Selvira was born into an ancient order of monks and clerics devoted to the research and preservation of life.

From an early age she showed a natural talent for healing and possessed an incredibly strong connection to spirits. The order appreciated her talent and molded Selvira into the ideal priestess. In only a short time she rose through the ranks of the orders to becomes one of its most respected and highest seated members. She was adored, a model of perfection, everything a member of the order should strive to be.

But it wasn't enough.

Selvira remained unsatisfied. She could heal, yes, but people still died. She could peer into the afterlife, even commune spirits, yet death remained an enigma, like something hidden behind a gauze curtain, almost visible but never quite. She had questions, yet years of research and meditation had brought her no closer to the answers than when she'd begun.

Finally, as she stared down at another life she'd failed to save, the solution became clear.

She traveled deep beneath the monastery, into the crumbling catacombs until she found the vaults. Room after room of scrolls and journals, rusting artifacts, specimens in dusty jars, and more, much more, and all of it forbidden. Collected over the centuries since the order's founding days, these were the treasures of necromancers, lich lords, dark priests; every sort of evil the order sought out and destroyed.

Selvira knew somehow that the answers she sought were buried there in one of those dark chambers and so she picked up the first dusty volume, and began to read.

The months passed, and each night Selvira silently made her way to the catacombs, and there she learned and experimented. Dark rituals, blood magic. She summoned demons and dragged answers out of the foulest spirits. She read Drathgul's entire library and even reanimated his corpse so she could learn from the man once called the Grave King.

And if every night she learned, then every day the results showed. Lives that would once have slipped through her fingers she could now save. She was seen as a savior, and was well on her way to being made the head of the order's highest council. The head priest confided that under Selvira's leadership he expected the order, and perhaps the entire world would be led, into a new golden age.

But it wasn't enough.

An idea had begun to blossom in Selvira's mind. An unshakable idea, a grand plot. Everything she'd been taught by the order and everything she'd learned in its dark vaults, it was all leading to the same place. The ultimate goal: to kill death. No matter the means, that was always the end. The lich lords, the necromancers, the monks, the priests: they all wanted the same thing. It became clear, she finally understood. She would slay death itself, and grant the world immortality.

She threw herself back into her research with new fervor. With each passing day she grew excited, and more impatient. She had to find the answer, she had to preserve life by defeating death. It was her purpose, why she'd been born into the order. They would all understand soon. Everything she'd done, it all was leading to this. They would all understand, that the ends, always justified the means. They would understand.

But they didn't.

One night an acolyte new enough in the order to have never seen Selvira saw her pass through the archway that led to the catacombs. Troubled, he ran to guards and told them someone had entered the forbidden vaults. The guards woke the heads of the order and they marched upon the catacombs. They found her there, talking to several reanimated corpses while preparing another for revival, ancient lichs

The order had seen enough. It would be a catastrophe, a blemish they would never recover from. One of their highest, and most respected and beloved members immersed in the darkest of magics. The order, they thought, might even fall. They couldn't allow it. They wouldn't. They had the guards seize her. Kicking and screaming as they dragged her from the vault, she pleaded with them, begged them to understand, told them they could conquer death, that the world could be free.

They didn't listen.

Under the supervision of the order's heads, the guards dragged her further into the catacombs, further than even Selvira had ever traveled. They stopped when they reached a stone circle, bathed in the light of the moon shining through a tiny window high above their heads. There in the middle, Selvira saw, was a stone chopping block with an axe resting against it and glittering in the moonlight.

She began to scream again. They couldn't kill her, they couldn't. Her dreams, her plans. She was going to end death itself, cure the world of its darkest disease, free everyone from the curse they were all born with. Her words fell on deaf ears. The elders had already made up their minds. No one would ever know of this. It would be said that Selvira had died in her sleep of an unknown disease and that the body had been burned to protect them all. She would be remembered just as most the order still thought of her and not as the monster she really was.

One of the guards held her down against the stone block as another hefted the axe. She was crying as she continued to beg them to understand, to see what she'd been trying to do. When she saw the cold stares from throughout the room, she began to squirm and flair wildly. She couldn't die, she mustn't. There was too much at stake, her whole life, everything she'd worked for, it couldn't end like this.

Another guard grabbed her and the two of them held her in place as the one holding the axe looked to the order heads. They nodded and the guard planted his feet and swung the axe over his head. Selvira closed her eyes and the blade sliced through the air and struck the stone floor with a resounding note that echoed through the vast chamber as it shattered.

The order members gasped, several screamed, and one even fainted. The guards fell over themselves as they scrambled back. The chopping block was empty.

***

Selvira waited. Was she dead? Somehow she'd thought it would be a bit more, painful. Had they changed their minds? Slowly, she opened her eyes.

She immediately shut them. It was bright out, far too bright. Squinting against the light, she Selvira glanced around. She was kneeling at the top of a sandy slope, the sun beating down on her. The dry air baked her throat and she coughed as the sand swirled around her. She didn't know where she was, but she certainly knew where she wasn't. The shock of it all coming back almost made her collapse.

They were going to have her executed. Not just going to, they were in the middle of doing it. Suddenly, she was angry. Hatred seethed inside of her and she remembered her last moments in the chamber, when she'd closed her eyes. Her last feelings weren't fear or panic, in her last seconds she felt betrayed, and malice had rolled through her like a wave upon the shore.

How dare they! Those doddering fools, spineless wretches! After everything she'd done, after all she'd sacrificed, they were just going to kill her, toss her aside like some piece of moldy bread? Her, Selvira Jeketh, the only one among the entire order brave enough to delve into the secrets sealed in the catacombs, the only one strong enough to challenge death itself. No, she would not die, not here, on her knees at the whims of cowards. No, she would live.

Selvira stood up, the wind catching her cloak and whipping it behind her. She stared into the distance at the endless sand. No, she would not die, not there and not here. She started off through the sands, steady steps carrying her forward. She still had questions, and it was time to find answers. She would pick up where she left off, and when she finally conquered death, she would find her way back to the order, and she would destroy it.

She would make a tomb of their precious monastery, and it would be the foundation for a new order. She would rebuild it; stronger, braver, immortal.

***

Note: I imagine these events take place several years, at the very least, before Aloise arrives on Starstill. She has likely remained on the plane to study Starstill (both the event and the plane itself). She is interested in Glacinorak and Anjomeddon and the methods they used to stop the rotation of the plane. Her obsession with immortality drives her and she would probably view Moonrise as sort of reverse engineering Starstill. This could potentially further her quest to conquer death and is probably why she would help Aloise.

Or not. Who knows?

Despite the many followers of the revered Elori, few are those who are invited into her warm embrace. That makes it particularily interesting for the even less numerous of people who reject the opportunity of ascension. Truth to be told, it's difficult to say if it was a voluntary choice of Krolf to do such a thing, or if the spark reacted violently to the searing images ravaging through his mind. Either way, the fact remains that he has seen the ugly truth behind the curtains of light, and lived to tell the tale. Of course, such a paradigm shift in lifestyle isn't readily accepted by many followers, perhaps in part because the man telling of it had searing images that ravaged through his mind. Thruthfully, Krolf himself sometimes wonders how correct he is in his display of heresy.

Despite this, Krolf's relationship to Elori isn't filled with hate, but ambivalence. Technically, his relationship to everything is filled with ambivalence, but especially Elori, whom signals the turning point of his life. On one hand, he nearly died, or worse. And that's bad, right? His life handn't amounted to much up until that point, but that was not reason enough to throw it away. However, on the other hand, the bright pictures filled him with newfound curosity of things he knew nothing about. A part of Krolf knows that this isn't a matter he should delve too deep into, but he can't help but want to solve the enigmas that resides in his head.

In his current stroke of genius and/or insanity, he figured he would rise a moon to the surface of the night skies, to rival the radiance of Elori. One could wonder whether it's a declaration of war, a dedicated form of worship, a display of newfound powers, an attempt to solve the puzzles that plagues his stupor, or just a wish to leave a mark on history. The answer is a simple yes.