The Story of Zyra
Zyra is not human and was never human. She is a plant — a sapient being of Ixtal's jungle that came into consciousness and took the form it found most effective for operating in a world where most power is held by things that walk on two legs. The exact mechanism is murky: a sorceress died in the Kumungu jungle, and the plants that grew through her absorbed her consciousness or her magical signature or something of her that wasn't quite gone. What emerged was Zyra.
She experiences the world through the particular sensibility of a plant-being: she is interested in life, specifically in the propagation and dominance of life, and she pursues this interest with methodical attention. Humans interest her as threats and as resources — their presence changes the landscape she inhabits, and she has opinions about these changes, generally unfavorable. She is not random in her violence; she is a creature with a perspective that happens to put human expansion near the bottom of her list of approved activities.
She moves through Ixtal's jungles and the territories beyond them with the confidence of a being that is native to the landscape in a way that nothing bipedal can be. The spores she trails, the seeds she plants, the thorns she deploys — all of it is the expression of a single coherent will: the Ixtal jungle should not be taken from the things that belong to it. She is one of those things. She intends to remain so.