Zelris’s parents were devout followers of the Religion of the Four, and brought her and her two sisters up with a strong belief of divine interference in her life. On the outskirts of Renelia-Gladewynn, her parents had a farm where Zelris and her siblings lived a happy childhood, helping to take care of the many animals, and being involved with others in the community in celebration and worship of the moon spirit Luara. With no formal schooling due to her carefree life on the farm, her friends were other farmers children, many of whom also had deeply devout parents.
Over the years her parents fell deeper and deeper into their devotion to Luara, and as their crops began to become less fruitful year after year, they became desperate praying over their fields, worrying their children would go hungry. Zelris watched this faith fall into obsession, where they cared more about worship than their own children, hoping that their show of extreme belief would appease the spirits and save their livelihood. After they were forced to sell the farm they had for generations, her father was forced to find work elsewhere, leaving her mother to care for the children.
Seeing the state her family was left in, everything her family had worked so hard for being gone, Zelris began to find odd jobs outside the house to support her increasingly unstable mother. Whether as a farm hand helping with the harvest, selling apples from her family’s tree at the market, or helping the fishermen mend their nets at the docks, she made enough money to help her family get by. She became increasingly confident in her own ability to control her own future, and much less certain that Luara, or any other spirit played a part in her family’s success, or failure in the past years.
While still young and uncertain of what her future may hold, Zelris is determined to start her own farm and prove herself in the world, without the ‘help’ her family relied on with religion.
