Childhood
"My family is so normal compared to everything and everyone else—including me—it's almost funny. Well. Aside from the changeling part, I guess."
Born in Cierdan in the year 2947 AS, Shallan had a fairly average childhood—something that is apparently weird if you look at literally anyone else in the party. Her parents, Dara and Riardon, both ran an herbalist shop while raising her and her older brother Adran. Her family was and still is firmly middle class, and aside from the whole changeling part of it (thanks, Dara), Shallan's childhood and adolescence passed very much as one would expect.
The normalcy was briefly interrupted in 2956 AS by a sorcerer-turned-goddess known as the Lady of Shadows. The Lady of Shadows ascended to godhood, killed the Raven Queen, and took control of the Shadowfell. Her first act was to then attempt to merge the Shadowfell and Material Plane while her followers—known as Her Majesty's Army—began an outright war. The ensuing global war would become known as the Reign of Shadows and last a bit longer than a year, during which Cierdan spent a significant period of time under siege. Shallan's mother actually served as a field medic during the war, while her father was left to run the shop and raise Adran and Shallan.
After the end of the war, once Cierdan and the rest of the world began to rebuild, things more or less went back to normal. Thanks to some of the experiences from the war itself, she developed an interest in the different planes and their interactions, particularly the Shadowfell.
At present, her parents still run their herbalism shop, and Adran works as a bartender at one of the taverns in the city.
Pre-Adventuring
"Information grants understanding if you know what to do with it. It’s idiotic to only learn from or about one thing when given the opportunity to learn more."
Shortly after she finished her public schooling in 2965 AS, Shallan apprenticed to Telna Gimlen. Telna was one of the leading experts in planar research at the Skyreach Spire, the major library in Cierdan and one of the largest in the world. Shallan began to teach herself wizarding from a spellbook she found in the stacks a few years after beginning to work there. This spellbook once belonged to a wizard named Berrinthal Varra, a bladesinger of significant power, though she wouldn't realize this for a number of years after first finding the book.
Once she completed her apprenticeship in 2969 AS, Telna formally included Shallan in her research endeavors. Together, the two of them continued to search for a way to close rifts left over from the Reign of Shadows and to restablize the slowly fraying planar structure. Several theories had been proposed, but no concrete solution had been found.
A year after she began working in research with Telna, the first of three break-ins occured. A number of months later, a second attempt was made, followed by a third almost a year later. These same break-ins are partially responsible for Shallan's introduction to adventuring. She spent a period of time afterward under a false identity, Chana, after potential threats were issued towards her family. In 2972 AS, Telna and Shallan hit a dead-end in their research at the Spire, so Telna sent Shallan to the elven city of Imylathelas, to search the libraries there.
Adventuring Days
"Can the world stop ending for five minutes? Or could it be literally anyone else's problem for five minutes? Please?"
Since leaving Cierdan roughly eight months ago, Shallan has experienced far more of literally everything than she ever would have imagined or liked, and yet somehow she's still not done. When she left Cierdan, she was barely more than a librarian. Now, she is one of the most powerful wizards in the world, on the verge of reaching the peak of a wizard's ability. She and the group have stopped two cults and their associated end-of-days goals, including the resurgence of Her Majesy's Army and the Lady of Shadows.
As a result of specifically thwarting Her Majesty's Army, Shallan has taken up the mantle of one of the planar Druids. The four Elemental Planes each have a Druid and a Stake associated with them. These hold the Inner Planes steady, and by extension, do the same for the Outer Planes. With the instability in the Shadowfell caused by the Reign of Shadows, another Stake had to form, this one tied to the Shadowfell. And that Stake required a Druid—a responsibility that fell to Shallan, and one that she feels woefully underqualified and unprepared for.
And yet despite that, the worst threat only just come into focus.
The Shattering, an event where demons and devils allied long enough to complete destroy the known planar structure and the drow civilization that had dominated for centuries beforehand, is known to most as the greatest threat that the world has faced prior to the Reign of Shadows. Entire swaths of history and knowledge were never recovered afterward as an entire civilization fell. But that was not the first instance of civiliazations and empires falling. Before the Shattering, before the establishment of the drow nations on what is now known as the Shattered Lands, there were the gith.
Some thousands of years before the Shattering, the gith faced their own end of days. One of their generals, Vlaakith, had risen to lichdom and sought to rule over all the planes. Without another option to stop her, the leaders of the gith were forced to tear apart the existing planar structure and lock Vlaakith—and the rest of the gith—out beyond the Material Plane using a ritual known as the Seal of Archavus. This Seal constucted a prison for her, bound to the fabric of the planes themselves. As the planes are weakened, so is her prison; as they are strengthed, so is her prison. In the intervening millennia, Vlaakith has sought to return multiple times, including during the Shattering. Each time, she has been locked out using the Seal of Archavus. With the rapidly destabilizing planes in recent centuries, the Reign of Shadows was one of the final nails in the coffin; the Seal has to be performed again, or Vlaakith will return and the planes will fall apart. It's fallen to the Plane Walkers to perform the Seal yet another time.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Performing the ritual as it was found would likely be catastrophic in the long run to the planar structure, saying nothing about the hell her friends and the other Druids would be subjected to, or about the massive loss of life it would also entail. The group enlisted the assisstance of a definitely-evil-but-doesn't-want-to-die archmage to create a temporary, less damaging and less powerful Seal to buy time to develop a proper one that won't 'tectonically lock' the planes. The temporary Seal was performed and Vlaakith was pulled into the Material before she was ready.
Now, the people who live on the Material Plane are fighting a guerilla war against the githyanki while Shallan and the group look for ways to return to the Material Plane after being flung across the Outer Planes. After that, it's just a matter of finding a way to kill Vlaakith for good while the archmage works to create nearly an entire new Seal. In the next few months, either the group will succeed, or the world will end. No pressure.
