Kael Sunstrike

Kael Sunstrike was a player character in The Twilight Anarchy (campaign 3). A monk raised in Shade Hollow, he is the son of the former miner Alaric Sunstrike, went to Shadehollow Preparatory College with Thoren Blackthorn and Evelina Crane, and was an ally of Archivist Seraphina Quill and The Archive of Echoes. The campaign opened with his note calling Thoren to The Rusted Anchor.

Before the Twilight Anarchy

Kael grew up among the farmland and busy mines of Shade Hollow, under a family debt to The Nocturnal Loom, a mysterious and powerful group prospering amid the political turmoil of the capital, Rookfall. The debt ran down the paternal line, and the Sunstrikes no longer remembered what it was for; it simply hung over the family name. As a boy he was inseparable from Thoren, their friendship rooted in the hardship and simplicity of frontier life.

After school his parents, hoping to clear the debt and give him a brighter future, sent him to Rookfall while Thoren stayed behind. The city was in upheaval, and the Loom was growing in power and in the nastiness of its work. As far as Kael could tell, his only job was to document the people of the city as he met them, in a book whose pages went blank every time he opened it. He may still have it.

After a few years, as tensions in Rookfall grew dangerous, a benefactor who had watched him since his arrival, High Cantor Vitrius of the Order of the Eternal Scribe, sent him home for his safety. Kael travelled back posing as a member of the Archive's clergy and took refuge in The Archive of Echoes; seeing his potential and resolve, and the High Cantor's hand behind him, the Archive took him in and sheltered him from the Loom. There he trained hard in body and mind under its keepers, and rekindled his friendship with Thoren, who somehow seemed far older than the few years apart would explain. He had been back a few years, and was well settled, when the Twilight Anarchy began.

Meanwhile his mother, Elara, suffered from injuries, and his father Alaric grew infirm with the illness that claimed several lives in Shade Hollow. An unseen benefactor kept them just out of the Loom's grasp. After Kael left, Elara died of her injuries, at the same time as Thoren's brother, leaving Alaric alone in a wheelchair; the local monastery, for reasons not fully understood, gave him shelter and food. As Kael grew in his path, the weight of the unbroken debt settled on his shoulders.

In the Twilight Anarchy

In Rookfall he recognised Brother Thaladrin, a drow soldier of The Panopticon Zenith. He did much of the damage in the cliffside fight that killed Brenor The Storms Fury. He fought with a Staff of Thunder and Lightning, carried a Horn of Beckoning Death in his bag of holding, and wore The Archives Defiance, bracers that let him draw on the Archive's defensive techniques to reroll a failed save and recover ki. During downtime in late 2024 he built a criminal underground from the remains of The Eightfold to serve the Archive, The Shadow Archive.

By April 2025 he carried the Shattered Mirror among the Sources; he died once and was revived in May 2025, and in July 2025 took the Source called Chained Oblivion. When the party rallied the gods against The Harsh, he won over the Unyielding Fist (with Ono Palevo's help) and the Lotus Dreamer.

The plague. Kael's mother died in the plague that struck Shade Hollow before the Twilight Anarchy. His father Alaric survived it but lost the use of his legs, and with them his post as mine foreman. Alaric was killed in the Eightfold's raid on Shade Hollow; because he died near a soul anchor, his soul was trapped in a cocoon of The Lethernian Lattice in The Shadowfell. When the party destroyed the creatures funnelling souls towards the Harsh's release, Kael freed his father's soul and let him pass on.

Lord of the Hunt. Kael is now the Lord of the Hunt, leader of the Feywild's Wild Hunt.