The herbalists and naturalists of the Sylvan are the envy of the world and, in her time, Yncensa Grail-bearer was the greatest. Her research in botany, toxicology, and medicine left legacies that persist to this day. No mere academic, she was a warrior who battled to protect the Mistwood’s natural sanctity against forces that would subvert and exploit its flora.
In the Age of Treachery, Demonspawn infiltrated the Heart Tree and awakened a seed of evil planted there a thousand years prior by Siroth, when he first turned against the mortal world. So began the Sylvan Corruption: a fell mutation that spread throughout the Heart Tree and into the surrounding forest. The befoulment seeped into the Rhythm as well, driving Sylvan mad and pitting kin against kin, Fae patrons against Elven clients, villages against villages. Plants and animals taken by the Corruption were twisted into violent mutants, exaggerating their traits for lethality above all else. The Tree also called many of these creatures toward it and absorbed them, thereby ‘learning’ their characteristics. It then used this repertoire of fangs, claws, thorns, and poisons to produce myriad monstrous hybrids.
Arborists and Watchers came across these sinister specimens with growing frequency and Yncensa already a noted expert in plants and herbs — was one of the first to realize that no known natural disease or parasite could be responsible. It was no less than Siroth’s Darkness and when it became clear that the Heart Tree had fallen to their ancient foe, the Sylvan sprang into desperate action. Yncensa assumed a place of leadership as the fight against the Corruption gathered momentum and urgency. She was wise in nature’s ways and eloquent in swaying doubters and rallying the believers.
Decades of war raged on as the bubble of Corruption grew and new magic-born horrors emerged from the Heart Tree’s festering boughs. When not weaving spells of purification and eradication upon the battlefield, Yncensa worked obsessively with samples of Corrupted plant and animal tissue, seeking to better understand the Sylvan’s enemy. This exhausting time was when she first used her famous grail – a precision alchemical magi-vessel carved from rare iron-ash wood, laced with enchantments and crafted with utmost precision. Its surface was slick and clean, blessed to never absorb a single drop of the ichors and toxins placed in it, but to contain and separate them for mixing and distillation. With such an instrument for her research, Yncensa made multiple breakthroughs while spreading no contaminants.
Yncensa learned much of the Corruption and documented hundreds of creatures it spawned. She sought a way to combine her magic and alchemy, to enhance the power and scope of each to help her people overcome the spreading onslaught. At that point in the Corruption, the Sylvan — from their new capital, Nyresa — had received Shadowkin rebels as allies and sent emissaries to the Dwarves of the Skyiron Dominion, begging their assistance. Yncensa travelled to a famed
Dwarven workshop and showed them her enchanted grail, asking if they could improve her design. The Dwarves were intrigued and agreed: after they completed their work, it burned with a magical flame to obviate the need for external heating of the vessel, and could be affixed to Yncensa’s battle staff, the grain of its wood aligning with the weapon’s for full attunement.
Through experimentation and painful trial and error, Yncensa concocted herbal compounds that weakened or purged the Corruption, and with her grail-staff she could channel these natural cleansers into magical bursts of vapor. Yncensa Grail-bearer purged thousands of the spawn of the Corrupted Tree — flame-spewing panther-beetles, acid-mawed tentacled bark-spiders, many-headed needle-bears with massive feet-pincers, and scores more. Thanks to the grail’s eternal cleanliness, it was a simple matter for Yncensa to extract the Corruption-killing compounds and replace them with healing herbs from her many pouches and vials when necessary. She could turn a single dose into a stream of rejuvenating energy, capable of restoring multiple Sylvan warriors to full fighting effectiveness simultaneously. She needed her powers to heal herself also, for continued exposure to the Corruption, the wounds she suffered, and the effects of failed experiments all took their toll.
With fire and steel, the Nyresan coalition of Sylvan, Skyiron Dwarves, and Shadowkin rebels pushed back the Corruption and finally burned the Tree of Darkness, ending the nightmare. But Yncensa could not be there for that joyous moment, for her years of ceaseless toil finally caught up with her. Noxious fumes had damaged her lungs and poisoned her blood, and even with her own genius of thaumaherbology, she could not reverse the decay. Before Yncensa could wither and die, however, the Arbiter rescued her from her sick-bed and encased her within a Shard. Now, Teleria’s greatest herbalist lives on to offer aid and advice to Teleria’s ancient guardian.
