There have been three separate Ellcrys trees, and each started life as an Elven woman. Little is known about Aleia Omarosian, who became the first Ellcrys, except that she consented to be made into the Ellcrys by Elven magicians during the Age of Faerie, prior to the advent of the world of Men. She thrived for many millennia as the Ellcrys, enduring the encroachment of Men upon the Elven lands and surviving the Great Wars. However, she sickened and died quite rapidly about fifty years after the Third War of the Races. By the time Lauren, one of the Chosen, noticed that some of the Ellcrys' brilliant crimson leaves were discolored, the Forbidding had already weakened to a point where a few of the most powerful Demons could escape into the Westland. One of these Demons, the Reaper, infiltrat