Karenna (kə-RÉN-nä) hin'Elric, known as Raven

Full Name: Karenna (kə-RÉN-nä) hin'Elric, of Clan Lucien, known as Raven
Species: Human, Cursed (Theriomorph- Wolf) *deceased
Allegiance: Lothanasi
Religion: Lothanasi
Social Status: n/a

Age: Deceased
Eyes: Pale blue
Hair: Black, long, straight
Height: Tall (around 5'9")

Physical Notes: See below.

Behavioral Notes: Reserved; dry sense of humor; sometimes bitterly sarcastic when provoked. Was nicknamed "The Ice Queen" by the Long Scouts. She mellowed a lot in her later years, and was deeply affectionate with those few who were close to her.

Supernatural Abilities: Standard innate spells and proxy spells for a high-level Lightbringer priestess, including healing, light, fire, wind, and electricity spells.

Personality and Appearance

Karenna hin'Elric was known to maintain a cool, professional exterior at all times. She was generally distant and businesslike with the others in the Keep, and did not open up much emotionally. Still, she had a heart — and she was known to show genuine compassion on a number of occasions, especially towards those who are helpless or defenseless.

Outwardly, Karenna was self-confident to the point of arrogance (very similar to how Janus Starson behaves in modern times).

Karenna was a medium-degree wolfmorph, with a small muzzle, a mostly humanoid face, plantigrade feet, opposable thumbs, a long bushy tail, and wolfish ears pointing up through the hair atop her head. She gave up the ability to shape-shift in exchange for the gods granting her human-like hands and feet; as a result of these changes, her body was also highly resistant to any new transformation magic. (note: this is before Kyia was able to control the Curse after Nasoj's death).

When she appears to Janus Starson during the Long Night of 2000 CR,1 she is in a tunic, leather jerkin, and leggings of a scout/field medic of her time and a bit younger (possibly a self-image from before the death of most of her family).

However, once assuming the mantle of Lothanasa, Raven always dressed in her white linen priestess's robes, with the a twin-cross (single vertical bar with crossbeams one-fourth and three-fourths of the way down) around her neck that symbolizes the intermediary focus of the Lightbringers' religion: Heaven Above, Earth Below, Meet in the Middle.

Background

Karenna was the high priestess of Metamor Keep from 699 CR until 750 CR. She was a cleric of the Lothanasi when they were still a religion. The position of Lothanas (female form Lothanasa), or High Priest(ess), was a hereditary one, which passed down to Karenna when her father Elric, the previous Lothanas, was killed at the Battle of Three Gates. Also among the casualties were her mother Anya, her older brother Aramis, and her older sister Talia, all clerics of the Lothanasi. Karenna, the youngest and least experienced of the family, was thus left to lead the Order in those troubled times.

Karenna's mother Anya was from The Angle, a farming region that is now part of the Province of Alamar.

While history has recorded her childhood name, Karenna, for posterity, very few individuals called her by that name. Her friends called her Raven (or Sister Raven), and most others would just refer to her by the common tongue variant of her title, Lightbringer.

She was the first and primary teacher of Merai Starchild, having found the girl after her spontaneous use of Light Healing the first time. Over time, their teacher and student relationship developed into a strong friendship. In addition, Karenna and Merai uncovered a deep seated corruption within the Lothanasi in 708 CR (foretold in The Starchild Prophecy), then the Day of the Starchild changed everything in Raven's world.

Janus is very interested the accounts of Karenna. When he meets her ghost he tells her "… you kept the Order alive in our darkest hour. You were faithful to your purpose at a time when everything around you was uncertain. I always admired you for that." Her response was to say, "I didn't make history; history came down on me like an avalanche, and I did my best not to be crushed by it." She also mentions that her mother "had a healer's heart" while talking about Janus's mother and seeing the similarities.

A Rift between Friends

The spirit of Karenna and Janus witness the confrontation that between Merai and Karenna when the older priestess returns to Metamor Keep from the Council of Athos (an council meeting that was dealing with corruption within the Lothanasi and the repercussions of the Day of the Starchild). Caught between her own beliefs and her desire to at least save Merai's life ("There were those at Athos who were convinced that you were a traitor. We've hung a lot of traitors over the last two years, Merai. I'm afraid we've set a bad precedent with it."), Karenna had worked out a compromise decision that effectively called Merai's vision of Yahshua a noble, innocent, but misguided and human interpretation of the experience of facing an unknowable Creator.

Karenna was aware that religion and culture are intertwined (something that Merai had not thought completely through) and the High Priestess was already struggling to keep something together for the people of Metamor Keep with the results of their gods being cast to earth. She realizes that with the internal issues (the recently uncovered corruption in the Lothanasi Order) and the fact that the gods the Lothanasi lead the worship for were now broken in their power, that something needed to be salvaged that would let her people remain standing against other cultural influences.

Specifically, Karenna was trying to save their way of life from the worship of Eli; at that time the main organized worship of Eli was through the patriarchal Ecclesia (based in Pyralis). The Lothanasi were already bad enough in that sense; Karenna was the only High Priestess in the entire Order, and women priestesses were rare outside of the Keep. However, the Ecclesia was much worse- at the time women were little more than the soulless possessions of their fathers and husbands.

And then what? We all queue up to be baptized by Father Hough? Find husbands for us to submit to? Trade our priestess's robes for maternity gowns? … Do you honestly think you can have their savior and not get their bondage along with it?… If I do as you ask, our granddaughters will kneel before bishops and serve their husbands like slaves. No vision, no prophesy, no word from on high is worth that.

-Karenna, to Merai

So Karenna was prepared for the Lothanasi Order to acknowledge Merai's experience, have it recorded for posterity, and then let it be ignored (The Lothanasi High Council would not acknowledge Eli as Creator or Yahshua as his avatar) as they tried to figure out what to do next in a changed world.

Merai, hurt that her teacher and friend didn't believe her (at least in in Merai's mind at the time), and knowing the truth of her experience, and knowing that she couldn't submit to the teachings of the Ecclesia, leaves the Keep to walk the world she had left shaken by casting down the gods to forge a third way. That way developed into the Meraist Church.

After several years they would reconcile, but Karenna regretted the time that was lost between them.

A Sister Imprisoned, Insane, and Goddess

Between the battle that Cursed the valley and the Day of the Starchild, Karenna discovered that the spirits of her mother Anya, brother Aramis, and sister Talia were trapped in soul gems by the Lilith, the Queen of Vampires. In the following years, the only gem that was recovered was Talia's.

After nine years of being trapped in the soul-gem, Talia's soul was restored to her body by Karenna (now known to everyone as Sister Raven) and the Necromancer Rickkter shortly after the Great Fall.

Unfortunately, the act of restoring Talia to her body proved to be misguided (at best), as years of imprisonment in the soul gem had driven Talia into severe solipsism. Unable to accept the world she had been returned to as anything other than a deranged fantasy of her own mind2, she did not feel bound by the moral strictures of the civilized world.

At first, Karenna and the other Keepers were unaware of Talia's condition.  To spare her sister from the Curse, Karenna sent Talia to the Midtown Lothanasi temple.  At this time, the Curse's range was confined to the area of the Metamor Valley.  While Talia did travel to Metamor keep frequently to consult with her sister, she did not stay long enough to be effected by the Curse.

When the opportunity to exact her revenge on Lilith presented itself, Talia took it — while Talia may not have believed it was really happening, but it would feel satisfying nonetheless. She was quite surprised when she found that killing Lilith granted her the power and position of the Vampire Queen. Lilith's death and absorbing her power did not help Talia realize that something was wrong.  After all, in the world she knew before her imprisonment, killing any of the daedra or aedra lords would have been impossible. The fact that she could kill Lilith further convinced Talia that she was still living in her fantasy world.

With no self-imposed moral restraints on her actions, Talia immediately began to use her power to her own whimsical ends. Being granted the abilities of a goddess, after all, gives you a very big sandbox to play in.

After several failed attempts to take over the world during the early 700s by military means, Talia finally regained her sanity through the actions of her sister, the God of Wisdom Samekkh, and the new God of War, Rickkter3

Finally Acknowledging Love

Karenna was always torn inside of herself, but never let the outside world know it. First, she was the young sibling of two strong up-and-coming Lothanasi, struggling to distinguish herself while standing in their shadows to an ever stronger father, the High Priest. Then in one day, she had to fill not only her siblings roles but her father's and take on the mantle of Lothanasa. While barely an adult herself, dealing with her own transformation and the transformation of everyone she had to provide for, and being the Priestess that her congregation didn't expect to have, she constantly put the needs of the Keep and its people before her own desires. Time and time again she put everyone else before herself in an attempt to prove herself to her people. As she matured, this did not change.

Then a bard wandered into her life and shook her sense of self to the core. She continued to put the Keep before herself, convinced that she couldn't have a relationship. The bard then did something foolish in the name of friendship and was forced into the form of a wolf full-time. Eventually, he gained the forgiveness of the goddess he had tricked and offended and was given his body and mind back. Charles Carter, aka "Wanderer", and Karenna then worked out the issues that had developed between them4. They married in 711 CR after nearly ten years of off-and-on courtship. They did not have any children of their own.

A Last Show of Friendship

The Long Night of 2000 CR, Merai enlisted the assistance of Nocturna and Klepnos to assist her in a "family matter" — and the three of them brought Janus Starson into a pocket of the Dreamlands and with subtle illusions (based on astute analysis and projections) encouraged Janus's sympathetic/"human" side which has resulted in him taking the first steps of a relationship with his fellow Lightbringer Candace Wright.

In the process, Nocturna was able to call and guide Karenna's spirit from the First Hell by using the sword Elemacil as a focus; Karenna had wielded Elemacil when alive.5 They first introduced her to the Field Commander to provide him with a sense of perspective, and when this work was done the Mistress of Dreams (and former psycho-pomp of the pantheon) escorted Karenna's spirit to the Veil (or at least as far as Nocturna could go, "stuck on this side."6.

"She's a strong-willed old soul, to have tarried so long on this side of the Veil."

Merai smiled at her. "Did you see her safely home, then?"

"Aye— as far as I can tell, stuck on this side." That was as harsh a gibe as Nocturna would ever make at Merai for causing their exile. Merai opened her hands in ambiguous acknowledgment. She could not be sorry for her decision, but Nocturna had earned the right to put the occasional dig in.

"Just be glad we had the sword to use as a focus," Nocturna said. "She's thirteen centuries gone; I don't think I could have called her back across without it."

Nocturna and Merai, A Lightbringer Carol (Stave V)

Known Allies

Known Enemies

  • Nasoj
  • Talia (during her period of insanity)
  • The Moranasi ("Shadow Bringers") — a cult of Ba'al worshipers, created to be a perverted reflection of the Lothanasi, who allied with Nasoj during the Winter Assault of December 706 CR.

Story Appearances

A Lightbringer Carol (Stave I)

Sources

Original MK2K Bible Entry- Raven, A Lightbringer Carol (Stave I & V), conversation with RavenB

Author's Notes

text

Voice Actor

none set

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License