Winnowill

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Winnowill
Publication information
Publisher	Warp Graphics, Marvel Comics (Epic imprint), DC Comics
First appearance	Elfquest #10 (unseen), #11 (full appearance)
Created by	Wendy Pini Richard Pini
In story information
Team affiliations	Gliders
Notable aliases	Lady Venovel (human disguise)
Abilities	Ability to "black send", causing psychic pain; ability to shape flesh; able to reshape her own body into aquatic or human form; able to reshape animals into monsters with deadly powers.

In the Elfquest comic book series, the female elf character Winnowill, of the Gliders of Blue Mountain, is the seductive but deadly enemy of the Wolfriders.^[1]

[edit] History

Though originally given healing powers, her fear of growing weak drove her to secretly harm other Gliders in an attempt to stay strong. It had a reverse effect, causing her powers to turn inward and become toxic. Once the lover of the Gliders' ruler Lord Voll, she vowed to find the palace for him, but instead discovered a dehydrated, wounded troll who had come to take rockshapers prisoner. She seduced him for amusement, giving birth to the half-troll Two-Edge, later killing the troll and driving Two-Edge, who would have tried to tell Voll what had happened, insane. When she returned to Voll, he scarcely recognised the person she had become. When the Wolfriders first arrived at Blue Mountain she attempted to enslave them and then tried persuasion, threats and kidnapping to try to drive them away. It turned out that this was all in a vain attempt to prevent Voll from remembering and trying to regain the ancient Palace of the High Ones - a quest which ultimately led to his death.

After Voll's death, Winnowill embarked upon many more schemes intended to destroy the Wolfriders and give her complete control of all elfin power.

At times she has lied, seduced, kidnapped and murdered to achieve her dark intentions. Rayek is the only elf who ever believed she could be turned from evil, perhaps seeing in her a perversion of his own desire to wield power for the good of all - as he sees it.

After centuries of enmity toward the Wolfriders, who had thwarted her plans at every turn, Winnowill deliberately allowed the human warlord Grohmul Djun to kill her, freeing her black spirit from her body. To prevent her spirit from roaming free and wreaking death and destruction at will, Rayek absorbed it into his own body, becoming both Winnowill's prison and jailer. Only Rayek, with his intense single-mindedness, has the strength to hold her, and even so she has sometimes gained the upper hand, wresting control of his body from him and even occasionally reshaping (and re-sexing) it into a perfect facsimile of her own.

Rayek still hopes that one day his love for Winnowill will curb her destructive urges, but he knows that the struggle will be a long and arduous one.

[edit] References