FALDEVON (prefers to be called FALEN)
Race: Silene
Eye color: Amber
Hair color: Golden
Distinctions: Wears a leg brace and walks with a staff
Crippled in one leg from infancy, Falen was a mild, skittish child raised in the hidden sanctuary of Widdenwael deep in the white Marcale Forest. Though his life was one of humble servitude and he possessed no discernable talents, he carried within him a fierce fire that would one day break free of all boundaries and sear a path into legend.
~Story~
“The cold mist that embraced the black heart of Marcale Forest was a mist men feared. The fog could be felt from the edges of the forest, and sometimes even seeped through the roots of the giant guard trees to pour into the surrounding fields. It materialized at evening like wisps of smoke from a smothered fire and spread outward with ghostly fingers, weaving and wandering and clammy as a wet veil that clings to the body and stifles the senses. It taunts with smells familiar but indiscernible and calls with voices unheard, leading to the old, blackened ruins at the center of the forest. It is from those ruins that the mist forever originates, formed as it were from the lost ambitions of those who dwelt forever captive within the ruined sanctuary. To enter the mist was to risk being ensnared in the dreams of a by-gone tragedy. To go near the ruins was to go insane. Such was the monument of Widdenwael. Only one thought it unfitting, one whose memory spurned the lore wrought by the ignorant and taletellers, one who did not fear to walk in the mist. He was one of them—the lost; one that lived when others did not, one whose destiny became the wishes of another…and unmasked a legend.”
~
The prophecy began to manifest in Falen’s fifteenth summer, the darkest year of his life, when his humble, secluded home in Widdenwael was shattered by war. The sanctuary was infiltrated and destroyed by the enemy and its young inhabitants murdered, and Falen came to know the first stirrings of terror, grief, and bitter loneliness. In his despair, he was offered a miracle. The Rover—the mysterious force through which the land of Avenan manifested itself in times of peril—visited him. It chose him to be its Echana, a leader endowed with special ability to unite the scattered and dwindling people of Silon.
It was to be Falen’s greatest honor, and his lifelong curse. The Rover lifted his infirmity and granted him the skills to become what he must, but it also robbed him of his identity and fettered his body to its relentless will. It drove him out into a vast and unfamiliar world, tested the limits of his courage and his faith, and led him to join the remnants of Silon’s broken army in their rebellion against the Thauron usurper Ryvan. In the long months following his escape from Widdenwael, Falen served the princess Shion, the former king’s exiled daughter and last surviving heir to the throne of Silon. He endured hunger and cold, suffered at the hands of enemies and elements alike, searching blindly until at last he discovered a way to turn the enemy’s most powerful weapon against itself.
When the war for deliverance finally ended, the Rover’s power released Falen, granting him the chance and the right to seek a future of his own. What had started with a prophecy now led him onward, revealing his mysterious parentage and the bloody rivalry surrounding his birth. Years of hurt and injustice threatened to darken his heart when he learned that he had been born the illegitimate son of an ill-fated royal family and hidden away during the Great Tragedy, that he had been intentionally crippled and reduced to humiliation and servitude to keep his true identify from being discovered. When the very stones of Redgate Palace responded with a welcoming resonance to his touch, he knew the truth. The greater life he had always dreamed of had been his birthright all along, and now he had the chance to seize it. His deeds and birthright afforded him the coveted ability to earn titles and property, and above all, the hand of Shion, the woman he had fought beside and grown to love.
It was hard at first to accept such a drastic change in his lifestyle, harder still to adapt to the social responsibilities in being named consort to the new queen of Silon, but married life came to soothe his nervous flightiness and ease the pain in his heart. Shion became his support in the strange new life of peace and restoration. The kingdom lay in her capable hands and those of her trusted council. Never again need Falen–now called Faldevon–hide beneath a dark cloak to escape notice or to hide his infirmity from the enemy. Never again would he sleep with the constant fear of ambush or betrayal, though his nightmares were slow to leave him. The sword that tradition dictated he carry at his waist was now nothing more than an ornament, a sobering reminder of a time that had now passed.
This, at last, was the kingdom that he had hoped to see as a boy, and now had the freedom to explore it. He also had the freedom to escape it, when he could outsmart his guards, and to return to the peaceful, sentient white forest he had known as a child, to the mist and the whispers of ancient trees and wind that had once lulled him to sleep. He used what authority he had to ensure that a new sanctuary was built there to house the orphans scattered in the wake of war.
Soon after, he would adopt one of the orphans himself, a small boy named Faeren, with whom he felt a special bond. He owed it to the memory of Widdenwael and the kindness of his old mentor to shelter, teach and to love a lost child of his own.
Raising Faeren would give him and Shion their first real taste of parenthood, but nothing could have prepared them for the chaos that their firstborn, Luke, would bring to their household. No prophecy could have foretold the heartache that would eventually drive Faldevon to leave Shion’s side, to call once more on the Rover’s assistance and risk everything to save both his children from an unspeakable fate. Later years will give Faldevon the wisdom, patience, and cunning he so desperately needs to safeguard Silon’s fragile peace, but whether by choice or necessity, he is and will always remain a slave to the Rover’s will.