Tàsmorei

Former lesser heiyao and reluctant penitent.

Little about her past is known, save that she once served the Deceiver Spirit whose malign rule buried Rushédak beneath mountains of corpses and oceans of kajtlemta blood. She is reticient to discuss her history, but kajtlemta scholars have traditionally ascribed her presence to a raufari most often embodied as a monstrous sea creature who was notorious for preying upon the barges, fishing boats, and caravels of the free kajtlemta.

Near the end of the Deceiver Spirit's rule she was betrayed by another one of his lieutenants and captured by kajtlemta demon hunters. The tianhunren allies of the free kajtlemta had instructed them to deliver any such heiyao into their custody, but this particular kajtlemta band had chosen instead to covertly liase with a gulofolk exorcist, whose Talent of spiritfire was believed capable of annihilating a heiyao soul. One among their number disagreed with this course of action, though, and set her free—whether they did so out of fear of tianhunren anger or a misplaced sense of mercy has been lost to history. Ill-advised this was, and they might all have perished that night, but for the utter terror she had felt at the prospect of complete oblivion and the anger that still burned within her from the Deceiver Spirit's indifference. She slunk away into the night and was not seen again for a very long time.

What she did in the intervening years, decades, and centuries is known only to a few. It is thought that she spent a long time as an outcast, pledging loyalty neither to the heiyao nor the tianhunren and trying to come to terms with what had happened to her. She is believed to have returned to Rushédak for some time in the guise of a kajtlemta, and lived as a human within the anhwan-republic of Lenhwoue. She finally reappeared much later as an alfr-like creature, her change of heart vouched for by a pair of tianhunren who were of wide renown.

There is a tale commonly told about her time in the void, of unknown provenance but often accepted as containing at least a kernel of truth. It is said that, at the end of her wandering, she sought out and found the Highlord of the Host, deciding that she would accept whatever fate he had in store for her. He devoured her—but not to destroy her or to consume her. Instead, she was confronted by the shades of all the kajtlemta she had maimed or killed, and their pain became hers in turn. When she finally emerged, she was once again a tianhunren. And upon the flank of the Highlord's form there could now be found a single scale, newly and forever discolored.

She is gruff and can be ill-tempered and standoffish, but also lacks many of the inhibitions that set most tianhunren apart from their First-Awoken counterparts and is more than willing to fraternize with her mortal companions in ways that other alfr would consider frivolous. She can be unsure of herself in ways that other tianhunren will never experience, but she is fiercely protective of her friends and willing to push through even the most hopeless of circumstances. It is for this reason that she volunteered—reluctantly—to mentor a group of adventurers shortly before the War of Gall and Brushwood, heroes setting off on a nigh-impossible quest to give the First-Awoken a fighting chance against the impending darkness.

She usually keeps a low profile. All alfr must do so in order to avoid attracting the baneful attention of the heiyao, but she in particular, given her history. Fortunately for her, she is considerably more formidable an opponent than most alfr, and she fights with vicious and unrelenting fury. She continues to be despised by certain civilizations; the kajtlemta have vowed to kill her should she set foot upon their worlds. Although her instinctive response would be something along the lines of "I'd like to see them try", she generally respects their wishes in this matter.