Cecilia’s Story:

Cecilia’s true name is Chasianna Falamin and she was a member of the Royal family in the ancient elven kingdom of Illefarn. Chasianna was the eldest of two children of the royal family, and as such she was the next in line for the throne. At the time, the nation of Illefarn was at war on two fronts: Orcs from the north, and the human mage empire of Netheril to the East. As such, each ruler of Illefarn and rulers-to-be were trained in the art of combat. Chasianna was particularly skilled. In addition to having a mastery of many weapons, she used transmutation magic to transform parts of her body itself into weapons for attacking. She was so adept that she could turn her leg into a sword, attack, and put her foot down in its original state within the span of about a second, all while wielding two weapons in her hands. Her younger brother, Elashor Falamin, was equally as skilled in fighting. Like his sister, he used transmutation magic. However, instead of transforming, he used his magic to enhance the capabilities of his body to a superhuman level. His raw power could smash a boulder, and he was still nimble enough to outpace even the swiftest of orcs.

After the events that led to the creation of the King of Darkness, Chasianna’s parents, Taenaran and Bellaluna Falamin went with their army to the Forlorn Hills, then known in the elven tongue as “The Emerald Hills”, to do battle with the King and undo what Illefarn had created. They left behind Chasianna and Elashor in order to protect the future of their lineage. Chasianna’s mother and father never returned from that battle. In a catastrophic event, the King of Darkness decimated Illefarns army, and even felled the king and queen after a long battle.

Upon receiving the news,Chasianna was abruptly ushered onto the throne. Having no time for grieving, Chasianna immediately set out to seek aid in destroying the King. She turned to Annaeus, the creator of the Avatar, and devised a ritual of purification that would severely diminish or destroy the King. The ritual was nearly completed successfully, but two of the groups who performed in the ritual were friends of the mages who had created the Avatar, and they tried to reach out to those mages and reason with them. The Avatar, who had been sorely wounded by the ritual at this point, seized the opportunity to free itself and lashed out, costing Illefarn many more lives.

Finally, Chasianna and her council turned to the great Crystal Wyrm, Nolalothcaragascint (or Nolaloth) for help. In exchange for a promise of many of Illefarn’s riches, Nolaloth agreed to join Illefarn in their battle. Chasianna feared that even this would not be enough and so, in order to ensure victory, she performed a powerful ritual which transformed her entire body into a single Rapier, so that her brother may wield her and their strengths would be fused as one. Only a great amount of power could undo this transformation. With Nolaloth at their side, Illefarn went to battle with the King of Shadows once more in a titanic struggle which shook the Sword Coast. Despite their combined forces, the King of Shadows managed to best the mighty wyrm, and slammed his body into the ground, shaking the earth and creating a massive valley in the Sword Mountains which remains to this day. In an extremely rare moment of error, the King faltered to make sure he had truly slain his foe, as the battle had wounded him greatly. Chasianna and her brother seized this moment, and they ran up the back of the King and drove their sword into the back of his head and ripped it down the length of his body.

The King was mortally wounded, but not dead. In order to escape, he tore open a portal to the Realm of Shadows, where he would stay to recover for thousands of years. It was at this point that he truly became known as the King of Shadows. Before he left, the King used the last of his strength to send a blast towards Chasianna and her brother. Elashor was blown to pieces, and the resulting explosion sent Chasianna flying into the sword mountains. In the aftermath of the battle, what remained of Chasianna’s army searched night and day to find her, but to no avail. In the years that followed, the forces that had once laid siege to the kingdom resumed their offence once more, and the once great Kingdom of Illefarn was scattered across the winds, forming three subrealms that gradually dwindled away in the sands of time.

Chasianna’s immortal body lay buried in the Sword Mountains for what seemed like an eternity. Her consciousness faded away, and she forgot nearly everything about her past. One day, she was brought back from her depths of subconsciousness when some dwarven blast miners were digging through the mountains, and managed to unearth her. The dwarves didn’t know what to do with her, so they sold her to a weaponsmith in Triboar for a small amount of money. The man polished her and made her look new again, and then put her on display as a regular but well-crafted rapier. Customers would come and go, but none would ever buy her because her price was too high for common folk. As time went on, Cecilia gradually regained her speech by listening to the Common-speaking customers as they would go about their lives. One day, when Cecilia had been on display for several decades, and the weaponsmith had grown quite old, a gnomish inventor by the name of Thwip Ironbottom came into the store, and looked upon her with admiration. For the first time in many years, Cecilia was taken off of her dusty display and placed into the hands of a person.

Chasianna decided to reach out to the gnome, and in broken common she asked him to take her in. The inventor’s eyes lit up with excitement at the discovery that the sword was sentient, and he quietly purchased the sword from the weaponsmith and took her back to his laboratory in Hundelstone for experimentation. Along the way back, Thwip asked her what her name was. Chasianna could not remember, but she had once heard the name Cecilia, and latched onto it subconsciously because of the similarities to her own name. So, in response to his question, she asked him to call her Cecilia.

Unfortunately for Chasianna, the inventor did not care about her at all, and rather than help her, he instead only thought of what experiments he could perform on such a rare object. He tested her mental limits by trying to teach her more common, tried to add his own magic to her enchantment, and attempted to modify her in any way he could.
One day, when Thwip was performing an experiment to amuse himself which would cause her to lace her strikes with insults, a dark energy awakened inside of Chasianna. During the battle with the King of Shadows, a part of it had imprinted onto her. This dark energy carried the original will of the King, which was to protect all of Illefarn. The energy caused her form to grown thorns and glow red, and she lunged at Thwip while cackling uncontrollably. After managing to seal her inside of a lockbox, Thwip stored her away and did not experiment with her any further.

Some time later, a group of adventurers came in to ask Thwip for help. Thwip asked the group to test one of his own experiments, of which he had countless. When the experiment predictably went wrong, Thwip took the opportunity to apologize by giving the party Chasianna, still in sword form, in order to get them off his back and to get Chasianna off his hands. The events following this have yet to be seen...


The King of Shadows:

In order to deal with the attacks upon Illefarn, the nation’s best mages were called upon, totalling 100, to perform a powerful ritual. Over the course of an arduous and extremely painful 100 day ritual, 99 of the mages died and imprinted their souls onto the only one that remained. Then the final mage too ceased his mortal life and became with the magical energy of the universe that flows through all things: the weave. This creature, named the Avatar, was given the instructions to protect all of Illefarn and to utterly destroy any who dare attack it. The Avatar was so fearsome, that for a long time none would attempt it.

However, in that time of peace, a mage who would come to be known as one of the most powerful mages of all time, named Krasus, developed a spell that would trump even the might of the Avatar. The spell, named Krasus’ Avatar, was a 12th level spell which would allow the mage to temporarily fuse with a god and assume control of it. Krasus used the spell to merge his mind with Mystra, God of Magic. The resulting chaos of the event ended in the death of Mystra, and all magic ceased to exist for a time, until Mystra was reincarnated as Mystril. The absence of magic caused the magic floating city of Netheril to fall from the sky, and the Avatar created by Illefarn no longer could tap into the Weave to sustain itself. In order to preserve its life so that it could continue to carry out its purpose to protect Illefarn, the Avatar turned to the Shadow Weave, a dark magic source governed by the evil god, Shar.
The Avatar, now merged with the Shadow Weave, continued to carry out its purpose. However, Illefarn became distrustful of the Avatar, and attempted to destroy it. The Avatar deemed that those who sought to destroy itself were enemies of Illefarn, and so it followed it’s directive to destroy them utterly. An epic and tragic struggle erupted, which led to the Avatar becoming the King of Shadows.