Veina/Lore
If you do not want spoilers, stop here!
Profile[edit]
Introduction Dialog[edit]
I'm Veina, an elf on a journey. I've left my home, guided by the winds. I want to experience some of the wonderful things, I've read about in books. I thought I'd like to try and become friends with some of you short-eared folk. I hope we can get along well.
Character Traits[edit]
As an Elf, Veina has a long lifespan and has spent much of it living a sheltered life in the ancient home of the Elves. Because of this, she is often oblivious to human customs, full of wisdom, and earnest to a fault. She has spent much of her life merely reading about the outside world and is excited to finally experience it for herself. Like her kin, her patience and perception of time is different. She is prone to telling long, winding stories that take multiple days to tell.
In many ways, Veina is a model elf: she is deeply reverent of their history and customs, in touch with the natural world, and lives by a moral code based on compassion.
Other Info[edit]
Veina is an elf with pointed ears and long blonde hair. She wears an open, flowing dress with puffy white sleeves and an emerald green body with golden trim. She also has an orange sash tied around her waist. The back skirt of her dress ends in flower petal-like shapes. As a mage, Veina is depicted with a staff and a book.
Story[edit]
Character Quest 1: A Story That Will Run Rings Around You[edit]
While sightseeing in Acteul, Aldo and Veina find a small child crying. After talking to him, they find out his parents are having an argument. Aldo and Veina resolve to help the child and find his parents by the Inn. It turns out, the husband had lost his wedding ring and his wife is incensed. In an attempt to resolve this crisis, Veina begins to tell them both the story about an ancient Elven ring of power and how something so small can bring the fall of a nation and lead to ruin. The story turns out to be a long epic and lasts overnight. By the next morning, the married couple quickly make up and resolve to search for the missing wedding ring. Aldo agrees to help to stop Veina from further storytelling.
Veina uses her wind magic to gather items into a single spot, to no avail. A town guard attempts to accost them for using magic within city limits, but Aldo talks him down and warns him of Veina's penchant for long stories. The guard is familiar with this and tells him about what humans call the "Elven Yawn" -- the phenomenon of elves catching people in long boring yarns over multiple days due to their different perception of time. He suggests they look in the Man-Eating Marsh for the ring.
At the Marsh, Veina suggests a summoning spell that would clear up the water in "just" 30 years, which Aldo fervently rejects. Instead, they come across some slimes congregating around an object. The slimes combine into one larger "Cursed Slime," which then heads toward Acteul. Aldo and Veina intercept and defeat it, and reveal that the object is the husband's wedding ring. It turns out the wedding ring had trace amounts of evil magic within it, and was possibly the same ancient ring that led to ruin, but it should be safe now that the slime monster is defeated. The married couple sincerely makes up this time, and Veina spends the rest of the day telling them how ancient relics come into such power.
Character Quest 2: Spoiler Alert: This Story Has A Sad Ending[edit]
Veina is perusing the library in Palsifal Palace for the latest edition of her favorite series: an epic of an ancient heroic warrior written by an Elven author. Because of their long life, the series is currently at 1,225 chapters. Riica tells Aldo and Veina about SmartBooks -- devices that can hold millions of digitized books. Intrigued, Veina and Aldo travel to the future to get one.
Upon arriving in Elzion, they meet an old man who agrees to share his SmartBook with them. When searching for Veina's favorite series, they find that the servers are down and they can't conduct a search. The old man mentions that someone at the IDA School should be able to fix the servers. Veina interprets this as instructions to find a healer for "Ser Verse," and Aldo does not know any better.
Back at IDA School, Veina runs into Ruina, and is delighted to meet an elf in the future. Veina puts forward the idea that perhaps Ruina is more human than elf, since she was raised with their customs and culture. Ruina is conflicted about the idea. Meanwhile, Aldo finds a doctor to heal the sickness of "Ser Verse." The doctor quickly figures out what they mean, and fetches a student tech to look into the SmartBook servers.
It turns out the servers are in Xeno-Domain and they must rely on a lazy third-party contractor for on-site repairs. Aldo, having access to the Xeno-Domain thanks to The Administrator, decides to go to Xeno-Domain himself. Veina is confident they can fix the problem and prepares an Elven Rite in the server room with a type of incense. It produces a foul smoke that alerts a student repairman. After talking to Aldo and Veina, he realizes he made an error while switching out parts and, in his panic, sends out robot security drones to cover his tracks. Aldo and Veina dispatches them and takes the student repairman to IDA for questioning.
Back at IDA School, the student repairman confessed to breaking into Xeno-Domain to fix the servers by himself, so that he could read the ending of his favorite book, "The Life and Times of Queen Miglance". The contractor, alerted by the incident, acted to repair its servers. With the servers now in proper working order, the student tech from earlier gives Veina a SmartBook. In it, Veina finds that her favorite series is complete at 11,111 chapters, and that number one is a mark of good fortune. However, with an errant press of a button, she accidentally skips to the end and spoils it for herself. Distraught, she gives the SmartBook back.
Character Quest 3: Crime, Punishment, Forgiveness, Healing[edit]
While admiring the architecture of Palsifal Palace, Veina tells Aldo about cultural values shared by both Elves and humans: empathy and cooperation. Suddenly, a hysterical man approaches Veina and begs for forgiveness and promises a tribute to the "Elven Overlord." Veina is confused. They figure out that the man is being extorted by a mysterious hooded figure claiming to be an elf. The mysterious figure demanded that he hand over all his wealth or else his village will fall to disaster.
Veina is confused as elves had once possess a number of ancient rites with the power to single-handedly demolish the world several times over, but most of them were forgotten to time, and no elf would demand tribute from humans as it violates their motto -- "the bounties of the earth belong to all". (Meanwhile, Aldo is silently alarmed at the word "most", meaning... "not all".) The man admits he is not certain that he was dealing with a true elf. Aldo and Veina decide to take this situation into their own hands and go to confront the imposter at a meeting place in Derismo Highroad. There, they find that the imposter is actually an Elven boy, who was surprised to see another elf. However, Veina immediately interrupts him with scoldings, and finds that he's irreverent, disrespectful, and talks back. He calls Veina "an old hag" and Aldo "an armored hedgehog", and runs away. Veina quickly clarifies to Aldo that in Elven years, she is still a "young lady" and not an "old hag".
They catch up to him in Actuel. Veina tries to lecture the Elven Boy about proper Elven behaviour, like the ability to tap into power of words called "Argent Tongue", but he refuses to listen. They argue back and forth for multiple days. When Veina tries to reprimand about his parent's teachings, the boy suddenly apologises and breaks down crying, saying his parents are being held captive in Nadara Volcano. Veina promises him they will go there and help him. Aldo is suspicious of the boy's sudden change, but Veina assures him he would not lead them into a trap. To do so would break their single greatest taboo -- "to take the life of another elf" -- and turn him into a Dark Elf. Even a child should know that Dark Elves lose their long lifespan and all their Elven abilities. (Veina admits she does not know if that is actually true; Breeno is also a Dark Elf.)
At the volcano, the boy reveals that he has indeed led them into a trap. As he commands Flame Hounds to kill Veina and Aldo, a dark power enshrouds him. A voice in his head speaks to him, "Don't... kill", and he becomes scared. Veina attempts to save him, but a voice in her head forbids her from intervening. When she does so anyway, for "to forsake another is to forsake yourself", the same dark fog begins to enshroud her. Summoning powerful wind magic, she disperses the dark energy and saves the Elven Boy from becoming a Dark Elf.
Finally, the Elven Boy reveals that he was raised by humans whose short lifespans eventually left him to fend for himself. As an orphan, he had never known Elven culture or community. They take him to Zol Plains and send a message into the wind. It is answered many days later by an Elven Youth who agrees to take the boy to the ancient home of the Elves, where he can finally learn their ways and find community with his kin.
Character AS Quest: Nature, Bugs and Everything You Hate[edit]
Back at the Palsifal Palace classroom, Veina is invited to be a guest teacher. She begins to teach the kids about their relationship to the natural world until Aldo realizes this lecture would take days. He interrupts and proposes a field trip outside. When they arrive at Corinda Plains, Veina shows up in a special outfit adorned with two butterfly-like wings -- feathers from the spirits that protect her home village. The outfit is designed for the Ceremony of the Winds, which shows their appreciation for nature.
To demonstrate this to the kids, she sends out a call on the winds -- the same one she previously used to call the Elven Youth. It is answered by giant bug monsters. It turns out they are friendly and were asked to assist with today's lesson. The insects play with the kids and they learn that not all things in nature are inherently evil.
On their way back to class, they find a crowd gathered outside the palace. It turns out a monster has broken into the palace and the guards have lost track of it. Veina insists on handling the situation and believes she can talk to the monster. When they find it in the throne room, she realizes it's a spider -- the one creature she fears and hates most. The spider "played" with her as she tries to attack in panic and misses. When the spider lands its shot, however, Veina begins to chant an ancient rite... One enough to level the palace! Aldo brings the kids from class to calm her down, and they beat the spider through conventional means. It flees back into the wilderness.
Veina apologizes for losing her cool, and insists that spiders are different from insects. When she was a child, she saw a spider eating the insects that lived by her home. She also thinks they just look creepy. The kids are newly motivated to learn about magic and excited by the day's adventure. Back in the classroom, Veina apologizes for her hypocrisy. She had tried to tell them that not all creatures in nature are evil, yet tried to destroy the giant spider monster just because she hates spiders. The kids forgive her and tell her it's natural; everyone has something they can't help but hate. Veina learns from them that it's okay to have some faults that go against her teachings. She then ends the class with a tragic tale of a love between a king and a witch, starting with part one of one hundred...
Character Quest ES[edit]
This character does not have this version.
