Avelorn

Avelorn lies at the heart of Ulthuan and the Everqueen is its sovereign. Her realm is the principal site of the Earth Mother, and she is regarded as the spiritual leader of the entire Elven realm. The position of the Everqueen is always taken by the previous queen's firstborn daughter, conceived during her year-long ritual marriage to the Phoenix King. After this formal marriage, they are free to take fresh consorts, but only the daughter of the Phoenix King can be the new Everqueen. Hence the queens of Avelorn have always been the Everqueens of Ulthuan, forming an unbroken chain from ages past. Avelorn itself is ancient. Its great forest is the oldest of all Elf realms. Ancient glamours lie upon its tangled groves, and creatures of legend - Treemen, Nymphs and Dryads - still walk beneath its eaves. It is a place of outstanding beauty and visceral danger to intruders, even the monsters that wander down from the Annulii mountains. The court of the Everqueen is always on the move, travelling through Avelorn from place-to-place like a great carnival, pitching silken pavilions wherever it halts. By day, silver laughter rings through the forest as the Elves make sport. By night, faerie lights flicker in the darkness, illuminating the revels and feasting. And yet, to mistake this Everqueen as merely a totem of the Earth Mother, Isha, would be unwise. She has a shrewd grasp of the political games played by Elven royals, and sends her own envoys to the courts - the Handmaidens - to ensure the good of all Ulthuan is upheld when such machinations are underway. And while Everqueens of the past may have avoided the battlefield, Alarielle the Radiant joins the fight without hesitation. Her power drawn from the hearts of all Asur, she is anathema to creatures of fell spirit, and no one can speak falsehood in her presence. So it is that a High Elf army might find glorious aid in its darkest hour, when the Radiant goes to war...