FILE NW/003 — PERSONNEL FILE

Commander Lithariel of the Elven Vanguard

Who is Lithariel in Resonance Portal Wars? The elven commander who survived the Sundering, her spear Solaryn's Beacon, her Leorin Astra, and why she walks into Churchill's war room.

Spoiler level: low. This page covers Lithariel's background and her role as Resonance Portal Wars — Book 1 sets up its alliance. It does not reveal where her story goes.

In a drawer beneath the table in Winston Churchill's war room, Resonance Portal Wars tells us, there is a sepia photograph of the Prime Minister standing beside an elf. If it ever got out, people would think the war had finally cracked his mind. The elf is Commander Lithariel of the Elven Vanguard, and she has seen a world end once already.

Who is Lithariel?

Lithariel is an elf of Cormanthor, once the mightiest elven nation of Ilyndor, the world on the far side of the Nazi portal, and now reduced to its last remnants. She is Commander of the Elven Vanguard.

She is also royalty without a throne. She is the daughter of High Lord Elenion, the last bearer of the Elaren Crown, and heir to a lineage whose name once defined the balance of magic in Ilyndor. It is a broken crown, and she carries its weight rather than wears it.

The day the world broke

Lithariel was newly married when the war between elves and orcs reached its end. The orc war bands, led by a chieftain named Thanar, had broken the mountain front and reached the sacred groves. The elven elders debated for too long. Her father made the decision alone. A great ritual would end the war, even if it split the world to do it.

She watched from a distant hill, holding her mother's hand.

That ritual became the Sundering. Leylines tore. Mountains crumbled. Rivers boiled and vanished. Whole elven cities were swallowed, and the magic that bound Ilyndor, which its people call the Pattern, shattered. Her father's last words reached her across the storm:

"Vael'tharok is not to be trusted."

She lost her father that day. In the same battle her husband, locked in combat with Thanar, was swallowed when the ground opened beneath him. She has also lost a sister, who died defending a leyline grove. She carries all of them into every fight.

Solaryn's Beacon and Astra

Lithariel fights with Solaryn's Beacon, a legendary spear that hums with Resonance. She throws it and calls it home. In one of Book 1's early set pieces, a German Panzer column crosses into an Ilyndor forest. The ground opens and the roots swallow the tanks, and then one throw of the Beacon strikes a tank and folds its steel "like paper". She spares the boy officer who surrenders. The forest has already passed judgement.

She rides Astra, a Leorin: a winged mount with a lion's body and an eagle's wings, its fur catching the light of Ilyndor's twin moons. Bonding with a Leorin is a rite of passage for every elf of age. For Lithariel, Astra is the last living link to the life she had before the Sundering. The book calls the mount "memory given flesh."

A weapon, never a crutch

What makes Lithariel compelling is restraint. She saw what happened when her father reached for more power than he could control, and she has built her whole discipline around never doing it herself. To her, Resonance is "a weapon, never a crutch". When she watches the humans experiment with Element 115, her objection comes from experience, not from mysticism:

"Elves don't experiment with the forces that sustain life."

That is why her collision with the Allies is so good on the page. Churchill wants an edge. Ian Fleming likes simple solutions. The scientists see a breakthrough. Lithariel recognises the same arrogance that destroyed her world, and she has to decide whether working with these people saves both worlds or repeats her father's mistake.

Lithariel and Churchill

The elves don't send a letter. Their first envoys, led by Captain Aelar Silverbreeze, step through a portal into the middle of Churchill's war council. A nervous guard fires. An elven archer splits the bullet in mid-air with an arrow. Churchill lowers his cigar and mutters the only thing a British Prime Minister could say: "Bloody hell." Then, deciding he is "Winston bloody Churchill", he takes the glowing translation amulet an elf holds out to him.

When Lithariel later takes her place at that table, she argues with Field Marshal Alan Brooke, faces down Eisenhower's scepticism, and proposes a two-front strategy across two worlds. In the same war room she makes the lights dim with a flick of her fingers to remind the generals who really understands the power they're dealing with.

Lithariel and Durgar

Lithariel's oldest enemy has a face. Thanar, the orc chieftain who killed her husband, was the father of Durgar, who now rides beside the SS on the other side of the war. When they meet on the battlefield, more than one generation's grief is in play.

Keep reading

• Durgar, Chieftain of the Drublog Clan — the son of the orc who took everything from her.
• Element 115 and the 1939 Antarctic Crash — the discovery that brought the war to her world.
• The Classified 1939 Dossier includes British intelligence's first profile of "the one with the spear". It's free when you join the list for Book 2.