#velumbra

A commission by @duskguard of Zarunpel's bonded shadow panther and mount, Velumbra, with a cameo of the knight herself.

She was great to work with, and why I love working with artists that know the source material: They came up with the idea of the hammer at the end of Zarunpel's braids from me just stating it was weighted for combat, and the aesthetics and habits of Knights of Garenbrig.

Name: Syr Zarunpel Alernis

Pronouns: She/Her

Species: Human(...?)

Age: 22

Plane of Origin: Eldraine

First Planeswalk: Kaldheim

Colors: Primary Green, secondary tied between White and Black

Appearance:

Zarunpel is a very short (about 146cm/4'9" tall) black woman, and her most striking feature is of course her hair. It is long enough it would drag on the ground if left untended, and its way to reflect light gives it a metallic appearance. The exact color is difficult to pin down, depending on lighting or environment, it has been described as copper at times, gold at others. She looks pretty thin and unscarred for a knight of Garenbrig, but appearances can be deceiving. Her hair is usually kept in braids, wrapped around her body when she's prepared for combat.

She's typically encountered in armor, light or heavy depending on the occasion, with the colors of Garenbrig and her family. She has a few, but one notable is an armored suit she got made on New Capenna that is still armor while looking less like one. Rarely in public, she'll be in something more casual, be it pants or dress.

(art by @looceyloo)

Sometimes she doesn't cast a shadow. This is a sign that her mount (and friend) Velumbra is out and about. Vel is a shadow Panther of Urborg and either lives inside of Zarunpel's shadow, or is Zarunpel's shadow.

(art by @duskguard)

Backstory:

Zarunpel is the seventh daughter of a Baron and a Knight of Embereth, the last born of their happy ever after. She and her six sisters all received at birth a "blessing" of Wilds magic from a fae close to their parents. As any fae blessing tends to, they come with some drawbacks, though Zarunpel ended up pretty well in the exchange.

Hers is a blessing of beauty, that manifests most obviously through her hair, shining, indestructible and heavy. But it has also molded her appearance into people's idea of a pretty fairy tale princess, whether she liked it or not.

While her parents and their fae friend had a path intended for her, she didn't want it herself. After some drama that'll be a story for another time, she became a knight of Garenbrig, of strength, taking advantage of the extra strength granted to her by her blessing to carry around her hair, almost as dense as the metal it resembles.

She sparked a few months after being knighted, while questing in the Wilds. She arrived on Kaldheim, and thought it only a trick of the Wilds among many at first. It's on that plane she met fellow planeswalker and knight of Garenbrig Traenor Blackwood (a @socialpoison character), who would illuminate her through her doubts about her new status.

From there, she would spend a few years questing across the planes. On occasion with Traenor, but mostly by herself. Eldraine, Kaldheim, Dominaria, Alara, Theros, Capenna... At the end of one of those quests, spanning Dominaria and Jund, Zarunpel was bonded to a shadow panther of Urborg, Velumbra, who became her friend and mount, able to follow her through her planeswalks on account of being her shadow.

Zarunpel is direct, brash, sometimes rash, but effective. She's used to be underestimated and looked down upon, and she hates it, so she acts in a way that'd hopefully dispel the illusion of a princess in armor.

After March of the Machine and the anguish caused by that (generally and personally), she still sees herself as a knight and upholds the high standards she sets for that title. Knight of Strength if not of Garenbrig anymore. She believes her role is to be strong for those weaker, to fight and carry burdens that others can't.

Some months after MOM too, Traenor and Zarunpel convinced each other to try a more formal romantic relationship than the casual thing they had for a few years. They now live together... When neither is out on a quest and Zarunpel isn't helping her sisters back in the family home.

Magic, gear and/or abilities

Let's start with a few paragraphs on Zarunpel's hair, blessing and how I see Wilds magic (that I would abbreviate to Wild magic in the rest because it's easier to say). Her blessing is one of Wild magic, and as such isn't as clean a spell as one would expect it to be. Wild magic has been shown to be powerful in Eldraine, able to flaunt some normal "rules" of magic and bring back the dead with their souls without an issue, destroy curses capable of destroying planes, and more. Given the nature of Eldraine, I consider Wild magic to be a powerful, if somewhat eldritch force, parallel to regular magic. It tries to tell stories, fairy tales or otherwise. There isn't really a mind behind it, but it encourages and manipulates things to form "better stories", whatever that means and on a somewhat meta level. Because Wild magic might not technically be the same kind of magic, Zarunpel's blessing also often goes undetected by spells and devices that scan for magic outside of Eldraine, though some are scanning for elements common in both and will pick it up.

A lot of that manifests in Zarunpel's blessing. It makes her stronger, so that she can carry around her hair because it wouldn't be a very good story if she just couldn't move on her own. How much stronger it makes her varies depending on the needs of that story, though. She's often just strong enough to get past an obstacle, or just not strong enough to raise tensions, even though the latter might require less strength than the former. Her baseline is stronger than the vast majority of humans that aren't assisted by magic.

Her hair is indestructible (to mundane means) and absorbs hard blows (that she doesn't strike herself), dissipating all the energy and momentum in what hits it into seemingly nowhere. Some powerful magical artifacts have been capable of cutting her hair in the past, including the sword her mother pulled from the Irencrag, Lovestrike. When cut from her body, her hair retains its properties for a seemingly random amount of time, from seconds to "it hasn't failed yet". Mostly, how long those properties last depends on how interesting or compelling the use is: trying to use it to mass-produce magical items would likely fail immediately, but a singular handcrafted gift out of love might last a lifetime.

Zarunpel doesn't have active magical control of her hair, though because it makes for a better story, it usually acts conveniently to her. When she spins it, it goes where she wants it most of the time, and rarely gets tangled into itself or her legs. It will sometimes conveniently be just in place to stop even an attack she didn't expect or foresee, though that is far from a reliable thing. "The knight got hit by a surprise arrow and died" isn't a very compelling story.

She uses her hair as both additional armor and weaponry. She uses thicker braids of it weighted on their end with blunt or piercing metal, and weaves thinner braids overtop her armor to stop most bladed weapons or large blunt ones from even touching her.

Aside from that, her blessing has a few other effects. She doesn't heal faster than other humans, but she does heal more completely, she never keeps scars or marks. Her body tends to heal damage so that the exterior of her body looks pristine before tackling other non-dangerous issues, which isn't always ideal. She doesn't know what would happen if she lost a finger, limb or organ and she isn't interested to try. Animals tend to fear her less and trust her more as a baseline, though they can still get scared if she acts aggressively or frighteningly around them. This might extend to people though people usually have a lot more biases and factors on how much to trust or fear someone and that typically is more influential than her blessing.

Her main form of active spellcasting is further protective in nature. She can extend the magic that shields her hair to other parts of her body or others, though that usually lasts only a couple seconds to a minute if she really focuses on it. The shorter bursts of protection she can whip up almost as fast as she can think of them, representing instant-speed cheap protection spells. She can also set up longer-lasting wards against specific magic over an area of land, though she's far from an expert in that.

Sometime after Dominaria United ended, Zarunpel heard about it and met with her knightly friends in Urborg. There, she was presented to the Soul of Windgrace, who asked of her a favor to retrieve an item he'd left on another plane back when he was alive.

After she did, Zarunpel was granted a boon by Windgrace('s soul), an urborg panther mount living in or maybe fashioned out of her own shadow. Named Velumbra (but more frequently called Vel or Velum), she needs a bit of ambient light to be summoned, and Zarunpel doesn't cast any shadow while she's out.

Her size varies a bit depending on the lighting conditions when she was summoned (she appears to just climb out of Zarunpel's shadow that shrinks as she emerges), but she's always big enough to be mounted by Zarunpel (who is pretty short to begin with), albeit not necessarily very comfortably. Without a saddle, Zarunpel often needs to hold onto her, and is usually not able to fight from Vel's back as they're moving at speeds.