| Helena the Grey | |
| Profile | |
| Status: | Alive |
| Age: | 55 |
| Race: | Human |
| Gender: | Female |
| Class: | Black Mage |
| Nation: | |
| Faction: |
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| Era: | |
Helena the Grey is a witch, sister of Viirsa Yuriev and mother of Arcturius. Born a bastard of the House of Whitehawk, she raised her son with harsh methods in a Libaterran forest but left all of a sudden in 1017 AE, prompting Arcturius to begin searching for her. During a mission to Alent to find the location of one of the last artifacts that she was searching for with her Grey Guard, she met Kaisa Blackwell. When Kaisa decided to join the Grey Guard, Helena discovered the girl was in fact her niece, prompting Helena to take her under her wing and train her in the ways of magic. After attempting to revive her sister from the dead, and the destruction of the Grey Guard, Helena set out with her niece to found Tevinth, which she ruled as queen for twenty years until she adbicated her throne to Kaisa in 20 AC while departing her kingdom to begin a quest known only to a select few in her court.
Biography[]
Third Age[]
Early Years[]
Bastard of Whitehawk[]
The bastard daughter of a nobleman and his maid, Alraune Yuriev, Helena's life even in the beginning was one of infamy. Her father, Leon Whitehawk, was the head of the noble House of Whitehawk that had once been the most powerful house in Etheril due to its reputation of producing powerful warriors and its long standing traditions of honor but eventually lost its influence to the House of Seneron due to their infamously bad spending habits.
Being seen as a disgrace on her family by her father's spouse, Lady Kailena Whitehawk, and her twin younger brothers, Kain Whitehawk and Blake Whitehawk, Helena was treated as little more then a glorified servant by her family that often received blame for the shortcomings of her siblings. Her true birth mother could do little due to her station and eventually was asked to leave her station by Lord Whitehawk's wife when Helena was little more than five.
Helena was adopted by Lord Whitehawk due to her lineage, but apart from this act her father had little part in his bastard daughter's upbringing. Though Helena was aware that she had an older sister, Viirsa Yuriev, who was also fathered by Leon, she doesn't remember much about her. She has kept the knowledge of her sister hidden since childhood.
Growing up as the punching bag of her household and mocked for her elven ears, a birth defect of her mother, and her illegitimate status, Helena found solitude in reading and increasing her knowledge whilst her siblings from the Whitehawk estate focused on war. When she was seven, she discovered that her hair had started to grey, a trait of her mother that earned her even more mockery. Aside from being known as "Pointy eared freak" and "Helf", she also earned a new nickname in "Old Lady Helena".
Growing further despaired, she found herself starting to eavesdrop on her father's 'strategy sessions' with the local militia as a way to escape her life, with Leon Whitehawk doing this in order to prepare the militia in the event that Etheril would end up in the middle of the Libaterran Civil War which was ongoing between the Rebels and the Locken Loyalists. Helena's knowledge continued to grow until Lord Leon passed away from illness when she was ten years old, removing the one thing that had been protecting her.
Kailena feared Helena as a potential rival and heir to the family, and, out of fear for her sons' livelihoods, quickly acted to remove her. In the dead of the night, with the aid of other household members and even her own sons, she had Helena taken forcibly from her bed chamber and taken all the way south to Vanna to be sold into an underground slave market.
Birth of a Legend[]
The next seven years of Helena's life were nothing short of hellish, with numerous beatings and belittlement that made her treatment back at her home nothing short of pleasant. Broken in body and almost in will, Helena was kept as a cleaning girl and eventually groomed to be a sex slave who would have her virginity sold when she came of age. Due to security and depriving of food, Helena was unable to find any way to escape, eventually giving up on finding an escape and letting herself surrender to violent fantasies of the murder of not just her captors but of the family that had forced her into this hell.
By luck, she got her chance during one evening when she was seventeen and sold off to a wandering traveller for the evening for him to have his way with. Despite her effort she was unable to fight off the assault and found herself at his mercy throughout the evening until he tired himself out.
The traveller made the mistake of bringing a magical scroll with him which he dropped during the evening. Helena discovered that the scroll had a spell on it when she accidentally read the words aloud. Her client was initially unconcerned with this, thinking her to have no latent magical power...until she completed the spell. To the man's horror, he found she had managed to apparently summon forth a dire wolf. However, this was actually a very convincing illusion but it nevertheless disoriented the man long enough for Helena to make her move. She took hold of a nearby chair and attacked him while he was distracted and beat him to death in a frenzy of panic and anger for what he'd done to her.
Helena realized that the spell might finally grant her what she had wished for years: a chance to escape. She cast the illusion spells again and distracted nearby guards, which allowed her to slip away. Using the element of surprise and a small grimoire of spells that her client had on his person, she quickly staged a mini revolt of fellow slaves with the aid of her illusionary dire wolves and through unchaining the various other slaves that were held there. The guards and slave masters couldn't react quickly enough and soon found themselves brutalised by the slaves and Helena's newfound power.
After the death of the slave master and through gathering supplies, Helena was shocked to find that she now had a small army of former slaves, who had been impressed by her resolve, utterly loyal to her command. The scared woman she had become faded and the educated girl of Whitehawk begsn to surface once more, starting to think bigger then just escape but of revenge.
Declaring to herself and all present that she would never again be degraded, Helena set out with her forces into the night to prepare for days to come as the group left Vanna and the harsh desert behind. The Grey Guard was formed on that night, with the dire wolf becoming its symbol. It was here Helena finally took the name of Helena the Grey, taking her first steps into true infamy.
Planning Revenge[]
Spending a year practising the magic of the book she found after having her Grey Guards hold up in a nearby forest, Helena did what she could to prepare for the eventual attack on her former home and family who were in Etheril. Her force, numbering at just a little over one hundred by now, spent their time as bandits and thieves by attacking various travellers. She also tamed and befriended a wild wyvern whom she named Legnalus, and the wyvern became her loyal companion.
Helena herself grew distant and became obsessed with increasing her power, eventually turning her attention to the gods themselves as a measure of the height of power. It was during this time in between preparing her troops and honing her skills that she began her research into whether it was possible for a human to ascend to godhood. And, if that wasn't possible, how could one go about rising to a power close enough.
Her research ended a year later when a small group of travellers found the Grey Guards on a trip. Helena proposed a truce to spend the night in exchange for information on the outside world. Helena herself becaming intimate with one of the travellers during the stay by pure accident. However, she got word that Yamato had begun invading the other nations and that war had been declared, which caused Helena to realise her opportunity had come. With the other nations distracted by the invasion and the subsequent Great War, Etheril would be left open to attack by her forces and, if done right, she would have her revenge.
While it is commonly believed Helena was the sole person responsible for the reign of terror on the countryside near Etheril and its surrounding villages, the truth is that her followers were aiding her. Using guerilla tactics that made her seem as though she was acting alone, and the advantage of the chaos caused by the war between Yamato and the Grand Alliance and the cities' low resources, Helena spent the next few months attacking Etheril and its surrounding villages, slaughtering numerous people from old men to children. Her end plan was to either lure her brothers away from Etheril or to make the villagers eventually revolt from the terrible conditions.
Return to Etheril[]
Helena's name spread by the few survivors, particularly of one unfortunate village called Tristram. She was pleased with her progress but soon came across one other issue: because of her relations with the traveller, she had become pregnant. Cursing her condition, she decided to speed up her progress, hoping to get her revenge on her family.
She soon found herself with a stroke luck as she discovered her brothers had tried to escape Etheril under cover of night to Lutherin. Helena mocked the irony of the supposedly proud warriors 'cowering at the first sign of war' as she went to intercept them. Sparing them no mercy, she had them executed on the spot and immediately took their heads to bring to Kailena.
Managing to sneak into Etheril under the cover of darkness and, through memory of the back entrances to the Whitehawk Estate, Helena marched a small bulk of her force into the estate and brutalised most of the staff before capturing her step mother. Dropping her step brothers' heads before her feet, she felt satisfaction at seeing Kailena, the woman responsible for her hell, groveling at her feet in despair for mercy. Helena ignored the pleas and instead ordered Kailena restrained and left in the manor before having her forces loot the estate.
Before leaving the grounds, Helena set the estate on fire and watched it and the occupants burn. Reveling in her newfound power and despising the weakness she had once held, she soon returned and ordered her forces to continue attacks at irregular intervals to make sure nobody 'forgot her' and also to scout information for old artefacts and rituals left by the gods for her to study. The Great War was coming to an end by this time as the Cataclysm struck, and the Faerfolc Rampage and the rise of the Magicracy of Alent also shook Libaterran soil, giving Helena the chance to continue her campaign of terror mostly unhindered while every Libaterran city tried to fend for itself in the world which was changing in the aftermath of the Cataclysm.
Searching for Artifacts[]
- "If you ever seek to defy me again, I want you to remember the pain you feel right now. And when it scars you, just know that what you felt this day shall be far worse if you go against my orders again!"
- —Helena to Arcturius
After her visit to Etheril, Helena retreated to one of the nearby northern forests to give birth and raise her child, whom she named Arcturius after the hero of one of her favourite stories. Being strict with her child, the initial joy eventually gave way to disgust and frustration upon finding out that he hadn't inherited her magical powers. This caused her to begin to despise her own child for not being able to meet her high expectations, and she treated him in much the same way her former step family had once treated her.
Years passed with Helena brutally lecturing Arcturius and trying to keep him isolated from the outside world for his own good. Lilli, an elf from the outside, entered the forest and befriended Arcturius in secret, but Helena soon found out about this and became furious. She killed the elf and in her rage she also scarred her own son with horrific burn marks to make him remember where his loyalties lay as well as make sure that he would never defy her again.
In 1017 AE, Helena eventually came across a map of various divine locations and artefacts that were said to possess the ability to grant a mortal a chance to transcend to godhood through a ritual. Leaving Arcturius without so much as a note, she went to gather her remaining Grey Guards to begin her quest for her ultimate dream: godhood.
Godslayer Era[]
Helena the Grey Witch
Helena sent some of her top Grey Guards to look for an ancient artifact which would presumably be located somewhere in Trinity Gask, capital of the Crimson Coalition.
She was finally reunited with her son Arcturius after her men brought him--and the artifact they'd recovered from Trinity Gask--to her. She had a tense conversation with Arc, and he told her everything he knew about the events surrounding Malperdy, including Haruko Mizushima. Then more interlopers were brought to the Grey Guard camp, among them Razravkar Dominus, Raul Emmenson, and Spector Drakai, whom Helena and her men interrogated, then bade farewell.
Helena set out for Alent after she discovered her son was missing. While there, she met with a teenaged girl Kaisa Blackwell who turned out to be the daughter of Viirsa Yuriev, thus making Kaisa the niece of Helena. The disillusioned Kaisa later abandoned her friends in the Grand Alliance and joined Helena's side, after which they met with Kaisa's long lost father Hector Blackwell who asked for their help in restoring the deceased Viirsa back to life. The pair assisted Hector's group in the task, which nearly led to Kaisa's demise in the process until the briefly revived Viirsa asked Hector to reverse the process because she didn't want to gain a second life at their daughters' expense.
After the revival incident, Helena, Kaisa and Hector's group decided to flee from Alent while the Battle of Alent had reached a turning point as both the Crimson Coalition and the Northern Horde were fighting the Alentians in a three-way battle.
While Helena was in Alent, most of her Grey Guard were ambushed and slaughtered by a traitor within the guard, a woman called Lucy Smith who was actually a demon named Azazel in disguise. Helena's pet wyvern Legnalus was spared from the massacre due to not being around when it took place.
Shortly after, the Second Great War and the Third Age came to an abrupt end when Alent was destroyed in a magical chain reaction caused by the Beacon of Alent. Helena's group survived the Catastrophe and left the ruins of Alent behind as they headed to safety in the north.
Fourth Age[]
Interim Years[]
Queen Helena.
In the years following Alent's destruction, Helena left with Kaisa and other refugees to found Tevinth, a city-state for mages, at the dawn of the Fourth Age. After being made the Queen of Tevinth, Helena ruled the city with a firm but fair hand for twenty years, her reign being a steady one in spite of fear of demonic retribution. As a Black Mage of great power, she was responsible for helping Kaisa perfect her magical abilities, even naming the princess as her heir in the event she passed. Helena decreed that non-mages could also live in her kingdom but not in Tevinth proper: instead, the mages constructed Outtown, an adjacent town on the outskirts of the walled city where non-mages could live under the mages' protection.
Deep Trouble[]
A terrorist suicide bomber claiming to work for the demonic empire of Andaria targeted Tevinth in 20 AC but was stopped at the docks. The attack prompted an investigation and, after two weeks of deliberation, Helena decided to leave the kingdom to investigate the matter and seek out answers personally, abdicating her throne to Kaisa as she named her the new Queen of Tevinth. After ensuring that Kaisa had what she needed to rule Tevinth justly, Helena left the kingdom, keeping her mission a secret from most of Tevinth aside from Kaisa and the closest members of the court.
Aliases and Nicknames[]
- Lady Grey
- What her followers call her.
- Queen of Tevinth
- Her title as the ruler of Tevinth.
Appearance[]
Has grey hair, Green eyes and pointed ears, which make some people mistake her for an elf. She's often wearing dark robes.
Personality and Traits[]
Cold, guarded, intelligent, manipulative.
Powers and Abilities[]
She is capable of summoning a handful of lesser creatures to do her bidding, most notably a big wyvern. She can also cast medium-level spells such as when she scarred Arcturius with summoned fire.
Innate Ability: Helena's ability was simple. She could tell which direction the place she called home was, which was how she was able to navigate the Grey Guards back to Etheril. She lost her ability in the Cataclysm.
Relationships[]
Alraune Yuriev[]
Alraune gave birth to Helena after having another affair with Leon. She had to give Helena away as Leon wanted Helena in his estate, and she was forced to leave the city soon after due to demands from Kailena. She never saw Helena again as she passed away years after leaving Etheril.
Arcturius[]
Helena treated Arcturius harshly, wanting to keep him isolated so that he'd meet no other people than her. She scarred him when he disobeyed her orders and psychologically manipulated him to become distrustful of outsiders.
Kailena Whitehawk[]
Kailena despised Helena for being a constant reminder of her husband's affair with a commoner. Because of this, she made Helena's childhood horrible in the Whitehawk estate and sold her to slavery, thus contributing to Helena's descent into becoming the ruthless witch she would come to be known as. Helena and Kailen's reunion years later was anything but happy, and ended in the burning of the Whitehawk manor and the deaths of Kailena and her sons.
Kaisa Blackwell[]
Helena and Kaisa met in Alent during their Threshold adventure, and seemed to bond after a bit of hesitation. Helena was so impressed by Kaisa's bravery and determination that she considered the possibility to make the girl join her Grey Guard. She gave the option to Kaisa who was hesitant to take it, but Helena gave her the means to contact her if she ever decided to change her mind. What neither of them know is that they're in fact blood related since Kaisa is the daughter of Viirsa, Helena's sister, which makes Kaisa Helena's niece.
Leon Whitehawk[]
Leon cared for Helena enough to adopt her into his household due to her being related to him by blood but otherwise spent little time with her while attending to family business. Helena looked up to Leon, particularly his strategist mind, and was saddened by his untimely death, after which her life became horrible in the Whitehawk estate. Helena still uses some of Leon's teachings to this day, carrying on his memory within her as she leads her Grey Guards.
Legnalus[]
Helena and her pet wyvern Legnalus care for each other deeply.
Viirsa Yuriev[]
Viirsa was Helena's older sister whose name is all Helena remembers of her. To this day Helena has remained unaware of the fact that Kaisa Blackwell, the girl she interacted with in Alent, is in fact Viirsa's daughter and thus Helena's niece.