West Wind App

[kaylinneya]

Spoilers for Cast in Conflict and all before it.

Also, crit warning for pretty much every possible trigger. This series sometimes talks around issues, but they are pretty much all there. I will talk around them as best I can where I can as well, but somethings are pretty core to Kaylin and her history. You have ben warned.

Swearing will be ******ed out, because she curses more than a sailor.

Please excuse inconsistencies in the spellings of race and character names, the author has a lot of very similar oddly spelled names and the person writing this app is highly dyslexic and doing their best. There is no decent wiki for the series to link to, so I am writing the summary of all 17.5 novels by hand. Mostly from memory.

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[kaylinneya]

? PLAYER INFORMATION
HANDLE: Chicklet
CONTACT: PM here or ChickletLARP
CHARACTERS CURRENTLY IN-GAME: None yet!

? CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Kaylin Neya/Elianne/Ellaryian (You can just put Kaylin, though most AUs she'll wind up as Eli.)
CANON: Chronicles Of Elantra/ The Emperor's Wolves by Michelle Sagara West
CANON POINT: End of Cast in Conflict (came out June 2021) + some CRAU
FUTURE CONTRIBUTION: She is the Chosen. While she will be coming in at her furthest canon point, it is clear from canon that she still has much to do. No one is clear in Canon what Chosen means, but it is being shown to mean one who fundamentally changes the world. She also has a familiar, which is a very rare thing that is known to change the corse of history and save/destroy worlds. So there is tons she is likely to yet do. She is also a binding force between a number of the world's other great powers and the reason that a number of them actually tolerate and even came to like each other. And without her Sedaris and the Cohort, powers themselves, have no base of operation that can keep them from destroying the world accidentally.

[kaylinneya]

HISTORY:
Kaylin was born Elianne (no last name) in the fief of Nightshade. This meant that she was a poor kid with no access to regular food or clothes. Her mother maintained a room for them in a house they shared with countless other fieflings. When she was five, she met Severn. She was under attack by a feral - canine/humanoid creatures that hunt at night in packs in the fiefs. She later learned that they are creatures of Shadow. At the time she only knew that any human caught by a feral was dead. Severn showed up and threw meat. To this day she didn't know how he got actual meat or why he gave it up to save a child he didn't know. But he threw it, the ferals chased the meat, he dragged her inside.

Severn met her mother and understood what Eli didn't. Her mother was dying. Severn was ten. He started taking care of Eli and her mother. He bought food when he and Eli could beg and earn enough coin. He stole when they couldn't. When Eli's mother died later that year he took her away. They found another room. Over the years, they had to find another room many times, because they were young and powerless and stronger people who wanted the room got the room.

They grew up well below the poverty line, if one even existed. They ate trash when they could find trash. They begged. They stole. They wore clothes that was always too big or too small, usually patched. They went whole winters without shoes.

When she was 8, in the winter, they found a child outside who was about Seven. Steffi. She was sick, and they didn't think she'd survive. Eli talked Severn into keeping her with them, and when she recovered she proved to be better at begging than the two of them put together, being adorable. She pulled her weight and they did better. Severn was talking about them moving to a bigger place.

The next winter, she was 9, steffi was 8, they found another 7 year old. Jade. They saved her from the man chasing her and the ferals on her scent by feeding the man to the ferals. He was stupid, he screamed, that drew more ferals and allowed the children to get away.

The next year in winter, on the longest night, marks started writing themselves across her body. Her arms, and as she discovered later, her legs. Very soon after they found the first body. A friend of hers named Tina. The girl was gutted and her arms and thighs matched Elianne's. Then another body. Another. Always someone she knew, of the ones she found out about. They kept expecting it to be her next. Severn kept a close watch on her.

It continued until she was thirteen. One day Severn said he was going out. And that he'd be gone overnight. That was dangerous. Very. He was 18, they knew he could get work, but not the kind of work that would let him stay with them. Eli was afraid of what his leaving meant but he left her in charge and she was determined to take care of her children. Because half the time she saw them as sisters, the other half she saw them as daughters. They were hers.

It was a horrible night. Severn returned the next day, injured but wouldn't talk about it. He watched Eli like a hawk for the next several days before sending her out with what little coin they had to go shopping.

She returned with food... to find Steffi and Jade dead, Severn holding a knife, the room washed in their blood.

She fled. She ran away.

The fief had, as all fiefs do, 4 borders. If she had run across the bridge to the city, this would have been a very different story. Had she crossed the interior barrier into Ravellon she would have died and that would be the end of the story. But she ran to another fief. Barren. She didn't know at the time that crossing the barriers between fiefs were weird for most people. Panicked, she just ran. She found a tower with a rusted fence, climbed through a gap in the fence and spent the night huddled in fear and pain until she passed out.

She woke up the next morning, sick with the memories, but alive. She spotted and was spotted by Morse, one of Barren's enforcers. The woman asked Eli want she wanted. She said that she wanted to be able to kill a man. that was the right answer for Morse, and the enforcer took her in. Got her fed, and clothed, and armed. Trained her. Brought her to work for the fieflord Barren.

Eli became one of his enforcers. She was small, but she became deadly. She became hard. But she always wanted to know the "why"s of her assignments. And one time looking into why a man, Paul, was to die she discovered that his crime, such as it was, had been to protect his sister who had been assaulted in multiple ways by a man from across the bridge. Instead of killing him, she warned him. Barren found out and had not just him, but his whole family killed and made into examples. And then he demonstrated in a very personal way that Eli had no power, while he had all of it.

Eli stopped asking, after that. She did what she was told. She stopped being her. She wanted to die but lacked the courage to take her own life. Even her death wasn't her own.

Barren then sent her across the bridge to kill the Lord Of Hawks. Across the bridge was a city that belonged to a Dragon - the eternal Emperor. The Emperor had three halls of Law to enforce his laws and police the populous. The Swords were the general peacekeepers and riot crew. The Hawks investigated crimes and arrested most wrongdoers, and the Wolves hunted those too dangerous for the Hawks or Swords. The Hawks had been investigating near the banks of the river that seperated the city from the fiefs, and that was a problem for Barren. So she was sent to kill the Hawklord to send a message.

She spent weeks training and preparing. Then she did the one thing she'd dreamed of her whole life... she crossed the bridge. And it was... just a bridge. No one stopped her, no one noticed that she didn't belong. She realized that she could have crossed at any time. any of them could. But that it wasn't as perfect as she thought it was. There was a law, and no ferals here, but people didn't magically become paragons of good just because they lived in houses with roofs and had enough to eat.

Eli studied her target, studied the way the members of the Hawks who had wings came and went from the Hawklord's tower. She spent time in missing persons, observing the ground (non winged) Hawks. And then when the day came, she scaled the outside of the Hawklord's tower.

She tried to kill him. She failed. He saw the marks, and more saw a girl who had given up. Once he had stopped her with his magic, she had been sure she was dead anyway. He questioned her, he subjected he to the Tha'alani (mind readers), and then... he offered her another chance. Another life. She took it.

She became Kaylin Neya. She was introduce to the other Hawks. To the main Sargent, Marcus Kassan - a Leontine (Cat people) - and to Caitlin, a human who was the Hawks' den mother as well as Marcus' secretary. Two of the Barrani (immortal elf like beings who all look identical), Teela and Tain, took her under their figurative wing. Marcus brought her to meet his wives and kits. Caitlin helped her find an apartment of her own. She became the Hawks' unofficial mascot. She trained to be one of them. She studied what she had to - though she became infamous for being singularly bad at classroom work and impatient with it.

She didn't know why severn had done what he had done. Didn't know that he found her soon after she met the Hawks, that he stalked her, watched her, that he joined the Wolves and became a killer for the law so that he could continue to watch over her, to make sure she was safe.

While she had been in the fiefs, after she had gotten the marks, she had discovered she could heal. With the Hawks she discovered, during a case involving a child trafficking ring, that her power could also be used to kill. She was given an artifact that caged her power. But the Hawklord trusted her enough to show her how to take the bracer off when she needed to. The bracer had an odd additional attribute.... if she took it off and went too far from it, it always returned to the Hawklord.

Over the next seven years she became an official Hawk, a private. She volunteered with the midwives, healing when nothing else would preserve life, as though that could somehow make up for the lives she took. She volunteered with the foundling halls, because she still had a weakness for children and wanted them to have a better life than she had. She also adored the matron in charge of the orphans.

When she was twenty, she was called into a meeting. Again. This time? The deaths had started in the fiefs again. Children marked as she was were being killed. She was being partnered with two new Hawks. A Dragon named Tiamaris who was as close to an expert on the fiefs as the Dragons had... and a Wolf. Corporal Severn Handred. Kaylin immediately tried to murder Severn, in front of the Hawklord. Which... did not go well for her.

She was ordered to work the case with them. She wanted to stop the killings more than she wanted to kill Severn, and she wanted to remain a Hawk - it was how she defined her life at that point - so she agreed. With poor grace. She didn't let him explain.

Very soon in the investigation they were back in the fief of Nightshade where they had been born, where they had lived together. They met the fieflord, Lord Nightshade - a Barrani man - and he put a mark on her face, his mark. So that he could always find her.

During the investigation she also wound up talking to the remains of an Old One - the ones who created this world and all others. He called her a flawed vessel, lamented her mortality, but gave her more Marks all over her body anyway. She also wound up with the fieflord's True Name (which in theory gave her control over him, which she does not use, and gives them a way to talk mentally over nearly any distance.)

In the middle of all of this, one of the Foundlings fell and broke her back. Kaylin rushed over to heal her. That gave the killers a singular gift. It seemed that they were trying to subvert the Marks of the Chosen that were ow written over most of her body (Arms, legs, chest, back, back of her neck) to turn her into a god enslaved to the will of their leader. The only outcaste Dragon, Makuron the Black. Because she used her power to heal they had trouble controlling her, which meant more kids had to die. But by healing Catti they had a direct line to her power.

Also during all this the bracer, when she tossed it aside to heal Catti, had not gone to the Hawklord, but to Severn. No one knew why.

After trying to kill Severn after Catti was taken - sure he had something to do with it - she was taken off the case and suspended. Tiamaris seconded her anyway and they used her power to find Catti. And she kind of blew holes in a few thick stone walls along the way.

She learned that had Steffi and Jade not been killed by Severn they would have been the next two victims and that their closeness to her heart would have made control over her absolute. Severn had killed them to save her, and because it was a kinder death than they would have had otherwise. Seeing the pain Catti was in, what was being done to her... his way had been kinder. And Severn wound up in a position where he could have ended it by killing Catti. But because Kaylin begged him to save her, he protected her instead.

They brought Catti back, but they hadn't found the leader. They had saved one child, the killers were still out there. They went back out even though Kaylin had used so much magic she should have been dead on her feet. Desperation gave her the strength to continue.

Ybelline, the Tha'alani castlord, read Catti's mind while the child slept, and for the first time Kaylin saw a Tha'alani as a person rather than a monster. Because Catti slept peacefully, it was Ybelline who suffered, living the experiences as Catti had.

They went back into Nightshade to hunt down the killers, aware that the timing meant the next sacrifice was to be that night. On the way they found a woman dying by a well, her child had been taken. Kaylin stopped to heal her, which nearly wiped Kaylin out. But they pressed on.

This time they hadn't taken one child, they had taken several. They marked them, and meant to kill them all in one night to speed up the process. Kaylin faced off against the Dragon who was behind it all and they fought. Her power against his. And to his shock, she was not only holding her own, she was getting the better of him. The conduit he tried to build between them worked against him, gave her access.

But the power took her over. All she could see was the marks on her arms - Words, True Words all - blasting at him as pure power, and his power striking back. All was dark. Her darkness, his darkness. Even their fire seemed to burn dark. She was aware of nothing but the power, the struggle between them. And then light. Severn put the bracer on her, stopped her power, allowed Makuron to flee. Because the battle was killing the children. SHE was killing the children. He stopped her.

They saved the children, but like with the trafficking ring, the children saw her as more of a monster than the Dragon and undead Barrani who had marked them and wanted to murder them.

The kids who had living parents were taken back to them. The rest went to Marrin as foundlings and Kaylin passed out sleeping for... a long time. Days at the least.

When she went back to work, the Hawklord said that Severn had been requested back by the Wolves and that Severn had deferred the choice to her. He had saved Catti when he could have killed her. He had saved the other children from her. She couldn't forgive him for Steffi and Jade. Couldn't. But she chose for him to remain a Hawk.

Thus ends Book 1, the short story, and the prequel novel about Severn. On to book two!

[kaylinneya]

Book Two:

After showing how strong her magic has become, Kaylin has been ordered to take magic lessons. This... does not go well. (while this is scattered throughout the book, summarizing the whole book's worth of lessons here for ease of reading) She insulted a number of imperial mages, largly because they insulted her. And because she was afraid that if she was a mage she couldn't be a Hawk anymore. Also, she hates magic. Especially her own. Finally she gets assigned Lord Sanabalis, a Dragon. He failed to insult her, she suspected he was impossible to irritate. The lessons still did not go well, but when he scared the **** out of her, she was finally able to light the **** candle, having seen the Name of Fire in his eyes. He loaned her an amulet to mark the occasion, and told her she was to wear it at all times while in the Barrani High Court (see immediately below) for reasons of history. In theory it would warn any Barrani who wanted to kill her that she belonged to a Dragon. She didn't like it, but it was a wear it or die sort of thing, so she wore it.

Kaylin was called to the High Court of the Barrani by Teela. The second son of the High Lord was dying and no one knew why. Severn, now Kaylin's partner, came with her. In healing him, she wound up with his True Name as well and he called her Kyuthe - family of his choosing - which gave her status at court despite being mortal.

Kaylin got tangled in Barrani politics in the worst ways after that, not a healthy thing for humans, given that Barrani politics usually involve assassination attempts and anything that can reasonably kill an immortal would have no trouble with a pair of humans.

Kaylin was led to an ancient tower in the High Halls of the Barrani in her stay as guest that led to the ancient Barrani test of name. The premise was simple on the surface - enter and emerge alive, and you are a Lord of the Barrani High Court.

The reality (Kaylin doesn't learn much of this until Cast in Deception, which is book 13, but putting it here for readability) is that it is a test made up of two parts, the High Halls themselves, which is a sentient building, and the Adversary, a creature of Shadow enslaved to the heart of Ravellon. The first part of the test is unique to each person (The fact that Severn was able to come with her will be the thing of legend in the future for that has been tried before, but never accomplished. It will be accomplished again in book 13, however.) That is closer to what the test of the Tower is meant to be.

The bigger test is the test of the Adversary. He has captured the True Names (think soul in this case) of all who failed to be able to see all he had captured and turn their back on them. The test os for corruptibility. One who can turn their back, one who can ignore his voice, in theory cannot be made a slav of Shadow. They have held their Names and thus are the guardians of the High Halls, to help ensure that the Adversary can never break free.

In their test, three major things happened. Severn was trapped back in the memory of the night he killed Steffi and Jade. Kaylin could see him, and their bodies, but nothing else. She had to watch, unable to interact as she saw what he had done after she fled.... She watched him close their eyes. Saw the anguish on his face. Watched him lift them both, together, carry them to where he could bury them. They didn't bury their dead in the fiefs. ("The dead don't care, the living still need to eat.") But he did, he buried them both. He couldn't see Kaylin again until it was done. The vision didn't leave him.

Another big thing of note was right after that, they encountered a field of lethe - a flower that erased memory. She was being offered the chance to forget. Forget Steffi, Jade, how they died. She punted and gave him the choice. He refused. They burned the lethe and moved on.

The other major thing that happened besides facing the Adversary himself was encountering a table. True Words, much like her marks seemed to move within it. Kaylin tried to touch the table and her hands sunk inside it. She had to take two words in order to remove them, one in each hand. One became her True Name - a thing that all Immortals have and no mortals do. She had to shove it into herself. Ellaryian. The other she carried with her. It became instrumental later in saving the High Lord's first son.

During the Leoswuld ceremony, where succession was meant to be passed on, she had to heal the High Lord's first son so he could take the gift his father offered, as his brother was willing to let the High Halls fall and doom them all rather than take his brother's place. She made it just in time with the aid of the Lady who was about to become the Consort. She used the part of a Name she had claimed to finish the first Son's True Name, breaking the hold the Adversary had over him. (I really don't know how to make this less confusing without going into far more detail, sorry!!!) They made it to the circle and the Lord of the Green (the first son) took the gift and became the new High Lord. Then Kaylin had to help the Lady escort her mother, the Consort to the Lake of Names. Kaylin had seen it as a table. To the Barrani, it is an ocean, though they call it a lake. There the Consort threw herself into the water. Kaylin had to leave alone while the Lady took her own test. Being the daughter of the High Lord and the Consort did not mean she would be the new Consort, it merely granted her the right to take the test first. Very few Barrani could pass this particular test, making the Consort the one Barrani no Barrani would ever intrigue against, because without her the babies would never wake. She gives them their souls. That Kaylin found the lake at all, and was able to go there again with the Lady and the Consort meant that she had also passed that test, and could serve as Consort if needed. But the Lady succeeded and became Consort to her eldest brother. (I did say CW: ALL.)

Kaylin finally got to leave, now a Lord of the Court and one who had the Favor of the High Lord, the Consort, and the Lord Of The West March (the second son).

She found out that her ability to call Fire had been augmented by Sanabalis, returned his amulet and could no longer light the ***** candle. Some reward for saving the ***** city...