Name: Shadaln (Known to the Mraal as His Voice)
Soul Name: n.a.
Origin: Old Settlement
Age/birthdate: 2nd generation/45OOish; born TWR -3323
Gender: female
Height: 5' 0"Build: athletic
Hair color/length/style: sandy blonde, shoulder length; on duty, bound with a hair band; off-duty parted in the middle and held back with combs; Fourth millennium: drawn back plaited or loose, bound at the neck, and grown down to the small of her back
Skin: very fair
Eyes: brown
Voice: alto, somewhat husky
Parents' Names: Mallorn (father) Mithiel (mother).  Both died in the Sundering.
Siblings: Quixol and Colya (brothers), Razmak, Tanyel, and Felimath (half-siblings); Colin, Betal, Coriander, Colin, Crystel, Doreel, Irralev, Lyris, Tyaar, cousins
Children: Leravie (daughter by Dekan), Chenir, foster daughter, Ciddara, daughter out of Recognition by Windstorm (who is not acknowledged as the father.)
Current Mate: Looks Twice, lovemate
Previous Mate: Dekan
Recognized?  To Dekan
Previous lovers: Ceyte, Dijin, Kesik, Mindar, Nalkor, Hanlir, Wyn, Silara, Spago, Twillor, Foi
Closest friends: Silara, Ceyte, Leravie, Vayree, Peysol, Nalkor
Jewelry: gold choker, Declared Badge (gold & silver, hawk sitting on a branch with the Tower in the background). When off-duty, long earrings and bracelets.
Talents: Sending
Favorite weapon: sword, spear, mace
Skills:
Hobbies: embroidery
Clothing: grey-green jumpsuit, headband, greaves, knee-high boots; off-duty wears floor-length gowns with flowing sleeves, often in shades of yellow, bodice often embroidered.
Animal friend: none

General Info: The Tower's seneschal, responsible for ensuring Tyaar's orders are fulfilled. A hard-working perfectionist, she is energetic and relishes a challenge Disorganization and chaos bother her.. Capable of handling duties with an iron fist. Assisted by Kesik. Responsible for the training and welfare of the Mraal servants. She selects and assigns servants, sees to the promotion, demotion, or dismissal of servants. Shadaln is personally responsible for the selection and training of the Golden Torcs.

Personal Info: Shadaln values loyalty above all else, blood loyalty highest of all. Considers loyalty a measure of honor and integrity. She is very conscious of the many familial interrelationships among the Tower inhabitants, and therefore feels a strong sense of loyalty to the entire Tower. As Tyaar is a blood relative, Lord of the Tower (and therefore responsible for all the inhabitants), and the one to whom she has sworn her service, she feels the strongest sense of loyalty to him. During third millennium, Tyaar consciously used this sense of loyalty for his own purposes.

 Off-duty she is quiet and reclusive, spending most of her time either practicing with Mindar, embroidering, or socializing with small groups of friends She is rarely seen at the larger parties, and never (unless at explicit invitation by Tyaar) at the more exotic parties. Many see her as standoffish and perhaps a snob; in truth, she harbors secret fears that other elves would reject her if they were to see inside her shell. She is reluctant to discuss her interests with any but her closest friends.
Shadaln takes few lovers. This is, in part, an outgrowth of her basic insecurity. Her disastrous lifemating with Dekan also bears some of the blame. She and Dekan never had anything in common. They Recognized literally moments after a tender lovemaking session between Hanlir and Shadaln. Shadaln cried for hours afterwards, saying that it was the wrong brother. After Leravie was grown, Dekan turned more and more away from relationships with all elves, and inward to his Talent. Totally oblivious to the havoc this wrought with Shadaln's feelings and self-image. His habit of wearing tattered, sailed clothing, forgetting to change, etcetera, during his final years before going Functional, was a particular affront to Shadaln. It is for these reasons she takes such pleasure in her little revenge-commissioning new and ever-more outrageous outfits for him.

 Shadaln was happy in the Tower throughout the first two millennia. This continued through the third millennia, until the Functionalization of Wyn. Until that event, Shadaln was, admittedly, living in denial, and threw herself even more into her work. When not on duty, she retreated to her quarters or safe relationships, where she was able to live in the illusion that all was well. For every event there was an explanation. How could she admit Tyaar was mad or evil?  He had the power to destroy them all, so malevolence was an unacceptable conclusion. Madness was out of the question, for if the most powerful healer the race had ever produced (so far as they knew) could become mad, what hope was there?

 So, she threw herself into her work. This gave her a sense of control over her life, and thus an illusion of control over the problem. Br explaining away the anomalies in Tyaar's actions she gave herself a safe distance. The immensity of the danger she faced, as one of those closest to him, was too much to endure--he had neither the time or the ability to weigh any other options. She wasn't really lying to herself, she simply came up with a version of reality she could live with. Accept Tyaar's explanations when he covered them, manufacture plausible excuses for him when he didn't. Becoming a workaholic was a survival tool that became a trap. The time spent working occupied her energy and distracted her from painful conclusions. The appreciation of those she served made her feel like a worthwhile person. She then began to feel that she could never slacken her drive to do a good job, or she will lose the respect and admiration of her peers.

 It is worth noting that Shadaln's workaholic behavior did not start with Tyaar's madness. Shadaln had always been insecure, fearing that people who came to know the real her would no longer like her. Being a workaholic was a successful strategy for dealing with the insecurity, and then it became a useful tool to avoid the issue of Tyaar's change.
 After Nightmare, Shadaln was first in a state of shock. She had loved and admired Tyaar for most of her life.  If, in the final centuries of his long life, he had become less than perfect, it mattered little in her estimation. Worse, Beliel or Doleera seemed the most likely candidates to succeed Tyaar (since Mikail and Chenir had both fled), and the realization of the overt oppression that would come of that was anathema to Shadaln's view of how things ought to be.

 She was left shaken by the Tyaar's Confession and the stories of the Functionals. She had suspected much in the last four centuries, but she hadn't wanted to believe it. So, she took refuge in Razmak's quarters. Flaying games of strategy against her half-brother took all of her concentration, making it possible to exist without thinking about the problems, or feeling anything. She was quite aware that Mikail, Kesik, and her other friends were looking for her. She pointedly ignored their sendings. During the gaming with Razmak, she decided that she would resign her position. She even made same plans to live in the valley with the Mraal.

 When Nalkor arrived to inform her that she had been chosen to a co-leadership with Erik (Widget/Foi), she thought Nalkor and the others had gone mad. She agreed with great reluctance, and announced her intention to take a long vacation before taking an active role. Her secret hope was that this would encourage one of the ‘rightful heirs’ (Chenir or Mikail) to step forward. When they failed to do so, this sent her into a bit of a snit. The fact that Leravie immediately began planning an investiture celebration1 and that Kesik, Giddiorn, and others continued to come to her with questions while she was 'on vacation' lust worsened the moodiness. Her own sense of loyalty wouldn't let her ignore the requests, and in her heart she knew she should be taking a more active role. She had admired and loved Foi, and trusted his native intelligence to handle the fob. There is also the complication of the Mraal. The Tower servants all feel a personal loyalty to Shadaln. They worshiped Tyaar, and to have a strange spirit take his place (Erik) is very hard for them to swallow.

 During the 'snit'/vacation, Shadaln will spend as much time as possible with Vayree in the weaver's quarters, or training with Mindar. She'll socialize with Silara. She will sometimes spend whole days in some lonely corner of the Tower with her flute.
 When the vacation (which has been mostly a joke, anyway) finally ends, she will try to shoulder responsibility with good humor. Unfortunately, she will have created a lot of ill will by that time. She never quite understands how deep these feelings run. From her viewpoint, she is fulfilling her original vow: perpetuate Tyaar's original dream of a safe haven for elves. Since her motive is the welfare of the inhabitants, she is at a loss as to why her decisions seem constantly under question, even from those she loves most dearly. Being a perfectionist, she tries to do the best job. Her insecurity bars her from explaining her deepest feelings, so, for example, when she makes a decision, she seems a bit imperious-she has already thought of the consequences and alternatives, why don't people understand that? She is so practiced at this sort of problem solving, that it seems to her others should understand them the way she does. This blind spot will ultimately prove her undoing.

 Shadaln needs to be needed. This trait extends itself into full-blown co-dependence during the Third Millennium, denying what was happening, and avoiding the topic when she could. If she just kept doing her job, if she found ways to do it even better, maybe things would work themselves out. She also needs to be constantly challenged. Until she realizes that the Tower inhabitants no longer need a parent to protect and guide them, she will be operating at a disadvantage.
 Following the Hidden Valley’s attack on the Tower, Shadaln decides to give up the title of Lord and move to New Hope.

Cults:
The Eyes and Ears: 'What one knows, we all know; what we all know, His Voice knows.”  One of the most secret of all the cults, those recruited usually stay for life.  Originally, this was not a formal designation.  The Mraal gossip.  Kesik, Shadaln, Gidd, or any of the elves who pay attention to the Mraal would hear the gossip.  To many of the elves, the gossip is unintelligible; first, it may be in the Mraal's own tongue, which few of the elves are up-to-date on; second, the Mraal all use their own appellations for the elves, which means the gossip is unintentionally in code (think about it for a minute: is someone like Spago or Winken going to understand when one Mraal mentions to another that 'His Voice's Hands is not happy with the Spirit of Baubles?'); third, the Mraal themselves don't understand what the elves are doing or talking about half the time, so their interpretation may be quite outlandish. In any case, Shadaln was charged with supervising the humans to ensure that the elves were served properly.  Now, if old Geezer has gotten too frail to carry Tandeya's paint supplies halfway up the stairs, but is too proud to admit it, and she doesn't notice, his fellows will notice, and Shadaln or Kesik might over hear. Geezer's pride would never allow him to say he couldn't take it anymore. It was in the best interest of the elves and the Mraal if Shadaln was aware of these things.

So, in the early years, Shadaln started asking specific Mraal to let her know if something like this was happening. To let her know if anything that might impair the Mraal's ability to serve, or otherwise disrupt things. It wasn't a matter of saying, “You are now my spy.” It was more a thing of noticing which of the Mraal were more perceptive (and perhaps empathetic) than average, and were reliable enough to tell the truth, without sugar-coating it to protect someone's pride. The individual Mraal, of course, took this as a special, mystical calling, and soon a cult evolved. Eventually, Shadaln was forced to recognize the cult as an official organization, and she participated in the ritual of selection (known as The Call: 'I call you into my service, will you answer the call?')

 The Eyes and Ears are specifically instructed to watch for and report any of the following: 1) Health problems developed by any of the Mraal servants1 2) abuse of the Mraal by an elf, 3) incompatibilities between a Mraal and the elf to whom he or she is assigned, 4) actions by an elf which disturb the Mraal 5) damage to the Tower or its furnishings.  95 percent of the time, Shadaln's reaction to such reports are to reassign the human servants. Occasionally, Shadaln has to take more direct action, such as telling the elf in question that if he/she is going to treat the servants so poorly, he/she won't have any servants to misuse any more. Or arranging for repairs. That sort of thing. Any Tower denizen with the slightest bit of common sense figured this out long ago. ('Gee, when I twisted my ankle during that silly practical joke, Shadaln asked me if Reevirah had treated the ankle yet.' 'Shadaln chewed me out because I threw that tantrum and scared my human. I don't know what the big deal is. Next time I'm make sure I don't throw a vase when my servant is in the way.') A classic example is Dantum's episode with the nightmares. The Eyes and Ears reported to Shadaln that Dantum looked and acted sick. His servant had been awakened in the night several times because Dantum was screaming, et cetera. Shadaln came to talk to Dantum about his health. 'Are you feeling well. You look as if you haven't slept. Have you spoken to Tyaar about this?'
Members of the Cult of the Eyes and Ears refer to Shadaln as 'The Protector" among themselves.  They refer to Kesik as 'The Protector's Hands.' Later, after Shadaln ceases to be 'His Voice' and becomes 'The Voice,' Kesik becomes 'The Protector's Sword Hand,' and Giddiorn 'The Protector's Shield Hand.'

The Golden Torcs: the worship of Tyaar, Tascha and Shadaln by this cult was interchangeable. When Tascha was still in the Tower, they were sort of the Trinity to the Torcs. In Torc mythology, the three became one, incarnate in Shadaln the Voice). The Torcs are the most open and least secretive cult. Any Mraal judged worthy is invited to join. The each wear the gold torc around their necks until they die (or suffer dishonor and loss of bakhan). Shadaln is known as 'His Voice' or 'The Teacher' because she is in charge of training.

The Cult of the Milkgiver: This is a cult within the Torcs. Most of the members are descendants of Man, Chenir's wet-nurse. Man was a Torc who fostered her newborn son to nurse Chenir. This cult is closely related to the Cult of the Nearest. It is not unusual for a member of the Milkgiver Cult to be a high functionary within The Nearest. They hold Shadaln in high regard because she asked the Torcs to provide a nurse. The bakhan of Man's family, her later children, and the son who was fostered was greatly increased. Marriage into the family is much sought after.

The Chosen: One of the most important days in the life of the Mraal is the Festival of the Harvest Games.  On this day, His Voice comes to witness the finals of the competitions1 dressed in autumn colors. She makes that years' selections to serve in the Tower.  To work inside the holy mountain, serving the spirits is a fast track to high status.  As The Chooser Shadaln is the first elf most Mraal ever see close up, and the all know she is the elf who will say whether they stay goat herders, or become Torcs.