Rilennia Rimeshard

'' This page is a perpetual work in progress as of patch 7.3.5. ''

Rilennia "Riley" Rimeshard (Rye-len-knee-ah Rhyme-shard) was your quintessential high elven orphan turned world-class battlemage and persistently nagging, well-meaning personal assistant.

Murdered during the Siege of Tirisfal by Ivan Sibelius Felsorrow and risen into service by the Head Apothecary of the Hand of Vengeance, the necromancer Seleste Felsorrow, Rilennia is now tasked with surviving day by day under the banner of the Grand Alliance, as an unliving reminder of what the Forsaken are capable of performing if left unchecked.

"Ama noral'arkhana."
Rilennia has seen combat during the course of the Burning Legion's third invasion of Azeroth - having served a tenure as a drafted Kirin Tor Peacekeeper, she's seen combat in the elven city of Suramar from both allies of the Burning Legion and Horde forces alike. She was previously stationed at the Broken Shore as an Invoker, putting out fel fires with her cryomancy - and talent for blueberry slush summoning.

Most recently Rilennia had been assigned to work in the region of the Alterac Mountains, alongside the members of the Citrine Eagle - conscripted with them to serve in the capacity of the Alliance despite struggling with her Kirin Tor-neutral roots. This conflict extends to the burgeoning tensions and outright war over azerite, before the elf was re-re-assigned back to Dalaran to maintain her neutrality - and a growing concern by the Magus Senate's upper echelons that she was not embodying the staunch neutrality the organization had taken upon the Legion's defeat. This Alliance-leaning support of the Silver Covenant still burned brightly within the Quel'dorei's blood, and this was to be her undoing.

As far as traditional schools of magic go, Rilennia favored an offensive style of abjuration, portal-ripping and, most importantly, a burgeoning specialty in divination and runeweaving. She was never seen without her Darkmoon card and Major Arcana tarot card decks. Rilennia also practiced alectryomancy with her pet chicken, aptly enough named Alectryo - having had performed a strange ritual known only to her of what appears to be a cross between a tarot reading, arcane divination and literal chicken scratch observation. The chicken, oddly enough, was instrumental in the defeat of the Burning Legion's operations on the Broken Shore; the common barnyard fowl served as a divination tool that could go uncorrupted by the Legion, due to its pea-sized brain. Serving as Chief Chicken Caretaker, and after a series of escalating events and circumstances, Rilennia acquired her own 'divination chicken' - Alectryo II - when her prior mentor artificially aged up an arcane-imbued egg with the powers of the Nightwell, in the same fashion as one would age a bottle of arcwine.

In general, the quel'dorei had become a lot less 'Riley' and a lot more 'Rilennia' since joining up with the Kirin Tor guard. She spoke more in Thalassian and appeared more reserved than she had before the war on Argus. While the majority of her mirth had been lost, the scar on her face didn't hinder any expression - when she did smile, the attempt hardly ever reached her eyes.

Appearance and Injuries
Rilennia sports a finely coiffed platinum-blonde mane, slashed short to hang around her elongated ears. She has a slim, slender frame, with petite measurements - a nice way of saying she's not packing any heat, if y'know what I'm saying. Anyone with a modicum of physical strength can - and has - picked her up over their shoulder with little to no effort, thanks to the lack of enchantments across her body.

Her visage is set with piercing blue, almond-shaped eyes, gently glowing with the remants of being risen into undeath. An oft-wrinkled, shapely nose accompanied Riley's high and sharp, almost gaunt, cheekbones. Her face is generally found sparse of feminine application, save formal events, but still has a natural radiance about it - Rilennia clearly didn't value physical vanity as much as an elf of a higher 'royal' station than herself, but when you're a high elf, you're already an 8/10 baseline, right? Too bad that's since been marred - she's acquired herself a nasty felfire scar; a misshapen, irregular blotch, running the length of her right cheekbone, back to her curved ear. Healing treatments had lessened its impact on her countenance, but it still remains as a remnant trophy of sorts in her people's war against the Legion; even with her newfound hemolurgy, Rilennia appears content to leave the mark as-is as it was in life.

Rilennia has undergone inopportune trials by fire in her early training by way of combat against the Burning Legion, and has suffered irrecoverable injury due to it - she still walks with a pronounced limp, most of the weight on her right side; her left leg having been broken in several places and left to set incorrectly at the time of healing. Because of this, Rilennia distrusts mere 'splash you with some Light' healing, and tends to be wary of 'too-faithful' paladins and priests - even more so now that she is literally a shambling corpse with an aversion to the Light's faithful.

The elf also has a ring of scars in the shape of sharpened bite marks lacing around her right collarbone that stretch back around her right shoulder - obviously something rather large and canid got ahold of her at one point. She insists it was a wound from a malfunctioning construct during a training exercise.

Trailing down the nape of her neck to both of her shoulderblades in lashes are the remnants of an infernal's self-destruction by explosion - long, thinly striped burns from raining rocks that gash her back into a chessboard of badly-healed burnt skin. It's clear the burns weren't given proper medical treatment after they were acquired. Having been risen negates the pain inflicted upon reaching too high up or to the side.

Past events transpiring regarding rescuing a rather unorthodox comrade-in-arms have left Rilennia with a faded, but still awful-looking ragged scar across her midsection and a trench of cresent-moon sliced flesh removed from her left thigh.

Her left wrist has also been broken at one point and re-set, leading Rilennia to need to 'crack' it often. There's also a cross-shaped scar on the palm of her right hand, a result of hand-to-hand combat with an unknown Dominion-oriented Demon Hunter.

Several slices and near-visible scars line her face and neck to her collarbone, a byproduct of the faction war over Azerite acquired during the Blood Maul conflict.

Thanks to the skilled artisans at the LC 37 Tournament of Ages, Riley's acquired two tattoos; a traditional anchor on her right thigh, and a blue-inked crest of Lordaeron encompassing her left wrist. These have both been what could have only been painfully slashed out, scarred up nearly beyond recognition. She does her best as of late to keep these covered, previously citing a past, since-ended relationship inspiring their inscribing.

Rilennia, as a corpse, also has the scattered, seared buckshot entry points from where she was fired upon at close range, peppering her left side with lotus pod-like holes. Scars from the shattered remnants of her Kirin Tor pauldron to her left line her shoulder and neck. Finally, her chest and midsection have been ravaged by a large scalpel blade, leaving jaggedly torn holes and scarring points at random intervals throughout her torso.

History
Rilennia mostly keeps to herself, and doesn't speak often of the time before she signed on to become Arcanist Reynolds' apprentice. She refuses to comment on any of her education at the Academy, instead citing the importance of hands-on learning through apprenticeship. Those elves that think they might have heard of the 'Rimeshard' line in Quel'thalas could be mistaking them for the 'Sunshard' line, a modest, yet storied family of Spellbreakers, ice sculptors and banquet decorators that unfailingly served the House Sunstrider -- and those with a more nautical background might recognize the Rimeshard and Sunshard names as - something else entirely, related to one of the first 'appropriated' ships of the Thalassian fleet...

For a good portion of her adulthood, Rilennia hid behind layers of falsified identites and appearance-altering glamours for varying reasons, until a chance meeting with her uncle Mel'oran Rimeshard, a murderous pirate ship captain, opened her eyes to her unknown lineage. Riley - then known as Raegil - then acknowledged her less than fortuitous past and has since decided that the time for hiding was over, filing to have her name legally changed back to Rilennia from Raegil. Out of spite to her venomous uncle, she kept the name Rimeshard, declaring the Sunshards dead and buried beneath Quel'thalas.

Embracing her family's heritage as elven privateers, Raegil legally filed to have her name reverted back to Rilennia, and the rest is history in progress. Since promoted to a fully-fledged mage in the Kirin Tor hierarchy thanks to an impromptu elective course at a ski resort slash snow bunny academy, she generally tried to make it day-by-day being one of the lower rungs on the blue-and-gold ladder. Sometimes that included rescuing eldritch-abomination-Gnomish allies, falling through infinitely tesselating portals to the Great Beyond, fighting off the Legion and Horde  in foreign Elven capitals, digging up ancient cursed troll relics, or simply people-watching in one of Stormwind's many vantage points.

You know, the usual.

Siege of Tirisfal
Rilennia met her untimely end on the eve of the fourth day of conflict during the Siege of Tirisfal, whereupon she had attempted - without superior orders, disregarding the Kirin Tor as a whole's refusal to participate in the conflict, and due to her remaining loyalties to the Matriarch of the Citrine Eagle, Zaria R. Blackmoore - to sneak her way into a Horde prison camp in order to free as many captured Grand Alliance prisoners as possible while under the illusioned guise of the director, one Seleste Felsorrow. Unfortunately, due to the untimely intervention of her husband, Ivan Sibelius Felsorrow, Riley was found out - illusions never being her forte - and quickly dispatched by the surrounding members of the Horde guard; a warhammer shattering her abjuration by Rekfar Axefury, then shot at point-blank with buckshot by one Jimlok Thunderroar and having her sharpened Kirin Tor pauldron driven into her collarbone by the sin'dorei traitor Arthalden Lightshard, rendering any escape impossible. She was then murderously stabbed to death by the irate Ivan for insulting his wife's countenance with the poorly crafted illusion.

That was not to be the end of Rilennia's suffering. She was quickly made an example of, risen into service by the vengeful Seleste as a pseudo-banshee, her wail echoing through the prison chamber nearly deafening those still imprisoned. Riley's raising into undeath quickly caused a minor schism between the members of the Horde army present; some disagreed with the forced raising, claiming it was not the Forsaken's way, and others encouraged Seleste, saying that the high elf had it coming.

Niklos Adamant, a celebrated cardinal in service to the Light, was one of the few prisoners that the intrepid elf had not managed to rescue with her impromptu mission; he instructed her to partake of her own blood to repair her injuries, and to stave off the hunger that had been imparted onto her - the alternative being attacking the Alliance captives still kept within the prison's chambers for their blood. Rilennia, after trepidation, agreed; introducing her to the merits of amateur hemolurgy - a twisted irony that her lover Tyrvarryn Shadowmist employed with great skill.

The cardinal soon revealed to Rilennia and those present in the chamber that Seleste would need to relinquish her hold on the quel'dorei's body and soul, to void the unspoken contract between them, in order to truly free Rilennia. Only then would she find possible amnesty - or antagonism - in the Alliance's ranks. He taught her rudimentary control over her body, so that the elf didn't instinctively claw for her newfound rune weapon. The sympathy of the cardinal quickly waned, however, when Rilennia attempted to attack Arthalden with her new talents for hemolurgy for lashing the bishop Kimberly Sweete; seeing the elf as becoming nothing more than another rotbrain soured his countenance towards her briefly - before Seleste returned and he bargained for her freedom by appealing to the necromancer's sense of self. This ultimately failed, as Seleste refused to relinquish the hold on Rilennia's form.

Niklos was eventually taken by two Forsaken dreadguards, away from the rest of the prisoners. This was very untimely as a rogue Forsaken agent by the name of Josandus Hartchorde, looking to defect, had falsified documents and arranged for yet another prison break. With help from a strange change of heart by Arthalden, who also ensured that the elf's chicken Alectryo was safe, Rilennia escaped with the others and ended up back at the reappropriated Monastery, where she met with Wey and had her wounds stitched by a strange man claiming to be a doctor.

The following morning, Rilennia was addressed by the Forsaken defector Josandus and the Master Sergeant Soreka Blackblood; along with the timely arrival of her mate, Tyrvarryn, Riley was given the hopeful option of being indoctrinated into the Ebon Blade for the protection of herself and the citizens of the Alliance both. The hold on the quel'dorei by Seleste was again brought up, with no real plan to free Riley from her control; discussions were made to bring Riley to Acherus for safekeeping, to bring her out of the range of the necromancer. It was unknown to all at the time, however, that the cardinal Niklos Adamant was willingly given to the Felsorrows in exchange for the quel'dorei's freedom.

Rilennia was taken to Acherus by her mate and a small escort of Ebon members overnight, whereupon she was given the armor of an initiate - not full saronite, but cheapened ghost iron armor, inlaid with kyparite to assist in the sonic resonance of her banshee-like shrieks; the amber material having been proven during the events of the Pandaria campaign to be used in Mantid technology - assisting with the reverberations and direction of such sonic-based warfare. The following night, the elf assisted the remainder of the Alliance forces stationed at the Scarlet Monastery. She and her compatriots survived the grueling battle on the ramparts, aiding the siege engines astride the Undercity's walls.

Taldarick Reynolds
Rilennia was trained in the ways of magic by the Kirin Tor arcanist Taldarick Reynolds, and served under him in their tenure in the Highguard. He instructed her in the seven schools of magic, fostering in her a love and appreciation for all things arcane - being one of the sole teachers responsible for furthering her education to a point of graduation from the Academy.

She once had reciprocated romantic feelings for him that have since fallen by the wayside since his return from an expedition to Argus. The magus returned not quite himself, and chose a life of burying himself in his chronomancy research above the life that he, Riley and their adopted daughter Nicolette attempted to carve out for themselves - leaving Riley alone in Dalaran for months at a time before she finally moved on.

The pair often acknowledge each other in the Hall of the Guardian, where the former has a longstanding desk; however, Riley had since been promoted to Guardianship, to where she no longer needed to serve beneath him; he has all but vanished from her life for the second time.

Alectryo II
Rilennia's beloved pet and officially Kirin Tor sanctioned divination chicken; the quel'dorei used him for simple matters as finding out the weather forecast and larger scale tasks such as tracking down Burning Legion holdouts. The chicken is gifted with a supernatural cognizance, and often accompanies Riley's fortune telling. Alectryo, as of the events of the Siege of Tirisfal, has to be kept in a wrought iron cage to keep him protected from ne'er-do-wells and thieves - and to keep him close to her, as he attempts to flee from her undead state any chance given.

Wey-Chung Brokenarrow
She nearly burnt his farm down, once. He's never forgiven her. They're pretty much bloodbound, with him bestowing upon her the nickname 'Fridget' due to her acclimation to frost magics and her inability to stop fidgeting.

Wey serves as a balance and a tether to Riley's otherwise unstable lifestyle, and acts as a voice of reason when she's had too much to drink or is sulking too much. Despite their traded barbs, it's obvious there's a familial bond between the two, forged from experience; one that stretches beyond mere acquaintanceship.

Tyrvarryn Shadowmist
Riley's runic alar'amithore and the Eagles' resident runesmith, skilled in the blacksmith trade and second only to Sir Shindo Malphur with the forge and hammer. Rilennia had taken a fondness to him for his willingness to both tutor her in the "Old ways" - impressing upon her further runic knowledge, passed down from his own Vrykul-taught mastery - and to speak up on her behalf to the rest of the Citrine Eagle; introducing her to his makeshift 'family'.

An ensuing mutual respect turned to affection leading up to and during a Horde-sanctioned air raid on Talongrab, the Eagles' base of operations, whereupon the Worgen's mastery of osteolurgy and hemolurgy repaired Riley's shattered shoulder blade in the aftermath. This action cemented a reciprocated bond between the two. Despite their starkly different backgrounds - his service in undeath aside, not to mention his nobility to her common background - the pair fostered a mutual attraction that has blossomed into the first phases of a romantic relationship.

With Riley's conscripted service into undeath, she has again taken on the role of student beneath her beloved alar'amithore; this time as a hemolurgist and interred member of the Ebon Blade.

Nicolette Rimeshard
Rilennia's adopted daughter and half-elven former orphan turned skilled protégé. 'Nico' is a child prodigy, a wunderkind of magic and mischief alike; she draws out a motherly side of the quel'dorei rarely seen - not that it matters, given Nico's penchant for disregarding with extreme prejudice anything Riley has to say. While the two may bicker, a softer side of Riley has been turned towards the teenager in an effort to better associate with her; since the siege of Antorus, Rilennia has made more of an effort to reach out to those she cares for, Nico being chiefly among them. The half-elf spends most of her time at the Academy, where she has been nearly thrown out twice since her enrollment; inadvertently following in the steps of her unorthodox minn'da.