Alana
Safe through Heroes of Ravenford Book 3
Main text: Book 2. Book 3: collapsed section below.
Characters
Dame Alana Benefilla is a Knight of the Rose. Readers meet her in Serpent Cult, where she and her fellow knight Sir Craven come to Ravenford to pay their order’s respects to the Lady Andrella at her coming-of-age gala. When the Serpent Cult attacks the feast, she fights alongside the Heroes of Ravenford.
Alana is a statuesque woman, about 5’8”, with a well-muscled build, a diamond-shaped face, light hazel eyes, and a striking head of fiery-orange hair bobbed short at the shoulders. In battle she is fierce. Outside it she is calm and serene, and her winning smile lights up a room.
Fully armoured, she wears gleaming full plate adorned with pale roses and carved runes that make it lighter to move in. She carries a holy longsword that gleams with white light in battle and a heater-style steel shield bearing a single large rose. Out of battle she wears silvery chainmail under a white tabard with a single pale red rose.
The Knights of the Rose are a holy order dedicated to Cormar, the God of the Winds (see Gods). A force for good for centuries, they fought in the battle against the Thrall Lords. Their ancestral home is the Wind Tower, a three-hundred-foot stronghold surrounded by a small town of the same name, west of the Bendenwoods beyond the southern branch of the Korkessel mountains. More on the order is in Thac.
Alana is 23 and a fourth-generation knight. Her father, Sir Rothar, and her older brother, Sir Renardo, are both high-ranking knights of the order. She joined at ten as squire to the Lord Protector, Sir Nigel Oxbow, and after eight years of training won her knighthood in a trial against her fellow knights and a vigil of prayer. She has been a Knight of the Rose for almost five years.
Book 3 is in the collapsed section below.
After Book 2 — spoilers for Book 3, Dark Monolith
In Dark Monolith Alana offers the Knights of the Rose to Ravenford’s fight against the Serpent Cult. She sits on the council in the keep with the baron, the baroness, Captain Gelpas, Andrella, and the companions, where they agree to strike at a monolith in the Darkwoods before the cult can use it. She sends Sir Craven ahead to raise light cavalry from the Wind Tower.
Riding a warhorse in a white hood marked with a single scarlet rose, she joins the baron’s strike force and becomes one of the travelling company that leaves Ravenford by the south road. She says Cormar has granted her some divine power, though she is no healer, and that the clerics of Cormar could not have done better than Aksel’s healing.