Claireece D’Amethyst

The Tidebound Healer of Amethyst

Race: Aquatic Elf (with partial human ancestry)
Age: Early 80s (appears mid-30s)
Affiliation: The Village of Amethyst, The Way of One (loosely), former member of the Sapphire Shoals Sea-Elf tribe
Alignment: Neutral Good
Occupation: Healer, Herbalist, Spiritual Mediator

I. Origins — Of Salt and Song

Claireece was born beneath the singing cliffs of the Sapphire Shoals, a stretch of crystalline coastline famed among the Aquatic Elves for its glowing coral groves and tide-echoing caves. Her people lived half above and half below the sea, moving with the currents and moon-tides rather than within stone-built walls.

Her great-grandfather had been human — a ruddy coastal navigator whose vessel wrecked on their reefs generations ago. The union that followed, though long passed into legend, left its trace strong in her bloodline: Claireece’s skin bore the warmth of human complexion; her eyes shimmered between brown and speckled-gray, like sunlight beneath shallow waters. She still bears the gills of her kind subtly along her jawline and of course the unmistakeable elvin ears.

From her mother, Sae’vanna, she inherited the art of Tide Alchemy — healing through seawater distillation, salves made of crushed corals, and the balancing of “tide energies” within the body. From her father, Thalor, she learned her faith and the sacred Lament of the Tides, a prayer to Ao sung over the drowned or lost — a song she would later whisper on the day she learn that she lost both her father and her first husband both to in a terrifying storm.

Sailors whispered what took them was the Kraken, rising from the deep trenches in retribution for overfishing and disregard for the sacred seas.  Claireece’s spirit broke and her mother urged her to journey until the lament ran its course in her soul. She left the sea behind soon after, her grief as heavy as the ocean itself, and her heart set on pilgramage.

II. The Man from the Stone Shore

Her wandering brought her inland, following rivers that braided the land like tributaries of memory. She came to rest in a modest human village nestled in the cove Northwest of Duke’s Rock — the settlement outsiders would later call Amethyst, for the violet tint of its cliffs at dusk.

There she met Yojannathan, a widower and fisherman whose life, too, had been broken by the sea.

Years ago, Yojannathan was first wed to Zaylani, daughter of Koa’Hoku — La’Oss’s own brother-in-law. Their marriage was initially a joyful union, and when Zaylani became pregnant with their first child, the whole village awaited new life with anticipation. But tragedy struck.

While out upon the sea, a sudden squall descended. The waves rose, the winds howled, and in the chaos, Zaylani was cast overboard. Yojannathan tried to reach her, but the storm revealed another terror: a shoal of great black squids, four or five in number, had come to hunt. One seized Zaylani and pulled her into the depths. Yojann dove recklessly after her into the tumultuous waters – his heart in utter agony.  He watched helplessly as his beloved Zaylani began gasp and gag whilst being drug deeper and deeper beyond his desperate reaching.

The remaining squids turned their fury upon Yojannathan, and it would have been his end — had not Claireece appeared amidst the waves. Through her gift of communing with the sea’s creatures, she diverted the squids away, convincing them to seek prey elsewhere. Yojannathan survived — but Zaylani, and their unborn child, were gone, lost to the darkness.

“Yojann” found solace in Claireece’s calmness. Her presence, like the tide’s return, reminded him that the sea could also heal. In time, their quiet companionship deepened into love. When they married, they bound their vows by casting a net woven with stone weights and shells into the bay — a symbolic gesture of union between sea and earth.

III. The Shadow of the Kraken

But not all saw their love as sacred, to Koa’Hoku, this union was not salvation, but insult. He believed the Aquatic Elves had plotted the attack, that Claireece herself was part of some darker design that had slain Zaylani, his precious daughter. His grief over losing his only child (and unborn grandchild) soured into despair and festering suspicions. From him spread distrust of the Aquatic Elves, for tensions between them and the humans of Amethyst had long simmered, especially when men sailed into deeper waters claimed by the sea-folk.

The villagers, remembering Yojannathan’s first wife, Zaylani, and her “mysterious” death, whispered of omen and irony. They said the sea had claimed him once and now sought to claim him again through this woman. Some claimed the Kraken itself had sent her — a daughter of the deep to finish what it began.  Koa’Hoku stoked these suspicions through insinuating gossip and hushed conversations in the night.

Skirmishes between fishermen and sea-elves flared. Words were spoken between neighbors that carved deep wounds. Claireece bore the brunt of much of this mistrust, even being barred from community gatherings, tidepools, and village rites. Yojannathan’s children with her, half-elves of tide and stone, were treated as strangers among their own kin.  When storms struck and nets were torn, when livestock fell ill, when the sea’s bounty thinned — it was easy to lay blame at the feet of the stranger from the tides and her half-blood brood.

The superstition grew gangrenous roots. In their huts the villagers began to mutter:

“The sea took his first wife and sent him another to finish the job.”
“His grief drew her here — as the tide pulls the drowned.”

And yet, Claireece endured. She healed the sick, taught midwives the use of brinewort poultices, and sang lilting elvish lullabies that calmed fevered children.  The breaking point came during the Festival of the Tides. Before the gathered village, Koa’Hoku denounced Claireece, saying her presence was a curse upon the waters. Voices rose in anger, hearts beat with fear. Had La’Oss not acted, blood would have certainly stained sand and stones.

The below is an excerpt from the journal of Juan-Carlos, Missionary of the way of Ao – Assigned to Amethyst Cove, Order of the Southern Crescent.

IV. The D’Amethyst Incident

A drought came, followed by the death of livestock and a red tide that poisoned the bay. A traveling preacher, whose name Juan-Carlos later omitted from his Field Journal, proclaimed that Amethyst was cursed for harboring “a daughter of the Kraken.”

One night, a mob gathered under torchlight. They stormed the D’Amethyst home, dragged Yojannathan and Claireece to the shore, and demanded confession for crimes of witchery. Their children clung to her skirts, silent as the waves that lapped behind them.

Yojannathan’s pleas for reason were met with fists. Claireece did not resist. Amidst the blows, she went to her knees, raised her hands in reverence, and softly sang the Lament of the Tides — the same song sung for her husband and father years before. The villagers faltered, for her voice carried not malice but grief, and something deeper — a sorrow that mirrored their own.

The mob disbanded, yet still left ruin in its wake. She was badly beaten and Yojannathan had lost a tooth and broken two fingers in his left hand.  They both were grateful their children were out spear fishing in the cove during the attack.  However, the children were deeply shaken by the event.  The next morning, when she came upon one of her attackers poisoned by a cone snail, Claireece came to his side and gently healed him, wordlessly.

Juan-Carlos, who recorded the event, wrote:

“Her mercy was deeper than the sea, her forgiveness salt upon the wound of man’s cruelty.”

The act broke the superstition’s hold. The village began to slowly heal as she was determined to never stop healing them.

IV. Present Day — The Still Waters

Years have passed since then. The D’Amethyst home now stands as a place of quiet respect, its thatched huts filled with soft blue light at night. Claireece tends the sick and weary, while Yojannathan crafts charms and tools that combine his craftsmanship with her tide-born sigils.

Her children bridge both worlds — the eldest twin is , a sailor who honors both Ao and the Sea Mother; the middle child, a novice at the Temple of Ao; and the youngest, strange and brilliant, said to hear the hum of the ley-lines that cross beneath the bay.

Claireece rarely ventures into deep waters now. Yet on calm nights, she walks barefoot to the tide’s edge and sings to the horizon — not a lament, but a song of peace. Fishermen who pass by swear they see faint lights under the waves as though the sea itself were listening.

V. Abilities and Traits

• Amphibious Physiology: Can breathe both air and water, though long absence from the sea dries her gills and weakens her strength.

• Tide Alchemy: Uses various sea-salts, numerous esoteric sea herbs, sea-creature venoms, and coral essence in healing; many of her remedies are unknown to surface apothecaries.

• Empathic Resonance: Sensitive to emotional “currents” — can sense tension or ill intent like ripples in calm water.

• Oceans Heart : Able to understand and influence the sentiments of nearly any form of marine life.  This is not “mind-control” as much as it is a form of psionic/spiritual “persuasion.”

• Divine Whisper: Some clerics of Ao suspect she carries a latent blessing — an intuitive spiritual gift of Ao that allows her to channel his healing energies without prayer or invocations.

VI. Legacy

Among the people of Amethyst, she is known simply as “the Tidebound Healer.” Travelers who come to the village often hear her story told as both warning and benediction: a tale of fear overcome by grace.

Though her life has been marked by tragedy and misunderstanding, Claireece D’Amethyst endures — a living testament to forgiveness, and to the meeting of sea and stone.