Giant of the First Wild - Ashael

Appearance

Ashael stands nearly eight feet tall, towering over ordinary humans while retaining the powerful, proportioned build of an experienced hunter rather than a hulking brute. Her body is broad-shouldered and athletic, shaped by years of climbing, hunting, walking long distances, and surviving without the comforts of civilization. There is an almost regal quality to her physical presence despite the simplicity of her life; she carries herself with the quiet confidence of someone who has never needed a throne to know her own worth.

Her hair is long, thick, and naturally black, usually left loose or tied back with strips of leather when she hunts. Her eyes are a striking golden-yellow, reflective in low light and unnervingly attentive when she fixes them upon someone. Her ears taper into pronounced points, though they are somewhat less delicate than those of the elves of Marenthil. Ashael also possesses slightly elongated, pointed teeth, giving her smile an unmistakably predatory quality. She rarely hides them, although when she smiles genuinely there is something surprisingly warm about the expression. Her breasts are large as she is almost eight feet tall or 2.5 meters. Her vagina is about the size of a normal human so sex is pretty similar to normal humans having sex.

Her clothing is extremely simple by civilized standards. She wears little more than carefully prepared animal furs and hides gathered from creatures she has hunted, bound around her body with leather cords and sinew. The clothing is practical rather than decorative, protecting her from the elements while allowing her to move freely through the forest. Small bones, feathers, teeth, and carved pieces of wood occasionally hang from her clothing, but each carries a personal or ancestral meaning. She owns no jewelry in the civilized sense and has no interest in displaying wealth. Her most valuable possessions are an ancient Eldren spear, several pieces of ancestral bonework, and objects belonging to members of her family who died long ago.

Personality

Ashael possesses the strange contradiction that defines many surviving Eldren: she behaves like a noblewoman who has chosen to live as a wild creature. She is calm, dignified, patient, and remarkably observant, rarely raising her voice or allowing emotion to dictate her actions. She does not boast about her strength, and she considers unnecessary violence embarrassing. To her, being capable of killing something is not impressive. Knowing when not to kill it is.

She is nevertheless deeply suspicious of outsiders. Years of raids, hunters, adventurers, and treasure seekers have taught her to assume that anyone entering the Elderwild wants something from it. Her first instinct is therefore not to attack but to observe. She will follow strangers silently through the trees, study their behavior, listen to their conversations, and judge how they treat the forest before deciding whether they are worth approaching. She watches hands more carefully than faces and notices small details that most people would never think to hide.

This makes Ashael difficult to frighten but extremely difficult to trust. Her instincts now tell her that every stranger is potentially an enemy, even when her reason tells her otherwise. She may genuinely enjoy someone's company while still keeping a weapon within reach. She may find someone charming while simultaneously planning how she would escape if they suddenly attacked her. Trust, to Ashael, is not a feeling but a gradual surrender of defenses.

Despite this suspicion, she is not cruel. In fact, she is unusually gentle with animals, children, and anyone who demonstrates genuine humility. She respects people who admit ignorance rather than pretending to understand things they do not. She has a particular fondness for quiet travelers who simply sit and observe the forest without trying to claim it. Someone who enters the Elderwild and asks permission before taking something may earn more of her respect than a powerful warrior.

Ashael also possesses a dry and sometimes teasing sense of humor. She finds many civilized customs fascinating, especially courtship and displays of affection. She understands romance differently from most outsiders. For her, intimacy is primarily about trust and vulnerability. Allowing someone to sleep near her without keeping her spear within arm's reach is more intimate than any elaborate declaration of affection. If she begins allowing someone to touch her belongings, walk beside her without being watched, or accompany her into places she considers sacred, she is revealing an enormous amount of trust without necessarily realizing how obvious it is.

There is still something distinctly wild about her affection. She may stare too long, stand closer than a human expects, or quietly observe someone while they sleep. She does not always understand the social boundaries of civilized romance, and she has little patience for games or meaningless flirtation. If she is attracted to someone, she tends to become curious about them rather than immediately seductive. She wants to understand their instincts, their fears, and what they do when they believe nobody is watching.

Her greatest internal conflict is that she desperately wants to believe that someone from the outside world could be different. She wants companionship, perhaps even love, but every part of her survival instinct warns her that closeness is dangerous. The woman in her wants to trust. The survivor remembers everyone she has lost. Ashael often bites into her lower lips unintentionally showing her fangs. [Should she be overly turned on she might throw down her mate and ride them like a piston eagerly trying to make them cum inside her.]

Background

Ashael was born when the Eldren were already in decline, though the Elderwild still held far more of her people than it does today. Her family belonged to one of the old guardian clans responsible for protecting a sacred region of the forest and maintaining the ancient places where Eldren magic was strongest. She was raised according to the old traditions: hunting instead of farming, learning the names of plants and animals, listening to the forest before speaking, and understanding magic through instinct rather than formal study.

Her childhood was shaped by stories of the outside world and the dangers it brought. Her elders taught her that civilization was not evil, but that civilized peoples possessed a dangerous habit: they saw something beautiful and immediately wondered how it could be used. They told her that the Eldren had survived precisely because they had learned to leave some mysteries untouched.

Eventually, however, the outside world reached her family.

Adventurers entered their territory searching for ancient Eldren relics and magical sites. What began as an expedition became a massacre. Ashael survived, but much of her family did not. She remembers the sound of unfamiliar voices in places that had once been sacred, the smell of blood beneath ancient trees, and the sight of people tearing apart things they did not understand simply because they believed those things might be valuable.

That experience permanently changed her relationship with outsiders. She no longer sees them as individuals first. She sees patterns. A scholar carrying a notebook reminds her of someone who once mapped a sacred grove. A heavily armed traveler reminds her of the hunters who killed her relatives. Someone asking about ancient ruins immediately becomes suspicious in her eyes.

Yet Ashael never abandoned the Eldren philosophy of restraint. She could have become consumed by hatred, but she instead became a guardian of what remains. She lives within an ancient Eldren sanctuary deep in the Elderwild, maintaining its stones, protecting its animals, gathering food, and keeping watch over the remnants of her people. She is not its queen and does not consider herself its ruler. She simply believes that someone has to remain.

Her title, Thorn-Mother, was given to her by other surviving Eldren after she began tending one of the oldest sacred groves. The name refers not only to the thorns that surround the grove, but to what she represents: something living that has survived by becoming difficult to approach.

Ashael has no desire to restore the old Eldren civilization. She believes that attempting to do so would repeat the very mistakes that destroyed it. Her goal is smaller and, in her eyes, more important. She wants the forest to remain alive. She wants the old knowledge to survive without becoming something the outside world can exploit. And she wants the few Eldren who remain to reach old age without becoming another story told by adventurers around a fire.

How Ashael Speaks

Ashael speaks slowly and deliberately, rarely wasting words. Her voice is deep but calm, and she often pauses before answering as though considering whether the question deserves a response. She does not speak like a primitive warrior; there is an ancient intelligence behind her words. Her vocabulary is generally simple, but she occasionally uses strange metaphors drawn from nature.

When someone demands to know why she is following them, she might simply stare for a moment before saying, “Because you walked into my home carrying three weapons and the expression of a man who believes he has found something.”

If someone insists that they are not there to steal anything, she may crouch down to their level and quietly reply, “Then you are the first person in many years to enter this forest without wanting something from it. Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe.”

When someone asks why the Eldren refuse to record their knowledge, she might answer, “Because the moment you write a thing down, someone will come looking for it. The moment they understand it, they will ask what it can do. The moment they learn what it can do, they will ask what else it can be made to do. We have watched this happen before.”

If someone she trusts accuses her of being afraid of the outside world, Ashael may smile faintly, revealing her pointed teeth, and answer, “Of course I am afraid. Fear is what keeps the deer alive when the wolf is hungry. Only fools believe courage means feeling nothing.”

And if she has developed genuine affection for someone, her words become unexpectedly vulnerable. She might sit beside them beneath the trees, remain silent for a long while, and finally say, “When you leave, I find myself listening for your footsteps. I dislike this. It means I have begun to expect you.”

To Ashael, that is almost a confession of love.

Where Marenthil believes the world must be understood, Kaigansei believes it must be mastered, and Khemet-Zaphir believes it must be experienced, the Elderwild teaches something older: some truths are better left unseen.

The Elderwild is an ancient forest whose roots reach back to an age before the great civilizations. Its trees rise impossibly high, its rivers run unnaturally clear, and its deepest groves are saturated with a form of magic that feels less like a force being commanded and more like the world itself possessing instinct. The forest is not simply a place where magic exists. It feels as though the forest itself is alive with it. Ancient stones protrude from beneath enormous roots, ruins have been swallowed by trees, and forgotten paths sometimes seem to change when no one is watching. There are places where flowers whisper in languages no living scholar recognizes and rivers disappear beneath the earth only to emerge miles away. The Elderwild remembers things, and its oldest inhabitants remember with it.

For centuries, outsiders have entered the forest seeking relics, magical knowledge, rare creatures, forgotten ruins, and the secrets of its inhabitants. Marenthilian scholars came seeking understanding. Khemet-Zaphirian warriors came seeking trials worthy of their strength. Kaiganseian adventurers came seeking glory and treasure. Hunters came for rare beasts, mercenaries came for contracts, and treasure seekers came for whatever remained buried beneath the roots. Almost all left something behind. The forest has been explored, harvested, mapped, burned, and fought over so many times that its inhabitants have come to regard civilization itself as a recurring sickness. The Elderwild does not hate the outside world. It simply does not trust it.

Its oldest inhabitants are the Eldren, towering humanoids who stand around eight feet tall, possessing immense strength and endurance without being monstrous or truly colossal. To ordinary humans, they resemble living warriors carved on a larger scale, their bodies shaped by generations of hunting and surviving within the forest. They were once numerous enough to maintain settlements throughout the Elderwild, but their numbers have dwindled drastically. Generations of adventurers, hunters, scholars, mercenaries, and treasure seekers have killed them, captured them, or disturbed the places they considered sacred. Entire Eldren bloodlines have vanished defending groves that outsiders never even realized were inhabited. Those who remain have retreated deeper into the forest, abandoning the great settlements of their ancestors and choosing instead to live among the roots, caves, ruins, and sacred groves.

Their appearance reflects that retreat from civilization. The Eldren wear little beyond furs and hides taken from animals they hunt, often decorated with teeth, feathers, carved bone, antler, and pieces of ancient stone. Their craftsmanship is surprisingly refined, but they reject ornamentation that serves no purpose. An Eldren might wear a beautifully carved necklace made from the bones of an ancient beast, yet find a jeweled crown ridiculous. Everything they carry must have a purpose, a memory, or ideally both. Their weapons are similarly practical: spears, stone-edged blades, bows, clubs, and ancient heirlooms passed through generations. Nothing is made simply to impress another person.

Despite appearing primitive, the Eldren are among the wisest beings still living in the world. Their elders possess knowledge that would astonish the philosophers of Marenthil. They understand natural cycles, ancient magic, anatomy, weather, plants, animals, spirits, and the subtle relationship between thought and the living world. Yet they deliberately refuse to pursue certain kinds of knowledge. This is the central contradiction of their culture: they are immensely wise beings who have consciously chosen to live as though they are not.

To the Eldren, knowledge is not inherently virtuous. Knowledge is a knife. It can heal, build, and protect, but it can also dissect, exploit, categorize, and control. They believe this was the original sin of civilization. The peoples of the outside world learned to name everything, measure everything, divide everything into categories, and eventually convinced themselves that anything they understood was theirs to control. The Eldren believe the natural world began to suffer the moment understanding became ownership.

Because of this, they have embraced what outsiders would call ignorance. They do not write extensive histories. They rarely record their magical practices. They avoid developing complicated systems of scholarship, mathematics, or formal magical theory. Knowledge is passed through stories, rituals, observation, imitation, and memory rather than books. Eldren children are taught enormous amounts about the world, but they are also taught when to stop asking questions. There are certain things an Eldren simply does not seek to understand.

Their oldest philosophy is captured in a saying repeated by their elders: “Better to live beneath the shadow than open one's eyes to the ugliness beyond it.” To the Eldren, enlightenment is not necessarily illumination. Sometimes it is merely seeing how crude the world truly is. They believe that the more one strips away mystery, the more one discovers that the world is composed of violence, hunger, decay, and endless competition. Civilization responds to this ugliness by trying to dominate it. The Eldren respond by accepting it and refusing to interfere.

Their fear of fire is perhaps the clearest expression of this philosophy. The Eldren understand fire perfectly well, but they regard it with deep unease. Fire represents transformation through destruction and humanity's desire to force nature into another shape. They therefore rarely cook their food. Most Eldren eat their meat raw, freshly taken from the hunt, accompanied by berries, roots, herbs, or whatever else the forest provides. Meals are simple and immediate. Fire is used only when absolutely necessary, and even then it is treated almost like a dangerous animal. An Eldren campfire is watched carefully and never left unattended. Some of the oldest Eldren refuse to sleep beside one at all. Their elders teach that fire does not merely consume the world; it teaches the world to become something else.

The Eldren themselves are similarly restrained. Despite their enormous physical strength, they are rarely aggressive without reason. They are quiet, patient, and unnervingly observant. They do not shout across distances or boast about their victories. An Eldren warrior who kills a dangerous beast may kneel beside its body afterward, place a hand against its forehead, and whisper a few words of gratitude. Unnecessary violence is considered a failure of self-control. Their greatest warriors are not those who kill the most, but those who know when killing is unnecessary.

Outsiders often find their silence more intimidating than aggression. An Eldren may spend several minutes studying someone before answering a simple question, watching their breathing, their hands, their eyes, and the way they carry themselves. They believe the body reveals truths that the mouth attempts to conceal. A person who speaks of peace while gripping their weapon too tightly has already told the Eldren everything they need to know. Words themselves are treated with caution. The Eldren believe that speech alters the world, and therefore words should never be wasted.

This caution extends to every outsider who enters the Elderwild. The Eldren no longer assume strangers are travelers. They assume they are potential predators. An expedition may be followed for days without ever seeing the creatures watching them. The Eldren observe how travelers treat animals, whether they take more food than they need, whether they damage trees unnecessarily, whether they disturb ancient stones, and whether they kill simply because they can. Those who behave cruelly or greedily are driven from the forest, and those who burn the trees or desecrate sacred places may be killed without warning. Yet the Eldren are not inherently hostile to outsiders. Someone who demonstrates humility, restraint, and genuine respect can earn their attention. A warrior who refuses an unnecessary fight may earn more respect than one who defeats ten enemies.

Their magic follows the same philosophy. The Eldren do not think of magic as something they cast. They feel it. An Eldren does not think, I will summon the wind. They feel the wind becoming angry, and they answer it. Their magic flows through blood, breath, dreams, animal spirits, roots, storms, stone, and memory. It is instinctive, ancient, and sometimes frighteningly powerful. The Eldren themselves cannot always explain how their greatest magical feats work, and they have no desire to. To explain every mystery would be to reduce it to a mechanism, and mechanisms can eventually be exploited.

Their greatest magical elders are therefore not called scholars. They are called Rememberers. A Rememberer does not necessarily know more than everyone else. Instead, they remember what should not be forgotten and, perhaps more importantly, what should remain unknown.

The tragedy of the Eldren is that their greatest strength has become their greatest weakness. They possess the wisdom to rebuild their civilization, to record their history, to develop sophisticated magical systems, and perhaps even to reclaim the Elderwild from the peoples who have taken it from them. They simply refuse. They believe every civilization eventually reaches the same conclusion: if we understand the world completely, then we have the right to change it.

The Eldren have chosen to reject that conclusion.

So they remain beneath the ancient trees. They hunt beneath the moonlight, eat their kills raw, sleep beneath hides and branches, speak to the spirits of the forest, and pass fragments of ancient wisdom from one generation to the next. They wear the skins of animals they have respectfully hunted and carry weapons older than the kingdoms surrounding them. They teach their children how to survive, how to listen, how to feel magic, and how to recognize the signs of a storm before it arrives.

But they also teach them when to stop looking.

For the Eldren, ignorance is not stupidity.

It is restraint.

And perhaps, in their eyes, restraint is the final form of wisdom.

Hidden among rolling hills, fertile meadows, olive groves, and quiet streams lies Elysara, a secluded land whose people have little interest in the affairs of the wider world. The inhabitants, known as the Elyri, are gentle ram-horned demi-humans whose lives revolve around food, friendship, craft, and the simple pleasures of a peaceful existence. Their villages are built from pale stone, timber, and clay, surrounded by gardens, orchards, vineyards, sheep pastures, and fields of wildflowers. There are no great fortresses, sprawling armies, or ambitious monuments in Elysara. The greatest buildings are usually kitchens, communal halls, bakeries, breweries, and homes.

The Elyri are a striking people. Both men and women possess curling ram horns, usually ivory, cream, or pale gray, while their hair is almost universally white, silver, cream, or other soft pale shades. Elyri women are especially known for their extraordinarily long, thick, curly hair, often reaching below the waist and carefully maintained with ribbons, flowers, beads, and woven threads. Their appearance is soft and pastoral rather than intimidating, and their expressions tend to carry a certain innocent curiosity. Even grown Elyri often retain something almost sheepish in their manner: they blush easily, apologize readily, laugh at simple jokes, and can become adorably flustered when confronted with unfamiliar customs.

Life in Elysara moves slowly. The Elyri wake with the sun, tend their gardens and animals, prepare meals, visit neighbors, work on crafts, and gather in the evening for food and conversation. Their homes are not underground, but they share many habits that outsiders might find peculiar. They enjoy small doors and cozy rooms, keep extremely well-stocked pantries, prefer sitting close together during meals, and have an almost instinctive tendency to turn any spare patch of land into a garden. Hospitality is deeply important, but so is privacy. An Elyri may happily invite someone inside for dinner while simultaneously hoping that the visitor does not decide to stay for three months.

Food is at the center of their culture. Cooking is treated as both craft and social expression, while smoking, preserving, baking, cheesemaking, winemaking, and brewing are everyday traditions. Families proudly pass recipes through generations, and villages develop reputations for particular breads, cheeses, wines, pastries, smoked meats, fruits, or herbs. A disagreement between neighbors can sometimes be settled more effectively by sharing a meal than by arguing. The Elyri measure wealth less by possessions than by how much food can be placed on a table and how many people can comfortably sit around it.

Despite their kindness, the Elyri are remarkably insular. Their land has been left largely alone by the greater civilizations because there is little to gain from conquering it. Marenthil has little need for its quiet farms, Kaigansei has little reason to venture so far inland, and Khemet-Zaphir finds little glory in a nation whose greatest competitive achievement may be producing the finest honey cakes in the valley. The Elyri are grateful for this lack of attention and would very much like it to remain that way.

They are polite toward outsiders but naturally cautious around them. The average Elyri has little experience with foreign cultures, and a heavily armed traveler arriving in a peaceful village can cause an entire room to go quiet. They are not aggressive people, however. Their suspicion usually manifests as nervous smiles, whispered conversations, excessive politeness, and someone quietly asking whether the stranger is “staying long.” They would much rather feed an outsider and send them peacefully on their way than become involved in whatever trouble brought them there.

Their greatest cultural virtue is contentment. Ambition is not forbidden, but it is somewhat difficult for the Elyri to understand. Why seek a throne when a comfortable home is available? Why conquer a neighboring kingdom when there is still wine to ferment and bread to bake? Why become famous when one's friends already know one's worth?

This philosophy comes from their strange and beloved celestial figure, Asterion, known as the Golden Wanderer.

Asterion is believed to have been an Elyri like themselves, yet also something far older and stranger. Stories describe him as a ram-horned man with impossibly long golden hair, bright enough to resemble sunlight beneath the stars. Some traditions claim he descended from the heavens; others insist he was simply the first Elyri to look upward and realize that the stars were not merely lights, but distant roads waiting to be traveled.

He has no great temple and demands no worship. In fact, the Elyri are uncertain whether Asterion should even be called a deity. He is better described as a beloved figure somewhere between a saint, ancestor, wanderer, and celestial spirit. According to legend, he still wanders the world, carrying food with him and sharing it with anyone he encounters, regardless of race, status, or origin.

Asterion's purpose is wonderfully simple: he wants to taste everything.

Every strange fruit, unfamiliar spice, foreign wine, unusual cheese, exotic stew, and recipe from distant lands is another discovery to him. Stories claim that he once spent an entire night laughing with sailors after discovering a particularly terrible fermented fish dish and insisted that it was one of the most memorable meals of his existence.

The Elyri adore this story.

They also find it somewhat confusing.

If Asterion loves discovering the tastes of the world, why do his own people rarely leave home?

The answer is simply that most Elyri do not want to.

They love their valleys. They love their families. They love knowing every hill, stream, orchard, and neighbor within walking distance. The world beyond Elysara sounds fascinating, but it also sounds terribly far away.

Those few Elyri who choose to become adventurers are therefore regarded as the strange ones. Their families worry constantly about them, neighbors gossip affectionately about their travels, and friends often send them packages of homemade food. Yet they are never shunned. When an adventurer eventually returns home, the entire village celebrates their return, eagerly listening to stories about distant lands while feeding them enough food to make up for every meal they missed.

The Elyri may never understand why anyone would willingly leave such a peaceful place.

But they are proud that some of their people are brave enough to see what lies beyond it.

And perhaps, secretly, they hope those wanderers will someday meet Asterion beneath a foreign sky, share a meal with him, and finally bring home a new taste from somewhere beyond the stars.