Tera Alon

The Tera Alon are not a distinct species at all, but a form — a transgenically-enchanted body that Alka Alon volunteers inhabit in order to move and fight effectively in the world of humanity. In Knights Magi Ithalia explains the process to Minalan: "Our fight. So many, in fact, that the few songmasters who know the old transgenic enchantments are growing weary with the transformation songs."

In native form an Alka Alon stands child-sized and lightly built. The transgenic Tera Alon form is tall, human-proportioned, powerfully muscled, and strikingly beautiful — surpassingly so in human eyes. It sacrifices a measure of the Alka Alon's native arcane strength, but gains the physical reach and stamina to wield sword, bow, and plasma weapon in the war against Korbal and Sheruel. Fallawen, Varen, and Ithalia are all Tera Alon in this sense; so are the hundreds of Alka Alon volunteers who took up the transformation after the fall of Anthatiel.

The Tera Alon emerged from the catastrophe of Anthatiel's fall, when the Alka Alon Council was finally forced to accept that the coming war against Korbal could not be fought from their native bodies. The songmasters who retain the old transformation songs are few and are growing weary; the more conservative Alkan lords fear that the Tera Alon movement will erode the purity of the Kindreds. Their fears are not unfounded. Tera Alon live longer than humans but far shorter than native Alka Alon, and those who have taken the form report a vitality and physical exhilaration they find difficult to give up.