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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 531258" data-attributes="member: 8530">People of MengaleThe Mengale AmbassadorOne of the High Lords or High Ladies has always held the responsibility of serving as the Mengale Ambassador, to communicate with the outside world.   The present ambassador is High Lady Arwen Gerithar Silmar.   She is the youngest of the High Lords and Ladies, and is rather rebellious, being receptive to new and different ideas.   She also enjoys travelling outside of Mengale, which is highly unusual for someone from this Kingdom.  She holds a precarious position among the leaders of Mengale, being the daughter of a well-respected former member, but with the others wanting her to develop more maturity before voicing opinions to their group.Arwen was born the daughter of High Lord Gerithar and his wife Lady Trean during the year 2323 and raised from birth to be a Mengale High Lady. In 2482 she became High Lady with the passing of her father.   She also began to dabble with the spellcasting arts of wizardry rather than clerical magic.   At that time she was only 159 years old, which was a human equivalent of only 15, and very few of the other High Lords and High Ladies took this “child” very seriously.  Those who attempted to try to manipulate young Arwen soon found that it was a mistake to think that adolescence was the same as naivete, as she had been very well trained by her father as to the political workings of the Kingdom and personalities of the other High Lords and High Ladies.   At the strong encouragement of both her mother and the other High Lords and High Ladies Arwen married Lord Silmar in the year 2505.   Lord Silmar had inherited the leadership of his family, a prominent family who specialized in creating ornate silver jewelry and dinnerware.  He had never married, and was the human equivalent of around 35 years in age.   The two were very attracted to each other and looked forward to a happy future together.   The High Lords and High Ladies hoped that his maturity would rub off on her, but it instead had the opposite effect, with him now acting more youthful and vibrant, with him accompanying Arwen on her journeys outside of the Kingdom.   While abroad Arwen continued to expand her knowledge of magic use, something not looked favorably upon by those of Mengale. Tragedy struck while the two were taking a sea journey in the first days of the year 2579.  Human pirates set upon the ship that Arwen and her husband were sailing on. Their leader, a vile man named Morbin, killed Silmar and had his way with Arwen.  The pirates then set the ship afire and adrift.  Before perishing in the fire, Arwen threw herself overboard.  She washed up days later on an isolated island near the Hope Island Chain.  The only inhabitant of the island was an old unnamed human woman, who found the barely alive elf and tended to her wounds.Several days later Arwen’s fever broke, and she became coherent again.   Depressed and despondent over the death of her husband at the hands of humans, she avoided the human woman as much as she could.   Many months passed, and Arwen found herself to be pregnant.  She prayed to Correllon Larethian that the child was Silmar’s, but was told in dream that it was not.  As a High Lady of Mengale she had been raised to despise any not of the blessed full-elvan blood, and the thought of having a half-human child was too much for her to cope with She tried to kill herself, but the old woman again saved young Arwen’s life.   The old woman later helped her give birth to the child.   Arwen wanted nothing to do with the half-elf baby, and the old woman was left with the task of raising him.   The old woman named him Ross, and taught the boy to refer her as ‘Mother’.  Arwen kept herself distant from the two of them, but found herself unable to totally abandon the boy.   She knew that she could not return to Mengale with the child, as their society would never accept him.  Arwen considered constructing a boat to leave the island, but the old woman refused to leave her lifelong home, and Arwen did not want the abandon the young boy here with the old human only having very few years left.  So Arwen stayed, and as time went on she began to help to raise the boy, teaching him physical skills as well as how to use magic.   The boy always would refer to Arwen by her given name. The old woman surprisingly lived several decades, and Ross grew to be a young man before she eventually died of old age.   Arwen and Ross then built a boat and sailed for several weeks until they reached a populated island that traded with the main continent.   Shortly the two of them returned to the Kingdom of Mengale.    The Mengale elves have such long lives with such a long-term perspective that during Arwen’s three-dozen year absence the other High Lords and High Ladies had not yet gotten around to replacing her, and so she resumed her position among them.   Arwen introducing Ross as her bodyguard, stating that “He and his now deceased human mother saved me several times from certain death.  I made a promise to her before she died that I would look after and protect her son.”    As the other leaders of Mengale were grateful for the return of their High Lady, and with assurances from Arwen that her relationship with Ross was not and would never be sexual in nature, they granted Ross a special exception to allow him to reside in Mengale as a Non-citizen.   As the only half-elf within Mengale, the population has barely been tolerant of his presence.  It is clear that most consider him an impure intruder in their elvan lands.   He is even rejected by most of the other non-citizens, who have become generally accepted by those of Mengale and feel that associating with Ross could jeopardize that.  The one exception is the gnome, who has become his only friend.  Arwen is saddened that he son will never be accepted by her people, and whenever a situation arises that requires a member of the High Council to travel outside of Mengale she always volunteers for it, to give Ross a chance to experience the outside world.  To date the only one who has deduced Arwen's actual relationship to Ross was a young elvan thief named Raliana.   She had worked for Potter of Forest End and accompanied Ren during two trade caravans into Mengale.   A few years later Arwen and Ross ran into her while conducting research at the College Library at Luynn, and Ross spent several days with the attractive young lady, during which time a comment accidentally came out.   Raliana has agreed to not reveal this to anybody. Unbeknownst to all of Mengale, Arwen has also secretly met with Gredawal Lyrr, the current patriarch of the Lyrr family in Brondani.   The two of them would both like to see the elvan groups reunited, but have not yet deduced how to make that happen.</blockquote>

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