Arcael

Arcael is an NPC Wizard of High Sorcery and Knight of Takhisis from the world of Krynn in the Dragonlance setting.

Krynn

Qualinesti

Arcael was born in the city of Qualinost, half of a pair of fraternal twins. Her father was a minor Wizard of the White Robes with an overinflated opinion of himself; her mother was a Ranger who spent more time patrolling the borders of the kingdom than she did with her family once the children were weened. Arcael was closer to her twin brother Valael than either of them was to their parents, but her brother's health was weak and he started displaying signs of a recurring lung disease around his twentieth birthday.

Against all reason and the advice of several healers, the twins' father strove to confine his son to the house, demanding that he start his studies of arcane magic, instead of engaging in exercizes in the fresh air that might have improved his health. When Arcael asked him to teach her as well - in part out of a genuine interest in magic and in part because she wanted to help her brother - her father rebuffed her, saying she lacked the proper temperament and tried to apprentice her to the city's Ranger squad. In truth, this was a snub because Arcael closely resembled her mother where their looks were concerned, and her father resented the fact that his wife had more or less abandoned him to raise their children when he had expected that to be her role in the marriage.

The twins decided to defy their father's wishes. Arcael would sneak Valael out of the house so he could spend time outside and clear the dust of their father's library from his lungs. Valael would instruct Arcael in the basics of arcane magic out of his own instruction books. They continued to do so right up to the eruption of the War of the Lance. When Qualinost itself came under attack, the twins' mother had already abandoned her post and family for a new lover; a fellow Ranger. The twins fled their homeland with a group of refugees that included their father, only to come under attack in the woods.

While their father dithered and Valael was wracked by a severe asthma attack, Arcael skillfully blended Enchantment and Illusion to make the enemy troops attach each other, saving the band of refugees. Instead of congratulating his daughter on her level of skill, her father exploded in fury, disowning Arcael on the spot for defying his wishes, and named her a Dark Elf for using magic associated with the Orders of the Red and Black Robes. The refugees forced Arcael to go her own way, over her brother Valael's wheezed objections. The young Elfmaid was on her own in a world gone to war.

Traven

Arcael made her way through the war-torn Krynn, and found an established Wizard of High Sorcery, who was willing to take her in as an apprentice and hone her talent so she could eventually take the Test of High Sorcery at the Tower of Wayreth. While this might seem like a good thing, the Wizard in question was the insane Traven, who saw her not as a pupil, but as a possible accomplice in his blasphemous research into channeling, manipulating and creating life. He fed her anger and resentment towards her father and the people who exiled her, as well as her concern for her brother Valael's health, and directed her interest towards the field of Necromancy as it allowed for the manipulating of life and death energies.

Arcael felt drawn to what her new master suggested, but was initially hesitant to plunge into a field of study that belonged to the Order of the Black Robes; joining that Order would forever make her an exile of Elven lands on Krynn. The Elfmaid meditated on the issue and had a vision of the three gods of magic. Solinari offered her wisdom and the power to defend; Lunitari offered her balance and the power to change; Nuitari offered her power and control. After everything that had happened to her up to that point, Arcael was swayed and chose Nuitari, consigning herself to darkness.