#eleonara

*This universe uses a mixture of book, show and game canon!*

A graduate of Aretuza, Eleonara focused on her abilities as a healer, an herbalist and a skilled Geomancer. And after a failed stint in politics, the sorceress cut herself off from trivial court life and focused her attention on wandering the Continent, offering her services to small villages. Anything from healing, protection, and, perhaps most infamously: Stealing away women, children and the unfortunate in the night, guiding those in need to sanctuary.

Born to a Brickmaker and a local healer, Eleonara hailed from the tiny village of Elgin. Her home consisted of others also working with mud and clay, potters and sculptors, brickmakers and builders, and was hidden in the swamps of Temeria surrounding Lake Vizima.

El was a middle child with two older siblings and two younger, it was a poor family but a loving one. And the girl often spent time barefoot in the mud, tossing rocks further across the lake than her siblings and often excelling in Hide and Seek. In fact, it was actually quite easy for the child to make herself disappear. Whenever her siblings became cross with her, she’d vanish into the mist. Foot races led to opponents getting their feet stuck in mud turned hard like cement, and even bumps and scrapes on a little brother’s knee could be healed with a loving kiss at the cost of a nosebleed or a need for a long nap. Little did she know, this was the result of hidden powers coming to blossom from within.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck when bandits raided the village due to a rumor that gold had been found while mining the clay. Eleonara’s father was crippled from a devastating injury and, tragically, Eleonara’s mother and siblings were lost in the ensuing struggle. From a family of seven to a family of two, the wounds and eventual scarring ran deep. Eleonara’s father was never the same and carried around an everlasting sadness that his one remaining daughter could not heal. Not with all of the love and herbs in the world. The rift between them grew as time passed, only for their connection to be completely severed with the arrival of a teacher from Aretuza.

While Eleonara doesn’t blame her father for doing so, the man was far too uneducated to realize what was happening, the sorceress from Aretuza had been pointed in their direction after a complaint was filed regarding Eleonara’s magical stunts. The man, convinced that he was doing the right thing and that his daughter would be in safer hands, allowed her to be sold and taken to Aretuza. This would be the last time they would see each other.

Given that Eleonara was from a poorer family, she, like many of the other girls from poorer families, had to work twice as hard from within their prison at Aretuza. Providing sometimes dangerous and often grueling manual labor to support the school and its functions. All while not being allowed to leave nor while having any contact with the outside world.

The girl was *not* fond of Aretuza, growing to despise their teaching tactics and means of pitting girls one against the other as a means of achieving power and greatness. But regardless, she applied herself to her studies. She faced some ridicule for showing an interest in Geomancy, a stubborn branch of an especially stubborn and draining element. This ended up being something she ended up studying extensively and excelling in alongside healing and herbal tinctures. She graduated with average marks and was released into the court of an up and on the rise Baron. A Baron who, with his party of fellow men, had gathered and unified large swathes of villages and land together. It seemed a promising start, and with the right hand it could blossom into something more.

It would be Eleonara’s first, and last, dive into politics.

Eleonara was met with hostility, suspicion and dislike from the people. The Baron and his supporters treated her like a lap decoration more than a guide or advisor, and much of El’s advice and attempts to help were met with stubborn and narrow minded means of thinking. It soon became clear to her that these men were simply interested in power and conquest. Disheartened, Eleonara befriended the Baron’s wife, a village chieftain’s daughter taken and forced into a marriage she hadn’t asked for. They bonded over their shared hatred of the self appointed Baron and his men. And when fighting broke out between the men, Eleonara took it upon herself to take the Baron’s wife and her children and guide them back to her home village, there they could escape the country with an old lover.

Eleonara, feeling a sense of duty to Aretuza, remained. Even as the Baron was slaughtered and the power vacuum began, the sorceress staid with each leader until angry and abused subjects burned down the fortress. El simply let her image die with them, and left the ashes behind along with a vow to never work for higher powers again. In helping her friend escape, Eleonara had found her calling: She’d always been good at hiding things. Now she could help others do the same thing.

So she walks the continent, spending long periods of time out in the wilderness and among the earth. She hones her Geomancy and Geokinesis and seeks out the few masters of the element of Earth. However, she often peddles herbs and healing services to small villages and towns. And, occasionally, finding an orphaned child, a battered girl or an outcast, befriending them, and coming for them in the night to take them to a different place to begin anew. Daughters ripped from their families returned, children brought to sanctuary or loving arms of new parents, men left for dead sent to places of healing. It is how Eleonara heals her heart and makes her difference in the world she knows.

However, this has not been without incident. Those who recognize her mud stained clothes call her ‘The Mud Witch’. Handfuls of scorned husbands or hired thugs or witch hunters have been sent after her often. Most of which usually end up encased in thick and hardened clay. Many are under the impression that she whisks people away to be killed and used as sacrifices. And eerie clay figures often find their way into the homes of those who are ‘chosen’. Circles of clay figures can often be found in the woods, acting as a barrier to hide huts filled with supplies and provide temporary shelter for those who wish to journey to their new destination alone. Eleonara herself is a mysterious figure, one who doesn’t speak of herself often but remains level headed and calm in almost all situations. She defends her charges ferociously from monsters and men alike, and is not beneath trying to stand up to a Witcher or two in order to accomplish her tasks.