User:Mortaleia/Mortaleia

=Dr. Mortaleia Valsh‘auron=

Description
Like a diurnal flower in the autumnal journey of her life, sun-seared and eclipsed by mortal doom, the elven female has folded within herself and looks beyond forever towards death. Auburn hair ravished by the meridian glare of day is enflamed with the golden breath of the sun. Her eyes are glowing amber infused with green, like two ghosts that bear the fallen flame of a dying star. Tears cannot hold so bright an incandescent sorrow as glimmers in the fires of those eyes. Within them is the same fierceness of life that supplies the fires their wrath. A thirsting anguish colors their rims where damask to shadow fades. Her complexion, sanguine and flushed, even in its healthy fullness cannot hide the purple veins of her wrist. And at her mouth is the carmine stain of potions and poisons that test the ruddy marl that is her living sepulcher.

Items of Note
Clearly seen in the possession of Mortaleia is a small collection of leather-bound journals, the first of which has scrawled on the front, “An Anthology of Death Poems and Elegies edited by Dr. Mortaleia Valsh’auron.” The second is entitled, “Evidences on the Art of Death: A Treatise,” by the same. The third and last is a small pocket guidebook titled simply and anonymously, “One Thousand and One Remarkable Ways to Die.”

Post-Second War
In her youth, Mortaleia lived on the edge of the Eversong and the Blackened Woods, helping her parents recover the dragon-scarred lands while praying for the safety of and sometimes visiting her brother while he stayed in Silvermoon as a student in the field of virology and she similarly studied to become a doctor. Mortaleia’s family dwelt in the service of purity, her father, Athen, as a priest and her mother, Gwanwen, as an herbal healer. Their efforts gradually aided in the recovery of the Eversong Woods while they trained their young and impressionable daughter—careful always to check her macabre sensibilities and growing affinity towards the arcane magics which they attributed to her proximity to the secret evil that once haunted her ancestors in Lordaeron.

The Fall of Quel’Thalas
Soon the dark woods, whose madness they long struggled to resist and desired to exorcise, was threatened with a new blight: a dark plague that ravished the human kingdom of Lordaeron. The family remained, studying the epidemic, while the disease and its victims drew ever nearer to their own homelands. At last, when the threat of war loomed over the Blackened Woods, and the Windrunners could no longer protect them, Mortaleia’s family fled to the safety of Quel’Thalas, setting aflame their home and all their work with the hope of delaying the assault by the Scourge. But they found no refuge in the great city of their people. Mortaleia witnessed the burning of Quel’Thalas, and the loss of her parents there. Her mother, she knew, was assimilated into the ranks of the Scourge, taken as a banshee. But of her father, she knew nothing, only that he was now gone.

Seeking a Cure
Lost and magic-starved, she wandered the pyric lands of her ancestors, fighting off the remnants of the Scourge and even the people of her past now transformed into the ghoulish nightmares that were too real. More real, they seemed, then the despair filling the void that once drank of the Sunwell. Soon their Prince, last of the Sunstrider dynasty returned, and she, eager for purpose, renewal, and satiation joined a research team, under Kael’Thas’ direction, to seek out an alternate source of arcane energy. They failed.

It was in these dark days that Moretaleia achieved her greatest resolve overshadowed by an insatiable sorrow. She left the solace of her people and returned to her family’s home—now no more than fallen stone and charred wood. Here she determined that if she could not slake her thirst for the arcane, she would deny it. Madness pressed in upon her as, for three weeks, she sat in the ashes of her home meditating, dreaming, and denying the pain that wracked her body. She reasoned that the pain would be her glory—that she could abide, even embrace the suffering with the knowledge that soon she could overcome the addiction. Mana-starved, malnourished, and weak with desolation, in the end it was not her determination that gave way but her body.

Her soul stood weeping at the gates of death, feeling the peace of death and relief from her mortal famine, but the gates would not open for her. No petition could open the doors, and no prayer for mercy from life allowed her entry to the serenity she saw beyond. Instead she was sent back, imbued anew with mortality, and accompanied now by demons who had sworn to sustain her and disallow her death until they saw fit. A pact had been made against her, or so she thought, by unknown petitions for unknown purposes. Perhaps it was because they waited for the day when the arcane addiction would devour her, making her a far more useful and corruptible tool. Or perhaps it was due to the supplications of someone closer. She did not dare to guess; she did not dare to think on the day at all. Rather she treated the incorporeal memory like a dream and let it slowly dissipate in the light. She might have denied it altogether, being a thing both unempirical and unprovable, except that now wherever she walked, she was in the company of demons. And she did not live unchanged.

From these demons she received an unending source of arcane energy and a daily battle against the temptation of gluttony. She saw herself grow more accustomed to wielding the power the demons provided, and saw her mind, ravished by the mana-fast and powers unknown, change to something sometimes more akin to madness.

Studies in Thanatology
Kael’Thas was gone, but her people gathered and sought direction. Mortaleia employed her mind and unique experiences to a new study and drowned herself in books. She became a student of the macabre: of all things dealing with death; of the psychology and mythology of the dead and dying. Once she had studied medicine and the prevention of disease, but now, all her efforts were focused on preparing those dying for the inevitable. It seemed to her a far more successful employment. In only a few years she had published her first book, “The Certainty of Your Death.” It attracted the attention of none but her peer review. But after the subsequent publication of her books, “A Treatment of Life,” and “My Death vs. Your Death,” she achieved the appreciation of one fellow researcher.

In the time that followed, they began working together in the field, studying the psychology of the dying. The ongoing offensive against the Burning Legion provided an unending source of study subjects, and when those who were undergoing the thralls of death dwindled, it became simple enough to encourage the process in the Horde’s enemies for the more-than-ethical purpose of research. It was during these concerted efforts, amidst the fray of battle, that Mortaleia was first able to truly harness the power granted her, a reborn child of blood, encouraged by her new associate. This research partner, one Dr. Nathron Bein’Gearth, became gradually more important to Mortaleia, and while she feared the influence he had over her, and further the direction in which he seemed to be leading her, the deep respect and admiration she had for him eventually involved her in a romantic relationship. But she did not long fear the sadistic tendencies and vengeful nature he harvested within her, because one day, he, all of their notes, and her unpublished book (titled simply, “Assurance”) that Mortaleia had been working on for the past four years was suddenly gone.

Within two months her book had been published under his name and he, very successfully, incited a hatred within Mortaleia that she had never known (he didn’t even bother to change the title). It is possible that after the confrontation she would have taken her anger and left with little more than regret. But Nathron chose to send a man to eliminate the evidence of his petty theft. Mortaleia survived the attack on her life; the assassin, however, did not. Little of her regret is now left, and all but the vow to “never be beguiled by a man until Nathron is dead by my hand” remains.

Continued Studies
Aside from her personal mission to murder the man that scorned her, Mortaleia engages her time in services that she thinks will aid the reconstruction of her home and the salvation of her people. Her enthusiasm for writing peer reviewed books on her studies in Thanatology has somewhat dwindled, but that does not keep her from the research. Instead, she now focuses more on the metaphysical implications of death and is in the process of writing her fourth (truly her fifth) book titled ostentatiously, “Evidences on the Art of Death: A Treatise.” She is also, more so as a hobby and specifically due to her many varied encounters with death and the dying, collecting an anthology of death poems and elegies.

Due to her status as a published (though not highly recognized) author and a studied disciple of alchemy, she has spent much of her time working alongside the Royal Apothecary Society of the Forsaken. She is comfortable in the Tristfal Glades, not much unlink her own memories of home, and is curious about the lifestyle of the Forsaken themselves. She has contributed a great deal to the Society and appears to be well-liked by the alchemists therein. She remains deeply inquisitive about the New Plague under their development, and continues to advance her reputation in order to be more involved in the project.

A Secondary Occupation
Because of her involvement with the upper societies of Undercity, her rapport with researchers in Silvermoon, and her movement between these and, more recently, the Seer’s Library, she has taken on a second and more clandestine employment. Certainly the royalties from her books (“Assurance” being the only one that has, apparently, accrued any kind of profit) cannot support her research; instead she has found a very lucrative position in the upper realm of society as a “silence broker.”

During her travels, Mortaleia discovered that the term alchemist carries a far different meaning in some more secretive cultures. It can be equally applied to the use of words, or “one who transmutes words from nonsense” (loosely taken from the Krenkese). In short, her studies in the field of cryptology, ciphers, and their translation, have made her a successful relay of information. Those desiring to move information discreetly and securely may hire her services to ensure its arrival. Working as an agent between clients, she may meet in person (or not) with the first party, encrypt whatever information he has, and deliver it and the cipher-key to the second party. This is not to say that she buys information; she only moves and, on occasion, retrieves it. For a price, she may broker an agreement between a client and a personal contact that she knows is more than capable of discreetly retrieving information within Silvermoon and without. Prospective clients who know Mortaleia, or have become aware of her, may indicate their interest in an exchange by presenting the following symbol to her either as a gesture or in written form: a circle with a point in the middle of it. It is the alchemist’s symbol of gold, the sun, success, and her personal alias as a silence broker.

At Present
For all her ventures into the realm of secret sciences and the art of the macabre, Mortaleia remains deeply loyal to her people and at least believes that she is serving them. Without hesitation she is guilty of a sadist’s curiosity with death, reasoning that the affliction she torments her victims with is merely so that they may love death more than life—because that doom is inevitable and for the sake of the Horde, they must die even if by her own hand. But she is a spall caster, and is herself afflicted with an addiction to the dark magics that ever call to her. That power is slowly corrupting her, and she knows it, and is not permitted to escape it. But she finds her solace in the thoughts of beautiful death, meditating on a peace she has not yet encountered. This is the balm that soothes the ague of coming death and lasting life. And it is this life, full of service and a quest for beauty amidst the terrible, that will be her epitaph. So she lives on, unhurried by her doom.