> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Asha Vayne > [![[Asha_Vayne_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Asha_Vayne.webp) > ###### Basic Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Character | > ###### Character Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Creature Type | Humanoid | > Species | Elf | > Gender | Male | > Pronouns | He/Him | > Place | [[Sumara, The Shining City\|Sumara]] | > Connections | [[Kaelen Vayne]] | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Alive | **Asha Vayne** is an elven soldier of [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]] and the son of [[Kaelen Vayne]], Meridian of the Blade. He vanished sixty years ago on the borders of the [[Vale of Eternal Night]] during a skirmish with the Hunt, and neither he nor the soldiers who accompanied him were ever found. He spent those years bound into the court of [[Mirileth|the Star-Veiled Queen]] as the pale guard "Evrath", his own mind buried beneath her glamour, until the [[The Bloody Nails|Bloody Nails]] brought him out of the Vale and he woke as himself. ## Biography Asha was lost in one of the border engagements that have long marked the uneasy boundary between Sumara and the [[Vale of Eternal Night]]. A significant member of the Hunt fell in the same clash, and the skirmish was costly on both sides. His body was never recovered — nor were those of his companions — and the official presumption has long been death. Among those who knew him, the loss settled differently. [[Kaelen Vayne|His father]] hardened in the years that followed, and those who knew Kaelen before speak of him as a changed man. [[Warden Sylvaris]], however, has her doubts. The ruling archfae of the Vale, [[Mirileth|the Star-Veiled Queen]], is not known for simple endings. Sylvaris believes the coincidence of a senior Hunt casualty and an unrecovered Sumaran soldier is too neat — and that there may be more to Asha's fate than a body left on a frozen borderline. ## The Years as Evrath For sixty years Asha stood guard in the Veiled Citadel of [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral]] under the name Evrath, glamoured and bound into the Court's service with his old self buried but not destroyed. His pale skin marked him out among the storm-grey soldiers of the Citadel, who glared at him as he passed and sneered at him as the Queen's pet — a curiosity from outside that their lady had taken a liking to. He was visibly unused to kindness, and a shiver ran through him when the name Asha was spoken in his hearing, though he denied ever having heard it. The glamour broke only once he had ridden beyond the Queen's city; he woke with no memory of the years between. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 50 - A New Morning in Sumara]] Named by [[Warden Sylvaris]] during her account of the Long Hunt's history. Sylvaris noted that Kaelen's son had vanished on the borders of the [[Vale of Eternal Night]] sixty years ago, and expressed doubt that [[Mirileth]]'s style would have permitted a straightforward disappearance — suggesting the truth of what happened to Asha may still lie within the Vale. #### [[Session 51 - The Last Light]] [[Skyguard Caeryn]] gave the party a fuller account of how Asha was lost. Some sixty years ago a Sumaran patrol strayed too near the forest's edge and clashed with a band of the Hunt; the dead were heavy on both sides, and the sigils on a fallen centaur suggested an important Hunt figure had died in the same fighting. Many bodies — Asha's among them — were never recovered. Rather than risk further escalation, [[Kaelen Vayne|Kaelen]] called off the border patrols and has carried the loss ever since. #### [[Session 52 - The Star-Veiled Queen]] In the throne room of the Veiled Citadel, [[Mirileth]] confirmed what [[Warden Sylvaris]] had only suspected: Asha is alive. She let slip that the lost son had been kept within her court for just such an occasion — leverage for any future dealing with [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]] — and remarked that the party had likely walked past him in the halls without knowing it. How to reach and recover him remains an open thread. #### [[Session 53 - The Blunt Tools]] The search reached inside the Veiled Citadel itself. Housed overnight as [[Mirileth]]'s guests, the party was watched by a court guard who gave his name, reluctantly, as [[Evrath]] — a knight whose skin showed pale where every other soldier of the Citadel runs storm-grey, and who was glared at by his fellow soldiers and sneered at as the Queen's pet. When [[Ryo]] asked the guard whether he had ever heard the name Asha, a shiver passed through the man — caught only by Ryo's sharp eyes — before he denied ever hearing it. The party left the city with no answer, but with one more oddity noted about the strange, pale guard of the high halls. #### [[Session 55 - The Long Hunt]] The lost son came home. Sent out of [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral]] by [[Mirileth|his lady]] with seven nightmare steeds and a small elven girl to see the fleeing party through the Wall of Night, the guard still calling himself Evrath found their hidden camp in the jungle, made his report, and lay down to sleep — and would not wake. When [[Berberis]] roused him by force he came up with his sword drawn, demanding to know where his crew was: the mind behind the eyes was Asha's own, and its last memory was the skirmish on the border sixty years gone. He recounted it on the ride south — his captain Iriak had wanted to look through the wall to learn the terrain, a patrol on the far side took it for an incursion, and the fight was past de-escalating before a blow to the head ended Asha's part in it. He asked whether any of his crew had made it out; [[Ryo]] told him none had. Shown the Silmara ring and told whose son Ryo was, Asha rode with the party through the wall and into the light for the first time in sixty years, squinting at the sky. At the [[Liar's River]], [[Grumble, The Anniahilator|Grumble]] greeted him by name — *"Welcome back, child. Too long, too long."* The party stowed his black Citadel armour in the bag of holding and lent him a plain elven robe before the gates of [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]], with the girl who calls herself Ellessa still holding his hand.