Nyriel Shadeleat - Grave Domain Cleric

Name: Nyriel Shadeleat
Race: Half-Elf
Role/Class: Cleric Level 9 (Grave Domain)
Appearance: Nyriel Shadeleat carries the solemn stillness of a mausoleum lantern. Slightly taller than the average human, with the lean grace of their elven heritage, they move with measured, deliberate steps that never seem to startle the quiet around them. Their skin is a cool, pale ash tone with a faint pearly sheen, as if moonlight has soaked into it. Long, straight hair the color of dark wine falls to mid-back; some days it’s braided close, other days loose and wind-tousled, adorned with simple bone and silver beads. Their features are androgynous—sharp cheekbones, straight nose, full mouth—with eyes like clouded amethyst that catch the glimmer of any nearby spirit-light.

They favor layered garments in shades of charcoal, deep violet, and muted bone-white: a long, sleeved tunic under a sleeveless over-robe, belted snugly at the waist. Fine chain gleams discreetly beneath the cloth, and a hooded mantle drapes across their shoulders for rain and ritual alike. Their holy symbol—a flat, oval stone etched with a closed eye and encircled by a ring of tiny grave-mark runes—hangs at their throat. Silver threads and embroidery trace subtle motifs of falling leaves and waning moons along cuffs and hems. Their hands are calloused but steady, stained at the fingertips with herb-dyes and grave-dirt in equal measure.

Backstory

Nyriel was born to an elven historian and a human dusk-priest who both believed that memory is a sacred act. They grew up among scrolls and funerary tapestries, listening to stories of long-vanished ancestors and forgotten wars while helping tend candles at a small city ossuary. As a child, Nyriel never feared skulls or bones; they saw them as quiet libraries, shelves of stories waiting to be honored properly.

Their first true calling came during a plague year, when their city’s dead began to outnumber the living’s capacity to grieve. Nyriel watched hurried burials and mass pyres, saw names left unspoken in the rush to survive, and felt something inside them twist. They began sneaking back to the burial grounds at night, whispering the names they’d seen on hastily carved markers, tracing sigils over mounds, and asking the gods of twilight and endings to forgive the living for being overwhelmed.

It was during one of those midnight walks that they first felt the presence that would shape their path: not a voice, but a weight in the air, a coolness around their fingers as they closed a stranger’s eyes. A sense of approval, quiet and stern. The next morning, they woke with the ability to see—a little more clearly than most—where death was near and when the veil between worlds was thinnest.

Years later, word reached them of a ruined elven site deep in the Ardent Woods: a place of shattered towers, sunken halls, and restless spirits tied more to memory than malice. Scholars called it a trove. Treasure-hunters called it ripe. Locals called it unlucky. Nyriel heard something else in those stories: a chorus of neglected dead, their stories about to be turned into currency.

They journeyed through the Woods, drawn by visions of moss-covered stones and whispering crypts. Near the crumbling remains of an ancient elven settlement—now just broken arches and half-buried vaults—they found what they were looking for: a place where grief had gone unwitnessed for too long. Nyriel raised a small shrine at the edge of the ruins, lit its first candles, and began the patient work of disentangling restless ghosts from their grievances.

Now, they serve as both warden and guide. They tend the dead with meticulous care, help the occasional spirit let go, and warn the living—sometimes gently, sometimes with cold steel—away from tombs better left undisturbed. They know that not every spirit should pass on; some are needed as memories and warnings. But grave-robbing, necromancy, and careless vandalism of the ruins? Those, Nyriel will oppose with all the calm fury of the grave itself.