Wood elf, age recorded as “Questionable,” 4 ft 8 in, weight recorded as “120ish,” hazel eyes, pale bronze skin, vibrant lime-green hair.

Faith controls Willow’s full characterization, beliefs, feelings, choices, and interpretation. Established support: Willow steals freely when opportunity presents itself and is strongly curious about forbidden, restricted, dangerous, interesting, or inaccessible things. Drawing is not a defining personality trait.

Willow Nightshade is Faith’s returning wood-elf rogue from an earlier school campaign. Faith controls Willow’s earlier personal history, characterization, beliefs, feelings, choices, and interpretation of events. Willow’s established habits include stealing whatever she can when opportunity presents itself and curiosity toward forbidden, restricted, dangerous, interesting, or inaccessible things. Drawing is part of the campaign machinery around her crossing rather than a defining artistic identity. Before the current campaign, Willow visited the Witchlight Carnival during its appearance in the High Forest of Faerûn. She first stole a set of enchanted colored pencils called the Prismatic Picture-Pencils. A picture made with the pencils can serve as the visual basis for the normal 2014 minor illusion cantrip, using the cantrip’s normal timing and limits. The illusion can make the depicted image appear more polished and convincing while preserving what the user actually drew. Willow later found an older Carnival attraction openly displaying a single sacred Sulatar book titled The Tears of Fire. The attraction made extravagant public claims that Zybilna had declared the book the most powerful artifact in all Faerûn and that the traveling carnival carried it forever between worlds. The display also presented three protective conditions: the book must remain openly visible, must continually travel somewhere it has never occupied before, and must have no predetermined next destination. The theatrical presentation made the claims sound like carnival nonsense even though the book truly carried enormous Fey magic and prophetic importance. Willow burglarized the attraction and stole the same physical sacred book. Her exact burglary method remains Open. The book is a relatively short sacred text of prophecy, ritual instruction, inherited history, and practical sacred directions. Willow read all of the pages that still contained writing. The final written material she reached centers on a Matron, the Matron’s infant daughter, a promised woodfire, woods and druids or other keepers of wild places, and the importance of timing. It presents two possible directions: one path in which the promised fire leads toward the burning of the world, and another in which different timing can lead toward saving the favored daughter of the Queen of Witches. Willow does not know who that favored daughter is. After that point, the remaining pages of The Tears of Fire are blank. Willow reached the actual end of the surviving written text; she did not stop early and she did not leave a final written page unread. Backend truth is that Thelania did not write a completed replacement prophecy into those pages. Her Fey intervention erased the continuation of the story and left that part of the book unwritten. At campaign start the pages remain blank. No later text has appeared yet. A loose sheet of paper sat inside the book as a bookmark near this final surviving woodfire / woods / druids / timing passage. Willow used the Prismatic Picture-Pencils to draw the scene suggested by that material and drew herself into the image. She then fell asleep. Willow remembers the passage that followed as a strange Fey dream rather than a technical planar route. Backend cosmology can describe the route as Faerûn into the Feywild, through a rare breach toward the Deep Ethereal and Eberron’s weakening cosmological boundary, into Thelanis, and through a Thelanis-linked crossing into Eberron. Willow herself remembers only dreamlike changes of place, light, distance, and sequence. The same physical book and the little drawing traveled with her. The blank pages remained blank when she reached Eberron. During that dreamlike Fey passage, Willow met a talking frog. The frog said that she had once been a drow. She remembered having an infant drow daughter and knew that reunion with that daughter mattered profoundly, but she could not remember her own name or her daughter’s name. The frog offered to help Willow find a way out of the Fey realm. In exchange, Willow agreed to find the infant daughter and bring the child back to her. The frog then helped Willow escape. Willow does not know the frog’s name or the daughter’s identity. Backend truth is that the frog is Matron Ardencia and the unnamed infant daughter is Donigi. Willow emerged in the Towering Wood of the Eldeen Reaches still carrying The Tears of Fire, the bookmark drawing, and the Prismatic Picture-Pencils. Greensinger Garnet Hails found Willow, chose to protect her, and escorted her onward. Willow reached Owl’s Perch in Garnet’s company, where her current pre-campaign connections with Leus and St’eeev formed before the group continued south toward the Riverwood. At game start, Willow knows only what she personally experienced: the Witchlight visit; the stolen pencils; the Carnival’s extravagant claims; the sacred book and all of its surviving written pages; the Matron, infant daughter, promised woodfire, woods / druid imagery, timing split, world-burning path, and the path that can save the favored daughter of the Queen of Witches; the blank pages after that surviving text; her bookmark drawing; falling asleep; the dreamlike Fey journey; the talking frog’s limited remembered facts; Willow’s promise; the frog’s help; her arrival in the Towering Wood; Garnet finding and protecting her; her short Eberron travel history; and her current possession of the book, bookmark, pencils, and Chocolate. Willow does not know Ardencia’s name, Donigi’s identity, the complete original Sulatar prophecy, Moonbreaker’s full history, the hidden origin of the dragonmarks, the Dragonmarked Houses’ possession of other Tears, Naadea’s role, the Fire Tear’s location beneath the Riverwood, Longroot’s connection to it, the Mark of Flame history, the full terms of Thelania’s bargain, what future writing may eventually occupy the blank pages, Baba Yaga’s complete relationship to the book, the Hourglass Coven’s full reason for wanting it, or the current backend convergence of Donigi, the Fire Tear, Longroot, and the book.