“Irulan Silverclaw, daughter of the learned druid Drego, son of Melak ‘the Broken,’ son of Rave of the Silver Quill, son of Bennin, possibly the greatest shifter hero in the history of Khorvaire. To what do I owe this honor?”
Irulan’s nose twitched. He knew exactly why she was here.
He was baiting her.
What choice did she have? She bit.
— from Legacy of Wolves
Irulan and her younger brother Javi grew up in the town of Greenheart deep within the Eldeen Reaches. Their father, Drego, was a highly respected member of the Wardens of the Wood and a noted scholar whose knowledge of the twelve moons made him much sought after by fellow druids, moonspeakers, artificers and others. That is, until he led an expedition into the depths below the Icehorn Mountains that ended in disaster. Drego, his wife Merrin, and a small party of druids and rangers set out in Therendor 989 YK to study a Gatekeeper artifact that had been found in the caverns and was thought to be linked to one of the moons. Drego returned months later, alone, near death and half-mad. Of the mission, he would say only that the artifact had been destroyed. Of Merrin and the others who had accompanied him, the broken shifter would never speak, and he was widely assumed to be the only survivor of the ill-fated expedition.
After a long, difficult recovery, Drego forsook his druidic path and converted to the Silver Flame. In an effort to break through her father’s lingering madness, Irulan converted as well, hoping that the shared belief might bring a return of the closeness they’d known before he had left for the mountains. But whatever had happened to Drego below the Icehorns had left its mark, and he was unreachable. He became a virtual hermit, spending all his waking hours in prayer and never leaving the house. Support of the family fell to the young, inexperienced Irulan.
Because Greenheart was a religious community with no marketplace or other source of employment, Irulan moved the family to the hamlet of Black Oak outside of Varna. There, she devoted herself to mastery of woodcraft and soon became adept at foraging in the Towering Woods. Despite the tenets of her newfound religion, Irulan quickly discovered that the black market in Varna paid more for certain hard-to-acquire items than she could earn in a year of trapping and trading. Irulan’s path might have taken a dark turn at that point if she had not been caught poaching by Dalin d’Vadalis. Dalin saw potential in the young ranger, and instead of turning her over to the Wardens, he took her under his wing and soon had her scouting the Twilight Demesne and even the Gloaming for rare animals crossing over from other planes that he could train and sell.
Irulan might well have stayed in the employ of House d’Vadalis forever if Drego’s past had not come searching for him. On a cold night in Vult 992 YK, Irulan returned home from hunting to find her father battling an aberration from the pits of Khyber. Half-living and half-dead, the horrible creature – a dolghast – had tracked her father from the Icehorn caverns, bent on some unfathomable purpose. With the aid of neighbors alerted by the noise, the dolghast was defeated, but not before it killed Drego and several other villagers.
Now solely responsible for her younger brother, and no longer entirely welcome in Black Oak, Irulan decided to leave the Reaches. On the advice of Dalin d’Vadalis, she traveled to Aruldusk in Thrane, hoping to find employment at the House d’Vadalis enclave located on the shores of Lake Arul. Unfortunately, her tendency to speak her mind did not endear her to the enclave’s leader, Pherud, and she was forced to seek work elsewhere.
Irulan and Javi soon found themselves living at a semi-permanent shifter encampment that had sprung up on the outskirts of Aruldusk after the razing of Shadukar. Just one more pair of orphans in a camp full of refugees, the two quickly made a place for themselves in the small community, where they lived in relative peace until that fateful night in Therendor 998 YK when a noble’s throat was torn out in a back alley of Aruldusk and Javi was found, covered in blood, only a few streets away.
Irulan is a razorclaw shifter with dark brown eyes and long reddish-brown hair that she wears in multiple looping totem braids. She typically wears a sleeveless tunic and long pants in nondescript shades of brown and green. While she carries a longsword, she prefers to use either her bow or her claws, depending on the proximity of her enemy. The third claw on her left hand is tipped in silver, a family tradition that dates back to her illustrious ancestor, Bennin Silverclaw.
© 2007 Wizards of the Coast