Description
Elwynn Vess was the embodiment of poised intellect. She was an elf whose very presence commanded the attention of scholars and sovereigns alike. Her hair, once deep auburn and later streaked with silver, was always worn in a single braid bound with green silk, the color of the Queen’s household. Her eyes held the calm focus of a mind perpetually in motion, sharp as a blade yet softened by patience. She was rarely seen without her writing quill or the small satchel of runic tablets she carried everywhere. Her voice, smooth and deliberate, could still a room not through volume but through the weight of measured truth. Even Queen Aelra Sylanthiel herself was known to pause when Elwynn spoke.
Personality
Elwynn Vess was thoughtful, measured, and endlessly perceptive. She believed knowledge to be both shield and sword—the first and final defense of any realm. She approached life as she did her counsel: methodically, with an unwavering commitment to clarity. To her peers, she was the model of composure; to her students, a teacher both patient and demanding. Though she could seem distant, those who earned her trust found a quiet warmth beneath the scholar’s discipline.
Background
Elwynn Vess was born into one of the oldest noble houses of Vel Enweir, her lineage steeped in both arcane scholarship and service to the crown. She rose swiftly through the Queen’s courts, appointed High Advisor to Queen Aelra Sylanthiel after a string of volatile council collapses. Her insight reshaped the governance of the realm, melding tradition with pragmatic reform, and she became known as the voice behind the throne.
Her life, however, was not untouched by sorrow. Her husband, Captain Theran Vess, fell in battle against the Sandwalkers in the northern wastes beyond the Elfwood. The campaign’s success was bought with ruinous loss, and Elwynn returned from his funeral forever changed—her compassion tempered by austerity, her faith in order hardened into necessity.
In the years that followed, she poured her energy into statecraft and guardianship. She raised two boys as her own: her son Elarin, a gifted pyromancer of quiet heart, and her nephew Landor Vess, the orphaned child of her murdered brother. To both, she offered the same gifts she gave her Queen—discipline, purpose, and truth unsoftened by comfort.
Elwynn’s death (by murder in the Vess family estate) has shaken Vel Enweir to its core. The signs of blood magic and venom point to conspiracies that reach far beyond the throne, yet the Queen’s grief has silenced public inquiry. Within the high halls, her absence is palpable: the stillness before each council session, the empty chair beside the Queen, the sense that the realm’s most trusted voice was cut short mid-sentence.