The Story of Estella Ravensong

Hello! First post here in the Dressing Room!

I wrote this character for a homebrew campaign that I'll likely never get to play (most of the characters I post here will have that in common), and of course I immediately fell in love with her. The simple backdrop to the campaign I was given by our supposed DM is that we would begin the campaign immediately after the 'end of the world'. The apocalypse in this case was essentially brought about by a cataclysmic battle between two dragon Gods resulting in monstrous armies sweeping across the world and laying waste to all that was. The first session would literally start in the aftermath, where our characters have nothing and are dusting themselves off in the ashes.

I wanted to create a character for whom lofty topics like politics, war and religion are simply background noise, whose own small personal struggle is so all encompassing that the effect of something so massive as the end of the world seems all the more catastrophic. I like to play around with scale in story telling, leaping between the very micro to the extreme macro, exploring meaning in both, and I feel I've touched on that with Estella.

So without further ado, let us get to the most exciting part:

Character name: Estella Ravensong

Race: Human

Class: Bard; College of Spirits

Level: 1

The Backstory:

The Story of Estella Ravensong

Everything we were doing was a lie. None of it was real. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

I ought to start with the truth, but I find that increasingly difficult these days - I fit into the world much better when I bend the truth of who I am. 

I was born poor, so poor that even the position of scullery maid in a Noble keep was much higher than my station. I had a different name back then, and so did she; but that’s not important now. I met Athena on my first day in the kitchen. She burst in, grinning, having just played a trick on her brother and looking for somewhere to hide. I was scrubbing the floor. I quickly helped her squeeze into the back of the kitchen hearth, and when her brother burst in, face and doublet covered in some sort of green sludge, I convinced him I’d seen her through the window crossing the courtyard. When she emerged from the hearth laughing and covered head to toe in soot, we were best friends.

She was like heaven to me, silver eyes, fair and freckled, with a smile that made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. Around Athena I was more than the scullery maid, I was daring, cheeky, I would answer back to the chef and boss the stable boys about. I felt I could be anyone.

We were jealous of one another, of course. I’d never had more than 5 copper pieces in my pocket, and she was rich beyond my comprehension. Athena had never once left the Keep alone, so to her, I was as free as smoke. 

When we turned 16, a man arrived at the gates. A suitor for Athena. He dropped to his knees and presented to her a crystal ball. He announced that a clairvoyant had looked into the glass and foreseen Athena being happy with no man but him. Once he had left we took the orb and laughed about it, though Athena was gloomy. We discovered if you held the orb and asked it a question, it would swirl with a shimmering purple mist. A silly gimmick, we thought.

To cheer Athena up, I looked into the orb, rolled up my sleeves and spun a dramatic tale of her future, filled with adventures, gold, far away places and no ugly, old suitors. We both knew the orb wasn’t really able to tell the future, but instantly we both realised the power of a story told from behind the crystal ball.

After that, we began giving ‘performances’ for people in the Keep. Donning long robes and earrings, lighting candles, telling anyone who would listen that we could contact their loved ones, or ask spirits for advice. We would invite folk to ‘Consult the Eye, and We Shall See’. We took it in turns to play the part of ‘The Eye’ but it soon became obvious Athena had the real talent for the act. First it was the other servants, but soon, even townsfolk would seek me out, asking to speak to ‘The Eye’, as if asking to consult with an angel, and I would solemnly reply, ‘We Shall See,’ before kindly parting them from a handful of coppers. 

     A couple of years passed, and we grew apart a little. Athena was being groomed as the Lady of the House, and I had discovered the delights of gambling at the local inn. You see, I’m rather talented at playing dice. I'm not especially clever but I’ve always had a knack for reading people and, failing that, light fingers. I made my first gold piece at 17 and forgot about the few coppers ‘The Eye’ had brought me.

There are two times in my life I ran away. The first time, I went with her. The second time, five days ago, I was alone.

The night was dark, the lights from the town blotted out the stars, the moon was just a shadow. Athena came to me, dismayed. The suitor had returned. Being wealthy, and well respected, he had impressed Athena’s father and a date for a wedding was set. He was four times her age, fat and dull. She was inconsolable. 

It was my idea to go. Many friends though I had at the local inn, I had found myself in increasing trouble with a number of unpleasant thugs from whom I had taken perhaps one too many silver pieces. I realised the life I liked to lead, the part I liked to play, wasn’t compatible with having roots. We took only a few things, long robes, a little food, a handful of gold pieces, and, of course, the glass orb. Leaving wasn’t difficult, I sweet-talked our way past the old watchman and together, like shadows, we dissolved into the darkness.

For a few weeks, we didn’t stop moving. We had to be sure we were completely beyond the grasp of Athena’s father. We rested no more than a night in any place we came to, and as our coin began to dwindle we would bargain our way into grubbier and grubbier accommodations: lofts, kitchens, barns, and stables eventually. Our names, Athena and Estella Ravensong, were borne arbitrarily of a rather tense exchange with the first innkeeper we encountered. We were sisters from then on.

We needed money, and it took no great ingenuity for us to realise we could return to our old clairvoyance trick. We purchased a few things, fabrics and cheap jewellery, and with some shrewdness, black powder and rouge, I crafted the visage of the Ravensong sisters. Athena collected black feathers and we added them to our attire whenever we found them. I liked the image of the Raven, they’re crafty birds, solemn bringers of dark omens - it felt powerful. With the last of our coin, I purchased a small, black dagger and prayed I need never to use it.

Initially we did not have much success. We had come to the town of Little Eadon, a tired, drizzly, trading post by day, but which revealed a lively, eclectic mix of travellers, traders, peddlers and performers come sundown. We tried our luck in crowded spots - the throng of midnight markets, the buzzing concert hall and some popular taverns. At every turn we were laughed at and then shooed away like rats. I soon realised, you do not sell fortunes to plump, contented merchants. Happiness needs no false hope; dreams are to be sold to the desperate.

I would like it known, for whomever is reading this account, it was not my suggestion we tried our hand in a brothel. Yes, we had changed our names and stories, but in my view, Athena was still a Lady, and though the thought had crossed my mind, I waited for her to draw the conclusion herself.

It was a revelation. We went from being mocked as charlatans to being revered and respected almost overnight: we became beacons of hope for the impoverished and downtrodden, fonts of wisdom for the crooked and corrupt, the beating hearts of a hundred hopeless romantics and dreamers.

    Little Eadon became our playground, and for a few years our influence grew. The doorways of brothels bear a thousand different footprints, and we sold fortunes and dreams to them all, shopkeepers, soldiers, scullery maids and sailors. We lured them to “Consult the Eye, and We Shall See”.

Occasionally, we’d cross paths with powerful figures, generals, nobles, once even a sea Captain stumbled before The Eye of Athena, pining for a girl. Athena told him his love would be happy with no man but him, and the Captain was pleased. I remember the day well, in part because the Captain showered us lavishly with gifts, including to me a curved, black steel rapier, with a hilt twisted to look as two ravens in flight, but also because Athena said something peculiar to me that evening as the Captain sloped away: “I shall miss this, when it all ends”. 

It was not long after that Athena and I began to argue. Only small quarrels, and we would always stick together as sisters do, but still, something unsettling was beginning to stir between us. I liked to drink and dance and be merry. I would accept invites to shows, play dice with rich merchants and was making plans to move on from Little Eadon. I wanted to see the world. But Athena increasingly preferred to be alone, and her easy smile became clouded and doubtful.  She began to speak more often of ‘the end’, and when I would query what she meant, she would look at me with pity, from the other side of the orb, like I was some clueless fool desperate for a hopeful lie. 

She was withdrawing into herself, and I often found her with the orb, gazing deeply into it. Once I caught her whispering to the thing. That’s when I became angry. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I snatched the ball from her gentle grasp and threw it across the room in frustration. Athena screamed at me, and flew to her beloved crystal ball, which had thankfully cracked but not shattered. She hissed insults at me, and I spat back. I called her delusional, that she’d fallen for her own lies. There was no ‘end’, we had won, the Eye had fooled them all and we could fool the world. 

I was too angry to see it then, I was barely listening to the words she was saying, but that night, in a damp, dusty room tucked deep within the walls of a seedy brothel, Athena gave a prophecy. A real one. She spoke of the coming of the end of the world, a rain of dragon fire, legions of evil marching across the land, thousands of lives lost and the death of God. 

Things were never the same after that. I had left in a fury, and spent the night drinking and laughing with friends. We continued working as before but outside of our act, we didn’t speak or see one another. I hadn’t believed a word of Athena’s prophecy.

And then came The End.

In horror I watched as what Athena had predicted unfolded before my eyes. The great battle of the dragon God’s took place as she’d described, and fire rained down from above. From the South came waves of monstrous armies, laying waste to all in their blood-thirsty path. They surged through the town, my paradise, in a relentless torrent of bloodlust and chaos, and Little Eadon became an inferno. 

I ran for my life through that blazing labyrinth, listening to the hideous cacophony of a town being obliterated, steel-plated footfall thundering behind me, and the roar of an army bent on nothing but destruction threatened every corner I blindly rounded. I was barely aware of my feet touching the floor, I could think only of Athena. Where was she? How could I get to her? She hadn't been in her room, no one had seen her. She was lost, and so was I. Each corner I took was a gamble, left, right, left again until I found myself in an alleyway, panic stricken, staring at the certain death of a dead end. This was it, Athena’s End. I stepped back, but the shadows of two monstrous forms swept over me like a shroud. Shaking, exhausted, I turned to look at their contorted faces and I knew I was looking into the hateful eyes of death. This was the end. Or so I thought. 

Suddenly a blinding white light poured through the alley, smothering my executioners and me in an all seeing gaze. When I could bear to open my eyes, I saw her, like some terrible angel, beaming with searing light and crackling with electricity, standing before the brittle silhouettes of the beasts that had moments ago themselves been the objects of terror. The orb was shaking within her grasp, boiling with an electric storm that also poured from her eyes and mouth. There was a silence like I’d never known, choking, as if all the air in that deep, dark alley had been removed. In both hands she raised The Eye high over her head, tendrils of purple mist curling down her arms, and as the distant howls of a dying God echoed above, Athena opened her mouth wide and spoke fire.

The beasts were engulfed in a roaring ball of flame and ash. I stumbled backwards, feeling the sharp, icy sting of rough, wet stone clawing at my back and watched from the ground as the creatures were incinerated, vapourizing until they were nothing more than hollow shadows burned into my eyes. The blistering heat of dragon fire seared my cheeks and hair, I tried to breath but scalding air scorched my nose and throat, and I thought for a moment Athena and I should dissolve like shadows on this blackest of nights. 

And then, she emerged. Covered head to toe in soot, my best friend, my sister, smiling at me like I was the most important person in the world, whoever I was. Slowly, I reached up to meet her outstretched hand and closed my fingers around the orb, and for a moment we stayed motionless, each seeing the other through the cracked glass of a crystal ball. Her wistful eyes betrayed her easy smile, and as I opened my mouth to speak, to apologise, to ask for forgiveness, to beg to know what happens next, she and all her light vanished. The night was dark, the blazing glow of a burning town blotted out the stars, the moon was just a memory, and there alone I knelt, just me and the Eye of Athena. 

I stared through the orb, unmoving, unblinking, not even daring to breathe as I desperately willed her face to reappear through the glass. I thought, what next, Athena? Tears streamed down my burned cheeks, and my lungs raked at my throat for air, and still I stared. I stared and stared through the glass until all the world around me melted to nothing and all noise converged into a single high pitched ringing. I stared. And then, I saw.

Two blustering ravens, twisted in flight through a smouldering ember sky. 

What next? The black bodies writhed and melded, the wings erupting to two, three, ten times their size. 

What next? A bone shattering roar, and a glittering dragon, magnificent and devastating, bursting forth from the ashes of the End.

What next?  Darkness, silence, shadows without figure, echos without voices.

What next? Please, Athena, what happens next? A voice, her voice, ringing clear and sure as a bell:

“We… Shall… See”