<div class="floatleft">(http://i.imgur.com/2rkNJ.jpg)</div><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Shiloh, Hornsaw Elven Monk (http://plothook.net/RPG/profiler/view.php?id=8786)</span></strong><br/><br/>Shiloh's tribe of elves suffers the haunting and terror of the taint of the Hornsaw forest.  Her earliest memories are of dread and lingering pain, of waking from inexplicable nightmares that were slow to fade.  Her family, like so many others, lost the ability or will to console her by the time she was old enough to speak.  So she and her bretheren watched the slow collapse of their people; warriors lost to futile quests, relics stolen in raids by the corrupt titanspawn, broken survivors of slain families wandering, solitary and dazed, into the forest mist to never be seen again.  She has survived atrocity.<br/><br/>As an adolescent, she and a handful of other youth from her tribe were captured by titanspawn.  She spent seven days in a wooden cage, suffering torment and misuse at the hands of sadistic beasts, and was forced to participate in dire depravity simply to survive.  By chance or fate, the nomadic titanspawn happened into grounds patrolled by a remote monastic order and were crushed by the warriors.  when Shiloh was recovered from their camp, she was the sole survivor.<br/><br/>They cared for the traumatized elven girl through a semi-catatonic state.  She didn't speak for six months, remaining silent except when she screamed herself awake at night.  The monks shared their teachings with her, caring for and protecting her for years, until she regained a measure of control.<br/><br/>Until her adulthood, she trained among the monks, joining their order.  Even had she been able to locate her people, she doubted her ability to face them and relate what she had experienced.  Their paranoia of the titans' taint would most certainly have turned them against her.<br/><br/>She would have been happy, though, to stay among the order, if the Calastian Empire and the Inquisition had not struck the order in tandem.  The Inquisition distrusted their mystical nature, harrassing the peace-abiding monks who, until now, had vowed that their enemy would never be their fellow man.  The Calastian Empire annexed their grounds and protectorates, stationing soldiers in their backyard to seize the few resources in the area.  Finally, when titanspawn did launch a successful attack against the Calastian fortifications, the inquisition blamed the monks and arrested their elders.  There was a battle, though many of the order refused to participate, and Shiloh was among those imprisoned for treason when she chose to fight.<br/><br/>She fled custody, successfully managing to smuggle herself to the Sweltering Plains and, eventually, to Shelzar.  Despite her training, she still suffers from nightmares, and she is fully aware of the creeping madness that seems to be edging in among these city-dwelling people.  Disillusioned by the fate of her order, she is losing her faith in their methods and, though she still follows the codes of their law, she wants change in the world.  She works in Shelzar in the hopes of gathering allies, weapons, and means to aid in the fall of the Calastian empire.