Calaethar Willowshade

Master Fletcher of Willowshade Arrows

“You can lose your home, your tools, your name…
but never your aim.”

— Calaethar

OVERVIEW

Once the quiet perfectionist of Leilon’s fletcher’s quarter, Calaethar Willowshade now walks the line between craftswoman and revenant.
The sahuagin siege took everything from her — her shop, her home, her apprentices, and half the skin on her right arm. What remains is purpose.

Once known for bows that could whisper secrets mid-flight, she now forges only one kind of arrow: the kind meant to kill.

Her shop, Willowshade Arrows, burned during the siege when repeated Call Lightning strikes from sahuagin shamans set the rooftops ablaze.
Only a handful of her stock survived, sold just days earlier to House Vexmoor’s militia — payment delivered in writs, not gold.
Until the High Road reopens or trade resumes with Neverwinter, those writs are worthless parchment — and she knows it.

Now, Calaethar works in the open square beneath a makeshift awning, hammering and carving with blistered hands, muttering prayers to Mielikki and darker things besides.

CURRENT STATUS

• Condition: Recovering from severe burns; right hand wrapped in resin-soaked bandages.
• Residence: Temporarily living in the ruined loft above her shop’s foundation.
• Business: Suspended. Accepts only repair work for Leilon’s defenders and druids.
• Obsession: Vengeance — specifically, the sahuagin shaman who called down the lightning that destroyed her life.

THE ENEMY

Through divine dreams from Mielikki, Calaethar has learned her enemy’s name:

Ssaalithra Stormfane, the Wave-Singer of the Drowned Depths

A powerful sahuagin matriarch and storm-shaman who commands a warband beneath the western trench known as the Rift of Teeth.
Her magic bends lightning and tide alike, and her followers believe her the herald of a drowned god.

Calaethar has sworn to kill her — but Ssaalithra rarely leaves the sea.
So Calaethar plans to force her ashore.

PLANS AND CONNECTIONS

• The Druids of the Graywood have promised to return in spring to help her regrow a new home from living trees. Until then, she sleeps among charred beams.
• She spends her nights designing harpoon-bows, breath-infused arrowheads, and driftwood charms that might turn the tides against sea creatures.
• She’s begun reaching out to Vex Maravo and Fizzwidget for help constructing experimental alchemical munitions — arrows that burn underwater or carry paralytic toxins.
• Her prayers to Mielikki have grown strange; some nights, she claims the goddess shows her not the forest, but roots growing through drowned corpses.

PERSONALITY

Once reserved and dryly humorous, Calaethar’s calm has cracked. She speaks little, sleeps less, and no longer drinks tea — only bitter draughts of willowbark tincture for the pain.
Her sarcasm remains, but it has edge now, like a blade filed too thin.

Patience? I buried that with my quiver
I make arrows for the living. If you’re planning to die, buy them elsewhere

To the townsfolk, she’s a figure of quiet tragedy. To those who look closer, she’s something else entirely — a woman one revelation away from becoming a monster hunter of legend… or a vigilante in Mielikki’s name.

HOOKS AND SECRETS

• The sahuagin’s lightning storm wasn’t random — it targeted her shop first. Why? Some say Ssaalithra recognized the blessing of Mielikki on her forge and sought to snuff it out.
• Elia senses something off in Calaethar’s prayers — the magic that answers might not be divine.
• Her plans for Ssaalithra could endanger Leilon if she provokes the warband too soon.
• The writs from House Vexmoor are still unclaimed; she may travel with the party to Neverwinter to redeem them — or demand payment from Darius himself.

QUOTES

Gold burns. Writs rot. Revenge keeps
The sea took my home. So I’ll build a bow big enough to drown it back
You can pray for peace or for precision. Only one answers.