Vyranna Moriel
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Dame Vyranna Sakiristos Moriel
Knight-Champion to the order-of-the-ebon-flame,
Knight-Captain, Knight-Priestess of Bane

Race: Human
Height: 5'1"
Weight: 122lbs
Hair Color: Sea-green
Eyes: Steel Grey

Early Life

Vyranna Moriel was born Vyranna Sakiristos, child of a courtesan in the busy port city of Calimport. Her father, whoever he may have been, was not known specifically to her mother; he could have been one of any number of patrons of the establishment where Vyranna's mother was employed.

Despite this, her earliest memories were happy ones, for the children of the women of the house were well cared for and seen to by their parents. Such was not to last, however, as the house of courtesans fell prey to the shifting power struggles of Calimport, and one of the powerful patrons had the house razed and the inhabitants murdered, for fear that his own indiscrete talk on the pillows would lead to his downfall. Vyranna, out to market with several of the other children of the house, came back to find the house in flames and her mother dead. She was six.

For the next several years, Vyranna, already headstrong and decisive, lived on the streets of Calimport with a band of street urchins, cutpurses and young thieves. This life was mostly happy, but led to constant conflict with not only the law, but the emergent guild of Pasha Pook, who leaned on the children to provide him with a tithe. Eventually, when the children either could not or would not pay his prices, Pook sent his bashers in to seize the children. A fighter already, Vyranna fought her captors, eventually killing one of the young men by smashing his head in with a stone. Many of the children captured were simply beaten into submission and put to work for Pook's guild, but those who fought or were otherwise valuable (extraordinarily pretty) were sold into slavery in the markets, Vyranna included.

From Calimport, the Amnian slavers who bought Vyranna thought to take the load of slaves to the Vilhon Reach, where the yuan-ti ruled houses were infamous in their appetites. Instead of risking the wrath of the Shadow Thieves (from whom they were withholding a cut) and passing through the chronically chaotic Tethyr, however, they chose instead to take ship into the Shining Sea and then into the Lake of Steam, where they had planned to head to the city of Ankhapur, and move overland to the Vilhon. Bad seas forced them to land instead at the city of Derlusk. Instead of waiting for repairs to their ship, the slavers decided to move on, passing through the wooded plains towards The Golden Road, the trade road which ran out of the Reach and down into those few cities in The Shaar; and then into the rich realms beyond.

The entire way, Vyranna was nothing but a problem for her captors; she refused to behave as they wished and constantly fought them and sought escape. Eventually, after several beatings and an incident with the cooks knife that cost a slaver his ear and bought Vyranna a nasty scar on her face, she was shackled and bound, her care given over to the other slaves.

Vyranna's fortune changed, forever, when the slave caravan reached Firesteap Pass, a sharp cut of rock through the low mountain range that separates The Shaar from the southern fringes of the Vilhon Reach and the nation of Chondath. As the caravan entered the pass, they were set upon by a band of Ebon Knights and their arms-men. The Knights had interdicted the pass as a way to punish the city of Innerlith, with whom the Ebon Knights were currently at odds over a diplomatic incident. The slavers, warned to throw down their arms, but disregarding the Knights (they likely believed they would be killed anyway), were slain nearly to a man. During the fighting, one of the slavers attempted to take refuge in the slave wagon in which Vyranna was imprisoned. Using nothing but her chains, Vyranna choked the man to death. She was found thus by the leader of the band of Knights, Ser Cathal Moriel. Impressed by her strength, calm under pressure, and will, Ser Moriel took the young girl into his own camp, and eventually, when they returned to Ebonhold, into his household. Vyranna was nine.

Knight of the Ebon Flame

Ser Cathal Moriel , in addition to being an Ebon Knight, was one of a large minority of Knights to also be priests of Bane. In his household, Vyranna learned both strength of arms and the ways of a Shaar-born priest of Bane (pre time of Troubles); she took to the teachings of the faith and the teachings of the Order with equal veracity. While not a zealot, Vyranna was confidently faithful, and through the teachings of Ser Cathal, learned to understand that her earlier life was the fault of weakness on the part of her mother. It was this weakness of her mothers, and the damage it caused to the young Vyranna, that lit the fire of strength and certitude in Vyranna. She vowed to never be the weakling her mother was, to never let others enslave or threaten her again, and to carve a place of her own through strength of arm and faith. Though she did not initially desire to be a knight, instead aspiring to the priesthood, by the time she was twelve, she had squired to Ser Cathal, having decided to join the Order.

Vyranna remained Ser Cathal Moriel's Squire until just prior to the Time of Troubles, when he was felled in battle with the forces of the nation of Dambrath. Vyranna carried him from the field to his tent, where, on his death-bed, he pronounced Vyranna ready to assume the role of Knight. He also inducted her into his house, and bestowed upon her his surname. Vyranna would go on to prove Ser Cathal's words right; in the coming months of battle with Dambrath's troops, she led her Spear of infantry to many victories, culminating in her rallying the remnants of several spears of men to hold a desperately besieged flank, which brought her to the attention of the Knight-Commandant himself.

Vyranna, now a confident young woman of twenty-two years, and a serenely confident junior priestess, was Knighted upon their return to Ebonhold. Shortly thereafter, the Time of Troubles would fall upon all of Toril; the Ebon Knights rallied their men, stripping the Order lands nearly to nothing, and marched north towards Zhentil Keep to offer service directly to Bane.

The Church of Torm, through its many agents, learned of this advance and sent a body of men at arms and Knights of the Golden Lion to prevent the Order from reaching Bane. They would come to battle at Firesteap Pass, a natural choke point in the march northward. Though they were outnumbered nearly three to one, the Tormite forces held for an entire day after the initial negotiation; it was near the end of the battle that Vyranna met Sir Varrys Reese, Knight of the Golden Lion, in battle and slew him, opening the Tormite flank and allowing the Order to force the Tormite army to surrender.

Afterwards, Vyranna carried the body of Sir Reese to his family estates near Tantras, to see him buried.

Vyranna served with distinction from the end of the Time of Troubles until the rebirth of Bane; moving to the rank of Knight-Lieutenant.

Thain and the Cyricist Heresy

Shortly after the Rebirth of Bane, the Order sent Vyranna to Thain, seeking to acquire information about the mysterious island which had only recently come to the attention of the Order in the depths of the eastern Shaar. Vyranna stayed on the island for the better part of a year, making few friends and gaining only a few enemies, before being recalled to the mainland to fight in a series of wars fought in Amn, Tethyr, the Vilhon Reach, and other parts of the south against the servants of the Mad God Cyric. It was here that she met Jesse Blackrose, a young squire with no Knight; his own having been killed during the campaigning. She took the young man as her own Squire, and they fought for over a year in the campaigns against the Dark Sun.

With the Cyricist uprisings apparently quelled, the Order again turned its attention to far-flung areas and other interests; Vyranna was dispatched with Jesse Blackrose, now an Armegar, to Thain to again test the waters there. This time, they were to scout the possible areas in which the Order could set up a presence on the island, which was seen as a powerful training ground, full of conflict, both martial and political, and a place ripe for the teachings of Bane and the Order. Again, after being on the island for less than 8 months, Vyranna and Jesse were recalled to the mainland to put down a Cyricist uprising in Amn; this time in concert with the revived Orthodox church of Bane. The campaign lasted for the better part of a year, with the battles raging all across the south, into the Vilhon Reach, and down into the northern Shaar, as the armies of the Cyricist loyalists were pursued to destruction. Her friend Jesse Blackrose won his spurs in the fighting in the Vilhon Reach, and Vyranna attained the rank of Knight-Captain for her long years of service, commanding a company of heavy foot for nearly the entire campaign before earning her promotion for the Battle of Wintercloak, fought along the banks of the Wintercloak river south of the Reach, where she led her company and that of Ser Kelthys Adramar, who was slain, in a vicious charge against a heavily defended position against the riverbank. She drove those Cyricists defending the position to rout and broke the backs of their other positions, leading to an orderly victory.

In the aftermath of this last gasp of Cyricist heresy, the Ebon Council appointed Vyranna a Knight-Champion, tasked with returning to Thain and establishing a foothold there for the Order. Others of the Order, including Ser jesse-blackrose, her long time companion, have journeyed with her to plant the flag of the Order on this far shore.

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