Appearance

Madelyn Thornwood is a woman of middling height with the long-boned, slender build of the Thornwood line, more scholar than soldier, and she carries herself with the quiet, unhurried posture of someone accustomed to chapel stillness. Her face is oval and fine-featured, with a straight nose, a soft mouth that rests in a faint, private half-smile, and a light scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes are the family green, clear and thoughtful, though the faint lines at their corners make her look older than her five and twenty years, as though she has spent more nights awake than she ought.

Her hair is the Thornwood black and falls nearly to her waist in loose, heavy waves. She wears it half up, the upper locks gathered back in narrow braids and pinned with a gilded star-shaped ornament from which fine chains and small pearl drops hang. Matching star-and-pearl pendants dangle from her ears, and a gold ring set with a green stone sits on her right hand.

Personality

Gentle but not soft, there's a real steel underneath her calm that tends to surprise people who mistake her quiet nature for fragility. Mads processes the family's losses through faith and care for others rather than through words, and has become, without quite meaning to, the one people bring their smaller griefs to when the larger ones feel too heavy to name outright. She and her twin disagree, sometimes pointedly, about how the Light ought to be used, protection through shielding versus protection through the sword, but the disagreement has never once cracked the bond between them. If anything, it seems to be the argument that proves how alike they still are underneath it. The Light has never been a struggle for her, and she has had to learn, slowly and not always gracefully, that it is not so for everyone.

Rumors

  • They say she healed a dying child in the refugee camps with nothing more than a touch and a whispered prayer, and that the camp folk now leave small tokens outside her tent in thanks.
  • Some claim she was meant for the cloister, promised to the Church of the Light since girlhood, and that only the Fall kept her from taking her vows.
  • It’s whispered that she has never once raised her voice, not even the night the Scourge came for her family.
  • Folk around the camps say she’ll tend to anyone who comes to her, noble or beggar, Alliance soldier or something stranger, and that she asks no questions about how they came by their wounds.
  • A rumor holds that she and Brother Lucius have quarreled over the Defias more than once, and that the gentle priestess has a sharper tongue than anyone would guess.
  • Some swear the Light shines from her hands brighter than any priest in Stormwind’s Cathedral, and that the clergy there have taken an interest in her.
  • They say she sees things in her prayers, visions or warnings, and that her sister always listens when she speaks of them.
  • It’s said a young lord of Stormwind has been seen lingering near the Company’s camp in hopes of catching her eye, and that her twin has made it plain what will happen if he tries.
  • The camp gossips whisper that for all her serenity, she weeps alone at night for the people she couldn’t save.

RP Hooks

  • Healing: The wounded, the sick, and the injured, whether Company soldiers, refugees, or passing strangers, may seek her healing hands and her prayers.
  • Comfort and counsel: The grieving, the frightened, and those carrying burdens too heavy to bear alone may come to her for a listening ear and a gentle word.
  • Fellow servants of the Light: Priests, paladins, and the faithful may seek her out for prayer, fellowship, or discussion of scripture and doctrine.
  • Rites and blessings: Those needing a blessing, a prayer for the dead, a funeral rite, or a wedding performed may ask her to officiate.
  • Refugees of Lordaeron: Displaced folk from the north may look to her for healing, food, a kind face, or help finding their way in Stormwind.
  • Questions of faith: Those who have lost their faith, or never found it, may seek her out for the patience she offers without judgment.
  • The Cathedral’s interest: Clergy of Stormwind’s Church may come to take the measure of the young priestess whose gifts have begun to draw notice.
  • Through Makenna: Those who find the elder twin’s directness too much to approach often learn that a quiet word with Madelyn is the gentler road to the Thornwood sisters.

Everything on this page is readable out of character. It isn't something other characters know in character.