04-04-2018, 06:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-05-2018, 11:52 AM by Ahana Varma.)
History
Pre-Omniverse:
[spoiler]The city-state of Bhalaee had long been at peace. This was thanks, largely, to their one-time unquestionable superiority in the magical arts… over the centuries, though, as their people grew complacent and turned their attentions toward less deadly sorts of spellcraft, other powers rose to prominence across the continent. Realising that (at the time) they had no need to field armies, as the less gifted cities did, one of their past Rajas had disbanded their military entirely, a decision which had left much more coin to be spent on infrastructure and development, and so went a long way towards making Bhalaee the economic powerhouse it eventually became.
Nevertheless, though his name was lauded long after his death for taking such a profitable approach, which had led ultimately to the complete absence of any sort of poverty within the city walls (though, admittedly, the overwhelming magical power which many of them possessed also had a lot to do with this), when the state's carefully cultivated alliances and diplomatic links began to fray, the lack of anything more than a simple police force – who had themselves seen very little actual violence, due to the generally genial nature of the city’s citizens – caused concern amongst many of the more ‘paranoid’ denizens of Bhalaee.
When the first true wars in centuries broke out – not mere scuffles over the placement of a border, but genuine, full-scale invasions – diplomats were dispatched with all haste, to do what they could to calm the situations. Even at this point, though, there were still only a handful who seriously considered the possibility that Bhalaee itself could be dragged into the conflict. For the most part, the citizenry dismissed the warring states as clueless barbarians, and went on with their lives as normal.
Ahana was no different. Born to a loving, albeit vast, family – as the Bhalaeese were proud supporters of both polygamy and gender equality, their family trees tended to often more closely resemble hedges – she grew up carefree and encouraged to pursue her dreams… regardless of whether they were at all achievable or not. The city-state was more than prosperous enough to afford a well-funded welfare system for its populace – something which was unheard of almost everywhere else across the continent – so there was no need for her to worry about ending up penniless and starving.
Ahana finished her schooling at the age of fifteen and went on to became an artist; a sculptor, to be precise, using her magecraft to form beautiful statues of pure gold. Given that gold – like almost anything else – could simply be summoned magically, it had little real value in her world, but even so, it was a non-corroding metal which looked pretty, so it had that going for it, at least. She did well enough for herself, though she never quite excelled in her field.
Until the conflicts finally reached their doorstep. It was just two years since she had taken up this artsy career of hers when the first army showed up by the walls. A dozen city guards were dispatched to disperse them, as though they were nothing more than a crowd of angry protesters. Not realising how much their own powers had waned in the time since their city-state last saw combat, or how much their neighbours’ had grown, it came as a great shock to the people when the squad was slain after non-lethally subduing ‘merely’ three times their number. Considering the enemy force numbered almost two thousand, this wasn’t the most devastating of blows.
Of course, as soon as their foes had committed this heinous act of cop-killing, the entirety of the city’s guards filed out through the gates and wiped them off the face of the world… albeit, with a much higher casualty count on their side than anyone was remotely comfortable with. Realising at long last – perhaps too late – that they had no choice but to accept that they too were involved in these wars, the current Raja ordered the reestablishment of the military.
Their first attempt was a complete disaster. No one in the city had any understanding at all of strategy and tactics, and the people had been split into two camps by the declaration; the frightened, who refused to volunteer, leaving their forces significantly outnumbered by those of their foes, and the cocky, who still considered their magic superior to everyone else’s, in spite of recent events, and often took needless risks and got themselves killed as a result.
Ahana, who was among that first wave of recruits, fell into this latter category, though she was a tad wiser than many of the young people her age, and had decided to focus on using her magic in a primarily defensive manner, by summoning great suits of golden plate mail to wear… it wasn’t long before she tired of this approach, though. She endured all of a single battle dressed in one such suit before vowing to do everything in her power to perfect her defensive enchantments, so that she never again had to struggle and sweat beneath that great a weight simply to keep herself safe.
With each engagement she wore less and less of her armour, until finally she ceased to need it at all. Despite her personal progress, though, the army itself was having a bad time, their inexperience allowing them to be outmanoeuvred again and again by foes they ought to have beaten. Eventually, after an extremely close call when they were pushed all the way back to the city walls, conscription was implemented, which helped a lot.
What helped even more, though – at least in the short term – was that another city-state overran the city of Bhalaee’s most powerful neighbour whilst that nation’s armies were out in the field. Devoid of the supplies they would need to continue fighting and with nothing left to protect, those men and women turned to banditry to survive, causing major problems for everyone who tried to get through their territory… and unintentionally shielding Ahana’s people from the worst of the fighting, allowing their generals and strategists the time they needed to actually learn how to lead armies.
This warring period lasted seven years, and ultimately ended with no clear victor… rather, it was more that every surviving state had simply reached a point where they could no longer justify going on any further; their peoples were starving, their industries dead, their populations reduced to mere dregs. They had no choice but to cease hostilities before everyone was wiped out.
Nevertheless, when the peace accords were at last agreed and the armies returned home, almost all of the nations aimed to convince their people that they had somehow won… and Bhalaee was no different. The scattered remnants of their media rushed to heap praise upon the sorts of people whom, a decade before, they would have condemned as mass murderers and war criminals without a moment’s hesitation.
Ahana was amongst these people. Though she lacked the raw power that many of the city’s new ‘heroes’ held, her inhuman resilience had allowed her to walk unscathed from melees in which thousands had died, drenched in the blood of friend and foe alike, but without so much as a paper cut herself. The media named all of their greatest warriors, giving them titles that ranged from extremely pretentious (for the most excessively overpowered) to just plain dumb (for the others). Ahana, they chose to dub ‘Unkillabitch’, for her apparent inability to die.
As gloried as they were, though, the wars had left none of them truly unscathed, and Ahana – once possessed of a delicate and artistic soul – had developed a taste for inflicting pain, injury and death… and also she was just kind of an asshole in general now. It wasn’t long before she began to tire of peace.
Given this, she was all too pleased to get on board when another of her nation’s champions – who had been titled ‘the Puppetmaster of Fallen Souls’, for his unparalleled mastery of the art of Necromancy – shared with her his desires to return Bhalaee to its former glory, by any means necessary. Despite the questionable morality of his plot – which involved the assassination of the city’s peace-loving Raja and the installation of his daughter (who was much more supportive of their agenda) as Rani, to rule in his place – she had no objections. And she was not alone; many of the soldiers had had trouble settling back into civilian life, and were able to be persuaded to join his crew.
In the end, the scheme went off without a hitch, and the city-state’s new Rani, along with the Puppetmaster and his elite little club of ‘heroes’, dragged their people kicking and screaming back into conflict, determined to subdue every other nation on the continent and this time, rather than allow themselves to grow weak and complacent in their superiority, they would enslave the other peoples and force them to take on all the menial tasks required for survival, whilst the Bhalaeese served as their ‘benevolent’ overlords and stuck to the martial magics themselves.
Personally, Ahana wasn’t too fussed about these goals, one way or another. So long as she had some excuse to keep being as excessively violent as possible, she was perfectly happy with her place in the world. Before this latest conflict was even close to a resolution, though, her enjoyment was cut short, when – midway through the sacking of a fallen city, just after having finished brutally murdering a man and his wife in front of their wide-eyed young son – Omni chose to pluck her from her realm and drag her into his.
[/spoiler]
Omniverse:
Chosen by God: I Always Knew I Was Awesome — In which Ahana arrives in the Omniverse, sees a gate, and walks through.
The Gifts of God: Omnilium is a Wonderful Thing — In which Ahana crosses the Dunes, almost dies in a car crash, and reaches Nippur.
The King and His Merry Men — In which Ahana gets scared by a skeleton, sleeps with a guard, and encounters a king.
The City of God: Repairs & Rebuilding (In Progress) — In which Ahana follows her king, fixes some walls, and...
Pre-Omniverse:
[spoiler]The city-state of Bhalaee had long been at peace. This was thanks, largely, to their one-time unquestionable superiority in the magical arts… over the centuries, though, as their people grew complacent and turned their attentions toward less deadly sorts of spellcraft, other powers rose to prominence across the continent. Realising that (at the time) they had no need to field armies, as the less gifted cities did, one of their past Rajas had disbanded their military entirely, a decision which had left much more coin to be spent on infrastructure and development, and so went a long way towards making Bhalaee the economic powerhouse it eventually became.
Nevertheless, though his name was lauded long after his death for taking such a profitable approach, which had led ultimately to the complete absence of any sort of poverty within the city walls (though, admittedly, the overwhelming magical power which many of them possessed also had a lot to do with this), when the state's carefully cultivated alliances and diplomatic links began to fray, the lack of anything more than a simple police force – who had themselves seen very little actual violence, due to the generally genial nature of the city’s citizens – caused concern amongst many of the more ‘paranoid’ denizens of Bhalaee.
When the first true wars in centuries broke out – not mere scuffles over the placement of a border, but genuine, full-scale invasions – diplomats were dispatched with all haste, to do what they could to calm the situations. Even at this point, though, there were still only a handful who seriously considered the possibility that Bhalaee itself could be dragged into the conflict. For the most part, the citizenry dismissed the warring states as clueless barbarians, and went on with their lives as normal.
Ahana was no different. Born to a loving, albeit vast, family – as the Bhalaeese were proud supporters of both polygamy and gender equality, their family trees tended to often more closely resemble hedges – she grew up carefree and encouraged to pursue her dreams… regardless of whether they were at all achievable or not. The city-state was more than prosperous enough to afford a well-funded welfare system for its populace – something which was unheard of almost everywhere else across the continent – so there was no need for her to worry about ending up penniless and starving.
Ahana finished her schooling at the age of fifteen and went on to became an artist; a sculptor, to be precise, using her magecraft to form beautiful statues of pure gold. Given that gold – like almost anything else – could simply be summoned magically, it had little real value in her world, but even so, it was a non-corroding metal which looked pretty, so it had that going for it, at least. She did well enough for herself, though she never quite excelled in her field.
Until the conflicts finally reached their doorstep. It was just two years since she had taken up this artsy career of hers when the first army showed up by the walls. A dozen city guards were dispatched to disperse them, as though they were nothing more than a crowd of angry protesters. Not realising how much their own powers had waned in the time since their city-state last saw combat, or how much their neighbours’ had grown, it came as a great shock to the people when the squad was slain after non-lethally subduing ‘merely’ three times their number. Considering the enemy force numbered almost two thousand, this wasn’t the most devastating of blows.
Of course, as soon as their foes had committed this heinous act of cop-killing, the entirety of the city’s guards filed out through the gates and wiped them off the face of the world… albeit, with a much higher casualty count on their side than anyone was remotely comfortable with. Realising at long last – perhaps too late – that they had no choice but to accept that they too were involved in these wars, the current Raja ordered the reestablishment of the military.
Their first attempt was a complete disaster. No one in the city had any understanding at all of strategy and tactics, and the people had been split into two camps by the declaration; the frightened, who refused to volunteer, leaving their forces significantly outnumbered by those of their foes, and the cocky, who still considered their magic superior to everyone else’s, in spite of recent events, and often took needless risks and got themselves killed as a result.
Ahana, who was among that first wave of recruits, fell into this latter category, though she was a tad wiser than many of the young people her age, and had decided to focus on using her magic in a primarily defensive manner, by summoning great suits of golden plate mail to wear… it wasn’t long before she tired of this approach, though. She endured all of a single battle dressed in one such suit before vowing to do everything in her power to perfect her defensive enchantments, so that she never again had to struggle and sweat beneath that great a weight simply to keep herself safe.
With each engagement she wore less and less of her armour, until finally she ceased to need it at all. Despite her personal progress, though, the army itself was having a bad time, their inexperience allowing them to be outmanoeuvred again and again by foes they ought to have beaten. Eventually, after an extremely close call when they were pushed all the way back to the city walls, conscription was implemented, which helped a lot.
What helped even more, though – at least in the short term – was that another city-state overran the city of Bhalaee’s most powerful neighbour whilst that nation’s armies were out in the field. Devoid of the supplies they would need to continue fighting and with nothing left to protect, those men and women turned to banditry to survive, causing major problems for everyone who tried to get through their territory… and unintentionally shielding Ahana’s people from the worst of the fighting, allowing their generals and strategists the time they needed to actually learn how to lead armies.
This warring period lasted seven years, and ultimately ended with no clear victor… rather, it was more that every surviving state had simply reached a point where they could no longer justify going on any further; their peoples were starving, their industries dead, their populations reduced to mere dregs. They had no choice but to cease hostilities before everyone was wiped out.
Nevertheless, when the peace accords were at last agreed and the armies returned home, almost all of the nations aimed to convince their people that they had somehow won… and Bhalaee was no different. The scattered remnants of their media rushed to heap praise upon the sorts of people whom, a decade before, they would have condemned as mass murderers and war criminals without a moment’s hesitation.
Ahana was amongst these people. Though she lacked the raw power that many of the city’s new ‘heroes’ held, her inhuman resilience had allowed her to walk unscathed from melees in which thousands had died, drenched in the blood of friend and foe alike, but without so much as a paper cut herself. The media named all of their greatest warriors, giving them titles that ranged from extremely pretentious (for the most excessively overpowered) to just plain dumb (for the others). Ahana, they chose to dub ‘Unkillabitch’, for her apparent inability to die.
As gloried as they were, though, the wars had left none of them truly unscathed, and Ahana – once possessed of a delicate and artistic soul – had developed a taste for inflicting pain, injury and death… and also she was just kind of an asshole in general now. It wasn’t long before she began to tire of peace.
Given this, she was all too pleased to get on board when another of her nation’s champions – who had been titled ‘the Puppetmaster of Fallen Souls’, for his unparalleled mastery of the art of Necromancy – shared with her his desires to return Bhalaee to its former glory, by any means necessary. Despite the questionable morality of his plot – which involved the assassination of the city’s peace-loving Raja and the installation of his daughter (who was much more supportive of their agenda) as Rani, to rule in his place – she had no objections. And she was not alone; many of the soldiers had had trouble settling back into civilian life, and were able to be persuaded to join his crew.
In the end, the scheme went off without a hitch, and the city-state’s new Rani, along with the Puppetmaster and his elite little club of ‘heroes’, dragged their people kicking and screaming back into conflict, determined to subdue every other nation on the continent and this time, rather than allow themselves to grow weak and complacent in their superiority, they would enslave the other peoples and force them to take on all the menial tasks required for survival, whilst the Bhalaeese served as their ‘benevolent’ overlords and stuck to the martial magics themselves.
Personally, Ahana wasn’t too fussed about these goals, one way or another. So long as she had some excuse to keep being as excessively violent as possible, she was perfectly happy with her place in the world. Before this latest conflict was even close to a resolution, though, her enjoyment was cut short, when – midway through the sacking of a fallen city, just after having finished brutally murdering a man and his wife in front of their wide-eyed young son – Omni chose to pluck her from her realm and drag her into his.
[/spoiler]
Omniverse:
Chosen by God: I Always Knew I Was Awesome — In which Ahana arrives in the Omniverse, sees a gate, and walks through.
The Gifts of God: Omnilium is a Wonderful Thing — In which Ahana crosses the Dunes, almost dies in a car crash, and reaches Nippur.
The King and His Merry Men — In which Ahana gets scared by a skeleton, sleeps with a guard, and encounters a king.
The City of God: Repairs & Rebuilding (In Progress) — In which Ahana follows her king, fixes some walls, and...