The Black Tome

Elianna

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14 min read

First appearance: Into the Mirror, Session 1 · watch it on YouTube

Elianna is the personal assistant of the Grandmaster: a small, bespectacled tiefling who carries a book everywhere, takes notes on everything and has never been in a fight in her life. When the Grandmaster sent a rescue party after the fallen champion Flynry, Elianna went along as chaperone, carrying a promise to her lady that she would come back safely. Somewhere in the green sands of the afterlife she became the group’s healer, mapmaker, contract-writer and diplomat. Now and then she also slits a throat. She does all of this while cursing under her breath and asking everyone she meets whether they are happy.

Story

Into the Mirror, Session 1

When Toddleheim and Locket answered the Grandmaster’s summons to the Dread Fortress, they found the Arbiter lounging on her throne in chains and sackcloth. A tiefling woman they didn’t know stood beside him. “I am her personal assistant. Thank you very much… My name is Elianna,” she said. She consulted her book and informed them that the Grandmaster was away and “does have a spa treatment at three.” She glared at the Arbiter and held her nose as she passed him. She apologized for the smell: “We haven’t washed him in a few days because no one wants to go near him.” Before going back to deal with him, she offered the visitors brandy and knocked back a potent shot from a tiny vial: “I’m ready to go now.”

The Arbiter led them down to the Hall of Fates, a line of floating mirrors over an abyss. Each of them had to look into a mirror and resist the urge to walk in. Elianna gave Toddleheim a blessing and a thumbs up (“you’ve got this”). When she overheard his muttering about the “good bosom” in his mirror, she cleared her throat and scribbled furiously. The Arbiter then revealed that the Grandmaster had wanted the group to have a chaperone. Elianna shakily put away her book and glasses and tripped on the stairs. Her own mirror showed a memory: a fire in an isolated snowy cabin, and the Grandmaster snuggled up with her under a blanket. “Oh, my sweet lady,” she whispered. She hovered her hand where the Grandmaster’s face would be, then pulled it back: “No. She wanted me to come back safely and I will do that. I’m not going to let her down.”

The Grandmaster, it was said, saw something special in her. She saw some of herself in Elianna, back when she had first arrived in Cor’thun, lost after her father’s death. Asked whether she had a message for her lady, Elianna glared at the Arbiter and said:

“Tell her I will keep our promise.”

Moments later the Arbiter disintegrated all three of them. They woke huddled together in the cold green-sand desert, and Elianna’s first words were “What just happened?” She had heard whispers of this place through the Grandmaster and the Arbiter, enough to know that people rarely came back from it. She took terrified notes the whole way as Toddleheim’s grief cracked open a path through the sand. That path led them to Flynry, fighting a pack of sand scorpions.

Claws of Sand, Shifting Sands, Hourglass

Elianna’s first battle began with a string of “fuck, fuck, fuck.” She was with people she barely knew, somewhere she had never been, facing monsters she had only read about. Even so, she lit the scorpions around Flynry in a blinding neon purple glow and wrapped him in a shimmering protective outline. All the while she muttered, “I didn’t sign up for this.” She then conjured a spectral scythe, which sliced off a scorpion’s pincers and then its head. The head landed at Flynry’s feet “almost like it’s a gift.” It was her first kill, and when she tried to curtsy, she fell over.

She was also the first to feel the ground rumble, just before the little scorpions sucked back into the sand and rose as a giant one. When its claws caught her, she screamed in pain. Then she remembered her promise to the Grandmaster. In a sudden calm she pointed at the beast and stared, and it was engulfed in a burst of purple flame and exploded.

Afterward she introduced herself to Flynry: “Hello, I’m Elianna, the Grandmaster’s personal assistant. I’ve actually never been in battle.” She recalled the realm’s name from her books: the Sands of Eternity. She sketched Flynry for the Grandmaster, wrote down everything that had happened, and healed his scars, explaining, “I had to learn how to heal because I’m constantly tripping and hurting myself.” When she looked into his mirror-sword, Truth, for any sign of hope, it showed her a ziggurat crowned with a shining crystal, then rewound the path that led there. She drew it as a map, hiding the page with her letter to the Grandmaster. Flynry gently turned the drawing right side up. When the sword refused to show her anything more, she kicked sand at it. Then Locket stepped up to the blade, and an arrow came over the dune and through her throat.

Shatter and Mortaurios

As Locket crumbled into sand, Elianna dropped to her knees and scooped what she could into the bag at her side: “Maybe we can put her back together.” Toddleheim began turning into a werewolf in his grief. Elianna scrambled away, yelling “What the fuck is that?”, and wrote the whole confusing scene into her notebook.

Over the next dune they found a glowing Aasimar, Cerys, surrounded by the outlanders who had been toying with her. Elianna opened her book to the first spell she saw and put three of the attackers to sleep. Then, never trained with any weapon, she took the smallest dagger from a sleeping outlander, whispered a prayer and slit his throat. His eyes shot open and he gurgled blood up at her before turning to sand. She did the same to a sleeping Tabaxi, then looked at Flynry: “Eh?” He nodded. At the table, someone called her “our librarian’s a sociopath.”

When Flynry raised his sword at Cerys over Locket’s death, Elianna ran between them: “I know you’re angry and I was sent here to protect you, but that may be our only way out.” Cerys knew the ziggurat. Elianna made her write the city’s name in the notebook rather than say it aloud, so Cerys couldn’t leave without them. Once the portal delivered them to Mortaurios, she showed Flynry her old sketch: “Well, she wasn’t lying. This is the place.” She sifted Locket’s sand for a soul gem and found only cold sand.

On the way to the palace she quizzed Bronn, the captain of the guard, asking him whether he was happy and confessing, “I’m really just a librarian.” She then used Flynry’s sword to sneak a look at Bronn’s inner self. When it showed a small, burdened man, she grabbed his arm and gushed about his broad shoulders.

Royal Audience and Otherside

Before Queen Cantressa and King Quintol, Elianna introduced “my lovely companions, Flynry and Toddleheim,” curtsied awkwardly and offered “Sandsickness, Your Majesty” without explaining what it was meant to explain. Claiming her book was stuck in her bag, she turned Flynry so his sword faced the throne. In it the old, frail king appeared as a young, black-bearded warrior with a robust belly, while the queen did not change at all. Elianna drew the king and sensed that Cantressa was telling the truth, but that “there’s more that’s being unsaid.”

That night she did something quietly kind. She heated Locket’s sand in the palace hearth and cast it into two small glass stones, one each for Flynry and Toddleheim, “so that they can carry their friend around as a remembrance stone.” Flynry thanked her “for keeping what’s left of her safe for so long,” and Toddleheim, teary, told her, “I do truly appreciate this, Elianna.”

Through a hall of mirrors they crossed into a snowy mountain realm. Elianna reasoned that Cerys couldn’t be dead because there was “no sand on the floor,” and stepped through after her. In the ice cave at the top of the mountain, the dragon’s freezing breath knocked her on her ass. She tried to banish the creature and failed, patched herself up (“because ow”), then summoned a spectral winged centaur to guard Flynry and wrapped him in a glowing cross of warm light. Cerys struck the killing blow.

The Scholar

In the dragon’s hoard she swept the room for traps with a wave of white light and found none. She could read the Celestial words on the golden orrery they found: “The path to dreams begins with the truth.” She dashed it toward Flynry’s sword. The orrery’s rings spun, the two pieces pulled together, and a flash carried them to a sunken library in the green desert. Inside they found a winged, mustached man in a trance, pulling books that turned to sand. When he woke, he had the face of the Arbiter.

Old Friends and Sky

Elianna explained the situation to Cerys plainly: “Well, he’s the one that killed us.” The Arbiter, who would soon give his name as Vythorn, claimed he had been killed by the Shadow King and that the Box of Chaos had clouded his mind. From her time at the Grandmaster’s side, Elianna could confirm that his history was true. She added, “I still don’t trust him. And he’s always been a pain in the ass.” Then she tackled him and sat on his chest, bashing his head with her book. Time snapped back, and she found herself standing where she had started. “God, not here too!” she said, and stomped her foot. Later, when Vythorn listed his aims, she flipped him off. He replied, “Yes, you are Elusia’s type.”

When Flynry asked Cerys to swear an oath, Elianna slammed down her notebook and two pens: “Contract?” Flynry made it a blood oath. Contracts are part of her daily routine, and she was delighted. Cerys and Flynry sealed it in blood and Toddleheim signed as witness. “I will go down with this ship,” Elianna declared. She also sensed that Vythorn hadn’t been fully sure where his mirror would send them, and that they had been “a little bit of an experiment.” She set the orrery on the table in front of him while shooting daggers with her eyes, ready to tackle him again.

She was the first to hear shouting outside the library. When Flynry told the voices they could find the party in Mortaurios, she told him, “You just doxxed us.” She shoved Vythorn out the door first. As the tiefling raider Sky introduced himself and demanded their belongings, she shoved the orrery down between her breasts, which began a long-running “third boob” joke at the table. In the fight that followed she wrapped the raiders in a bubble of silence, so Flynry’s fearsome battle cry came out as nothing. She shielded Toddleheim and tried to unravel an enemy wizard’s spell. When Flynry and Cerys went down, she brought them both back to their feet with one wave of healing.

The Way Out

The raiders won anyway. With almost nothing left, Elianna answered the wizard with a burst of hellfire before an orc cut her down. The Arbiter surrendered, and Sky’s mages healed the party. Elianna threw some gems into the sand as her share of the tribute. She had come to treat Flynry as the group’s leader, and when Sky invited them home she asked if they could come and learn about his people’s culture.

In the hollow soul gem Sky’s people call the heart, she traded her amulet, a rose-gold chain with an emerald, to a kobold shopkeeper. He bit it, declared it a unique soul gem, and gave her a charm of good health in exchange. She asked Sky why his people had been exiled, and then asked him what she asks everyone: “Are you happy?” Through Flynry’s sword she glimpsed Sky’s urges: nothing sinister, just a habitual pickpocket always thinking about finding things. She quietly pulled her shirt over the orrery and checked her pockets.

At the Oasis, a lava field crowned by a giant orrery-like machine, the device in her shirt began to vibrate and glow blue. She handed it to Vythorn when he asked, “May I?” She then helped hold the platform against the fire guardians while he worked. She called down a cube of rain that weakened the elementals. Her command to “Halt” failed because the elementals spoke none of her four languages, but her spectral weapon finished one off. A giant shrugged off her attempt to banish it. “Hey man, Vythorn, how’s it looking?” she called. “I am almost there. I’m almost there,” he replied. Soon after, fiddling with the orrery, he turned to her: “Your friends are going to die.” She ran to the mangled Flynry, healed him and shielded him. Behind her, Vythorn said, “I wish it could be different, but this only works for one,” tore the orrery open like a portal and vanished through it, and an explosion from the orrery ripped the top half of the giant clean off. Elianna was left with the others on the platform, still dead and still far from home.

Personality and Abilities

Elianna is about five foot two, with curly black hair, light violet horns and a light purple tail that swishes under her skirt. She wears bright red glasses on a reading chain woven with teal and black strands. She always has a book at her waist, a notebook, two pens, and a bag that the table compared to “Mary Poppins’ purse.” She calls herself a librarian who “didn’t get out much.” She is clumsy, frightened and constantly swearing, and she is also stubborn, sharp-eyed and endlessly empathetic. She sketches everything, writes letters to the Grandmaster, and asks every stranger whether they are happy.

She is a cleric who learned healing because she kept hurting herself, and she picked up “one or two things” from watching the Grandmaster fight. Her magic leans purple: neon outlines, shimmering shields, a spectral scythe and a burst of purple hellfire for anyone who hurts her. She can also put enemies to sleep, call down rain, bring the fallen back to their feet and read Celestial. Her best tools, though, are her eyes and her nerve. Again and again she is the one who notices the rumble, reads the inscription or peeks at a stranger’s true self in Flynry’s sword. When she decides to act, she will tackle an archmage or quietly cut a sleeping enemy’s throat after a short prayer.

Relationships

  • Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Elianna is utterly devoted to her “sweet lady.” Her mirror showed a memory of the two of them together in a snowy cabin, and she promised to come back safely.
  • The Arbiter: She loathes him. She has held her nose at him, tackled him, beaten him with a book and flipped him off, and he betrayed her twice.
  • Flynry: She came to rescue him. She sketched him for the Grandmaster, healed him, gave him a remembrance stone and came to see him as the party’s leader.
  • Toddleheim: His werewolf shifts terrified her at first, but he reassured her, they went over her notes and drawings together, and he thanked her tearfully for Locket’s stone.
  • Locket: They travelled together briefly before Locket was killed. Elianna gathered her sand and turned it into keepsakes.
  • Cerys: Elianna kept Flynry from killing her and made her write the city’s name in her notebook. She also drew up the blood-oath contract that Cerys signed.
  • Sky: The raider who beat them, then hosted them. She asked him whether he was happy and caught his pickpocketing instincts in the mirror.

Memorable Quotes

  • “I am her personal assistant. Thank you very much… My name is Elianna.” (Into the Mirror, Session 1)
  • “No. She wanted me to come back safely and I will do that. I’m not going to let her down.” (Into the Mirror, Session 1)
  • “I didn’t sign up for this.” (Claws of Sand, Shifting Sands, Hourglass)
  • “I’m really just a librarian.” (Shatter and Mortaurios)
  • “God, not here too!” (Old Friends and Sky)
  • “You just doxxed us.” (Old Friends and Sky)

Appearances

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