------------- Rising Star - Rose

She was born over two centuries ago in a land far away, before anyone even thought of going there. Her father came to Callona to serve the great Smith-Mage, Sharronne. Twenty years later, her father summoned her and her mother to make the long sea voyage to Carellon. From Pawldur they made the trek north along the coast road and inland to the kingdom of the Dwarves, Shabrund. There, she grew up far from the worries of the world, for the most part.

She noted the passing of the War of Arrallon by catching site of a falling star. Little did she know it was part of the Republic Starbase the Arrallonian rebels had just destroyed in orbit. She led her father to where the debris had landed and they took the “star metal” back with them. Her father, with Sharronne’s help, mixed the impossibly heavy metal with adamant and forged a masterpiece battle hammer. Though it didn’t look like much, the head was fifteen times heavier than steel, ten times heavier than adamant, and many times stronger and harder than both. As an elven youngster, barely a century old, she couldn’t even lift the thing.

Decades passed and the only note of world events was when Sharronne, the mighty Smith-Mage, was assassinated as a prelude to the Second Orc Wars. She had sat in the Wizard’s lap many times and listened to his stories. She was the only one at his funeral to bring flowers. That was not the way of dwarves.

There in the high mountains of Orinvale, the Night of Demons passed unnoticed, as did the Second Elfkin Wars. Then came the Gnolls and the Black Witch. In a single night she seized control of the High Council, and with her magical charms, bound the Dwarven kingdom as her ally in the War of the Wolf Hordes. The Black Witch learned of Roselyn’s family and declared that no Delsian would be permitted to live within her domain. Roselyn watched sheepishly from inside a hay wagon as her parents were put to death. The newly born Dwarven resistance secreted her away and she joined a refugee train streaming south. In a camp outside of New Calladon, she was witness to the invasion of Carellon and barely escaped. After the war, she traveled home, to find their house in ashes, nothing left but her father’s indestructible hammer.

Having no home, she returned to New Calladon. Showing almost as much knowledge of Dwarven custom and smithing as a dwarf, she was accepted at the Temple of Moradin, which also served as a smithee. She trained in the ways of war. Other events passed her by, until the Crystal War began. She eventually headed east to join up as the war threatened to spill over in Carellon. She missed it. She arrived in the mountains overlooking the Symballan frontier just as the Shadow asteroid struck the northern desert. She expected to die. But whatever miracle saved the world had saved her. She took the falling star as a sign and travelled south through the war ravaged Symballan Empire, through the Pouarr Nation, into the lands of Foxmoor. There she found a job as a metalworker in Dient. Then she heard of Kar’Dhaer on the mountain of Syvasmyr. Stories had it a star lived there, the living embodiment of Apos itself. She decided that was something she had to see.

Maybe this living star could unravel the mystery of her father’s hammer. For a High Elf raised amongst dwarves and isolated from the scientific knowledge of the world would know nothing of neutronium.

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