To the best of her knowledge, Zila began her life as an ordinary elven woman living an ordinary life in a realm far from your own. On a fated October day the armies of a man called D'sparil marched into her settlement, burning and pillaging all in sight. D'sparil's troops would sieze the strongest and healthiest of the population, killing those too young, too old; the flawed, the sick. These unlucky men and women found themselves stripped, caged; transported deep into D'Sparil's fortress in Hell's Maw. Once there, any survivors of the journey were subjected to a process known only as "indoctrination." Subjected to pain beyond measure, both physical and psychological, their psyches were completely and utterly destroyed, will and personality, memories and thoughts replaced by an all-consuming drive to serve D'sparil. Zila survived to become a "Disciple" of D'sparil. Like the others, she found herself caught somewhere between life and death, body charred obsidian by the processes of her indoctrination. Her very blood pulsed with liquified mana that sustained her, kept her in that limbo of existence. The prize for her resilience was bleak; for two hundred years she mindlessly obeyed every whim D'sparil gave her. Zila oversaw the indoctrinations of countless others just like her, she ordered her subordinates to drag civilians screaming from their homes into the waiting crucible of Hell's Maw.

D'sparil's bid for power would not last, however. An elven mage named Corvus, the last of his kind left in the realm, single-handedly destroyed D'sparil and the other so-called "Serpent Riders." The outcome was far from positive; Corvus was the only remaining living entity in the entirety of the realm. What was once a world was now no more than a sepulture for countless damned souls; a communal ossuary for our brave, vengeful hero. With the death of D'sparil the chains binding his army to his will were released. Freedom is never free, however. Without a will to control them the powerful magics that sought to bind Zila and her brethren instead tore them asunder. Blood-soaked screams originating from her fellow Disciples lashed against the ochre walls of her Cathedral; brothers and sisters destroyed on the molecular level, simply exploding around her. Some long-forgotten hint of Zila's past aptitude reached out to her, braced her against the roaring forces seeking nothing more than her destruction. Her world went dark... The smell of decayed flesh stirred the shade from her lapse, tempted her to her feet. She was bare, covered in the ectoplasm of her obliterated kin, dazed, confused; a newborn from the ashes of a damned existence. The wraith gathered her senses, collected several intact Disciple robes as a reminder of her past and set off towards D'sparils invasion portals; towards a new home.