omnes una manet nox.

one night awaits us all.

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief. ― Homer, The Iliad

soulsheld. independent, selective medael from infinity nikki. guided through the soul tide by ciri (she/her, 30+). contains heavy spoilers for the 2.5 update. very crossover friendly. follows from skyheld. pinned post/mobile banner/promo credit.

temporary about | loz verse | da verse | bg3 verse (can also be used as a general dnd/forgotten realms verse)

guidelines.

unprompted | always accepting | @accultant

"I don't play."

Her words are clipped, emotion held back by such old habit she does not know what would come forth if she let them through, grief or rage or mad glee; in them, too, is an irrefutable end to a line of questioning that has not quite begun, a definitive no to any careful prodding for her to play. But her hand goes to her hip, to the ocarina hanging from her belt. Long nails tap the hollow bone, familiar even when silent, without the hum of sleeping divinity.

She doesn't play, but she must keep it. Out of sentimentality, yes, but not for Ilmater, for the temple where she once filled her days by playing it for the ill and injured, troubled and lost. This goes further back than that.

She remembers a woman holding her leg so gently and humming as she cleaned the small scratch on the knee, a soft thumb brushing tears away, a kiss between the itching new-growth horns. She remembers a man picking her up and setting her on his shoulders so she could see over a crowd. She remembers a boy walking behind her along a long, lonely beach, stretching his little legs to step in the tracks she left in the sand. She remembers the same boy, older, taking her by the hand to lead her to his newest project, a flower he dug up from the dirt and put haphazardly into a pot expecting it to thrive. She remembers these things, and then the illness, and then the loss: they were snatched from her like kites with their strings cut off, and she was left with her half of the string, with all of that love leading to nothing.

All that time, all those years, she was told the ocarina would help. Her mother and father believed it, even as they died in no less pain than they had if she hadn't played. Her brother still believes it. Medael alone understands its futility. Magic can soothe a scratch on the knee, but there is no cure for the wounds of the world. The ocarina's silence is a testament to her belief. Its song was hope, and she carries its hollow shell to remind herself there is no hope left.

A part of her yearns to speak of this. A weaker part of her yearns to spill it all in one big heave, to let forth a flood of unwavering despair, to say out loud we are all doomed, look at us, we are all doomed! She looks at Iago, but does not say this. She's not as weak as that.

THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN | accepting | @chaostides

"Such is the nature of loss. It does not begin or end with death."

Comfort is a strange thing. Like her clerical robes, once worn day after day until they sat on her shoulders like a second skin, now left behind somewhere—their cut and texture would be familiar, still, if she were to put them on, but she would not feel like herself in them. The robes have not changed, but she is not the Medael who wore them; comfort has not changed, but she no longer speaks it fluently. They would be a costume now, a speech practiced beforehand with no heart put into it, and she has tired of pretending.

If it is comfort Alara speaks she will be disappointed, but Medael does not turn her away. Once she was Ilmater's Pain-bearer, and she can bear this pain too, hold it gently as a small flame that needs but breath to grow stronger. She has not comfort to give. She will speak the truth now.

"Loss begins before you know it, and ends when there is nothing left, no thought nor memory. There will come a time when you do not remember your mother's voice, or her eyes, or the touch of her hands." In front of them, the campfire flickers. There is something about fires, something about the stillness of late evenings, that seem to invite these kinds of confessions. Sorrow seems greater at night, and perhaps other people, even strangers, seem not to far away.

When Arlathan fell to the Tevinters, the followers of the Forgotten Ones in the Tirashan forest had already withdrawn into their temples and gone into uthenera, preparing for a long sleep. They had been in hiding for millennia already, and knew to bide their time.

Time did pass, yet the night of the elves wore on. Every now and then they would awaken by the wards of their temples to fight back outsiders, to maintain the defenses, to pray and to watch the outside world for signs that their Gods might return. Then they would return to sleep. Age would try to sink its claws into them, but by spending most of their time only half alive, they evaded it century by century.

Still, though age could not find them, death did. Their temples crumbled, their sarcophagi cracked; predators tore apart their sleeping bodies. Their spirits strayed too far into the Fade and forgot the way back. Some fell in the rare battles fought on temple ground. Some, venturing out for news, carried illness back.

One day, the High Keeper of one of these ancient temples, one dedicated to the Goddess once known as the Healer, woke alone...

WAR TABLE OPERATION: SHADOWS OVER TIRASHAN

We are getting reports of large rifts on the edge of the Tirashan Forest. This is a remote and dangerous region, and perhaps it would be best to let it be... but refugees from the area are begging us for help as demons from these massive rifts drive them from their fields and villages. With the Orlesian forces occupied elsewhere, they're unlikely to receive help from anywhere else.

JOSEPHINE:

The Marquis of Serault might be able to help us get into the area safely. With some well-placed words they will consider it a boon.

LELIANA:

Some places are best left to their own. Let us send agents to escort these refugees to safer areas. (mission end.)

CULLEN:

My soldiers can secure the area before your arrival. It will still be dangerous, but we will know what we're up against at least.

...well, not quite alone.

While she slept, the fragile Veil in her temple has torn and demons have slipped through. Now they stalk its halls, some wearing the bodies of those who slept in the temple, the scribes and guards and other servants. Medael, weak from her long sleep, barricades herself in the temples inner chamber and bides her time.

Salvation comes in the form of a mortal, with a strange mark on their hand.

Though the rifts at the temple are closed, its defenses are ruined and all other inhabitants dead. Medael sees no point in returning to uthenera, choosing instead to follow the Inquisitor into the unfamiliar modern world. Assumed to be a mortal elf, one of many rumoured to live in the Tirashan forest, she stays only a short while with the Inquisition before she leaves to travel. She stays in contact with some of its member, however.

Medael returns shortly after the defeat of Corypheus and offers to join the Inquisitor as a companion. As a powerful spirit healer, she can offer healing as well as guidance on dealing with spirits and demons, in addition to offensive magic. She will remain a potential companion up until Trespasser, at which points she disappears. Evidence left behind suggest that she has been an agent of Fen'harel all this time, keeping an eye on the Inquisitor's condition in Solas' place and feeding information. If not revealed sooner, it will also be revealed here that she herself is an ancient elf.

INTERIM

In the years after the events of Trespasser, little is seen or heard of Medael unless she wants herself to be seen. She works with Solas, but unbeknownst to him she has her own plans for the world. She does not want the ancient elves restored as a people—she wants them returned to spirit form, and to stay as such forever. For that, she needs to assure that the fall of the Veil is as destructive as it can be—and if possible, she needs the Titans to stand guard between the physical world and the Fade.

VEILGUARD

THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN | accepting | @chaostides

The tiefling's golden eyes roll heavenward for a moment, before the cold mask slots back into place on her features. So the other is not merely a spoiled brat but a coward as well, and this is who she must rely on to lead her troupe of adventurers into the ruin? If she was more powerful Medael would turn on her heel and proceed alone into the depths, but she has spurned the power granted by Ilmater and not yet found an acceptable substitute, and without magic the sword at her hip is near useless. She needs an escort, that much she has found out on her own. It is a shame that the most likely candidate to far is... this woman.

Medael looks at her with a detached sort of pity, the way one looks at a dying butterfly, small and insignificant and not worthy of a deeper grief, but still in its way a sad thing. This is the great tragedy of the world, that it is filled with such horrors, and that no one is truly equipped to deal with it. That the darkest corners of the world as well as its brightest plaza, hold cruelty and sorrow and pain unending. That death, such as it is, is no respite, that neither soul nor body is ever safe, that the suffering is never over. That it matters not if one is a coward or filled with bravery, if one is a lady or a butterfly, because the world will break both in time.

name: medael race: tiefling class: cleric (before act I), shadow sorcerer (act II and onwards) alignment: true neutral

ACT ONE: LADY OF SUFFERING

When the party approaches the Overgrown Ruins the bandits standing outside have captured a tiefling woman found sneaking around their camp and are currently discussing what to do with her. The party can try to negotiate for her release, or they can fight the bandits, at which point she will join them. If they negotiate for her release, or if they kill the bandits but then leave the ruin, she will stay by the ruins seeking a way in. The only way to recruit her into the party is to keep going into the ruin, where she is seeking something.

Though she is slow to reveal it to the party, Medael used to be a cleric of Ilmater the God of Suffering, and served as a Painbearer in the Open Hand Temple in Baldur's Gate for many years. She witnessed endless suffering and countless injustices and could do little about it but offer comfort. Such is the work of the One Who Endures, but she would not endure forever. When she could no longer bear the pain she had been given, she began to search for other paths.

First she turned to other gods, but she never found one who had the answers she sought. Life, she had learnt at the temple, was the source of all suffering. Death, then, had to be its end. True death, not resurrection, or the eternal wallowing of souls in some afterlife. But this was not what most gods offered. In her search, she found echoes of an old god of death, older than Kelemvor, older than Cyric, older even than Myrkul. The Lord of the End of All Things—perhaps he would have what she wanted.

He was dead, but true death is a mercy denied gods as well as mortal souls. She followed the crumbling trail and came upon the Overgrown Ruins, knowing only that it was an old temple of his. What exactly she expected to find there she does not know, but she recognizes the power and wisdom in Withers. It is enough for her to stay to seek his counsel, even if he too cannot give her what she wants.

Having given up her faith in Ilmater, Medael has lost her clerical powers and now relies only on martial weapons, with which she is decent at best. She is not much use in a fight, but can tend to wounds and illnesses with non-magical healing, and is knowledgeable in potions and poisons. Throughout Act I she will thus support the party from the sidelines.

ACT TWO: LADY OF MERCY

Although disappointed by Withers and indifferent to the threat of the tadpoles, Medael follows the party into the Shadow-cursed lands, where she takes an interest to the curse. Here is a land almost devoid of life; the undead are soulless and know neither joy nor grief, driven by base urges or the command of another. Though she gives little heed to the teachings of Shar, she begins to investigate the cursed lands on her own. This, naturally, puts her in great danger, but the shadow-curse doesn't consume her. Instead she lets it fuel her, finding a pathway within herself to the Shadowfell itself, and learning how to turn its power into her own sorcery.

As a Shadow Sorcerer, midway through Act II Medael can join the party as a full companion. She initially joins the party out of a desire to further investigate the Shadow-cursed lands. As the Absolute's end plan unfolds, her interest shift to the Netherbrain. Though she keeps these thoughts from the rest of the party, she considers whether enslavement to a Netherbrain is the solution she looks for—because one is said to lose one's soul when becoming a Mindflayer, and so the people as she sees it will be gone, and what happens to their altered husks matters little. She needs more information before she decides on this plan, however. That is her guiding motivation, moving into act III.