------------- Tales of the Raptors – All Grown Up

Yashifa, if you will remember, was a young orphan girl that was assigned to the Silver Gryphon when they went to Xanthius before the Three Wars and got involved in the Crystal Dust smuggling through the Duergar passages.  She was a ward of the Temple of Isis and gave Emma the clues she needed to suspect Reverend Mother Aellana Thenes Ahim was not all she appeared to be, that something wasn’t going quite right at the Temple.  She was given the job of handling their horses.  Emma insisted that the girl (about 12 at the time) take a ride with her on Ankhen, her Pharaoh’s Gryphon.  That just made her life.  That was 7 years ago.

Yashifa stayed in Xanthius when the Temple was relocated.  By adventure and misadventure, she ended up at the Symballan Military Academy in New Phoenix, though her faith in Isis had been cemented by her encounter with Emma, and later, with Emma’s mother, Sarafina.  Sarafina saw in her something special. She made sure that the girl was given to Talasha Moonshadow for training.  Isis bestowed upon her a gift for the coming wars,… the powers of the War Witch.  However, she was too young to fight.  The Three Wars were over before she saw any service,… well, none that her instructors knew about at any rate.  After the war, the Church of Isis abandoned building up a warrior sect in favor of increased Feyhd’ahki troops.  Yashifa was left as one of a kind, an oddity within the church, kept around “just in case”.

As fate would have it (or a rather nasty tempered Sarafina), Yashifa was sent back to Xanthius when the Temple of Isis was reopened, as a reminder to the newly restored Reverend Mother Aellana of just why she was removed in the first place.  Knowing the connection between Colonel Jarah al’Durran and the Reverend Mother Emmahezare, she become fast friends with Jay.  Though she held rank as a Captain in the Symballan Airlancers (Golden Gryphon Wing), she was transferred back to the priesthood when the decision was made to disband the warrior sect of the church.

At the age of 19, she is young, gorgeous, more than a little promiscuous, and now that she’s back in her home town of Xanthius, she’s known to run with a dangerous crowd of thugs, thieves and gamblers.  No longer the frightened little girl the Silver Gryphon met, her exposure to them, and their affect on her, has made her headstrong, mouthy to persons of authority, and overly confident.  She’s an occasional name dropper, but remembers growing up on the streets before being taken in by the church.  She is sympathetic to the poor and downtrodden, exceptionally giving to those who are actually in need, and as imminently kind to the innocent as she is fiercely vindictive to those who prey on them.

Yes, little Yashifa is all grown up.

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