Lords of Gossamer and Shadow NPCs: Shiandar Blessington, the Swan Queen

Shiandar Blessington bird waker after a shift This image is in the Public Domain

I have always had flight in my heart.  My father had to nail my window shut when I was a child as I kept leaping from it into the garden below.  He was worried that I would permanently hurt myself.  He did not know that even then I would call the wind to soften my fall.

But even with that skill it was not the flight that the birds displayed and I knew that in all reality that I too was destined to become a bird.  I need to learn how to peel back the route that evolution had taken me and choose the branch that would allow me to take wing, graceful and soaring with only my wits and strength to rely on.

I was fortunate, for in my home realm of Tintralon I was born a princess of sorts.  That is what you would call it anyway and I had access to many wise and worldly advisers whose only desire was to keep me happy.  It was very early that I received information of what you call the Umbra.  I was told it had the ability to remove my current form and transform me into the thing that I desired most.  I was introduced to the Maiden Mother of the bird wakers.  A sect of what many feared were witches that lived on the mountaintops of my world.

I was inducted and initiated in secrecy for it would have brought great shame to my family had this become common knowledge.  They stood for an ideal that I could not.  Rigid adherance to tradition, the strength of justice and above all the honor of all that is set in the tomes of law.  For me it was only freedom and change that would set me free.

As an initiate I flung myself from the highest peak and trusted in the teachings of the Maiden Mother.  I allowed myself to be free in heart and mind for the very first time and let the Umbra shift me.  Before I hit the ground my bones broke and twisted.  The hairs on my body sprouted and my robes fell tattered away from my body.

I never hit the ground as the Umbra transformed me into my greatest wish and I felt my heart soar as my wings instinctively kept me aloft.  I was now a true bird waker, and along with it a mistress of the Umbra.  I had learnt the lessons of the Maiden Mother, as few others had before.  I sailed over the failed initiates bleached bones at the bottom of the cliff and imagined what it could have been had I not been so fastidious in my practice.

With praise the Maiden Mother taught me the secret of the Grand Stair.  She told me that I was in her domain and that I would now need to find the Grand Stair and find that place that I fit among it.  I would not be welcomed back into my home if I stayed as the Maiden Mother told me I could no longer hide what I was.  I could walk as a human only so long before the lust of freedom would overcome me and I would have to reveal myself.  I knew this to be true and with no ill feeling I stepped out onto the path to find the true nature of my soul.

I am Shiandar, Swan Queen of Alabrand.  Come fly with me.