User:Joshmaul/Valya Tiren

"'Tell your moon goddess to prepare for blood.'"
 * - Captain Valya Tiren

Valya Tiren is a nighthuntress of Suramar. Formerly the devoted protector of Lord Randarel of House Vendross, she put her life on the line numerous times for her master during the Nightfallen rebellion, and continued to be his most loyal guardian after the Nightborne aligned with the Horde. She is considerably less sympathetic about the burning of Teldrassil than Lord Randarel, believing the night elves' high priestess, Tyrande Whisperwind - a native of Suramar - to be a traitor to her people. This led to friction between herself and Lord Randarel; when he discovered that she had aided the Forsaken in their "mindless slaughter" of the night elves in Darkshore despite his expressly forbidding it, he reluctantly banished his now-former captain from Suramar on pain of death, telling her to go and die for the mad Warchief as she saw fit.

Biography
Valya Tiren had been the captain of the guard for House Vendross of Suramar since the War of the Ancients, though the majority of that period has been spent contained within the shield erected by Grand Magistrix Elisande. When the shield came down and Elisande aligned Suramar with the Burning Legion - the same Legion she had hidden from during the War of the Ancients - Tiren was against it, though not nearly as vocally as her master, Lord Randarel Vendross. As Elisande's reign became increasingly more authoritarian and cruel, Randarel convinced Tiren to denounce him to Elisande's "goons" so that she would survive the war to come, and to hide his children, Erdanel and Telisa, somewhere in Suramar City. Reluctantly, the captain agreed, but was haunted by the after-effects; Randarel was exiled to the wilds to wither away, but not before Elisande had his wife, the Lady Elerina, beheaded in front of him.

When First Arcanist Thalyssra, herself exiled for her opposition to Elisande, joined with the "outlanders" from the floating city of Dalaran to overthrow the Grand Magistrix, Tiren eagerly offered her aid to the cause, becoming an operative for the Nightfallen rebellion inside Suramar. Joining up with the Unseen Path, the esteemed order of Azerothian hunters, she eventually befriended a pair of "fellow captains" - a gnome named Englebert Blunderwitz, a veteran from the Gnomeregan Militia, and a pandaren from the Wandering Isle named Lazhna Trueflight, who had once served a noble house from Silvermoon. The rebellion was able to find an alternative to the Nightwell in the form of the arcan'dor in Shal'Aran, and Tiren personally gave the now-Nightfallen Lord Randarel a precious fruit from the tree, which restored him to his former self. Together, they participated in the siege of the Nighthold and avenged Elerina's death by taking down her executioner, Spellfencer Relsyn.

After the death of Elisande and her Legion ally, Gul'dan, Lord Randarel and Captain Tiren joined with Thalyssra and the other Nightborne to align Suramar with their allies in Silvermoon, and with the Horde to which they belonged. However, Randarel questions the tactics used by the Warchief, Sylvanas Windrunner, in battle. Captain Tiren, however, gladly joined the battle against the "hypocrites" led by Tyrande Whisperwind, a Suramar native who had no love or loyalty for her former homeland; she joined the fight against Tyrande and her "zealots", the Army of the Black Moon, in Darkshore without any hesitation. Randarel was outraged, especially as this came on the heels of news that his friend and ally Menarian Talashar, a Magister of Silvermoon, had been sentenced to death by the Forsaken-dominated regime in Orgrimmar for questioning the atrocities committed by Sylvanas, who he increasingly began to call the "Lich Queen". Restraining himself from killing her on the spot only by her long service, Randarel banished his former guard captain from Suramar on pain of death, telling her to go and die for her Warchief as she saw fit. Seeking to reassure the suspicious Forsaken of her loyalty, she would later lead the Forsaken into the Vendross estate, where Randarel was arrested by Father Shankolin Blightpath for harboring the "traitor" Talashar. Before being taken away, Randarel wrenched the white diamond pendant from around her neck and swore to end her life if he survived Sylvanas' punishment.

Deeply troubled by the encounter, Tiren left her "old things" behind and retreated to the Trueshot Lodge, the Unseen Path's headquarters nestled in the western edge of Highmountain. There, she encountered Captain Blunderwitz, himself "taking a break" from work in the field. Despite being on opposite sides of a particularly bloody war, she found herself more closely allied with her supposed enemy than with the Horde her people were joined with. When she returned, she had changed rather dramatically...