Vol Rajani
The Rose Knight, Founder of Otari (Roseguard)
Appearance
Remembered in statue and song as a no-nonsense swordswoman in rose-themed armor, bearing her ancestral thorned longsword, the Rosa Argentis — which now sits on display in the Dawnflower Library.
Personality
Capable, direct, and unflinching. Exiled royalty from Nidal, she set aside her claim to a crown without a backward glance: 'I would rather be a hero than a princess.' The line is carved above the door of the Otari garrison, and every child in town can recite it.
Backstory
Exiled from Nidal in her youth, Vol carried out of that shadowed country only her ancestral longsword, the Rosa Argentis, and a claim to a throne she would never sit upon. She made her name in the fighting pits of the Inner Sea and in the slaying of monsters, and it was she who first proposed — on the Absalom docks, with a dead beast at their feet — that four strangers should become one party. Her family's silver rose gave the Roseguard its name. She lived out her years in the town she helped raise and died in 4285 AR, some four decades after its founding, of a fever taken from an old wound that had never truly closed. She is interred in a mausoleum in the Otari graveyard, and the town honors her each Founders' Day with Vol's Swordfighting competition.