Nhani Moonfall: Origins

During my tenure in World of Warcraft, there’s been no single character I’ve embodied that has grown quite as far, accomplished quite as much, or had nearly as much an effect – both on me and other people – as Priestess Nhani Moonfall. She has gone far beyond her simple origins, and few characters have so exploded into being for me as she has. Since there seemed to be an expressed interest, I thought I’d run through her origins. If nothing else, some of it would make for interesting parallels and differences with Hani Foonmall who derived quite a few elements from her.

The origins of Nhani Moonfall begin in pre-sundering times where she was born the daughter of a priestess and brought up in a relatively small and simple community – a town I gave the name Minasaar – not too far from Zin-Azshari; Nhani herself tends to recount that she grew up seeing the light of “The City” shining in the horizon. Nhani’s mother, Lunia Moonfall, was a great influence on her, in spite of often being busy, and Nhani spent much of her childhood looking up to and attempting to follow in her footsteps.

She had a rather uneventful youth, growing up with her mother, her father and an older brother – Nhani occasionally remarks that her brother was only a decade older than her, expressing the (by her percieved, at any rate) rarity of Night elves having two children with so short time inbetween. In hindsight, she tends to note that at the time she never truly understood or perhaps even knew her mother; she simply followed because it never occured to her to do anything else.

Then, of course, came the Sundering.

Nhani was probably not all that far from an age where she’d be sent to Suramar to train as priestess acolyte, something which would likely put her on par with the age of Shandris Feathermoon, when the Legion came. Nhani doesn’t know what happened to her father – presumably he died very early on in the attack; her mother stayed behind to buy time for as many as possible to flee. Nhani describes that she was essentially dragged away forcibly, though she never knew (nor at that age, cared) who did. Unlike Shandris, Nhani had little to no combat training and never came across Tyrande Whisperwind; she spent most of the war against the Legion huddled in a corner among other refugees, trying to come to terms with her grief and loss.

With the Sundering past and the Night elves left to put a new society together, Nhani was left with having to find a new life since almost everyone and everything she’d grown up knowing and believing in was gone. She found her first new glimmers of hope in the image of Tyrande Whisperwind – the young new High Priestess who had not only survived the fall, but seemingly outright prospered. Though it would be a long time before Nhani ever truly come to know or even meet the High Priestess, Tyrande came to represent an – albeit ever distant – mother figure that, unlike Nhani’s own mother, wouldn’t just die on her.

Spurred on by both hatred for the Legion and outright hero worship for Tyrande, Nhani took on training to join the fledgling Sentinel forces as soon as she were permitted, finding a sort of peace in being able to direct her anger and grief into a purpose. Eventually she found balance in her newfound family of the Sisterhood, though by her own account it would take centuries. As a Sentinel, Nhani was considered capable, but unremarkable. She had great potential, but seemed perfectly content simply being a part of the small Sentinel detachment she ended up assigned to.

In the Shiverleaf Sentinel company, as they were called, Nhani served mostly as a combination of forward scout, mounted Huntress and front line warrior; though Nhani has expressed that any Sentinel is expected to be able to handle a bow even from the back of a Hippogryph, she has far more experience with thrown and melee weapons than she has as an archer. In stark contrast to her present, Nhani was known to be something of the jokester of the company, the one who’d play jokes and pranks (or simply talk) on her fellow sisters in arms to lighten the mood; she’s also known to have struck up a friendship with the company healer.

The Long Vigil passed oddly quietly for most part, and Nhani spent some ten thousand years patrolling the same forests, helping Furbolgs, hunting the odd Satyr and looking into the occasional intruder. It’s implied that she made several attempts at relationships during this period, few lasting more than a few years at most and all ending in failure, part due to the dangers being a Sentinel, part due to her being unwilling to sacrifice too much of her simple Sentinel life for any prospective partner.

It’s also somewhere during this period that the infamous Treefall incident took place – an occasion Nhani tends to describe as the time she “broke a tree with her back.”. In essence, her company was set to confront a particularely oversized corrupted Furbolg and Nhani ended up being thrown into a young tree with enough force that it broke. Nhani tends to remark that the company healer told her it’s something of a miracle she survived, and she describes having a notable mark somewhere across her back since. She tends to remark that she hasn’t been able to feel anything in that particular region since then.

Then came the second invasion, culminating in the battle at Mount Hyjal. Nhani wasn’t actually in that battle – her company was doing mundane things like evacuating civilians and guarding supply lines. What is noticeable is that after Hyjal, Nhani noted that in spite of being a Sentinel.. she hadn’t really been able to do anything about the Legion this time either. What’s more, with their mortality restored, Nhani suddenly found herself wondering what exactly she’d spent the last few millenia doing. Deciding she needed time to find herself and her calling, she left the Sentinels to simply spend time wandering – seeing the world as it had become, meeting their new allies, trying to see how and why the world had changed so radically over the millenia.

She spent a good year or two just drifting like that, taking everything in, before returning to her people, once more to serve – though this time as more than simply a Warrior.

It’s not entirely certain how exactly Nhani went from a former Sentinel with rudimentary, pre-sundering Priestess training to one of the more reknown Priestesses of the current age. One can surmise that perhaps Tyrande recognized potential in her and tasked her accordingly, giving her a comission that forced her to rise to the challenge, or that she was given a task no one else wanted. What matters is that she was given the Lights of Elune order, and from there she rose not only to the challenge, but to prominence. Acting with newfound responsibility and a previously largely unused wisdom tempered through thousands of years, Nhani all but came to inhabit the very image of Night elven priesthood, to the point where many would swear she has never done anything but.

Nhani’s more current history is complicated and really deserves its own post; much because it was something that developed through interactions with other people rather than simply being written down backstory. As a result, it’s also a little more convoluted in places and have marks of selective memory, fluid continuity and the odd retcon. It’s also the point where she through sheer effort and force of personality essentially went from an initial “upstart Priestess” to one of the more recognized Priestesses currently in service.

If there’s enough of an interest, I’ll see about putting one together. For now, this is more her broad strokes ancient past. Nhani was always about overcoming, in a sense – she lost her family, she got better. She lost her home, the entire society she grew up believing in, she got better. She’s a sort of a symbol of overcoming adversity and suffering, standing evidence that one can move on and get better, no matter what. She represents hope, in a sense.