User:Joshmaul/Arrhae Leafrunner

"No matter what your path, you are a child of Elune, young Arrhae. The Goddess guides your hand in all things, even when your path is not the same as that of Her priests."
 * - Tyrande Whisperwind, High Priestess of Elune

Arrhae Leafrunner was a druid of the Cenarion Circle whose siblings serve in the efforts to restore Felwood. She was one of Saavedro of Stratholme's staunchest allies. During the second invasion of Stormwind, however, she would meet her end in combat...and return as something she hated more than anything.

Biography
Born in Ashenvale six hundred years before the Battle of Mount Hyjal, Arrhae Leafrunner is the youngest of the Leafrunner siblings. When she came of age, Arrhae trained to become a Priestess of the Moon under Tyrande Whisperwind, High Priestess of Elune. But Arrhae - despite the respect she had for the power of Elune - felt the calling of the druidic path as surely as her siblings did. After the Battle of Mount Hyjal, the fall of Cenarius and the sacrifice of their immortality, Arrhae informed High Priestess Tyrande of her decision to train in the ways of the druids. Tyrande, while reluctant to let one with such promise leave the priestly order, acknowledged that Elune had chosen another path for Arrhae to follow.

Arrhae travelled to the Moonglade and trained under Keeper Remulos, the son of Cenarius who guarded the sacred glade. While under Remulos' tutelage, Arrhae was sent to the Eastern Kingdoms to combat corruption in the southern provinces of the Kingdom of Stormwind. Upon arriving in Westfall, she encountered the human paladin Saavedro of Stratholme and a Defias turncoat named Nyssha, whom the paladin had adopted as his daughter. Arrhae was impressed with Saavedro's determination to combat evil, and sympathized with it; in turn, Saavedro saw a potentially beneficial ally in the Cenarion Circle. He asked Arrhae to be his personal representative to the Circle, and - with Remulos' guidance - Arrhae accepted.

Business in Azeroth
While Saavedro returned to Lordaeron and Nyssha remained at the beck-and-call of SI:7 in Stormwind, the paladin sent Arrhae to deal with the growing threat of a mysterious darkness that had permeated the area now called Duskwood. Arriving in the town of Darkshire, Arrhae offered her services to Ello Ebonlocke, the Lord Mayor of Darkshire, and his daughter Althea, who commanded the Night Watch - Darkshire's militia forces - in their efforts to combat the evil. First, Arrhae travelled to the town of Raven Hill, where she met a hermit named Abercrombie, who lived not far from the massive cemetery. Abercrombie asked for several items - ghost hair thread, zombie juice, ribs from the ghouls that wandered the cemetery, and a crate left behind and stolen by ogres.

Little did Arrhae realize that she had been tricked; Abercrombie was actually a man that Darkshire children's stories referred to as "the Embalmer", an alchemist who lived in Raven Hill and was driven to madness by the death of his wife Eliza - to the point of using black magic to place his own heart within her chest, which gave her an insatiable lust for human flesh. Arrhae - to her horror - had helped the madman create a powerful monstrosity which he called "Stitches", akin to the abominations that served as heavy shock troops for the Scourge up in Lordaeron. After Stitches was defeated, Lord Ebonlocke sent Arrhae back to the Embalmer's shack to confront the beast that was Eliza - the bride of the Embalmer - and destroy her, taking the heart of the Embalmer from her.

Next, Arrhae was sent on a detective mission along with the shaman Jaeden'laek to determine the identity of a man called "Stalvan", a name brought up in a vision by the town mystic Madame Eva. Checking the town records, Arrhae discovered the name of one Stalvan Mistmantle, a schoolteacher who - according to the records - resided in the town of Moonbrook, above the Deadmines that served as the hideout of the Defias Brotherhood. Travelling into Moonbrook and entering the abandoned schoolhouse, she found a letter that Stalvan had written but never sent, and brought it back as evidence. Then it was found out that Stalvan had stayed in the town of Goldshire, to the northwest of Darkshire. Another unsent letter was found, this time addressed to a home in Stormwind. The house caretaker, Folsom, informed him that his father had cleaned up the blood after the massacre - apparently, Stalvan had developed an attraction to one of his students, and when she fell in love with another, he killed her, her suitor and very possibly her entire family, driven mad by the insult he felt. The trail led Arrhae to the Eastvale Logging Camp, east of Goldshire, and then back to Darkshire, where she gained possession of journal pages that lent credence to Stalvan's madness.

Eventually, the trail finally ended at a small cottage grandiosely called "Manor Mistmantle" outside of Darkshire. Althea Ebonlocke commanded that Stalvan - now undead - be destroyed, and his ring taken to Madame Eva. The battle was short but brutal, Stalvan's blade leaving scars across Arrhae's bear-form body, but in the end the madman fell dead at her hands (or paws, as the case was). With these two threats eliminated, one more remained: a necromancer named Morbent Fel.

The Quest for Morbent's Bane
A young man named Sven Yorgen lived in an encampment to the west of Raven Hill Cemetery, having been forced off his farmstead due to the encroachment of the Defias Brotherhood. When Sven fled, he saw a shadowy figure bury something on the property, and sent Arrhae - who had travelled from Darkshire with supplies for his camp - to find out what it was. It turned out it was a book, a journal left behind by a possible witness to the butchery of Sven's family.

Consulting with Madame Eva, Clerk Daltry at the Town Hall and Tavernkeeper Smitts at the Scarlet Raven, Arrhae determined that the author was not native to Darkshire, was a nervous and jittery person, and travelled out of Darkshire to the west. She had seen someone fitting that description in Raven Hill, and sure enough - upon investigation - found the man called "Jitters" in the courtyard of the ruined town. Jitters gave the rest of his journal up (if only to appease Sven's wrath). Reading it, Arrhae was disturbed to hear about "black riders" from Deadwind Pass to the east, and the involvement of the necromancer Morbent Fel...and a mention of a powerful, ancient weapon known as the Scythe of Elune, which was used to summon worgen. The only problem was, the worgen began to spread like wildfire.

After proving her worth by destroying undead in the nearby cemetery, Arrhae was dispatched to Stormwind, to speak with Bishop Farthing at the enormous Cathedral of Light there. Farthing read the journal and listened to Arrhae's story of what had happened in Darkshire. The Bishop believed that a weapon created of a special metal called Lightforge Iron could weaken the necromancer enough for him to be destroyed. The last known shipment of Lightforge Iron was onboard a vessel of the Third Fleet of Kul Tiras, sunk during the Second War by a dragon attack. To that end, Arrhae travelled to Menethil Harbor, to gain the aid of the dwarf Glorin Steelbrow. Glorin identified the vessel carrying the holy ore as the Flying Osprey, a Thalassian vessel sunk to the south of Menethil Harbor. Finding the crate broken into by murlocs, leaving one ingot behind, Arrhae killed several more murlocs to obtain more ingots, which would be necessary to forge a weapon. With the precious metal in tow, Arrhae returned to Stormwind, where she obtained the aid of one Grimand Elmore, a master weaponsmith. Grimand gladly forged the iron into a weapon usable against Morbent Fel, which would remove his protective wards...and leave him open to her attack.

Returning to Duskwood with Morbent's Bane, as the weapon was called, Arrhae first transformed into a cat and stealthily made her way into the Forlorn Rowe, the house where Morbent Fel resided. Creeping past the guards, Arrhae broke her stealth by using the weapon, which drastically weakened him. Turning now into a bear, Arrhae charged, and proceeded to tear the necromancer apart in a feral rage. Once the deed was done, she returned to Sven. But this whole business about the mysterious Scythe of Elune still troubled her...so she returned to Kalimdor, to the Moonglade, to ascertain the truth of what was going on.

The Hunt for the Scythe of Elune
After taking Remulos' counsel, Arrhae travelled to the outpost of Forest Song in Ashenvale, where the draenei and night elves were building an outpost to oppose the remaining Legion forces, the Horde and other threats. She was informed of a place known as the Howling Vale, named because of the presence of worgen, much like "Roland's Doom" - the mine in Duskwood that Arrhae had purged sometime before. Deep in the Vale was the Shrine of Mel'Thandris, where Arrhae discovered that a priestess named Velinde Starsong had taken the Scythe of Elune and summoned worgen to battle the demons of Felwood. Realizing that the worgen were multiplying, Velinde - as written in her journal - had considered taking the counsel of the archmage Arugal, the master of Shadowfang Keep, who had also summoned worgen for what he believed was a good purpose - battling the Scourge. Not long after that, she travelled to the goblin port town of Ratchet in the eastern Barrens, to take a ship to Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale.

Hot on the trail - and realizing where this would most likely take her - Arrhae travelled to the Barrens and made her way to Ratchet, and from there to Booty Bay. There she met the caravan leader the priestess had joined, who pointed her - as Arrhae suspected - to Darkshire. Speaking to the town clerk once more, Arrhae was pointed back to the Carevin family - specifically their patriarch, Jonathan, who was leading efforts against the evil that permeated Duskwood. Carevin pointed Arrhae back to the mine called Roland's Doom to find evidence of the Scythe's location. The evidence was found, but the Scythe was nowhere to be seen. Disappointed, Arrhae made her way back to Kalimdor to make her report in Darnassus.

Fall at Stormwind
During the second Scourge invasion, Arrhae accompanied Saavedro and his allies to Stormwind Harbor to fight off the undead attack. The first wave of the assault was led by Battlelord Velenkayn, a death knight who had once been Saavedro's student. Velenkayn had been captured and corrupted by Bloodsail Admiral Joshmaul, the vile orc warlock who was Saavedro's chief nemesis, and later turned over to the Scourge in an effort to stay off the Lich King's radar. Enraged by this betrayal of both her benefactor and of existence itself, Arrhae recklessly charged in and was tossed aside like baggage with one swing of Velenkayn's axe. Her broken body was taken by Velenkayn and his minions to Acherus, the Ebon Hold, which had replaced Naxxramas as the Scourge powerbase in Lordaeron. Clinging stubbornly to life, Arrhae's wounds eventually proved too horrific for her body to withstand. She died in agony three days later.

Recognizing the potential within the hate-filled night elf, Velenkayn petitioned the Lich King and Instructor Razuvious to resurrect Arrhae in their service for the coming war with the Scarlet Crusade. They agreed, and Arrhae was raised by Acherus necromancers and attired in the robes of an initiate. Both Razuvious and Velenkayn undertook her training in the war against the Crusade, where she would fight alongside the feared Instructor's other students, such as Artimus Devaneaux and Ublaz Deathspear.

Arrhae was lauded by her comrades in the Scourge for her emotionless slaughter of hundreds of Scarlet Crusaders, often with her bare hands, and her cold-blooded murder of Yazmina Oakenthorn in a house near the Chapel of the Crimson Flame that held other prisoners from the Argent Dawn. For that act, she became known later as Arrhae of the Bloodstained Hands. During the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, she personally slew dozens of Argent defenders until they were defeated by Tirion Fordring. After she was freed from the Scourge, the horror of what she had done sunk in - and as she journeyed to Stormwind with Artimus, she knew she never wanted to associate with him again; he killed for the sake of killing, which went against her nature. She also knew that Tyrande would reject her outright now. So she turned to the one person she knew could help her: Saavedro of Stratholme.

Disturbed by the change that had come over her, Saavedro - who had seen the fight at Light's Hope from a distance - was reluctant to allow a death knight into his ranks, but after some urging from Tirion Fordring and from his own chief advisor, the draenei shaman Jaeden'laek, he accepted her into his ranks and made her his personal emissary to Highlord Darion Mograine. She has declared herself an enemy of the Council of Deathlords, which Artimus heads, and has particularly expressed a wish to take revenge on Battlelord Velenkayn for corrupting her.

Eventually, Arrhae severed her ties to Saavedro, having tired of the constant politics that governed the Alliance, and joined with the mercenary band known as the Grand Army of Kezan.