Takalen the Ranger is described as an asur with long, ash-blonde hair. In XI 10, she knew Lady Fayelle and Prince Faldor, and, alongside the Great Eagle the ranger called friend, went to investigate the mansion of said-prince, the smell of rotting flesh and an ominous silence hanging over the estate.[1a]
Spoilers for Blood of Aenarion[]
Takalen occasionally visited the family when she passing through the area, and never knew them to be careless despite the comparative safety they had to the rest of Ulthuan. Faldor was not one to relax his guard. When Takalen found the noble family's gate ajar, she went to investigate, only to find a fox carrying the severed hand of an Elf. The ranger then and there drew her sword, and though she was "no weak-gutted town-dweller", what she found in the courtyard beyond made her want to heave. Elven bodies, flayed, mutilated and dismembered, were laid out in a pattern. Wildlife had disturbed the outline, but the fact that someone had intentionally laid the parts out in an ordered way was obvious. Especially the splashes of blood and dried out strips of intestine.[1a]
A strong stink of magic was in the air. Like all elves, Takalen was sensitive to the flows of magic, despite not being a mage. Within the main building, she found flies buzzing within the foetid air, too many for it to be natural. The stink of dark magic grew stronger the deeper she went. Old furniture lay broken as though a crowd of maniacs had rushed through, breaking everything precious they could find. Discarded clothing, blood-soaked, lay everywhere. The outlines of odd, elvish shapes were imprinted on the walls. It took the trained tracker long minutes to work out what happened, simply because her mind did not want to accept it; that lust-maddened elves and other things, had rolled in blood and had wild sex against the walls.[1a]
So it was that Takalen remembered hearing rumours regarding some of the locals, how they had been dabbling in the old rites of the Cult of Luxury. It looked like they had gone beyond dabbling here, that they had taken to summoning things using the old dark magic. She then deciphered the words crudely written on the walls, repeating again and again Slaanesh's name, smeared in blood and excrement, mixed with other names, and curses and imprecations. N'Kari was one of those names, the Keeper of Secrets responsible for the Rape of Ulthuan in the dawn ages, a creature twice destroyed by Aenarion and thought gone forever.[1a]
N'Kari has returned, said one sentence, sometimes spelled out in crude block characters and sometimes in the graceful looping script of modern Elvish. It repeated over and over again like the monotonous repetition of a lunatic. N'Kari will have vengeance.[1a]
After finding the horrific scene in the Great hall, it was a long time before Takalen could think clearly, but through her story, the rest of Ulthuan would know the daemon's return.[1a]