Vestele Riverthorn Lore: Official Story

‘Strike with the force of a raging river. Wash away all that is dead or unclean. Bring about the purity of the spring rebirth. Slay the forces of decay. Honor that which is blue and green, cold and born anew.’

– Mantra of Vestele Riverthorn

Vestele was an overconfident teen when she became lost on Mount Starbloom one early spring. Snows still coated the unforgiving rock, but the green shoots were emerging and the first drops of the annual melt were winding their way down the slopes. These details meant nothing to the freezing, starving Vestele. Tears ran down the Elf’s face as she huddled down, teeth chattering, shivering arms wrapped around goose-pimpled legs. Then he came. Glaicad. The Prince of the Thaw. With a tap of his staff to her shoulder, Glaicad gave Vestele just enough warmth and strength to escape the mountain. He said not a word to her.

But Vestele was changed forever. She had been arrogant and headstrong, dismissive of the warnings and wisdom of her elders, so confident in her master bladework she thought herself invincible. This nearly killed her, and Vestele knew it. She became fascinated with Glaicad, her gratitude driving her to seek him out. It took her many years, in which she continued honing her warrior skills to offer them to the Prince of the Thaw. They finally crossed paths in the beginnings of springtime on the very mountain they had first met. There, Vestele pledged her sword to him.

Glaicad neither accepted nor denied. He said nothing, continuing only to tap the ground with his staff as he strolled, each delicate touch creating a tiny rivulet of meltwater. Vestele had expected a response, but was not deterred. So she followed him, and did so for the whole spring, and Glaicad never said a word.

At the very end of the season they came to a patch of the Mistwood Vestele had never been to before. The trees were barren, brown and red, gnarled, barbed and contorted into ugly, fearsome visages of horns and teeth. The air smelled of burning and blood. The wind disappeared and a fell darkness hung about the place. Vestele could feel it in the Rhythm. It was angry, frightened, hungry, rampant.

‘Corrupted,’ Glaicad said, his voice sounding like sticks striking rocks in a fast-flowing stream. With that, there was a rabid, echoing howling from deeper in the Corrupted woodland. Vestele drew her sword, Springblade, and raised it aloft. She was too young to have fought the Corruption when it arose, and she had never been tested against the mutated remnants that still haunted regions of the Mistwood.

The chimeric beasts that came for them were scorpions and jaguars and centipedes combined, creatures of claws and fangs and stingers. Each was the size of a mountain ram. Vestele, an eager warrior always inclined to attack rather than defend, threw herself at them.

The creatures were faster than anything she had fought before, and preternaturally agile. They dodged every blow, skittering and leaping aside, between trees or even burrowing below ground to avoid them, popping up behind her. It took every measure of her focus, quick reactions, and skill just for her to stay alive – she never landed a strike.

Then Glaicad stepped forward. He gestured with his staff to each beast in turn. Every one was frozen solid. Then he stared at Vestele. She took this to be a sign to finish off their attackers, which she did, shattering them to pieces with Springblade.

Glaicad told her she had to learn to strike with the force of a raging river, to represent a burst of water coming from a melting glacier.

Vestele nodded. She became a greater warrior than she ever imagined as the years passed, as cold and still as an ancient glacier ready to fight with the fury and speed of a furious torrent at a moment’s notice. In that time she formed bonds with both Eostrid Dreamsong and Grand Oak Padraig and is now recognized as spring’s most capable defender, a warrior ready to defend every sapling as it emerges from the cold ground. In recognition of this, Eostrid herself granted Vestelea crown resembling fresh shoots and a cloak bearing the image of a tree regrowing its leaves.