Aradel Vipère

Basic Details

Full Name: Aradel Vipère of Embermoor

Titles: Heiress of Blarget and Embermoor, Apprentice Alchemist of the Glass Menagerie

Race: Half-Elf (¾ Elf through her mother’s bloodline)

Date of Birth: 602 PR

Early Life in the Moors (602 – 612 PR)

Aradel was born beneath a thunderstorm that boiled above the Ember Vents, where lightning strikes ignite the marsh gas. The omens read that night spoke of “fire born in mist.” Her father Lucien called her his spark of clarity; her mother Cyranel called her the dream made solid.

She was educated by three tutors before she could speak in full sentences and dissected her first frog at seven. Her mother trained her in the arts of memory and suggestion, teaching that truth is merely a tool. Her father taught her that every tool can kill.

By ten, she could compound curatives without burning her hands and was recorded as having neutralized a poison test designed for senior alchemists of Blarget.

The Prodigy of the Glass Menagerie (613 – 617 PR)

When Lucien deemed her ready, he brought Aradel into his forbidden laboratory beneath Embermoor Keep — the Glass Menagerie. There she learned the Vipère method: brewing with emotion as much as ingredient. Anger thickens venom; sorrow sweetens antidote.

Aradel’s notable experiments:

• The Lunar Distillate: A serum that grants night vision and dream lucidity for a day but erodes colour perception for a month.
• Whisper Oil: An alchemical mist that carries voices across walls and seems to reply in the listener’s own tone.
• Soul’s Mercury: An unstable fluid rumoured to heal flesh while leeching memories of pain — a mixture banned after a test subject forgot his own name.

Her talent was both gift and threat. The Council of Thorns requested samples for the Emperor’s use; Lucien refused, but several vials disappeared from her workbench nonetheless. Aradel responded not with anger but innovation: she created traps within her formulas — mixtures that explode if stolen by unregistered hands.

Education and Conflict (617 – 620 PR)

At fifteen, Cyranel sent Aradel to the College of Silver Threads in Tudor’s capital to study politics and rhetoric. Within a year she had been expelled for “inducing mass hallucination in the Hall of Saint Amazuth.” Witnesses claimed she turned an entire debate chamber into a garden of snakes to demonstrate that “fear is the purest argument.”

Returning to Embermoor, she was forbidden from leaving without escort. Lucien saw danger and potential in equal measure; Cyranel saw a reflection too sharp to control.

Rumours spread that Aradel has been seen wandering the Ember Fens with masked acolytes at night, testing new concoctions on bandits and beasts. The locals now call her “The Twilight Venom.”

Faith and Philosophy

Though raised to honour Krina and Amazuth, Aradel was drawn to Drevrena, the Goddess of Night and Dreams. She claims Drevrena speaks to her through vapour and mirror. Her belief is not devotion but experimentation: she attempts to distil faith into liquid form, to “bottle the dream of divinity.”

Some whisper that during an experiment in 619 PR, she did just that — creating a silver vial that sings when held by moonlight and makes the drinker dream of the same future each night. When asked what she sees, Aradel only answers:

“A hand of black glass reaching for the sky — and a serpent biting its wrist.”

Relations within House Vipère

• Lucien Vipère IV (Father): Respects her intellect but fears her independence. They speak in code — every lesson a test of loyalty.
• Cyranel Voss (Mother): Loves her fiercely yet tries to bind her through discipline. Aradel once said, “Mother taught me how to dream within bars; I prefer to poison the lock.”
• Nerin Vipère (Brother): A friendly rival. He writes poems about her eyes but secretly sells her formulas to fund his duels.
• Cyris Vipère (Youngest): Her favourite sibling. She tests her non-lethal mixtures on him — “for his prophetic dreams need stronger colour.”

Current Standing (620 PR)

At eighteen, Aradel is already spoken of in the same breath as her father and mother. She serves as Lucien’s right hand in the Menagerie, often sent to negotiate with the Council of Thorns and the alchemist-guilds of Tudor. Unlike her father, she shows occasional mercy — usually as an experiment in morality.

She is said to be developing a compound known as The Eternal Venom — a symbiotic toxin that replaces blood with silver and makes the heart beat forever. If successful, it would grant immortality at a cost yet unknown.

Personality

Calm, precise, and curiously gentle when not in a laboratory. She believes knowledge without danger is sterile. Her humour is dry, her smile disarming, and her temper glacial. She can recite a poison’s recipe and a poem in the same breath.

“We are not born to inherit the moors,” she once told her father. “We are born to see what the moors can become when they finally breathe.”

Legacy and Rumours

• The Crown’s inquisitors believe Aradel corresponds with scholars in Vindhan, reviving forbidden elven techniques of transmutative blood alchemy.
• Some say she is courted by a shadowy figure from the Order of the Silverbrand, others that she is the Silverbrand’s next target.
• Lucien calls her his “perfect successor.” Cyranel calls her “a storm that must be contained.” The moors call her “Mist-Born.”

Aradel Vipère stands poised between generations: the brilliance of elven thought, the ambition of human blood, and the poisoned legacy of House Vipère.
If Lucien is the venom and Cyranel the whisper, then Aradel is the breath that spreads both — a new serpent born to inherit the mist.