Iri'thiel Nimeanera

General information
Race
Half-drow (dark and high elf mix)
Class
Fey wanderer Ranger [10th lvl]
Alignment
Chaotic good
Gender
Female (she/her)
Age
~75 (~25 human age)
Birthday
25 September
Height
165cm
Orientation
Lesbian
Campaign
The Revenants: Awakening (DnD 5e homebrew)
Alt names
Clouded Silver, Moonflower

A half-blood drow who time travelled into the past to right the wrongs of a world she never knew, to prevent anti-magic calamity from happening. Those plans got cut short when she and her party were framed into a murder and sent to serve their death sentence by facing an impossible battle with a crazy necromancer.
She was soon resurrected by the same mage who killed them, as an experiment, but it cost her her memory. Trying to recover what was lost and recall her mission before the tragedy unfolds again, she’s travelling the continent to uncover its secrets and do as much as possible to weigh the fate of this timeline in their favour.

Her most discerning features are loyalty, determination, anxiety, and curiosity. Overtime she became much less of a coward and is now the first to jump in the front lines of combat or speak up, even when faced with royalty-level individuals. Blade dancing is her primary fighting style, but she’s also a decent archer. She’s great at noticing details and is the first one to read notes, maps, to scheme, and explore. As for her interests, Iri collects little things that remind her of certain locations, is always curious about alchemy, magic, as well as different forms of self-expression. She recently learned how to do piercing with metal. She’d love to have more time to dance and maybe even sing.

[Ancient times]
The story takes place on a continent once ruled by four main races: elves, dwarves, nagas, and [xxx]. The world struggled in a war with dragons, who brought all the other races as their armies to the continent (including humans and beastfolk). The conflict forced the four ruling peoples to either fight or live underground, leaving whole systems of tunnels and cities below the surface, as well as defend fortresses and magic towers all around the land.

At the peak of the conflict, a group of archmages performed a ritual spell that destabilized magic across the continent. In one blast, all the dragons were turned to stone, the elves’ near-immortality was taken away, and the nagas and [xxx] ceased to exist. Since then, no one has seen an intelligent dragon in at least a thousand years. Having no way to escape the continent and no dragonfolk to rule them, the numerous other races started to call the war-ruined land their new home, while the elves became divided into subterranean drows and surface kingdoms.

Elves and humans eventually began rediscovering magic and “standardized” the division into specific schools. Although each culture had their own depictions and names for the Gods, the pantheon was somewhat classified. A number of countries and kingdoms were formed throughout the continent, ranging from racially diversified regions, to those solely human, or elven, or else.

Around a thousand years later, another cataclysm would shake the world. Much like the first wave, it would wash over the entire continent and cut it from magic, take away the stars and break the moon in half.

This will be the world Iri’thiel has come from.

She was born a few years after the calamity-like event, raised in a village of post disaster survivors – a mixture of all races, though controlled by human Overlords attempting to melt their cultures into one. As far as everyone knew, magic no longer existed, and they all had to wear metal pendants for protection.
Her mother was a drow, and her father a high elf, an unlikely union that never had the chance to revolutionise tradition. They were shunned to live at the outskirts of the village’s society. Never quite able to fit in, Iri struggled to maintain any real friendships, especially when growing up among races that matured much faster than her. She worked as an alchemist for a good number of years and was trained to be a hunter. She eventually met Aknidae (Aki), a timid tabaxi and Fernir (Fern), the always smiling wolfkind. 

One day the three of them, together with a few other people, were “promoted” to leave the village and be transferred to a better place. This basically meant they were given a fetch quest to retrieve the Crown of the Undying and exiled until they returned with the item. Of course, no one has ever returned to the village once they left it.

Iri’thiel’s memory starts to become patchy here, and things become complicated very quickly. They discovered that magic was still present. Wildmagic, to be precise. After a long series of events she doesn’t fully remember, they found a Lich who was partially responsible for breaking the old world, and agreed to follow his plan to go back in time and fix what had gone wrong.

The Crown was one of the key elements to the plan. The village Overlord learned about this, and in his rage, became possessed by a devil (or always was one?) and opened a portal to the Nine Hells to find Iri and the others, burning everything in his wake. They saved whoever they could from their old home before leaving everything behind and jumping back in time.

[After the time jump]

Iri’thiel, Aki and Fern each landed in a different part of the continent and at different times, only reuniting in that strange Past after months of learning the world they were never meant to live in. It had stars and a normal moon, the magic was different but definitely present, the land was lively and there were actually functioning cities.
Iri first found herself in a forest that was home to a mixture of elven kind brought together by Eilistraee and her followers, the Shan’revani, helping those lost and in need of guidence. She found a new family there and promised to continue their mission. This is where she learned how to control her magic and when she got a tattoo on the back of her neck.

Eventually she figured out the purpose of her mission and she learned the whereabouts of her friends. They found each other, but before they could do anything else to save the timeline, they were framed into a murder by powerful political figures and were sentenced to death. With some help, it didn’t happen immediately and they were given a chance to serve their sentence with the Black Legion, who sent them to die in a battle of some local uprising. The uprising was an understatement as they walked right into a powerful necromancer’s den to become fodder for his experiments.

[First death]

It was rumoured that in ancient times, when the dragons were turned to stone, their King made a split second decision to sell his soul to the Nine Hells, causing his heart to crystalize and shatter into multiple pieces when his body fell from the sky. These became known as the Dragonheart Shards - red crystals full of magical essence. Renowned artefacts, legendary or even fictional to most people, they were theorized to be used as powerful sources of energy.

Iri’thiel woke up on a surgical table in a ruined mess hall with a dark crystal embedded in her chest. She knew nothing but her name at the time and that the two other bodies next to her belonged to her friends.
The necromancer was incredibly disinterested to impart any knowledge on himself, his goals, or the world they woke up to, leaving them lost and confused. They quickly managed to escape his lab and were forced to piece their lives together from scratch.

As of level 10, they managed to recover most of their memories through magical means or the memories flooding in by themselves. They recovered their old equipment and met a few people from the time before death, but even today, not all has been found.

Because they don’t belong in this timeline, they’re considered to not fall under Fate’s plans and can influence the lives of others outside of Fate’s power. Thanks to that, since waking up, they formed a party of 9 – a group of people who were meant to die long ago but swindled their fates thanks to the three time travelers. This includes an exiled drow sorcerer, a banished succubus warlock, 4 Black Legionnaires: two human fighters, one wood elf rogue, and a half-elf paladin. They all quickly became very tight forming friendships and even closer relationships between some.

[Second death]
It happened during one of their missions to uncover a teleportation device from the ancient elven times, never since recorded in modern history. This one was a breakthrough, but it was submerged underneath a river. Iri’thiel dived in to see it, but through miscalculation, fear, and freezing temperature, she drowned before the party could pull her out. What brought her back was the Shard – with a burst of magic she started to breathe again. They don’t know how many times the crystals can save them, but she’s definitely not planning to repeat the experience and has been afraid of diving and much more anxious in the cold since.

Their achievements so far are (most of them, at least): saving one town and one major city from ruin, dismantling two occult groups, freeing an underground thief sanctuary from bad leadership, fighting corrupt mages, imprisoning a few spies from an opposing Empire power, unearthing long-forgotten magical portal towers, saving the young Viscount and his sister from being captured or murdered by the Empire, and finally defeating the necromancer who initially killed them.

They had been to Feywild as a result of pure accident of stumbling upon two archfeys’ shenanigans. They prevented the opening of a portal between the Hells and the Material plane two times already, and it was attempted by none other than the same devil that would burn their home in the future.

Their next task is to try and prevent one drow House from starting a war with the closest earldom that has been in conflict with them for years already. It may be a place of meeting old friends, though not exactly ones they’d like to meet.

As of level 10, Iri and Aki parted ways with Fern, the wolfkind fighter, who decided to take matters in another part of the world in his own hands, having personal connections there.

[Personality]
Iri’thiel is an extremely loyal person who cares deeply for her found family, but can be quite brash and mean to those outside her group. She’s very protective, mostly for fear of losing those important to her again. She’s well-meaning and usually pretty honest, but it often backfires. She wants to believe that everyone can have a second chance, and this belief has been put to the test a few times already. She often hides her problems from others, even her closest friends, and has been learning to be more open, especially if those problems’ consequences were to harm the others (again).
Iri takes initiative often when surrounded by her friends, bravely running into an obstacle with her sword out, but is scared of a shadow when left by herself. That never changed and probably never will. She’s very curious of the world, but she’s sometimes too cautious to explore it. Good listener, remembers little things about each member of her party and gifting little personal things is her love language.

[Appearance notes]
The most important is to keep her freckles and horns. She wears many piercings in her ears, one on her nose and two on the ends of her horns. She always sports a fringe and at least a few braids. You can see the rest on her reference sheet below.

[Patron]
Ever since reclaiming the memories of meeting the Shan’revani Iri’thiel rediscovered her faith towards Eilistraee, or rather faith in her mission. She communicates with Iri through sending moths to her in the night or by their connection through the Singing Swords she owns. 

[Uriel, aka the guest in my head]
Not long after leaving the Shan’revani, Iri stumbled upon a hidden sanctum where a vampire woman was trying to steal an ancient vampire’s phylactery containing his blood. Long story short, she charmed Iri to drink it and bring it to her. Iri managed to stall long enough for the sun to rise and the vampire was forced to leave her be. 
Ever since this event, she’s been carrying the ancient blood but without any side effects. Very recently, though, after a blast of necrotic energy washed through Iri, the vampire inside her has awoken. He’s been able to speak to her in her head, see through her eyes, and read her emotions, but not much more than that. He presented her with an offer to give him power so that she could cast his spells and use his abilities without turning into a vampire herself. She’s been very dodgy about the idea, hating that she has to share her body with another creature, but it’s not impossible she won’t consider his offer in time of need.

[Mind control]
Initially knowing the Charm Person spell and wanting to explore the magic of influencing others, she had fallen victim to this very magic or similar mind-controlling effects many times during the last months and had cut herself off from that particular spell as a result. She remembered a few traumatic memories from the past that involved someone close to her using her with magic and it’s been on her mind ever since. Every time this happens again, and it does, she grows more devastated and angry at herself for being so weak and unable to protect her mind. The newest addition of Uriel does not help her at all, but at least he doesn’t seem to want to hurt her…. for now.

[Party relationships]
■ Aki (PC, tabaxi rogue) – her first real friend, they learned, matured, and did crimes together in the past. Iri cares for her but there is a certain distance between them. They used to be lovers for a while, but upon death those emotions were wiped away together with their minds, and they don’t have the desire to go back to it now.
■ Fern (PC, wolfkind fighter) – she could always rely on him for advice or a reality check when she was struggling with anything and she admired his brevity and the silliness behind his smile. She sometimes misses him after they parted ways, but hopes they will meet sooner or later.
Llelyth (NPC, drow sorcerer) – after being exiled from her House and breaking away from under Lolth’s patronage, Iri’s been trying to be involved in her development and rediscovery of self. She feels somewhat responsible for her happiness living on the surface, and has grown very attached very quickly. They recently spoke their feelings out loud and came together, slowly figuring out how it is/was to love someone.
■ Raven/Vermisea (NPC, succubus warlock) – their friendship went from acceptable, through full of doubt and being wary of each other, to affectionate and deep rooted. Wanting to protect others, Iri doubted her loyalty and motives based on all the hellish influence they’ve been dealing with, but soon realized it was her fear speaking, not facts.

[Motifs/Themes]
◊ Moths or lavender moths made of light (her dancing lights cantrip)
◊ Red crystals/red colours
◊ Moon and stars
◊ Morning glory flowers
◊ Two blades, blade dancing
◊ Chaotic fey energy
◊ Mist
◊ Being mind controlled
◊ Fear of fiends, fire, deep cold water
◊ Black dragon

Main references

Extended gallery