Ashryn, who gives her name as Sister Ashryn, is a drow woman traveling the Silver Vale with a companion, meeting people and trading thoughts with them.1 She says “Sister” is a title rather than kinship.1
Description
She stands about six feet tall and wears black robes with a nun’s habit and a thin veil across her mouth that can be seen through. Her face is stern and her voice is soft, close to a whisper. She smells of incense, which she says is common quality and nothing hard to find.1 On the road she carried a brass holder with an unlit candle.1 Her companion wears the same robes with a deep hood, is about five foot seven, shows a smooth and entirely unremarkable face when glimpsed, and does not speak.1
Beliefs
Ashryn says she has no family history and no personal history of any kind, having cast away what tethered her to the material, and holds that families and their histories are superfluous and ultimately a hindrance.1 She asks people whether they have known loss, on the grounds that loss is the one universal experience and therefore the best way to learn about someone.1 When Luma called loss the flip side of love, Ashryn answered that abandoning one prevents the other.1
Of the Starfall she says she knows next to nothing, except that it brought to the world what mankind has called the Sorrow.1 She holds that the Sorrow is a name men gave to something they do not understand, and that it is not inherent to the thing itself.1 Asked what charity exists in the world that is not moral, she answered: the charity of silence.1 Life, she says, is finite, like a wick burning low until the flame goes out, and decay and emptiness are the only inevitabilities. To struggle against that is to invite needless suffering.1
Biography
Session 5
She and her companion had been staying at the Miller's House in Crick's Bend for a couple of evenings.1 Luma stopped her in the road outside the church grounds and questioned her. Turning to Rhysaene, Ashryn said she had the air of someone who had known loss, and asked her to describe it for Luma.1
The party sought her out again that evening at the Miller's House. Hazel told her that all silence does is invite the Sorrow, and that she would not call the Sorrow charity. Temerity told her to watch her words, and Ashryn apologized for any offense.1 She remarked that Temerity is an odd name to give a child; told that Temerity chose it herself, she said, “I think you chose quite well.”1 Leaving, she said: “Only one of us will be right in the end.”1
Her words struck a chord with Temerity, who said afterwards that she agreed with Hazel: struggling against the infinite nothing is what all life is.1 Iva whispered that she was depressing.1