been a creature of palaces and manicured gardens; now, she slept in a tent, haunted by the scuttling of unseen creatures.
The next few years were a trying time for Tramaria. Her family had been forced to leave behind much of the wealth that might have brought them some comfort in the frontier settlements of Durham Forest. Instead of being at the top of the societal food chain, they were forced to congregate with the lesser nobility, somewhere in the middle of the new hierarchy that was beginning to form. Neither the poorest, nor the richest. Neither the most influential, nor the least.
Tramaria retreated into studies of the arcane, even as her people descended into anarchy. With the end of the War of the Elves, and the formal exile of the Dark Elves to Durham Forest, the latter fought among themselves for power. Tramaria became obsessed with unlocking the secrets of the strange, wickedly bladed and barbed scepter that had once been a symbol of her family’s authority in Aravia, believing that it might hold the key to regaining their lost power and influence.
The scepter was centuries old, a relic of times long forgotten. For much of that, her family had considered it nothing more than an heirloom and weapon; a symbol of their superiority over the other noble families. But to Tramaria it was something more. The gem integrated within the blade seemed to whisper to her, in the dark of the night, in her dreams. It called to her, beckoning her to wield it… as if it were meant for her. As if it were her destiny.
Tramaria’s family, meanwhile, threw themselves into the ongoing conflict, hoping to improve their status and reclaim something of their old power or even to rule the Dark Elves themselves. But when the dust settled and order had been established, Tramaria’s family had been all but wiped out. Those who survived, fled. Tramaria hid herself away in an isolated village, far from those who might otherwise have sought her death in reprisal for the actions of her family during the fighting. Soon, all memory of her had faded away entirely.
When Tramaria finally emerged from her self-imposed isolation several decades later, it was not as the daughter of a disgraced house but a woman of intent. In her exile she had learned how to draw out the malign power nestled in the mystic gemstone at its core, and had added its strength to her own, using it to greatly enhance her already-formidable arcane abilities, as well as increase her longevity. The staff was bound to her, and she to it, in ways even she did not fully understand.
With the staff, Tramaria was a sorceress equal to any who had ever emerged from the academies of Ireth or Aravia, and she intended to use her power to reclaim all that had been taken from her. But she had learned from her family’s mistakes. They had sought to rule through open violence and short-sighted treachery — she chose another path.
Tramaria started slowly; warily. Backroom deals and whispered promises served to reintroduce her to a society that had long since forgotten her name, she using her magic to dull the wits of her interlocutors to gain herself further advantage. What her kin had lost through vainglory and hubris, she intended to regain through guile, subtle application of skill, and force of will. At first, she sold her magic the way a warrior might sell their skill with a blade, but was wary of revealing the full extent of her power. The internecine feuding between the Dark Elves was ripe for mercenary work, especially of the mystical kind.
Tramaria parlayed her skills to wind herself into positions of influence first within the guilds, then with the noble houses. She has quickly become a trusted advisor to many notable families and institutions but, as with her magic, she is always careful not to show just how much influence she truly wields. Bit by bit, she has made herself indispensable to the descendants of those who’d once sought her death, and become an integral factor in the continued survival of her people. But Tramaria is not satisfied with simply serving the aims of others. She has plans of her own. And one day, she will have back all that was taken from her.