Gilarion was born the first child and eldest son of the Highborn Dragonlord Pheanachar Glirlomien, heir to one of the greatest and proudest aelven lineages of Azyrheim. Though the House of the Glirlomiera counted itself among the highborn in origin, such was its valiance, wealth, honour, respect and influence that through alliances of marriage it had long been accounted as weighty among each of the several aelven populaces in Azyr: whether fellow highborn, exiles, wanderers, the Eldritch Council, the Darkling Covens, the Scourge Privateers, the Shadowblades, the Orders both Draconis and Serpentis, the Phoenix Temple and the fell cult of Khaine. Lord Pheanachar of Azyrheim was fierce in wrath, learned in deep knowledge, and wise in counsel; ever assisted by his gentle, prudent consort Irithel Gauseweft, a beloved spellweaver from the wandering kin.

These great parents naturally had high hopes and expectations in every way for their first son and destined heir, and at first Gilarion fulfilled these amply. His looks combined his father’s astute azure glance and his mother’s restrained elegance. He grew quick to speak, but swifter still in thought. Gilarion was more gifted in song, tale, verse and music than any of the Glirlomiera that could be easily recalled. He was curious and inventive, but also obedient and affectionate.

In the long ago and legendary age of mythic peace Gilarion’s life would thus have passed well, kindly, wisely, lengthily and uneventfully. But he had not been born into such a time. The Age of Sigmar demanded of the aelven nobility in Azyrheim able service in war or magecraft, and, despite his famous parentage, in these Gilarion proved astonishingly uninterested. He recoiled in terror before his father’s dragon. The most expensive and protracted tuition left him still little more than a competent swordsman and shot. And his indifference to the arcane powers that shape the realms was, in an aelf, little short of a disgrace.

Yet Gilarion could not be dismissed as an utter wastrel. His talents were all too evident elsewhere – in music, conversation, composition, enquiry, friendship, research and negotiation. He would have made a passable Swifthawk Agent or an excellent merchant; but neither station befitted the heir to the Glirlomiera.

Sadly Lord and Lady Glirlomien determined that their amiable oldest son would be useful to further the family line, perhaps, but in few other respects. They left him to his own devices, and placed their ambitions in their many younger children, four sons and a daughter. The younger Glirlomiera proved by some quirk of fate – or perhaps by way of their parents’ emphatic education – to be quite different from their eldest brother both in their abilities and in their personalities. Gilarion’s sole sister inherited her mother’s sorcerous gifts in full measure, along with an icy hauteur that was agonising to witness. She was named one of the youngest Eldritch Councillors at under a hundred. All of their brothers embraced martial destinies, though to old Lord Pheanachar’s sorrow none accepted the strictures of his own Order Draconis. One took a wife from among the Exiles, a notorious Darkling Sorceress, and himself rose to the gloomy eminence of a dreadlordship in the Order Serpentis. Another became a fearsome Fleetmaster in Anvilgard. The fourth son of the Glirlomiera held to his mother’s people and was soon granted authority as a Nomad Prince. The youngest scion of the family fell mostly out of sight as a Shadowblade Assassin. But all of these siblings, save Gilarion, had heady and perilous tempers, all too rapid to take offence or act on impulse.

In time Lady Glirlomien perished, and Lord Pheanachar, weighed down by foreboding and grief, soon followed. His dragon, riderless, betook itself to the Azyrite wilds; though Lord Pheanachar’s dreadlord son was a dragon rider himself, he preferred to keep to his bleak, honourless, coven-bred black wyrm-steed.

A divided and turbulent period for the Glirlomiera now followed. Gilarion was now, in theory, Lord Gilarion Glirlomien of Azyrheim; but he disclaimed the title and the very family name, taking instead the by name some friends had playfully given him for his minstrelsy, ‘Lyrestir’. Free at last from family burdens and disappointments, he began to roam the Mortal Realms as one of that enterprising company alternately dubbed Lore Pilgrims, Far Travellers, or Trade Pioneers. Gilarion became well known, even more than for his music, for his astonishing fund of connections and information, gathered lightheartedly enough but put to use in earnest in smoothing over political wrinkles – and earning enough aqua ghyranis to live in easy style – wherever he went.

But such efforts to avoid the crushing legacy of the Glorlomiera would not entirely avail Gilarion. So attentive to distant intrigue but lightly thoughtless of his own rank and dignity, Gilarion, when he put aside his lordship, had not bothered to consider who should succeed him. On one brief return home to Azyr he found, to his horror, that all of his siblings, save only his enigmatic brother among the assassins, had declared themselves the rightful Lord (or Lady) Glirlomien. They were accordingly at the brink of staining Azyr with private bloodshed, in so doing drawing the hostile attention of the Stormcast Eternals, with their utter destruction surely to follow.

Gilarion did not hesitate to put all his skills to use in this critical situation. He persuaded the Glirlomien dreadlord that the family had ancient rights in Ulgu that must be asserted, the nomad prince that his place was to lead the Wanderers back to Ghyran, the Eldritch counsellor that her ineffable powers placed her above the petty and meaningless drifts of rank and title, and the fleetmaster that there was a fortune to be made in Anvilgard. He did not succeed in finding the assassin, and could only pray that his youngest brother was not after the title too.

He considered his work well done – at first. Until the rumours reached him: of an Order Serpentis army carving a bloody swathe through Ulgu and threatening to put the God-King and the Shadow King at irrevocable odds; of a headstrong prince who had started deadly feuds with half a dozen Sylvaneth groves; of a fleetmaster who dared to defy the Scourge, and of a stormy schism on the Eldritch Council itself.

Gilarion has not escaped his great family’s problems, nor, after all, solved them, but so far only spread them catastrophically throughout the realms. To him the Knight-Consalcio Zerawit Silverwing’s mission, and the Lord-Castellant Vanhelm’s appeal, come as one, last, desperate chance to begin setting matters right.