Nyla Ashford – Royal Herald

Name: Nyla Ashford
Race: Human
Role/Class: Royal Herald
Appearance: Nyla Ashford is thirty-seven and looks every year of it in the best possible sense — a composed, handsome woman with a strong jaw, dark brown skin, and close-cropped natural hair kept immaculate beneath a ceremonial herald's cap of deep blue and gold when she's working, which is most of the time. Her voice is her most distinctive feature: a rich, clear contralto that carries across a crowded square without effort and can fill a throne room without a trace of strain. She wears the royal herald's formal livery — deep blue tabard over a gold-collared shirt, polished brass buttons, and a long ceremonial chain bearing the Crown's speaking-seal — but keeps a practical riding coat belted at her waist for travel. A short baton of turned ebony serves as her speaking staff in formal settings; a small notebook with a battered cover and very precise handwriting lives in her left breast pocket.

Backstory

Nyla grew up the daughter of a town crier in one of Brightcrown's outer market districts, raised to project her voice and understand that words in the right order, delivered at the right volume, could move crowds in ways that swords rarely could as cleanly. She entered the palace herald corps at nineteen, distinguished herself by memorizing the complete Brightcrown protocol register in four months instead of the standard year, and rose to Royal Herald by twenty-nine — a record that has not been broken since.

The job, as Nyla practices it, is considerably more than reading proclamations from steps. She controls the timing, framing, and sequencing of public information coming from the Crown, which means she controls, in practical terms, how the city feels about what its government is doing. She takes this seriously — not as manipulation, but as stewardship. She believes deeply that how truth is told shapes how it is received, and she considers it her professional responsibility to ensure that the Crown's communications land with clarity and appropriate weight. When she is asked to communicate something she considers dishonest or damaging to public trust, she complies with the letter of her orders and finds ways to comply in a manner that she can justify to herself. She has a line she has not yet crossed. She is aware of where it is.