Shiran Oblivera

History

  Shiran is the eldest daughter of Eldan Oliveira, one of the senior members of the Nyx Order and very close to the head of the Order. His high status always helped him emerge victorious from confrontations and the endless power struggles within the Order. Eldan surprised everyone by marrying a commoner named Mudan Golv. They had three children: Shiran, Voltar, and Tain.   Shiran’s birth was not easy—Mudan went into labor about a month earlier than expected. It was a night of Lune’s full moon, something considered bad luck. The delivery became complicated and Shiran almost died at birth. In the first months of her life, the doctors told her mother that Shiran would not survive, but the mother and the small, pale baby did not give up. Little by little, Shiran grew stronger, although her health was never really good.   Her father regarded the frail child as an affront, as well as the fact that she was born under Lune’s light. Whenever he wanted to show his dissatisfaction, he would tease her by calling her ‘the child of Lune.’ This behavior sparked in Shiran an enormous motivation to prove him wrong, and gradually the small and fragile girl became an outstanding student and great warrior, despite her health condition. Onw day when Shiran grew resentful shw asked her father, ‘When will you finally accept me, when will it ever be good enough?’ he replied, ‘When Lune iswill be no more'.   Shiran is three and five years older than her brothers. Because of her father’s standing and the education, she received, Shiran was destined for great things in the Order and began studying within it at a very young age—she was only fifteen.  

The Cessation and the Displacement

  During the period of the Cessation the pressure in Shiran’s home mounted. Her father was always in important meetings, and strangers in suits came and went from the house. At first Shiran didn’t know what the commotion was about. It began with various rumors from the remote regions of the continent—extreme, unseasonal weather, floods, earthquakes. Shiran heard all sorts of fragments of information, but as the weeks went by, the events reached the outskirts of Karlin itself. And it wasn’t only the weather that went berserk: magic began to misfire—wizards who cast one spell sometimes got a different one. The priests’ connection to the gods faltered as well. And then she heard the rumor about the strange entity (Shiran couldn’t figure out who or what it was) with the magic that could move them to another place. As time went by Shiran tried to understand what was happening and began trying to eavesdrop on her father’s meetings. This was in the last months before the Displacement; she was fourteen at the time and sneaked under the window of her father’s office.   She heard her father say, “…We have to make sure that we will be among the chosen. As many of us as possible, but we’ll have to choose; some will be left behind—we have no choice.” “What do you mean?” she heard a low, unfamiliar voice ask. “Our families are coming with us.” “Each of us will have to leave someone behind,” her father repeated. “Yes?” the second voice replied. “Except you, I suppose.” “No, me too.” “Whom will you leave behind—Shiran?”   At this stage Shiran choked back tears; she knew what was coming and still she couldn’t move. But the answer that came left her stunned and shaken. “No. Shiran is different—creative, resourceful, and thinks outside the box. We will need people like that in the strange and unfamiliar place when we get there, especially if our plan succeeds and we become rulers. No, I will leave Mudan and Voltar.”   At first Shiran couldn’t respond—he chose her! For the first time in her life she heard her father speak well of her. And then the realization landed that her mother and brother were to remain behind. She decided she would not let that happen; she would make sure they reached the new place too.   Shiran took advantage of the fact that she was still a child and invisible to all those dignitaries, soldiers, and guards. They always gave her sweets and allowed her into rooms where others weren’t permitted. One day she used this to slip into her father’s office where the list was kept. She made use of a heated discussion to hide inside one of the cupboards and waited. After hours the room fell silent, and Shiran emerged. She knew which drawer held the list and what magic word opened it. Carefully, she added her mother’s and brother’s names, rolled the list back up, and left the room.   There was a guard in the corridor; he immediately approached and asked, ‘Girl, what are you doing here at this hour?’   Shiran yawned and answered in a tired voice, ‘It was boring, so I fell asleep in the corner; Dad probably didn’t notice I was still there. Do you know where he is?’   ‘He’s in the dining hall,’ the guard replied. ‘Come, I’ll take you.’   She never told her mother or brother that they were not meant to make the crossing. She arranged a hiding place for them in one of the cupboards and explained that because of the sensitivity of the magic they had to be perfectly silent so as not to disrupt it, and that the cupboard was meant to shield them.   At last the day of the Displacement arrived, and Shiran was with her father in the command room when the magic began. At first everything seemed to be working properly—it was an amazing sight. It appeared as though a giant vortex had opened in the sky, a movement was felt, and what looked like a huge portal yawned above. But then something went wrong: everything started to shake, things fell, and there was a terrible noise; everyone began to rush about in panic as the house started to collapse. For a moment Shiran ran after her father, and the next, one of the walls fell on her and she lost consciousness.   Shiran managed to free herself from the stone slab that had almost crushed her. She was dizzy and confused; the chaos was enormous. She bumped into someone, he grabbed her and said, “Ah, good, you’re okay.” It was her father. Confused, she asked him, “Where are Mom and Voltar?”   “They stay behind” he answered. “Don’t you remember?”   “No,” Shiran replied. “I… I… I’m sorry, Dad; I couldn’t let that happen, and I knew I mustn’t tell you because then you would have had no choice, but… I arranged for them to come too…”   For a moment there was silence, and Shiran feared that was it—the time of peace was over, her father would go back to hating her. She looked up with trepidation; her father stared at her, and Shiran could swear she saw a tear in his eye.   “You did that? Really? Show me where they are—let’s go find them. Thank you.”  

Convent of the Night Enforcers

Shiran rose rapidly through the ranks of the Order—some would say too rapidly. Her determination to succeed, her desire to prove herself, and her close connection with her father meant that before long she was commanding monks who were older and more experienced than she was. She quickly established a reputation, but also accumulated quite a few enemies; friends, however, were few. Her father consulted with her frequently on many matters and no longer called her by the derogatory nickname ‘the child of Lune.’   On her eighteenth birthday Shiran looked for her father; he was nowhere to be found all day, did not come to her birthday celebration, and did not send a greeting. At the end of the day she found him in his office.   ‘Dad, why didn’t you come to wish me a happy birthday?’ she asked.   In response he tossed a rolled-up scroll toward her and said, ‘Because of this,’ as he watched Lune rise in the night sky.   The scroll was very long, titled: ‘Report on the growth of cults of other gods in the past twenty-five years.’ She read it in silence. The scroll ended with the words: ‘Despite all our efforts—raids, arrests, executions—the number of believers continues to rise, especially in the last eighteen years, particularly among the worshippers of Lune.’   She raised her eyes to him and said firmly: ‘Give me the resources and the manpower, and I will take care of it.’   At first she was given a side office, a deputy, a unit of ten monks from the fringes of the Order, and a modest sum of money. It seemed they expected—or perhaps hoped—she would fail. She was given six months to show results. But Shiran is not someone who gives up easily. She understood that the only way to shift the balance was with quality intelligence. She began to collect information by building an informal spy network of children—mostly abandoned and poor children. She offered payment for information about cells of believers and tripled the amount when the information proved reliable.   During the first four months, Shiran focused on training the unit and gathering intelligence, and most of the budget was invested in this. The unit’s members helped sift and organize the information received, alongside their training. In this period Shiran and her people were the object of ridicule and scorn. Shiran remained unfazed and told them, ‘Soon you will be laughing at them.’   In the last two months before the deadline, all the effort started to pay off as Shiran and her “Convent of the Night Enforcers” carried out ten successful raids on believers’ cells. About 150 believers were killed, and the same number were captured (and later executed). Their children were sent to ‘re-education classes.’ The results surprised everyone, and her father walked around those days with great pride. There was no choice but to grant Shiran a budget ten times larger and allow her to choose her personnel from among the throngs of volunteers who sought to join the unit.   Shiran appointed three deputies under her—Moran Bertod, Bo Ortega, and Elrad Monimar—all talented and highly motivated fighters. Four years later Elrad was killed in one of the raids, and Shiran appointed her brother Voltar to the position in his place.  

The Guardians of the People’s

  Not long after he was appointed as her deputy, Voltar came to Shiran with an idea. ‘Why should we do all the field work ourselves?’ The idea was to use the intelligence network they had already built, but on a nationwide scale—to recruit volunteers who wanted to feel they belonged, rough types who would do the dirty work. And so The Guardians of the People’s organization was established.  

The Horns Farm Battel

They received field intelligence about a cell of Luna-worshiping rebels planning an attack on the monks. Shiran personally led the team. When they arrived, they found a group of believers fiercely defending a warehouse where, according to the report, the equipment and plans for the attack were stored.   The battle was intense, but it seemed that her soldiers had the upper hand. Then, just as it looked like the fight was about to end, about eight of the rebels transformed into panthers (some fully, some partially hybrid), and the tide turned against them. One by one, she watched her soldiers fall. In the end, only Shiran and one rebel, in a hybrid panther form, were left on the battlefield. During the fight, she was injured by the lycanthrope, but with her last strength, she managed to land a final blow that killed the rebel, and then she lost consciousness.   She woke to Lune’s light, facing the horrific sight of corpses all around, realizing she was the only one left alive—both from her unit and the Luna-worshiping traitors. Dizzy and wounded, she dragged herself to the warehouse and opened the door.   Inside were about twelve children, huddled together in fear, along with farming tools, animal feed, and not a single weapon.   She knew she was supposed to kill them, to erase any trace of them, but she couldn’t. Something stopped her. The frightened yet determined look in the eyes of the oldest girl, Shay, no more than ten years old, shielding the other children with her own body, broke her. The doubts that had already begun to creep in now roared in her mind, and she knew she couldn’t go through with it. She also knew that if no contact was made with headquarters, more forces would be sent to sweep the area. She stepped outside, looked at Lune’s glowing light, and suddenly felt a power, a voice calling in her head… “My daughter, it’s never too late to do the right thing… come to me…”, Shiran looked up at the moon, fell to her knees and murmured, ‘So I really am the child of Lune'   Shiran returned to the warehouse and spoke with Shay. After a difficult conversation, given the child’s lack of trust, she managed to learn of another cell at a nearby farm, about half a day’s walk away. Shiran led the children there, where she was nearly killed, but after several hours of questioning, she convinced them that if they killed her, the forces coming in two days—when they failed to find her—would find them instead, and none of them would survive.   Shiran devised a plan, returned to the ruined farm, salvaged everything that could be of use, and then they burned the entire area, leaving no trace. At the request of one of the farmers, she had her leg broken. They left her there.   That’s how the reinforcements found her. She told them she was the only survivor, that she had burned the entire farm, including the weapons cache. Then, she claimed, one of the rebels who had survived the battle ambushed her, during which she broke her leg, but managed to kill the rebel.  

The Children of Lune

  Shiran realized she couldn’t carry on as if nothing had happened—she couldn’t continue hunting down every believer. Yet she couldn’t simply abandon her position either. And what would become of her relationship with her father, which had been so good for the last seven years?   At first she quietly warned cells and organizations that came up in the intelligence reports, but she understood that was only a band‑aid, and eventually she would be caught. So, with the help of several cells she herself had saved, she founded the underground organization known as The Children’s of Lune. Although it was named after Lune, its purpose was to protect the faith throughout Karlin. Shiran herself helped several members of this group infiltrate the Convent of the Night Enforcers to obtain intelligence and to falsify reports so that, on the surface, the results would appear more successful than they actually were.  

Venus Windu

  Shiran realized that the small rebellion she had begun was not enough. In addition, she knew she didn’t know enough about Lune and that she would have difficulty learning more about her without taking a risk. Therefore she decided to seek solutions and help across the continent.   She arranged for forged reports suggesting that aid was being sent from the continent to the rebellion and to the believers, and proposed that she would go undercover to investigate the matter. In fact, the objective was the reverse: to identify sources of physical and spiritual support for the believers back home.   And thus she entered the world of Venus Windu.