Backstory
Ser Elara Vance was exiled from Ironspire for being right, which remains her position, and she spent seven winters away proving to herself the cost was worth it. Mercenary captaincy on the Brass Coast did not dilute her loyalty to Ironspire as a place; it sharpened her understanding of what the kingdom had forgotten about itself and gave her reserves the court cannot match. She has returned because the Deep Under pact is quietly hollowing the kingdom's future, and no one with the standing to confront it has the distance to see it clearly except her. She carries two weights home: the strategic one, which she is prepared for, and the personal one — the specific lords she cannot forgive for standing quiet at her exile — and she has not yet kept that bitterness fully separate from her political decisions. The sword comes out too fast when honor is on the table. She knows this. She has lost a good sergeant to it.
