Elnor Fairshaw

Elnor Danger Fairshaw is a gnomish Captain of the Stormwind Guard of the Stormwind Guard who formerly was a member of the Underfoot Express.

Appearance
Elnor is of average height for a gnome, but her body is extremely fit and in shape. Considering the amount of time she spends in heavy armor or swinging a weapon, she moves with the confident grace of a veteran.

Since returning as a living gnome, Elnor's hair is coal black, and her eyes are a clear blue. She frequently changes her hairstyle to suit her moods. Her eyes are very expressive, usually shining with a subtle mirth.

Almost always seen in heavy armor of some variety. She seems to favor spikey dangerous-looking armor, but can sometimes be seen in a set of Alliance blue armor. Only very rarely and typically only around trusted friends is she seen without her protective armor and fully armed. Lately she has been favoring the use of a shield and a one-handed mace which crackles with electicity.

At her belt is a line of assorted communications units. The fanciest bears the Underfoot Express insignia and is obviously gnomish-designed and made. She also carries an older Stormwind Guard communicator and a handful of smaller others.

Personality
Like many gnomes, Elnor is almost supernaturally good-humored. She is always ready to laugh at a joke, or offer a wide warm smile to a friend. Even passing acquaintances are treated with a warmth that most others would only reserve for a close friend. However she would openly admit that this is not true "Trust" as one would trust someone implicitly. In general she treats others politely and warmly until they give her reason to do otherwise.

When encountering criminals, rude people, or the senselessly violent, Elnor is very openly outspoken about her scorn for them. She finds it impossible to comprehend these types of people, and never fails to heap verbal abuse upon them, sometimes to her peril. It's very apparent that Elnor is an extremely honor-bound individual. She never abandons her friends or even aquaintances unless they betray her admittedly high ideals of honor.

However, to enemies Elnor is fierce and extremely violent. Never hesitating to plow straight into a fight if necessary, she can at times be extremely unpredictable. This is also a major flaw of hers, she almost never pauses to consider the odds. While she is quite good at pre-planning any conflict, once the blades are out Elnor simply acts.

Her major personality weaknesses are a tendancy to too-easily believe what she is told, as well as more than ordinary confidence in her own skills. She is also admittedly as stubborn as a mule, but once her demand for proof is met she easily admits her previous mistaken beliefs.

Fighting Style
Elnor is an experienced gnome at the art of physical combat. Where some would underestimate a gnomish opponent, Elnor turns their expectations upside down with her furious relentless assaults. Once battle is joined, Elnor does not hesitate unless the odds are hopeless (and she has a very liberal concept of hope). She favors blitz-style unpredicted assaults, charging her opponents behind her shield, or her favored head-butt attack.

She uses a curious mixture of offensive and defensive fighting. While her tendancy to charge the enemy and dive into a fight is offensive, she uses her shield and heavy armor to defend her allies and soak up attacks from the enemy.

One of her other favorite and commonly-attempted attacks is to grapple with an opponent. She will frequently even let herself be hit as long as it affords her the opportunity to latch onto her enemy. Once she attaches herself to her opponent, she fights like someone posessed. One of her favorite maneuvers is what she terms "The Dosius Head-Grab", wrapping a hand around an opponents head and hammering it into the nearest immovable object.

=History= Elnor was born in Gnomeregan to a happily married couple of mages. At a very early age she showed a suprising aptitude for magic, and her parents immediately enrolled her in every program available for early mages.

As an adolescent, her magical skills seemed close to the genius level, and she rocketed through school, progressing rapidly to advanced magical classes, at times outstripping her teachers. Her parents saw to it that she was sent to Dalaran for advanced studies, serving as an apprentice mage in the old city.

When the first war broke out, she was serving in Dalaran as a junior mage. Her parents answered the call to aid the Grand Alliance, and Elnor went as well, journeying south to Stormwind to fight the orcs as they ravaged the lands.

Eventually as the Alliance forces fell back, Elnor and her parents were living in Lordaeron, aiding the fighting in the second war from there. When the war was over, Elnor accepted a teaching position at the Stormwind Academy of Arcane Sciences, and there she stayed for a couple years.

The Scourge
Before the "official" outbreak of the third war, Elnor was working as an arcane researcher in Stormwind as a tenured professor. She had developed a spell that she believed would generate a large-scale portal to any point, allowing entire forces to move to locations of conflicts. Other professors were skeptical that such a spell would work, so Elnor gathered her friends among the staff to help with the casting, and they planned a public demonstration.

While her comrades channeled arcane energy into her, Elnor controlled the casting, forming her custom spell, aiming for a large scale portal to the Outlands. Instead, the spell collapsed, causing an arcane collapse that yanked Elnor out of Stormwind, depositing her on the heights of Icecrown Glacier.

Stunned but not nearly disabled, Elnor looked around and saw thousands of undead minions surrounding where her fizzled portal spell landed. Immediately, she laid into the undead, frying waves of them before finally exhausing her mana reserves, and figuring herself done for.

Instead, a passing lich saw what had happened, and not about to simply turn a trained battlemage into a ghoul, offered Elnor a choice. Join the Cult of the Damned or become a simple undead minion. Without any choice, Elnor accepted the lich's offer, and was transferred to Scholomance to learn the basics of necromancy.

Since she joined the Scourge as a living gnome, Elnor was not undead. She retained her free will, but knew if she was ever going to get away she had to act as if she truly wished to be there. Elnor used her already exceptional willpower to split her mind, hiding her true good self in the recesses of her mind, and letting her anger and violence take over her conscious actions. The Scourge bought the act, believing her to be yet another angry vengeful being, joining to punish some imagined wrong.

As a battlemage, Elnor had always prided herself on staying in physical shape. Regarding the typical mage lifestyle of staying behind a desk, she had trained frequently with weapons such as swords. This training caught the attention of a passing Death Knight commander, and he suggested that the fiery little gnome might make a better death knight than magical instructor. Elnor was transferred into the death knight regiments, forced into brutal military training.

For a long while, Elnor remained a death knight adept, the pure aspect of her spirit hidden away deep in her mind, waiting for a time to return to the surface. Until she was assigned to the Acherus mission...

After the Scourge
After breaking free from the Lich King, Elnor was lost. Her mind was split between her intellectual self, and her violent military self born from her death knight service. After a few days wandering Stormwind City alone, she was recruited by the Court of Shadows.

After a brief period, Elnor left the Court of Shadows to work with the Underfoot Express. During this time she was a frequent member of the Gnews staff.

While a member of the Underfoot Express, Elnor was asked to join the Stormwind House of Magistrates. She served in this position for quite some time, before resigning to spend more time with her wife Lelainya Martell.

The Stormwind Guard
Elnor left the Underfoot Express, and shocked almost everyone that knew her by joining up with the Stormwind Guard First Regiment. At the time that she joined, the regiment was in rather dire straights. Almost all of it's respect had been lost in the eyes of the public. The efforts of Owen Dosius, Jendral McSmoth and many others helped begin to restore the Guard, transforming it back into a proper military unit.

Elnor climbed the ranks in the Guard, eventually achieving the rank of First Sergeant before unexpectedly resigning her post and vanishing. She then returned to the city after serving with the Alliance forces in Icecrown. Upon returning, she spoke with the colonel of the Guard, Adroby Relindor, to catch up on events. He explained to her that he was restoring the Guard after a long period of neglect and leadership problems. The Colonel offered Elnor a comission as Lieutenant in the regiment. Elnor's seeming fascination with helping to build something won her over, and she agreed, although with serious doubts about her capability to serve as an officer. Through her actions in the guard, Elnor rose to the rank of Captain.