The Tainted Light

The Tainted Light

A long backstory for Morgana Ember

The Birth of an Omen

Morgana was born on the night of the Spellplague's final convulsion. The sky split open, and the light of a hundred dying stars fell upon her village. Her mother, an aasimar paladin, died in childbirth. Her father, a human scholar, was driven mad by the visions that followed.

She was raised by the temple, a place of light and prayer. But the light inside her was not pure. It was tainted, twisted by the energies that had touched her at birth. She could heal, but she could also harm. She could see the future, but the visions were always dark.

The Whispers Begin

The whispers started when she was ten. At first, they were faint — a voice at the edge of hearing, a presence in the corner of her eye. She thought they were demons, or perhaps the whispers of her father's madness. But they were not.

They were something older. Something from beyond the stars. Something that had been waiting for her.

She learned to live with them. She learned to hide them. She learned to use them.

The Pact of Blood

When she was seventeen, she discovered the truth. The whispers were not demons — they were the remnants of an ancient consciousness, a being that had been trapped beneath the world for millennia. It had reached out to her because she was the only one who could hear it. The only one who could help it escape.

She made a choice. She would not free it — but she would understand it. She would study it, learn from it, and find a way to use it against its own kind.

Now

Morgana walks the Shaar with a fire in her eyes and a secret in her heart. She has come to Lake Lhespen because the whispers are strongest here. She believes the aboleth's influence is connected to her own transformation — and she may be the key to stopping it.

Or she may be the key to setting it free.

"The light is not pure. It was never pure. And I am its vessel."