Creation

Taline was created by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren in Black Cloak 1.

Major Story Arcs

Taline is the Queen of Kiros, the last city in the world. She took over at some point around the end of the final wars that defeated a great evil and presumably also led to the destruction of the rest of the world.

Taline is an Elf and has a royal court that is also comprised of all Elves, including Vasha, mother of Phaedra Essex and Hadrian II of Essex; Ividor, her lead magician; Lysanthir, the next-most-prominent magician and her lackey; and Valorie, a younger magic healer. Her son, and heir to the throne, is Freyal III of Sidra.

Other centers of power in her kingdom include Phinneas II of Thane, the most powerful Dracona, a rival class of beings; the Kiros Three (Galal III of Veris, third in line for the throne, Elea Veris, and Aldric II of Solas), the most powerful Humans; and the Black Cloaks, detectives at the Kiros Police Department.

At some point, Kiros’s magic infrastructure starts to fail. This magic keeps Kiros safe and flourishing. Taline and Lysanthir create a scheme to breed the Taka (cute fuzzy magic animals) in vast numbers and drain them of their magic. The Taka are beloved so the plan is a deep secret.

This goes on for an unknown number of years.

Meanwhile, her son Freyal falls in love with Phaedra and they are engaged. However, Phaedra discovers that Phinneas II is her father and she is half-Dracona. Kiros’s society is based on rigid race lines. If she married Freyal and her lineage was made public, it would ruin him and put her own family in danger of honor killings. She decides to break up with Freyal. This leads to the Queen, who likes Phaedra, to have to exile her. Phaedra doesn’t tell them why she makes her decision.

Freyal is crushed and starts slumming it with the lower classes, getting a lowborn Elf girlfriend. Phaedra becomes a Black Cloak.

Freyal discovers the Taka plot. He can’t decide whether to let people know about it. He considers suicide and/or telling Phaedra about it but decides against both—the latter because he doesn’t want to put her in danger.

Taline, however, finds out that Freyal knows. Kiros’s magical vulnerability is too dangerous a secret to take a chance on letting it get out. She goes to his slum apartment and stabs him with a magical Dracona Dagger. As he lays dying, he takes a rare Dracona poison, which he knows will make Phaedra realize something unusual is going on when she investigates his murder. Dace, his girlfriend, also takes the poison. When Lysanthir, who followed the Queen, finds Dace’s body at the scene, he drops it in the Lagoon where a Maid (mermaid) named Yanha bites it, and then dies of the poison as well.

The sudden presence of three bodies does indeed garner the attention of the Black Cloaks. Phaedra starts an investigation and visits the Queen to tell her of Freyal’s death.

While there, she is hit from behind by her brother, Hadrian, who never forgave her for her exile. She is healed by Valorie, the palace healer.

The Queen talks with Phaedra and realizes she will probably be found out, given Phaedra’s determination.

Several events happen that attempt to hinder the investigation. A second person tries to kill Phaedra with a Dracona Dagger, an attempt which she survives only because she had recently been healed and because of her Dracona heritage. Several beings who look like Dracona, but may have been magically disguised, harass Dace’s friend Renna. An All Points Flash bulletin is sent out by the police, seeking the capture of Phaedra and her partner, Pax. It is unknown whether the Queen or Lysanthir (who sometimes operates without her knowledge) set these things in motion but presumably the Queen was at least aware of them.

Phaedra and Pax eventually figure out the Taka scheme and find the machine that absorbs their magic. Lysanthir and the Queen confront them. Taline makes clear that however horrific it may be to pull the magic out of the Taka, turning them into blackened Wraiths, it is necessary to keep Kiros afloat, and that if they stop, the most vulnerable populations of the city will bear the brunt of the damage.

Phaedra still believes they must be stopped. Her partner Pax is more concerned for the damage it may do to the people in the neighborhoods he lives in.

They discuss Freyal’s death. When Taline finds out that Lysanthir interfered with the bodies she is furious.

Some of Phaedra’s allies, including her head sorcerer Ividor, show up and there is a battle. Ividor and Phaedra’s mother die, the latter at Taline’s hands. Phaedra destroys the machine. The queen and Lysanthir are taken into custody. Fires and floods destroy portions of the Narrows and the Trees within Kiros.

Five years later, a series of mysterious murders take place. Phaedra (now a private citizen) and Pax, along with his new partner Alden, investigate. The people are killed by Dragyern, giant monsters under someone’s control.

Another attack happens at the Supermax prison. At first they assume the Dragyern was there to kill the Queen and Lysanthir but when Phaedra, Pax, and Alden show up, she’s fine and Lysanthir seems to be the victim. She has a fancy cell, looking out from behind a beautiful transparent clock face. They interview her and she points out that Lysanthir’s body is missing—he wasn’t killed, he was taken. She seems to have some sense of what’s going on, but has no other concrete answers.

In the end, they find out that one of the Kiros Three, Elea Veris, was behind it all. She was developing a new form of synthetic magic to replace the Taka magic (with Lysanthir’s help). She is killed by one of the Dragyerns she was controlling and the Black Cloaks give the new magic to the Prime Minister who replaced Taline as the ruler of Kiros—who happens to be Phinneas II of Thane, Phaedra’s father.