Nais, before he was the Shadowthief, was a master archer who devised many techniques still in use nearly a thousand years later. Massive shield walls, tiny loopholes, and thick armour were of no avail against his dazzling trick shots and supreme accuracy.

But Nais himself had a terrible weakness: he loved finery and wealth and used his authority as an elite Sylvan Watcher — and the unqualified access it gave him to ledgers and treasuries — to steal and embezzle. His constant craving for new treasures drove him to risk robbing the grand archives of the Sylvan capital, nestled amid the colossal roots of the first Heart Tree.

There Nais found treasures he had only dreamed of: weapons made from solid lightning, bejeweled diadems, and the sproutlings of trees that would bear solid gold fruit. Among it all was a huge, mysterious corvid skull, carved with a glyph Nais couldn’t decipher. His eyes were drawn to it and he surreptitiously removed it from its wooden pedestal. The moment he touched it, the glyph flared with soft blue light, and his fate was sealed.

Nais heard a voice in his head, harsh and croaking but strangely compelling. It announced itself as the Earl of Glinting Metal, a Fae lord who had fallen upon hard times. The Earl, voice quavering with sorrow, told Nais that petty and jealous rivals had torn his body apart, flensed it, and bound his spirit into the skull Nais now held. Glinting Metal, discerning Nais’ penchant for thievery from the circumstances of their meeting, promised to enhance Nais’ senses and give him incredible stealth and situational awareness to match his outstanding archery, if Nais would only abscond with the skull and keep it by his side.

Nais knew most Fae to be manipulative and capricious, but greed prevailed and he departed the archive with the skull. True to his word, the Earl’s magic empowered Nais by mere proximity. Nais snatched the earrings from the ears of noble Elven ladies as they dined, rings from the fingers of sleeping princes, and precious seedlings of exotic plants from the Heart Tree’s bloom-keepers. Even the Vermillion Chamber, the Sylvans’ elite order of witch-finders, could not apprehend him. As the bond between Nais and the Earl grew with each theft, so grew the Earl’s mental dominance. Nais himself changed, his movements becoming ever more flitted and flighty, and he took to resting in the tops of trees. Soon Nais was obsessed with the skull and its whereabouts, even strapping it to his head as a headdress so it was always with him. He believed himself fully in control. He was deluded.

That feeling changed when Nais raided an armory in Yakai filled with a collection of antique arms and armor. Despite his supernaturally enhanced skills, he was swarmed by guards and their hounds, stabbed several times, and nearly mauled to death. But then, with a bright flash of the skull-rune’s soft blue light, the Earl of Glinting Metal took control over Nais. The Elfs body warped and grew, and a burst of magical energy hurled the dogs away and blinded their handlers. When
the light faded there stood a huge, monstrous being, half-crow and half-Elf, with huge talons and long-feathered limbs.

The ascendant Earl slaughtered everyone, and the wounds that Nais had suffered closed themselves when the blood of his foes fell upon them. Glinting Metal then pilfered absolutely every shiny thing he could find, snatching trinkets that Nais would never have bothered carrying, even the polished buckles on the dead guards’ uniforms. Returning to the Mistwood, the Earl felt his control of Nais slipping, but knew that with each subsequent transformation that hold would grow stronger. The transformation reversed, and Nais awoke amazed to be alive and with his backpack crammed full of trinkets, rings, and other assorted metallic objects. He was shocked, but the whispering skull crafted honeyed words of reassurance, while reminding Nais that he now owed the Earl a life-debt.

The Earl’s ambition grew and he steered Nais further and further from the Mistwood. The Earl’s magic nurtured Nais when the Rhythm of his home faded, letting the Elf rove far and wide. For over a hundred years, the duo wrought havoc among the treasurers and archivists of Teleria, and Nais relied more and more on shifting into the Earl’s mighty raven-form to deal with any troubles. As time passed, the Earl sensed Nais’ body aging, and decided on a final, climactic heist before he discarded Nais for a new host: they would rob the Arbiter herself in her very tower.

The pair thought themselves concealed as they crept through the marble halls, but in truth the Arbiter had sensed the Earl’s magical irradiance and was watching their every move. After giving them the chance to lose their nerve and retreat, and seeing they would not, she appeared before Nais with a flash like lightning and a scowl upon her lips. He tried to unleash Glinting Metal, but the Arbiter bound him in golden light and pried the crow’s skull from his head. Clear-headed for the first time since he grasped the skull in the Sylvan archives, Nais begged forgiveness. The Earl, too, pleaded servilely for the Arbiter’s mercy from within his bone prison.

The Arbiter laid a powerful geas upon the two of them and bound them to a Shard. Henceforth, she decreed, Nais the master thief would retrieve holy relics and missing Shards on her behalf as a Chronicler, protected from age and bodily needs within the Shard whenever he was not deployed. As for the Earl, he was returned to Nais to continue their partnership, and even take command of his body as he did of old, but the Arbiter drastically limited the Fae’s control over the
Elf. Both Nais and Glinting Metal agreed to the deal. Nais was relieved and the Earl sullenly compliant – so far, the fear of losing his host and returning to captivity in an inanimate object has kept the Earl in line.

This Nais the Shadowthief lore is originally posted by Plarium in-game.