Saira was a powerful sorceress. She lost her heart to a handsome horse-lord, barely a boy. She cast her magic to ensnare him, for she believed that all was fair in love and war. And this was love of the most powerful kind. The other magic-makers had unkind ideas about the use of magic to further love. They called her slut, defiler and cradle-snatcher. She however, had a different name for herself.
She was Saira the Romancer.
The night they were married, a jealous foe poisoned the wine they were to drink. The poison was meant for Saira, but her boy drank it first. The halls rang with her anguished howls, as she cradled the dead boy in her arms. She called upon the highest magic to bring back the boy, but the magic did not work. She then obsessively toiled and studied for years, watching over the rotting corpse of her lover. In despair, she turned to the darkest, most forbidden magic and raised him back from the dead - only to discover to her horror that death had changed him, and that he was but only a twisted, demented shadow of his former self. The monster ravaged and devoured every night. She silently wept, and let him - holding on to a memory of an imagined future they never had.
One day, her work was discovered. The magic she had used to revive her man was reviled across the known races. The elves, dwarves and men sent their most powerful magic-workers to destroy the shade she had created, and bring her to trial. Capture her they could not, but they did destroy whatever remained of the animated monster. As Saira fled from her charnel-house, she swore vengeance against her pursuers, and against all men.
She channeled all the love, affection and joy she ever held, into her lover's wedding band. It would be her sword of the night. She began to plot of raising an army of the dead. She swore to find and bind the three elves, nine men and seven dwarves, who had destroyed the memory of her love. She would use them as her means. The age of men would have to end, before it even began.
Saira the Romancer would have to become Sauron the Necromancer.