Ferra Ellisvat
| Species | Eslurian |
|---|---|
| Title | Commander |
| Affiliation | Nelazgians |
| Home | Veskadoth, formerly Varaar |
| Family | Aero Ellisvat, her brother |
| Status | Alive, held at Veskadoth |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Ferra Ellisvat is an Eslurian woman who commands Nelazgian forces at Veskadoth against her will, taken from Varaar as a child and sold to the enemy she now leads.[1][2] She is the stolen sister Aero Ellisvat joined two organisations to look for.[3]
Appearance
Ferra is human, which is what gives her away in Veskadoth: she looks nothing like the creatures around her.[1] She wears a long black cloak with silver embroidery and keeps her brown hair tied up in a tight bun.[1] Under a turtleneck she wears what looks like a simple black necklace, fitted tight against the skin of her throat.[2]
Her name is chiselled on a placard on her desk. Lumikki Otsby works out what she is from that alone: Eslurians commonly carry a surname and Nelazgian natives do not.[1]
Personality
Ferra holds a Nelazgian face in front of Nelazgians and drops it the moment she is round the corner, where she is blunt to the point of scolding. Told that two escaped prisoners did not trust her, she offered them the choice between the alley and her office and walked off without looking back to see whether they followed.[1]
She is clear-sighted about her own position and pessimistic about everyone else's. She laughed at Lumikki's promise that bringing Obellius Kalaar down would free her, because the Eslurians held at Veskadoth are Obellius's bargaining chip and their fate is tied to his. She thinks he is underestimated, and that the Nelazgians serving him will end up his slaves as well.[2]
She takes what small revenges her situation allows, and counts helping escaped prisoners as one of them.[2]
Background
Ferra was a baby when the Ellisvat parents were still alive, and Aero remembers a childhood trip to Zybersia from that time.[4] She was taken from her bed one night by the Rewakan gang of the Gangs of Varaar. The only thing Aero found there afterwards was her pergonzia plushie, which he still carries with the body torn off it.[3] The gang sold her to the Nelazgians, who had been buying young Eslurians, brainwashing them and training them to lead their ranks on the grounds that Eslurians are better suited to leadership.[3]
Ferra's own account matches. She says she was "taken at a young age and forced into the role I serve now", and that the Nelazgians settled on Varaar because Eslurians there were willing to capture children and sell them on.[2]
Story
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
A crocodilian named Reingart caught Lumikki Otsby and Remidigon in an alley of Veskadoth after their escape through the sewers. Ferra took the two prisoners off him by rank, lent them her cloak as a disguise and walked them across the square and in through a back door of the castle to her office, a ground-floor room that doubles as her sleeping quarters.[1] There she told them her name, and that she was Eslurian: "My name is Ferra Ellisvat and I, as well as you, am from Eslura."[1]
Asked why she did not simply leave, she pulled down her turtleneck and showed them the necklace. "Obellius enchanted it. If I leave this island, it will tighten and kill me." She is confined further than that: the Eslurians held at Veskadoth are kept in separate districts so that they cannot conspire, and hers are the castle and the prison.[2] She believes there are others in the same position but does not know who or where they are.[2]
Calamity knocked at the door mid-conversation, and Ferra hid the two otters in her wardrobe. Calamity, who came to see her and complained that she had been pushed away lately, let slip that the Nelazgian plan had entered its final stages and that the tunnels were almost finished. A second visitor followed, and Ferra was pressed into joining a search for the escaped prisoners.[2] She stalled by saying she had a letter to finish, glanced at the wardrobe, wrote something on a notepad and left it deliberately on the desk when Calamity questioned why she was not taking it with her.[2]
What she left was a hastily drawn map: a web of lines crossing the whole of mainland Eslura, touching nearly every minor town and all four kingdoms, all of them running back to the Sacred City at the centre.[2] Lumikki and Remidigon took it, went out through the window and made for the port. Leaving the island, Lumikki felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Ferra behind, and meant to come back for her with the full force of Eslura.[5]
Ferra is alive at Veskadoth when the second novel ends. What becomes of her afterwards is not shown.[5]
Relationships
Aero Ellisvat is her brother. He joined the Rewakan gang and then the Nelazgians trying to find where she had been taken, and told Reagan Hideaway that the real horror was that he no longer trusted himself to pick her out of a crowd. Asked her name, he answered "Her name was Ferra" and turned away to hide his eyes.[3] Ferra, for her part, watched the two Otsbys hold paws and told them "Your relationship reminds me of how my brother and I used to be".[2] The novels never bring the two together and no character in them states the connection aloud. Whether Aero ever learns what became of her is not shown.[3][5]
Calamity is a Shifter serving Obellius and something more than a colleague to Ferra, close enough to put her boots up on Ferra's desk, use her Shifter voice to tease her and complain about being pushed away. Lumikki read the two as involved, and later tried to use it, telling Calamity that Ferra was Eslurian and that serving Obellius would get them both killed.[2][5]
Lumikki Otsby she saved twice over, first from Reingart and then from the search party, and made no attempt to collect the credit for either.[1][2]
Obellius Kalaar enchanted the necklace that holds her, and she describes his use of captive Eslurians as collateral as brilliant, in the same breath as calling him a man who will stop at nothing.[2]
Behind the scenes
Book 2's chapter 22 is titled Ferra's Dilemma. She is named in Book 2's pronunciation guide, which gives Fair-uh Ellis-vaat, and not in Book 1's.[6]