Hannah¶
aka Hannah Half-Elven, Hannah the Forsaken. Daughter of Heimdall and Queen Aduni Thrandurassil. Servant of the demon lord Osgilliath. Central antagonist of Act 1.
The Queen's Shame¶
Dres Elas was the bastion of the high elves, proud and superior to every other city, and the house of Thrandurassil had long ruled it and the known world with it. The young queen Aduni had taken an even younger husband of Netherese descent, a boy not yet of an age to stand behind her in the marriage.
Then diplomats came to court from the outer realms, and the queen's eye fell on a human from the northern reaches, a mountain man come to talk terms for trade. Heimdall, he called himself. They became lovers, and he flaunted her favour brazenly, until the Legion Commander banished him back to his own people.
Months later the queen gave birth. The child was of both peoples, and the noble line knew no greater shame. She was sent out of the royal houses to a family of elven farmers on the outer edge of Dres Elas, who were paid a royal tithe to keep the secret and promised death if it came to light. The queen was forbidden any word with her daughter. In time the young king grew into his duty, a new baby was announced, and the whispers of a human devil child were put down by decree and by years.
Flat Ears¶
The child came to be called Hannah. She did not look like her siblings. She was short for an elf, too stout, and her ears softened at the tip where they should have sharpened. The other children called her Flat Ears and threw rocks at her.
Hannah Half-Elven grew cunning and stocky, with a liking for violence that no moral concern held back. As a teen grown she went looking for the children who had chided her. They were found in a ravine a short way from town with their skulls broken. Their closest friends swore they knew nothing.
By then she had a following. Cutthroats and cowards, mostly, but feet on the ground. That was when a cultist found her, a servitor of Osgilliath the Destroyer, pit fiend and lord of the depths of Hel. His people were few. They promised her the one thing she wanted. Power.
The Forsaken¶
In the labyrinth beneath the old city she seized an old pagan temple of Sol and Mani. On the night of a blood moon her cultists worked quickly. They took her arms off at the elbow and crucified her on an inverted cross inside a devil's circle.
Osgilliath flowed into her. The arms grew back as fiendish claws, and the rest of her twisted to match her new patron. Hannah Half-Elven died on that cross. Hannah the Forsaken came down from it.
The Blood Elves¶
She shared the blessing. She opened her veins to her cultists, and some of them fled, but once the blood touched their lips they had no concerns left. They sprouted claws, forked their tongues or swelled to enormous size, and they came out of the labyrinth that night killing everything they met.
After a time the blood of their victims stopped being enough. They went back to feed from their queen.
The Prison¶
In the end the elves imprisoned her. Her name was struck from the Thrandurassil royal line, where Caerdan is her half-brother, and her soul was locked in a magical prison beneath Dres Elas.
Five hundred years after the cross, the party broke the ruby keystone that held the prison shut, in session 1.2.0. They did not know who they had freed.
The Rebirth¶
She was the force behind The Chosen. The Speaker spent his last days preparing her return, and when the eighth rune was seated in the door beneath Upper Hammerfall, the ritual finished itself. What rose in the sanctum was Hannah the Forsaken, wearing Ygritte's face.
Three times in that fight she clawed her way through the corruption. The first time she had seconds, and she spent them on two words. Keep fighting. The last time she asked the party to let her end it herself, and they said yes before she had finished looking at them.
Hannah Half-Elven died on her own terms. Her father stood at the edge of the ruin and watched, and said nothing. What left the body was, briefly, the colour of dawn.