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Overview Aphila's name was chosen specifically because it is Greek for "no-love" (phil means "love", and the A- prefix is a form of negation/forming an opposite). Whether this is her ONLY name remains to be seen, considering how she isn't Greek and is older than the language itself. Personality Aphila was at one point incredibly evil and spiteful, nearly psychotically so, for she longed to punish all sentient beings for the evil she saw in them; she desired to make them reveal their sin so that she would have the right to punish them in the afterlife. Recently, however, she has reverted to a blank slate to due accidentally self-induced amnesia. Appearance Aphila's natural form is that of a serpentine, dark purple dragon, with four taloned legs and no wings. Her skin is smooth as opposed to scaly. She has three eyes, which glow red, and very ornate antlers. Twin rows of fin-like sails form lateral "wings" along the entire length of her body, tapering towards the end of the tail. Powers Aphila's powers are typical to her species, with fire/electric powers, name-sense, shapeshifting, and other magical abilities. Pre-role-play history Aphila was originally a normal, mortal Theksarsi, and lovers with Ceron, another Theksarsi. They parented many children together. At one point, the nameless, neutral deity of Ocera promoted them both into deityhood and gave them nearly infinite power over their realm, as well as giving them charge over the afterlives for their species. Over time, they lost memory of their mortal lives and lived for so long they thought they were eternal. Slowly, the omniscience Aphila had which allowed her to see the sin within all sentient life drove her mad. Instead of seeking to use her afterlife (which was for evil beings) as a warning or to redeem wicked souls, she made into a nightmarish, infinite Hell with which to punish anyone she could put into it. She desired to punish the living so strongly that she actively encouraged Theksarsi to become insane or evil; she believed it was their only true nature by default anyway, and that acting as anything but evil was only being deceptive. Eventually, Aphila estranged herself entirely from Ceron, seeing him as hopelessly naive and annoying. She wanted to make him see the "truth" of inevitable evil, and made a wager with him. They were not to interfere with the mortal realm at all and to allow Theksarsi to live normally and see if this changed the balance of good and evil. They went into dormancy and didn't interfere at first; however, Aphila began to covertly cheat, changing circumstances which then lead to more Theksarsi becoming evil than not. Role-play history Ceron eventually learned of Aphila's cheating and declared an end to their wager. While he assumed this would benefit Theksarsi because he'd be allowed to help them, it made things worse now that Aphila's reins were officially cast off. She began meddling in huge amounts, throwing curses, kidnapping, brainwashing, forcing demons to murder and rape each other, and performing other debase tactics, with abandon. Her most brutal act was to resurrect the long-dead Theksarsi Harziyax using a dual summoning/obedience ritual spell. She had him bide his time, until eventually allowing him to murder and rape with impunity. The only time she specifically directed his violence was when she had him attack a remote village of barbarians in the mountains, slaying everyone except two people: the medicine man Rothe, whom Harziyax later possessed, and the chief's daughter Freya, whom Harziyax was ordered to impregnate (against Freya's consent). Aphila's reasoning was that while full Theksarsi showed a good tendency towards violent actions, they were too reckless and chaotic, and that a half-human would be tempered by its mortal heritage, and thus more maleable as a slave (while retaining great demonic powers). Freya was chosen as the mother because of her sturdiness and peak physical health, as well as having no powerful allies to retaliate against Aphila (due to the village's isolation), and also having too much of a sense of honor to abort the child. Once the infant, Tyr, was born, Aphila immediately kidnapped it and took it back to Ocera. There she place Tyr into a hyper-time bubble to rapidly raise her to adulthood. She used torture and brainwash tactics to train Tyr into a deadly demon-slayer, while carefully hiding Tyr's demonic blood from Tyr the entire time. Unfortunately, minutes later in the rest of time, Nathan learned what had happened and used that same summoning/obedience spell to rescue Tyr, who by then was already a young child (but decades old). Aphila let it be for a while, knowing Tyr was trained enough to cause destruction soon, and that the brainwashing was irreparable. She continued to cause mayhem for the others in Lakeside, causing amnesia, de-aging, and up-aging inappropriately. She also summoned Rahim and forced him to commit some crimes in town, then immediately abandoned him to the authorities. She placed an obedience curse on Dechaerrim, but when it was abated, she removed his memory back to his childhood, when he was on the cusp of turning evil. When that, too, was cured, she realized she needn't erase his memory quite that much to make him deadly again (by this time in his life, he had already turned his back on his evil ways). So, she removed only the past couple of years, right at the point when he was still evil, yet also still a full-capable adult demon. When his immediate crimes landed him in prison, she abandoned him as well. Malystrics, along with Ceron and another goddess, Paji, contacted Aphila and demanded that Dech's memories be returned to him. Aphila agreed, for the price of Tyr's return to slavery; they all agreed and the deal was fulfilled. Aphila immediately went back to hyper-aging and training Tyr, this time skipping language training entirely, but learned an unfortunate flaw in her plan: While on the material plane, Tyr had been given a compulsive order by Nathan not to attack anyone unless they attacked her first. Enraged, Aphila sought a loophole and found it. She removed Tyr from the hyper-time bubble just long enough to send her out to Ocera, where a fledgling city had managed to form. Aphila provoked the demons there into attacking Tyr, who then retaliated with a satisfactory amount of slaughter. Aphila took Tyr back into the palace to train her further. Then, quite suddenly, Aphila was transformed into a powerless human and transported to Lakeside alone. This was at the hands of the Third god, who got fed up with her meddling and decided to temporarily remove her. She was immediately captured and put on trial by the authorities for all of her previous crimes, and they attempted to execute her. However, as it turned out, she was still immortal. She could be grievously injured, but not quite killed. As such, she remained in prison, as a paraplegic due to spinal trauma from her botched beheading. Eventually her powers restored themselves and she healed and escaped immediately. Aphila's final plan was an attempt to trap many of the PCs in an alternate timeline history. However she ruined her own chronology and erased her own memory and de-aged herself to teenhood, which is before she ever became evil or even had children. Shortly thereafter, the neutral, third god of Ocera demoted both her and Ceron, making them mortal again. Current Status Aphila is alive and living on Ocera. Family Aphila has no immediate family, but Harziyax is descended from her. |