Dökkálfar

Dökkálfar, Queen Aibell’s Shadowblade, is the embodiment of Svartálfheim’s twilight cruelty. Among the Svartálfar, she is both feared and revered—a phantom whose name is spoken in whispers when the torches gutter low. With skin like polished obsidian, though often painted white with ash, and eyes that gleam a pale, icy blue, she moves as if she were cut from the very shadows of her realm. Dökkálfar is not merely an assassin but the sharpened edge of Queen Aibell’s will, the blade that strikes where diplomacy ends.   Her origins are shrouded in rumor. Some whisper that she was born from the first twilight of Svartálfheim, a child of shadow itself rather than flesh. Others claim she was once a princess of a lesser house, stripped of title after slaughtering her kin to prove her loyalty to Aibell. What is known is that she trained in silence under the Queen’s own gaze, learning to weave shadow and steel into a single art. Where most assassins rely on speed or poison alone, Dökkálfar makes use of illusion, patience, and the cold inevitability of the hunt. In her hands, darkness is not cover—it is a weapon.   Over the centuries, her killings have become the lore of the Svartálfar. She has strangled a rival duke with a garrote from the shadow, suffocated emissaries beneath veils of shadow, and once slipped unseen into the Seelie Court itself to leave a queen’s wine goblet filled with frostbitten ash as a warning. Every death carries symbolism, a mark that it is not only Dökkálfar’s work, but Queen Aibell’s vengeance.   Befitting her title of Shadowblade, Dökkálfar rarely strikes in open conflict. Instead, she plays a game of fear and inevitability, waiting until her prey’s guard falters. Her second, Gloni the Mistress of Poisons, manages the alchemical subtleties of her work, but it is Dökkálfar herself who delivers the final, intimate end. She is known to whisper into her victim’s ear a single word—sometimes a truth, sometimes a lie—before the shadows close around them. To the Svartálfar, this is seen not as cruelty, but artistry, the perfect union of terror and silence.   Dökkálfar’s loyalty to Queen Aibell is absolute, though its roots are less affection than devotion to a shared ideal: a world where twilight and winter never cede to dawn. Her shadow is cast long across The Feywild, and for those who cross Svartálfheim, the last thing they will ever know is the gleam of ice blue eyes in the dark.