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Saerina
Character Sheet
Identity
- Full Name: Saerina Duskwind
- Family Name: Duskwind
Vitals
- Condition: Undead
- Undead Type: Darkfallen
Appearance
- Gender: Female
- Apparent Age: Adult
- Height: Tall
- Build: Slender
- Hair: White
- Eyes: Violet
- Skin: Pale
Overview
Saerina Duskwind is a high elf Darkfallen assassin who serves the Alliance through Morrivar Company. Duskwind is the Thalassian family name she carried in life, long before undeath, Sylvanas, or the profession that followed. She remains undead, and the damage death has done to her emotional life cannot be undone merely by time or love.
Darkfallen Assassin
Saerina is a corporeal, banshee-like Darkfallen rather than a permanently incorporeal banshee. She can dissolve partly into spectral smoke, move with unnatural speed, fly for short distances, unleash a banshee wail, and strike with death and Maw-infused power. She also employs lesser bindings and soul-affecting methods suited to assassination. Some of this power arises from the same source behind Sylvanas’s later abilities, though Saerina is far less powerful.
Sylvanas and Defection
Saerina once believed in Sylvanas and served as one of her elite assassins. The massacre at the Gathering in Arathi was the first serious break in that faith, though she tried at first to justify it. During the crisis around Saurfang, being sent after him forced her to recognize why Sylvanas had dispatched an assassin rather than a peaceful retriever. When lesser assassins attacked Saurfang, Saerina neither aided them nor openly joined him. Letting him survive was her first failure of loyalty, not yet an act of open rebellion.
After the Shadowlands, she tried to find a place among the reformed Forsaken. Eventually she understood that even an honorable version of her old life as a hidden state assassin was no longer a life she could inhabit. She gave the new leadership intelligence on loyalists, networks, operations, and Sylvanas’s contingencies before leaving Horde service without expulsion or a traitor’s brand.
Cairden and Morrivar Company
Cairden admitted Saerina to Morrivar Company only after a long period of scrutiny, cooperation, and provisional service. He had every reason to distrust an undead former Horde agent, Sylvanas’s former assassin, a Maw-altered professional deceiver. Only after Saerina demonstrated honesty, control, dependable obedience, and a willingness to accept judgment did he support her place in the Alliance.
Their love began after that trust was established. It was genuine, but it could not restore the full reciprocity of a living relationship. Saerina could love through loyalty, trust, protectiveness, possessiveness, devotion, and rare emotional breakthroughs, but could not wholly receive or answer Cairden’s living, Lightforged love. They eventually ceased being lovers while remaining deeply bound.
Zayla and the Long Aftermath
Zayla became Saerina’s sister in all but blood. Together with Cairden, they searched for a way to restore Saerina without destroying, replacing, or fundamentally changing her. No acceptable method was found. Across the following centuries, Saerina remains Cairden’s dedicated subordinate and Zayla’s sister, even as the immediate emotional meaning of those bonds gradually erodes into something foundational to her identity. Brief returns of clarity make the loss sharper, not easier.
Relationships
Affiliations
- Forsaken - former people and service
- Horde - former
- Morrivar Company - current home
- Alliance - current
Timeline
- Raised or existed originally as a high elf before undeath.
- Became Darkfallen and remained corporeal after death.
- Was personally elevated or altered as one of Sylvanas Windrunner’s elite agents; the exact procedure remains undefined.
- Served Sylvanas as a genuine believer and elite assassin.
- Experienced the Gathering in Arathi as the first major rupture in her loyalty, though she initially rationalized the massacre.
- Was sent after Saurfang during the Fourth War and recognized that Sylvanas had chosen an assassin rather than a peaceful retriever.
- Stood aside or vanished when lesser assassins attacked Saurfang, allowing him to defeat them himself.
- Reluctantly joined the movement against Sylvanas and remained involved through the events surrounding Sylvanas and the Shadowlands.
- Tried to find a place in the reformed Forsaken order after the Shadowlands.
- Provided the new Forsaken leadership with intelligence on loyalists, networks, operations, and contingencies before formally leaving Horde service.
- Underwent scrutiny, cooperation, and provisional service before Cairden accepted her into Morrivar Company and supported her place in the Alliance.
- Fell in love with Cairden only after that trust was established.
- Participated with Cairden and Zayla in an unsuccessful search for a way to restore her without destroying, replacing, or fundamentally changing her.
- Ended the romantic relationship with Cairden while remaining his fiercely loyal subordinate.
- Remained close to Zayla as a sister and continued serving Cairden across the centuries.
Hooks
- Define the exact means by which Sylvanas elevated or altered Saerina without locking it down prematurely.
- Preserve Saerina as undead rather than making her another restoration-to-life case.
- Determine the limits of her Maw-infused assassination powers.
- Explore how she processes the Gathering, Saurfang, and her first failure of loyalty.
- Clarify how much the reformed Forsaken know of the intelligence she provided before leaving.
- Her grief after losing Cairden is disturbed by undeath: flashes of almost living anguish fade back into numb calm.
- Over centuries, she may remember that she loved Cairden and that Zayla searched for a cure while losing the emotional immediacy of what those facts meant.
- Her simplest future truth may become that Cairden is her lord and Zayla is her sister, even when she can no longer feel the whole history behind those words.
Notes
- Saerina stands in for Maz’dinah during the Argent Tournament.