Ella's parents betrayed their goddess when they turned to worship of devils. They were excommunicated from the temple of Sharindlar, goddess of healing and mercy, and when they fled they abandoned their young daughter. Deciding Ella was innocent of her parents' crimes, the temple kept her and raised her as an acolyte.

Growing up, though the priests insisted no one judged her for what her parents had done, Ella always felt as though she was held to higher standards than the other acolytes, treated with suspicion they weren't. Where some might have responded with rebellion, though, she doubled down, burying herself in her studies, in her worship, desperate to prove herself as more than her traitorous parentage. Which isn't to say that she disliked it--Ella found solace in Sharindlar's indiscriminate care and compassion, and when she allows herself to think of her parents she finds herself wondering how they could have ever turned their backs on such a loving goddess.

Like any place where clerics gather, the temple was always host to someone who needed help, and Ella realized pretty early on how much she wanted to help as many people as she could. More than just the people who came to the temple, because they were only a tiny fraction of all the suffering people in the world. So when she began to manifest divine magic of her own, bestowed upon her by her goddess, the choice was clear. She left the temple, left the mountains for the outside world, away from the judgement she grew up immersed in. Ella knows she can't help the entire world alone, but she can damn well try. And now it's taken her here.