Volierre

Volierre Storyline The Griffin Sword Saga Gender Male Race Elf Culture Illistim Status Alive Hometown Ta'Illistim Alias/Title The Foundation Affiliation(s) Gosaena

Volierre was one of three emissaries of Gosaena, alongside Maluverre Sil'Andruthile and Sylvirria Azarielle.

In 5100, Volierre was inducted into a longstanding Illistim cult dedicated to Gosaena. The cult's leaders had swayed him to their cause when they learned that he was a brilliant cartographer and scholar of the esoteric. With promises of caches of artifacts to study, Volierre quickly delved into them. Within scant years, he found exactly what the cult had intended: the location of an ancient temple dedicated to Gosaena that predated the elven empire. Unbeknownst to him, it was the same temple that had been visited centuries before by first Sylvirria and then Maluverre.

The cult carefully planned an expedition to the temple, which they knew to be both extraordinary and potentially quite dangerous. Volierre among the expedition, and he described the temple as being permeated with a strange stasis. He was left at one point alone in the temple, during which the cult orchestrated a cave-in to force Volierre to survive by exploring the temple itself. He found three pools at its heart; two were dormant, having been visited twice before, but one glowed with a shifting silver light. One night, he woke to find that he had submerged himself in the third pool in his sleep. This immersion had changed him somehow, as it had done to Sylvirria and Maluverre before him. He had become the Foundation, and he bore the knowledge of all things past that Gosaena's silent servants must be imparted. He knew all of the prophecies that have now passed. His eyes clouded over and blinded, he was plagued by visions - glimpses into the past that he called the All-Pattern. He drank absinthe to dull them and the pain that accompanied them.

No longer trusting the cult, Volierre accompanied them back to Ta'Illistim. They had placed a geas on him, to compel him to obey him; through him, they sought Sylvirria, the Advent, who had gone missing. Regardless, he would have sought her out anyway, as he knew the true purpose of the temple. He struggled against the cult's control, the potency of their geas on him slowly waning as he traveled to Solhaven during the latter parts of the Griffin Sword Saga. When Maluverre discovered the cult's manipulations, he flew to Ta'Illistim aboard his airship to sabotage their lair, destroying their grip on Volierre. Unfortunately for Maluverre, this did not deter Volierre, who continued to seek both Sylvirria and now Maluverre entirely on his own. Unlike them, Volierre knew what had to be done to complete the ritual that each had started independently of one another inside the ancient temple so many years before.

Maluverre finally surrendered the pursuit, on the eve that the leaders of the Dark Alliance had reassembled the shattered Griffin Sword and gathered within their dark sanctuary to begin a ritual to complete its corruption. Volierre joined him on his airship along with a group of witnesses, and they flew to Ta'Illistim to Maluverre's home, where he revealed Sylvirria, still entombed within the crystal. Volierre did what none others could and finally woke her. He immediately began to speak, to insist that the three now complete the ritual that they had started, but he was silenced by her. She said that, before anything else was done, she wanted to spend her last remaining time as a mortal to stop what she had foreseen. She then took flight and, wielding two scythes of black and white, utterly destroyed the undead and demonic armies that were sweeping across Elanthia. It was only after she returned that she, too, relented.

The three carried out the final steps of the ritual - which was intended to raise one of them as an Angel of Gosaena, destined for the Void. Sylvirria was the one fated for that role. Before she left, the ritual completed, she gave a silver sickle to an adherent of neutrality, which was used scant hours later to destroy the Griffin Sword. Volierre also departed before the the Resistance began their final attack, though his vision had now been cleared after years of the past blinding his eyes. He has not been seen since.

Appearance

You see Volierre.
He appears to be an Elf.
He appears to be very old.  He has blinded white eyes and pale skin.  He has shoulder length, fine steel grey hair swept back from the temples.  He has a gaunt face and a pointed nose.
He is in good shape.
He is holding a straight silver cane capped with a lustrous black orb in his left hand.
He is wearing a pair of circular silver spectacles with deep black lenses, a simple silver amulet, a sweeping black velvet longcoat stylized with foggy grey patterns, a crisp white silk shirt with long ruffled sleeves, a dark leather belt twined with creeping patterns of opal, a pair of dark velvet pants, and a pair of dark silver-clasped half-boots.

See Also

• 06-12-2005 - Visions of Volierre log