Lore: Shyla
Eternal bliss
Shyla Starhearth: grand lady of the High Elves, foremost priestess of the Vigil, the voice of wisdom and compassion when the Guardians hold council. Shyla: bold and brilliant, bolstering the faithful with kind words and inspiring sermons. Without her, the Guardians would be swept up in zeal and lose track of their conscience. She keeps her people on the path of the gods, yet behind her flawless beauty is a soul as sad as the first icicle on a bare branch.
When Shyla was a young maid (as Elves reckon youth) she served as a priestess of Tavril. The wild goddess had sworn the High Elves to serve as guardians of the untamed places, and Shyla devoted herself entirely to keeping her people on the path of faith and stewardship. Like a pristine forest glen, she lived a life of serene isolation. Until she met Hylas, and everything else nearly burned away.
Prince Hylas was the pinnacle of Elven grace, swift of foot and mind and blade, full of blazing passion rare in the cool forest-folk. He and Shyla loved for centuries, harmonious as sun and sky. The songs celebrating their love could fill the grand library in the Chancel of Labors. Soon, the songs lamenting their parting will be even more numerous.
A difference of opinion
When the Mathosian Civil War began, the lovers found themselves divided for the first time, if only by politics. Shyla argued that the Elves had to side with Zareph for the good of all Telara, while Hylas would not endanger their charge over the wilds to meddle in the affairs of men. Unable to convince him, Shyla led her followers to join the Mathosian rebels, leaving her dear prince behind.
None could stand before the hideous magic Aedraxis released at the climax of the war, not even a cleric of Shyla’s experience and skill. Shyla, Priestess of Tavril, died that day, and Shyla, Pentarch of the Vigil, arose as one of the first Guardians. Along with Cyril Kalmar and Borrin of the Dwarves, she helped keep Regulos from total victory, and returned to her homelands leading those High Elves who had also ascended.
Rushing into Hylas’s arms, Shyla found them… cold. While others might take their beloved’s wholesome return from the grave as a miracle, Hylas seemed alternately sickened by and jealous of Shyla’s Ascended status.
Eternity torn
Once more the two lovers clashed over the fate of their people. While Shyla fought for the Elves to officially join the Guardians, Hylas maintained that a Mathosian war had all but ruined Telara. He would not follow a Mathosian before, and he certainly never would now.
Where before their debate seemed like two lovers and friends in a lively discourse, this second engagement turned bitter, entirely on Hylas’s side. He questioned Shyla’s integrity, her fidelity (in more ways than one), even whether it was the gods who returned her to life. Still, Shyla loved him, forgave his grandstanding as rhetoric, and remained loyal, though he no longer visited, or even smiled upon her.
Then without warning, Prince Hylas took his entire royal clan, House Aelfwar, and holed up in their ancestral castle, allowing no visitors. Shortly thereafter, he informed Shyla by messenger that their “association” was no longer advantageous to the Elven people, and so he felt no need to maintain pretenses.
Pity not the Pentarch
To say that Shyla’s heart broke would be like calling a toppled tower “cracked.” Nonetheless, without further opposition, Shyla officially joined the remaining High Elves to the new-formed Guardians. For the Guardians, she has been a pillar of strength, a rallying point for Telara’s scattered Elves, never wavering against any enemy, even the forces of House Aelfwar. She fears she must stand against Hylas, and that the rampant spread of Life Rifts has something to do with him.
Mighty Cyril is glad for her council, though he sees the price her heart has paid for such purity and resolve. It is common knowledge that they take tea together, privately, once a week in Sanctum. Shyla speaks only of strategy, the war against the Planetouched. She appreciates the Mathosian’s clumsy attempts at companionship, his tendency to act fatherly toward a woman many times his age. Her mind is bent always toward supporting her people, so that the Elves are never again torn asunder as they were when the Kelari left, when Aelfwar turned away… as she was when Hylas broke her heart.
