Alaeron Duskbow - The Obsidian Heart

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Name: Alaeron Duskbow
Race: Or-Tel'Quessir Wood Elf (Elmanesse)
Height: 183cm (6'0")
Weight: 70kg (154lbs)
Skin: Coppery tan
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Blonde

Physical Appearance:

A male wood elf. He carries a large darkwood bow, with a quiver full of many arrows strapped to his back. His clothes are elven deign, yet of simple make in forest hues of green and brown. Sensible and practical clothes. Several pouches are strapped to his belt. His skin is coppery, his hair is blonde, and worn long. His eyes are hazel – sometimes trending green other times brown.

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Background:

Spoiler

I was born, by your human reckoning, in 1165 DR – the Year of the Obsidian Heart.

As a young elf I was fortunate to come under the tutelage of Regithlar Silverleaf, a ranger. It was he who taught me much about archery, hunting, and lore of the forest, the history of the People.

Almost one hundred years ago the King of Tethyr commenced persecution of those of elven heritage. It became a dark time for us. We withdrew to our forest. Wealdath - the Unspoiled Woods. It is a magical place, the last remnants of the elven realm Keltormir of old. It holds many wonders, and many secrets. But also many dangers.

I joined those who patrolled our borders. Doing what we had to do to keep our borders safe.

Recently steps were made to see peace between our people and those outside our forest. I returned to Regithlar’s abode but there was no sign of him, save a peculiar object left in the centre of his table. A small stone of obsidian, heartshaped. Moreover, a strange rune was emblazoned on its surface. I took it as a sign for me but its meaning I have yet to understand. It is said that you humans have lore and knowledge in your cities and towns. Perhaps I shall leave the woods for a time, and I may learn yet the secret to the rune and Regithlar’s message.

We shall see.

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[Magnus]

"The Fig Tree and the Sea"​

It was as simple question his kin had asked him at Greengrass. "Where is the furtherest you have been beyond the Wealdath?" A simple question, yet the response it brought to the mind of the stoic wood elf ranger - of memories and feelings long stored away - was anything but simple.

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Long before Y'Tellarien. Before the heart of obsidian. Before even the war drums on the wind, there was a summer. A brief, golden season when Duskbow, still young by elven standards, left the green vault of Wealdath and traveled south. He remembered how the forest behind him seemed to sigh, not in farewell, but perhaps in warning.

Duskbow had gone not for duty, but curiosity. Regithlar had told him of cities, their noise, their brilliance, their cruelty, and encouraged him to see them with his own eyes. “To understand the world,” his mentor had said, “you must sometimes step beyond the trees.”
"Go," Regithlar had said that dawn, voice soft and weathered. "There is more to the world than even our oldest trees remember. You will not lose your roots by walking among stone."

And so he did.

For the first time, he crossed the Starspire mountains, passing through dry canyons, olive groves, and sunbaked ridges, his elven garb drawing stares and wariness. Taking passage on a swift ocean-going ship just west of Zazesspur. His journey took a week, and the air grew hotter with each passing day until, at last, he saw it: Calimport.

The city sprawled like a jeweled serpent beside the sea. Its sandstone minarets pierced the sky, and the scent of cardamom and salt mingled on the breeze. Duskbow walked with purpose, bow slung across his back, quiver full. The guards at the gates raised eyebrows but said nothing, elves were rare, but not exceptional. He remembered the scent of dust and spice rising from the road. The way the sky turned bronze in the late afternoon.


Inside, the city roared. Merchants shouted in tongues he did not know. Painted veils fluttered in balconies above. Children darted through the crowd like fish. For a moment, Duskbow felt adrift. The forest had always told him where to look, what to hear. Here, there were no birdsong cues or whispering winds. Calimport was a cacophony of color and sound. A city as alluring as it was dangerous. Sandstone towers cast long shadows over labyrinthine streets, where perfumed nobles and ragged beggars brushed shoulders in the same breath.

The days passed in study, but at night, Duskbow wandered. He learned the stars looked different above stone. He heard songs sung in seven languages. He saw cruelty hidden in beauty in a slave market cloaked in incense and gold. And yet, he also saw kindness: a fruit vendor handing oranges to hungry children, a blind poet reciting tales to a crowd that listened in reverent silence.

There, Duskbow met Sahmir el-Fahri, a scholar of ancient lore, a man whose manners were like the sea; calm on the surface, unknowable beneath. The man was old, his beard streaked with white, but his mind was sharp. Over dates and strong tea, they spoke of ancient history.

But it was not Sahmir who remained in Duskbow’s dreams.


It was Laleh

Sahmir’s daughter.


She was not a poet, though she wrote verses on scraps of cloth. She was not a warrior, though she carried herself like a blade. She laughed like sunlight glancing off ripples. She asked questions as if she were pulling thread through the fabric of the world, trying to find where it would unravel.


At first, they walked the gardens at dusk. He would tell her of the Wealdath, of glades where deer walked without fear, of trees that remembered names spoken centuries ago. She told him of Calimport, of the tunnels beneath the city, of the dolphins that sometimes followed ships at dawn.


One evening, beneath the fig tree at the heart of the courtyard, she reached for his hand. He did not pull away.


For a time, their days took on the rhythm of something not quite real. They stole hours in shadowed corners of Sahmir’s villa, exchanged glances in the hush of the library, brushed fingertips when they passed books between them. It was a quiet love, tentative and aching. Neither dared speak of the future. They both knew it would break the spell.


One night, on a rooftop overlooking the harbor, Laleh said, "You belong to the trees, Alaeron." for he had shared with her his name, "Not to this place. Not to me." Her voice trembled, not with weakness, but with truth.


He kissed her, gently. And then, after a long silence, he said, “And you belong to this sky. This wind. This sand. You are the spirit of this city, and I could no more keep you than bottle the breeze.”


They did not say goodbye.


When he left Calimport at dawn, he carried no tokens. No letters. Just memory. Her laughter among the fig trees. The scent of jasmine clinging to his cloak. The knowledge that some love was meant not to last, but to be remembered. The way a sunset lives on in the mind long after the light has faded.


He never returned. Not because he could not, but because he could not bear to find the fig tree gone, or worse, unchanged.


And sometimes, when the light hits the trees just so, or when jasmine lingers in the breeze, Duskbow closes his eyes and lets himself remember her.


Laleh.

The one summer. And the way the sea burned gold beneath their feet.

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The Duskbow of Wealdath​

In the still hours when the ancient forest held its breath, as sun’s last light painted the canopy in amber and gold, he would take to the border paths. It was at this hour between day’s dying breath and night’s first whisper that men grew cautious and creatures grew bold. And it was then that the elves of Wealdath sent forth their most silent sentinel.

He was young then, by elven measure, but already marked. Trained under Regithlar Silverleaf, he had mastered the bow with a swiftness that surprised even the seasoned rangers. But it was not only skill that set him apart. It was the way he moved through the half-light, more shadow than form, more silence than shape.

The humans of Tethyr, who had grown fearful of elvenkind and tightened their noose around Wealdath’s green throat, whispered of a ghost in the trees. They called him the Duskbow. They said he could see in twilight as clearly as a hawk at noon. That his arrows struck with no sound. That he spoke not with words, but with wind and bark and blood.

Some said he was a spirit of the forest itself. Wrathful and ancient, drawn to the scent of iron and hatred. Others claimed he was merely an elf who had lived too long in the shadows and gone mad from sorrow. Few dared test which tale was true.

But he remembered the faces. The trespassers, soldiers, poachers, elf-hunters. He gave warnings when he could. A snapped twig too close. A feathered shaft buried in a tree by one’s ear. But when they came with torch and blade, he gave no second chances.

From atop the high branches or hidden in the brush, he would draw back his darkwood bow, fletched with feathers of owls and dyed in dusk-leaf ink. His arrows whispered through the air, and the forest answered.

It was said that dusk in Wealdath lingered long, held in place by his presence. That as long as the sun had not fully set, the Duskbow yet watched.

He bore the name with reluctance. Not for vanity or glory did he guard the borders, but for kin and for peace. Yet even he could not deny the power of the name, and so it stuck.

When peace talks began decades later, and the swords lowered and the torches dimmed, he found fewer reasons to patrol. But still, in the twilight hours, he would sometimes walk the old paths. Not to hunt, but to remember. To listen.

And though the world forgot the tales, the trees remembered. And when dusk falls on Wealdath, it is said you can still feel his presence in the hush, like a bowstring drawn, waiting.

For the forest does not forget its guardians.

Nor does the dusk forget its bow.

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