Member Spotlight: Eluial Aldaran

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Author: Stephen Lightheart, May 2014


Anyone who visits the Site Announcements forum will notice that there’s recently been a giant influx in Aes Sedai. One of those new Aes Sedai is Eluial, who was raised to the Brown Ajah this month. She’s still pretty happy about that. “It was a wonderful surprise. Although, I'll be honest, I don't know if ‘Eluial Sedai’ quite has the right ring to it. Sounds kind of weird to me.” Eluial Sedai. Hmm… Eluial Sedai. It sounds pretty good to me. So who is this Eluial Sedai? Read on!


Eluial, a.k.a. Sahar

Offline, Eluial goes by the name Sahar. She has a dog and a husband, in that order. She happily posts pictures of her dog all over the internet, but leaves it to her husband to post his own pictures if he so desires. Sahar plays Pathfinder every other week with a group of wonderful weirdos. She takes hipstery pictures and post them on Instagram, and she digs in her garden when the weather is nice.

When she’s not digging, taking and posting pictures, or hanging out at Tar Valon, Sahar works as a lab tech in a biomedical research lab. “It sounds fun but it's kind of not.” She’s also working on getting her Master’s degree in chemistry and hopes to graduate at the end of this quarter. What will she do after that? “I want to teach. I'm not sure if I'll be teaching community college or more like high school. I'm very passionate about education, and especially science education, and especially especially science education for young girls. So, I hope I can be doing that soon.”

Online, we know Sahar as Eluial. Where did that nick come from?

“Eluial was the name of the mother of my first D&D character. I loved the name so much that it became my WoW character's name. After playing WoW for many years and "being" Eluial for that long, it just kind of became my online handle. Now I don't play WoW anymore, but I am Eluial here, so, I've been Eluial (or El or Elu) for about 8 years now.”

Eluial Online vs. Offline

Whether you meet Eluial online or offline, you’ll get to know her as the same person. She might be a bit chattier online, though, as she finds it easier to organize her thoughts and share them at the pace of text based conversations than at verbal conversations. However, if you get her drunk, you won’t notice the difference. “If I've had a bit to drink, in person I become much more similar to how I am online. I can be just as loud and obnoxious in person as I am online. I just tend not to be as often as I am here.”

Eluial, Aes Sedai of the Brown Ajah

If you meet Eluial at a real-life event, chances are she’s proudly wearing her brand new brown shawl, made by Taika. What makes Eluial a Brown Aes Sedai? “Quite a few things, I'd say. But mostly? My sense of humor (dark and dry, like a good wine), my low-key attitude and my love of a good baby-on-a-spit roasted over an open fire.”

If there’s one thing she loves about her new Ajah, it’s the way Browns relate to each other. “As in, how you're given comfort if you need comfort, a swift kick in the butt if you need a swift kick in the butt (and trust me, our kicks can be pretty swift), advice if you need advice, and so on. And how we discuss things. No one takes it personally if you disagree about something with them, and we have some really nice and interesting discussions about a wide variety of things.”

When it comes to book Browns, Eluial has a pretty good idea of how she’d fit in, too. Like so many people, she loves Verin. Beyond that, she definitely has “that ‘study ALL the things’ mentality. And poking at things just to see how they react. And being spacey. And forgetful. And in my own world a lot. Yeah. All that.”

Eluial the Assassin

Of course, those paying attention to such things identify Eluial Sedai with something other than being Brown. After all, she’s been freshly appointed as the Assassins moderator in the new Mafia subforum. A logical decision, since Eluial single-handedly organized these Assassin games from a couple experimental games into a recurring and increasingly popular forum activity. Being a Brown through-and-through, the thing that Eluial likes most about these games are the analysis and problem solving, the mystery, the deception, the battle of the wits. “It's fun to really dig down deep and figure out what all the undercurrents are in the game. And strategizing. And coming up with some really bizarre tactics that no one has thought of before that are just crazy enough to work.” She then adds that she prefers being Mafia over being innocent—a confession that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone aware that Eluial is Zashara’s mentee.

In closing, being the good moderator she is, Eluial offers advice to anyone interested in playing an Assassins game in the future:

“Just do it! And don't let the loud mouths (like me!) keep you down. If you have a crazy idea, share it. You never know what will happen. And if you get ignored because you're new and it turns out you were right about something, rub it in! Tell us all you told us so. Seriously. It's good for our egos.

“Also a big thing I try to emphasize in the ‘about the game’ threads is understand that the games get heated sometimes. I mean, the premise of the game is to lie. To everyone. Constantly. So just don't take anything said in the thread personally. If someone doesn't believe something you're saying, they're not casting aspersions on your character. It's all about the game. Outside the game, we all love each other. But in the game, we're all (potentially) enemies.”