Dara Aldora Griffiths Hart was born in the year of the King 1213, which makes her 284 years old when she first arrived in Austernell. She was raised in the northern mountain nation of Endora by her adoptive parents Henry and Elizabeth Griffiths, who claimed they discovered her abandoned as an infant in the woods near their home. She was raised in a quiet, secluded farming community with only a few other families within an hour’s ride by horse. She had a simple and sheltered upbringing under the watch of her very protective parents. As she grew up, her life was much the same as any other adolescent girl, yearning to be an adult, leave home, and find love. She met a boy named Allen Hart who courted her and eventually they were married. Dara had no reason to think there was anything strange about her until the night of her honeymoon.
Dara believed that all little girls had wings because that’s what her parents told her. She was taught that showing or talking about her wings was rude and immodest. But it wasn’t until the night she was married that she discovered to her own shock that her parents had deceived her all along. She discovered that she was a faery, one of the precious few that existed in the world. After her honeymoon, she confronted her father Henry, who admitted that he deceived her for her protection. He informed her that there were other faery far to the southeast in a mystical kingdom named Helesia. She was warned never to go there, for a terrible monster would devour her. In time, she reconciled with her adoptive parents who were already old when she was born. They died when she was thirty years old.
Dara lived a blissful married life on the Hart family farm, working alongside her husband Allen, raising horses and tending an apple orchard. As the years went by, they grew closer together hoping to start a family of their own, although Dara never conceived, nor did she ever grow older. For decades it was a distant worry as Dara continued to love him more, despite the gray hairs and wrinkles he collected. He always told her how lucky he was to have such a beautiful girl. Inevitably, Allen grew old, leaving Dara responsible for the care of both the farm and the man she loved. They savored every day they had together, always hoping they had another decade, another year, another month. His legs and his memory weakened, leaving him confined to his bed in his final weeks until the day she had dreaded finally came.
On December 6th 1297, Allen died in his bed beside her at the age of 84, endlessly repeating that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen before he took his final breath. She buried him and continued to tend the farm alone for the next few years until she realized that all their happy memories together had turned to sadness. She considered starting over, finding another man, and building a brand new life, but the thought of burying another husband was more than she could bear. Instead, she left her farm and walked away from love entirely, vowing that she could never replace the man she lost. Her happy mortal life was over, and her immortal journey had just begun.
In the centuries that followed, Dara gave up the life of a farm girl and left her homeland, hoping to do something with her immortality that would heal the world and the endless sorrow in her heart. She has shared precious little of the journey that forged her into the armored warrior she has become, except the passing mention of a man named Ethan who bid her to put away her plow and take up her father’s sword. After leaving her old life behind, she journeyed with new friends to the nearby cursed kingdom of Camnia where she helped defeat a wicked vampire lord and a necromancer. However, her trauma at the loss of her husband was only deepened by the loss of her friends, killed in the final battle against Lord Aldous Bellerine, shackled with the guilt that her friends died saving her. She has spent centuries without a home to call her own, moving from town to town, hiding her beauty, her face, and most importantly, her wings. Her memories became legends until 200 years after her husband died, when she arrived in Austernell with a chest of gold for the poor.
In order to catch the Killer of Downtown, Dara performed as a dancer at the Sparrowsong theater in Austernell. She managed the impossible with only a single day’s training, replacing the murdered Tonnifer Gillis in front of a sold-out crowd. Despite her fear of the world seeing her wings, she revealed them on the stage to fight off an invasion of vicious ash wolves alongside her friends, saving the notorious South Side Shadow from certain death with a kiss that healed his wounds. She had no idea how she performed either miracle, to dance or heal, until Adalard the Just taught her of the Grace of Titania in her blood. She discovered the power of faery empathy, that when she opened her heart to the people around her, she understood the feelings in their hearts and even their hopes and fears as if they were her own.
But Dara discovered that her greatest weapon was neither her strength nor her sword but a miraculous power fueled by her infinite grief, which she named “The Sting of Sorrow.” Unbeknownst to her, Gracian the Voice of Sorrow had endowed her with the power to expel the hate and wrath from the hearts of both men and beasts with a mystic force fueled by her own pain and sadness. The same force that Gracian used to stop her from her own anger and wrath opened Bax’s heart to Roland’s pleas and paralyzed both the horses and their riders during the Bravos’ attack on Uptown. This mysterious power stopped a brutal battle that would have resulted in hundreds of deaths, leaving another scar the city could not heal. In a daring rescue, Dara fought Alpha Bravo Charlie to save the Duke and his council members who were held hostage, but not before Charlie stabbed her in the back, puncturing her lungs. In a moment of desperation, Bax kissed her, healing her wounds with the Grace of Titania and saving her life, just as she had done for him days ago.
After bringing peace to Austernell, Dara finally confronted Francisco in his own home, discovering that he had made a wish to a dark power to bring him what he desired most…love. It was revealed that the ills that had befallen the city were all a lure to bring her to him in the hopes she would redeem him from his evil. Despite his many evil deeds, Dara chose to believe he could be a good man and told him she could forgive and forget everything he had done. However, despite her willingness to finally choose love, Francisco knew that a happy life with a vampire was an impossible dream, realizing that the world would lose a hero if he took her as his wife. Francisco realized he had misunderstood his wish, now knowing that the stone had brought her to kill him because what he desired most was death. It was in one final act of pity and mercy that Dara ended Francisco’s life with her father’s broken sword, saying goodbye to the one man in all the world who understood her pain. As the city celebrated a brighter future, Dara was lost, dreaming of the past, and wished she could end her own life.
Armor of Sorrow 