Title : Caliph of Piriltine, Beloved by Death
Gender : Female
Race : Auriel
Heritage : Jeddite
Birthdate : 14 Thulce 3976
Age : 26 years old (immortal)
Height : 5'7
Weight : 160lbs
Hair : dyed pink, originally white
Eyes : red
Sexual orientation : asexual
Partner : Saint Andrew Aldenir of Leene
Parents : Roman Donovan (deceased) & Rachel Nalder (deceased)
Brothers : Zachary Donovan, Charles Donovan (deceased)
Defining traits : massive crystalline scars on her neck, wrists, and chest from numerous suicides and having her heart removed.
Personality : no nonsense, rash, impetuous. She is very driven, often impatient. Once she sets her mind to something, there is no stopping her. Despite often being callous to those around her, she is a good ruler to her people. She can be very mean if it ends up being for the greater good in the end.
Favourite colour : pink
Likes : the ocean, studying magic, collecting rare artifacts
Dislikes : her family, being touched, those who profit from other's struggles, the Valakian Empire
BIOGRAPHY
Ophélia Donovan was born into the accursed lineage of caliphs of Piriltine. Although she was the eldest, the throne would belong to her brother, Zachary. Something which she did not take well.
Like all of her ancestors before her, she had never seen the world outside the castle, trapped inside from fear of being killed by the vengeful entity hunting her bloodline. She saw herself as having no future. Forever a prisoner, forced to do her duty in a loveless marriage. Trapped in this situation, everything seemed hopeless for her.
However, she refused to back down. She grew very stubborn and combative and was ready to sacrifice everything to take the throne. She didn't want to live in fear. She wanted to see the world. She wanted to be caliph.
Ever since she was a child, she had loved to take long walks on the private beach near the castle. There she would talk to the ocean, almost feeling like it was listening somehow.
One day, when she was still a little girl, she cut her foot while strolling upon the sand. In pain, she put her foot in the saltwater in order to disinfect it as she sat down and looked upon what had wounded her.
It was a shard of what seemed like iridescent glass, but its colours kept subtly changing regardless of movement or light. It was unbreakable and perpetually cold to the touch. When she checked her cut foot, she realized that the wound had disappeared, leaving no mark. She tried cutting into the flesh of her arm a little, waiting for the wound to close by itself, but she soon realized it wasn't the glass, but the ocean that had healed her.
Numerous times she cut and the water embraced her wounds, closing them. The soothing feeling of the healing felt like the love and care her parents had failed to give her and was well-worth the pain of the cuts. She kept the shard of strange glass and visited the ocean day after day, talking to it, convinced that it was truly listening to her.
Although she didn't know it yet, this shard she held was a piece of the broken Heart of Eler, washed ashore after millennia of drifting in the ocean. This piece resonated strongly with the entombed husk of Jourmenes, dreaming at the bottom of the sea of Leene. This put Ophélia in direct contact with the God of Death. He spoke to her in a language she had never heard, yet somehow she knew what He was saying. His words were kind and reassuring. A soothing balm on her forlorn heart. A comfort on difficult days.
Over the years, Ophélia became a strong, determined woman, but also grew intensely attached to this voice from the ocean, even though she believed it was the water itself talking to her. She felt such a strong love for Nemeresis, she promised her heart to Him.
However, her father had promised her body to another. Ophélia was forced to wed Warlord Kasimir Handal, a great desert ruler with a massive army. She vehemently rejected this union, but had no choice on the matter.
Despite her best efforts, the day of her marriage arrived. Rather than walking down the aisle, she striped off her gown in a fit of despair and ran to the ramparts. She vowed to be with her ocean lover in death and fearlessly cut her throat open with the shard she always kept on herself. Her body plummeted down into the waves below, welcoming her like open arms. The fall alone would have killed her, but despite her open neck, and saltwater filling her lungs, she was still alive and conscious. She sank to the bottom of the ocean and remained there, in peace, for what felt like an eternity to her, but was merely more than a few days.
While she was underwater, a dark shadow swirled around her. She felt no pain, no sadness. She was held in the embrace of the God of Death, even though she still ignored His true nature.
Though fragmented, dead, and dreaming, trapped in the husk of Jourmenes, Nemeresis felt comfort for the first time in eternity. A presence, though mortal, who offered Him love and soothed His melancholy away. He took pity on the poor girl. Even though it pained Him to part with her, He sent a large shark for her to grab onto.
The shark swam her close to shore and Ophélia walked out onto the beach like nothing had happened. Her cut was healed and she was unarmed from the whole ordeal. Guards soon found her, sitting naked by the ocean, talking to it.
Ophélia could now hear the voice clearly. It was no longer coming from the waves, but in her soul, always with her. She was inhabited by this presence. The voice was beckoning her North, into unknown lands of darkness.
Entranced, she was taken back home with little protest and no one could explain what had happened to her, where she had been, and how she had survived.
Ophélia didn't remain in the fortress for long. Her father was only briefly happy to see her before berating her for missing the marriage. It didn't matter to her. She packed victuals and secretly left at the first chance she got.
Her journey to the continent of Ghaur took many months. She faced numerous perils. She felt pain, misery, hunger, cold. She had an unfortunate run-in with the warlock Lazare Khelshatakh who stole the shard of the Heart from her.
She carried on despite tiredness, despite wounds, despite the situation feeling hopeless, despite being raped and left for dead. She courageously heeded the call from deep within her soul, going over the Obsidian Diadem and into the accursed, forbidden lands from which no one ever returns. The starless lands where even the light of her torch seemed absorbed by the eternal night.
She kept walking and walking, running out of food, barely sleeping. Her torch burned out, still she carried on into the darkness, entirely blind.
Eventually, without noticing, she was walking over ice, which gave way under her weight. The frozen water shocked her. She was too weak to swim, so she sank down into the blackest abyss.
She kept sinking for many hours, panicking, but never drowning, yet always in pain from the cold. She was in complete darkness until she could vaguely discern a ruined city at the bottom of the sea.
There she fell into a chamber that had very little water in it, as if by magic. In said chamber, she found an ancient sarcophagus laying amongst an alien architecture, the likes of which she had never seen. In the tomb, a tall skeleton lay, human-like, yet with details that made it appear stranger the longer she stared at it.
Despite her exhaustion, Ophélia soon realized that the voice she had been hearing came from this skeleton. She felt such adoration for this being, but she knew she was dying. The journey had taken so much from her. She confessed that she felt like she had travelled so far only to die here in front of Him, and He confirmed that this was the case. A sacrifice from a devout could give Him the spark He needed to animated the corpse He inhabited.
Entombed with Jourmenes were two more shards of the Heart. Without hesitation, Ophélia slit her throat with one of them once again and quickly passed away.
Jourmenes came back to life, gaining a fraction of his power back, but not His memory. He still had no idea of who He truly was. He vaguely remembered being betrayed. He felt the great loss of life His curse had wrought. He realized He was all alone in this world. No one knew who He was. No one was left alive to remember the lost city of Midian.
It was too late to undo the curse. It was too late to forgive as all had paid the ultimate price. He felt the tremendous weight of loneliness upon Him. A feeling that tremendously scared Him. Even though He couldn't recall who He truly was, deep within Himself, Nemeresis still felt the full pain of the abandonment He suffered at birth.
He looked upon this mortal woman who had gladly offered her very life to Him. He had not been adored for so long, He felt very touched by her sacrifice. But He knew He had just lost His sole company.
Thus He decided to vest part of His shattered powers into Ophélia. Bringing her back to life, He voluntarily crippled himself so she could be with Him forever. He would remain a weakened skeleton, nothing but a shadow of His true potential.
Ophélia was revived, but wasn't truly alive anymore. She had become a phylactery for Nemeresis' fragmented soul. What little part of it He still held, he separated in two between them. Now they were one.
As safety, Nemeresis cut Ophélia's heart out of her body. That way, even if they were to be pulverized or burnt to ashes, as long as a part of her remained untouched, they would both always be able to come back. They left her heart in the tomb, at the bottom of the frozen sea of Leene, trapped between dimensions. No one would ever be able to find it.
Together, they journeyed back to Piriltine. The travel took even longer due to the skeleton of Jourmenes being in such a sorry state, but at least Ophélia no longer had to worry about the elements, or hunger, or tiredness. Although she could still feel the full ache of such needs, she was no longer impaired by them.
Once they reached the castle, Ophélia presented Jourmenes, His monstrous appearance hidden away by black wrappings and a cloak, as her husband. Since He did not remember His name, she named Him Andrew after her favourite poet, Andrew Belami, a Marki who often romanticized necromancy. She claimed He was a saint from a foreign land called Leene, as the long-lost name of the sea He had been slumbering in was one of the very few details He recalled.
Being bound to Andrew gave Ophélia the power to incite people to death. Simply by telling someone to take their own life, they would be overcome by the overwhelming desire to do so. She used this ability to have her father, Roman Donovan, commit suicide. Her mother having succumbed to the curse when Ophélia was young, she did not need to get rid of her.
Her brothers Zachary and Charles, escaped such fate as they had cowardly fled as soon as they heard news of her return. She paid them no heed, if they had left the safety of the castle, they were likely already dead.
Thus Ophélia took the throne. As she was now immortal, she could rule forever, but as she was dead, she could never have children. Not long after, her marriage to Andrew was officialized. He preferred to remain hidden away from sights, knowing He was monstrous to behold.
A few years after Ophélia's coronation, a vengeful Kasimir tried to wage war upon Piriltine. This would be the only time that the Auriels would get to see Andrew. As Kasimir's army greatly outnumbered that of Piriltine, Ophélia called upon her husband, having a special armour commissioned to protect him. She used what little Sidereal Ink she had left in her stores to give an example of his power, hoping they would never be challenged again.
They rode side by side in the vanguard. Andrew could cut down a dozen men in a single swing and Ophélia kept fighting despite being pierced by numerous arrows. Her blood had turned to saltwater due to her heart pumping into a half-flooded grave, terrifying her enemies who said she didn't bleed.
Many rumours and legends about the rulers of Piriltine began to spread after the battle was won. They became feared and respected by all. Their power was never challenged again and, just as Ophélia had wished, those under her rule finally knew peace and plenty.
As a show of confidence, she reopened the palace after thousands of years, tearing down its high walls. She erased all traces of the atrocities that had occurred there and had it repainted in pink, her favourite colour.
In just a few years, the city changed for the better. There are no crimes, no poverty, no cruelty, no hunger. The transition had been slow at first. Ophélia had no tolerance for criminals and no qualm in exiling the guilty to certain death in the desert of Thuruntsöl. The even distribution of food and wealth prevents petty theft and the fear of death has the unsavory kinds who seek to take what does not belong to them do their shady dealings elsewhere. While busy enforcing the peace, Ophélia has also made it her mission to recover all the missing shards of the broken Heart of Eler with the hopes of restoring it. She knew her revenge against the warlock Lazare would be best served very cold and all the more delicious for it.
The Auriel view their leader as an ascended goddess, but most other races view her as a witch, using black magic to extend her life. Some even qualify her reign as tyrannic, dubbing the Auriel a race of sheep led by a wolf.
Nevertheless, downtrodden pilgrims of all races converge to Piriltine to offer their final moments to the immortal caliph. The sick, the meek, those who have lost all hopes, they all come to visit in order to be granted a painless death. All think they go to meet Ophélia, but in truth, they are meeting Andrew, who takes their last spark of life and offers them peace. Although he possesses very little of his power, Andrew is even able to put even those afflicted by a curse of undeath to rest and to free those whose soul has been bound to Helen, making him a saviour to many.
((AUTHOR'S NOTES))
Ophélia was first named Dulcine and was meant to be an evil witch. Design-wise, she had more Romani influences, giving fortune teller vibes. I can't remember what the Auriel race was originally called nor why I had created them. I know Ophélia was merely existing for years until eventually she became one of my most storied and significant character.
Numerous characters and storylines were merged during the great lore consolidation. This greatly contributed to Ophélia's background.
As far as Andrew goes, I seem to remember having a dream about a catacomb saint being the lover of a foreign queen. He had Eastern Orthodox influences to his garments, much like a Schema monk.
I don't know at what point I decided that Andrew and Ophélia would go well together, but they absolutely became a power couple. Ophélia went from evil to morally grey. Andrew became the incarnation of Nemeresis, a god of death I created in my early teens. I never thought so many elements would converge together and turn this unassuming character into one of the key leads on Eler.
