Magella Qindi was born to Gerta Shein and Saenfen Qindi in distant Aerenal, 878 YK.
She showed great promise as a warrior and little patience for the nonsense of court, and so after a short life as a knight of house Qindi, she joined with the Valaes Tairn: the famous mercenary house that traveled north to Khorvaire and pledged its loyalty to Cyre early in the opening stages of the Last War in 916 YK.
For the next forty years, Magella rode with distinction. She passed from regiment to regiment, commanding two of them and notching several victories in the decades leading up to 948 YK, when a series of Cyran military reforms required that the Valenar forces integrate into the Cyran Legions as auxiliary companies under the command of Cyran centurions.
She was placed in the X Legion under the command of Centurion (later Tribune) Momoa Southwind, and freed from the responsibilities of command, she flourished. Magella became the tip of X Legion’s spear, and her immense personal presence and deadly cunning led the heavy auxiliaries and their legion to victory time and time again.
Then, in 956 YK, War Leader Shaeras Vadallia turned coat. That night, in her grief and fury, an aberrant dragonmark manifested across Magella Qindi’s chest.
Ambitious Valenar princelings, still the moral heart of their auxiliary companies, defected in droves, and by the end of the year most of the companies had ceased to exist, and only a scant few Valenar warriors—under two hundred, all told—remained in the legions. Magella Qindi was among the last to depart. In secret, she urged her company, the Vashtaer Suliunar, to remain with X Legion, she left a sending stone with Tribune Southwind, and then she left for Valenar. For the remainder of the war, she would grit her teeth and play the politics of the Valenar court, leveraging her military successes to climb the ladder and become Warlord of Zephyr Keep… a prestigious posting where, nonetheless, she could bide her time, marshal her resources, and largely avoid fighting her former Cyran comrades, all the while feeding them critical military intelligence through Tribune Southwind.
There, at Zephyr Keep, she has consolidated her power and waited. Since the end of the war, she has summoned a steady stream of arcane advisers to Zephyr Keep, asking each one to devote their energies to researching the Mourning. But she hasn’t just been compiling and recording their research… she’s been copying their techniques and sharpening her newfound magical skill. The next time she rides into battle, it will be more than her sword and her horse that her foes must fear.