Elned the Wise is a very old sorcerer loyal to Babanak the Great. She knows much about magical artifacts and the manner of their creation, and they say she can see through any lie.

Elned is one of Babanak’s primary advisors, and she accompanies him to every meeting. Elned was a member of Gava the Supreme’s council when she ruled the clan, and she has known Babanak from a very young age.

Personality

Elned tries to make people feel comfortable around her by acting playful and mischievous. She often pretends to forget things and to not understand what’s going on, while in reality she watches other people very closely and takes mental notes of everything they say. When she needs to, she drops the masquerade and can quickly take charge in an emergency. However, she prefers to give hints and subtle advice to those around her in an attempt to guide their actions.

Motives

Elned holds a deep and highly personal hatred for the Lukurru. Since long before Babanak came to power in the Bekebel clan, Elned has been promoting distrust for the Lukurru and encouraging open war with them. Much of her wisdom, both as a member of Gava’s council and as Babanak’s primary advisor, has been directed towards her goal of destroying the Lukurru. With both, she has been able to leverage the death of Nort the Pyromancer to motivate actions against the Lukurru.

Background

Elned grew up during the Siege of Bekebel Citadel, the zenith of the conflict between the Bekebel and the Lukurru. For seven years, legions of Lukurru soldiers fought to breach the walls of the citadel. By the time the Lukurru finally retreated, both clans had suffered tremendous losses. Nonetheless, skirmishes continued around the border between the clans territories for decades to come.

As a result, Elned’s childhood was spent mostly underground in Bekebel Citadel’s tunnels. Until the siege ended, she had no education, and she was raised mostly on preserved food and propaganda. Later, like many others whose childhoods were turned upside-down by the war, she returned to school and began to learn metalworking.

Elned excelled in her studies and soon became an apprentice to Lubu the Artificer, who taught her how to weave enchantments into metal. Over the years, Elned’s abilities as a sorcerer slowly emerged and she became capable of imbuing metal with magic of unprecedented potency. When Lubu retired, Elned took over her shop and school and continued to develop new arts of metallurgy and enchantment.

When Gava the Supreme became the leader of the Bekebel Clan and formed her council, she selected Elned to be one of its nine members. For a while, Elned continued to run her school while she served on the council, but over time her responsibilities as a councillor grew until she could no longer maintain any students.

At first, most of Gava’s councillors had lived through the Siege of Bekebel Citadel and remembered it vividly, even though Gava herself was born several years after it ended. But as the years wore on, the older councillors were replaced as they retired. Eventually Elned was the only one on the council who had experience the siege firsthand, and her powerful enmity towards the Lukurru was no longer the prevailing consensus.

When Gava suffered her sudden and debilitating injury, leaving her unable to speak or walk, Elned and the other councillors nominated her son Babanak to lead the clan in her absence. As it became clear that Gava would never recover, Babanak took the title Babanak the Great and became the permanent ruler of the clan. He abolished the council, but then hired many of his mother’s councillors (including Elned) as special advisors. To the present day, Elned serves as Babanak’s tutor in sorcery and enchantment and works with him and Paparnad the Mystic to develop the clan’s gifts to Tuvdak the Magnificent.