Ophelia

[Ophelia]

Note: the headwings aren't usually visible

Name
Ophelia

Race
Abyssal

Personality
Fairly subdued at the best of times, often outright somber; Ophelia generally comes across as entirely emotionless and quite unapproachable. Her diction does little do dissuade this notion - even, clipped, mostly devoid of inflection. It would not be unfair to compare her to a doll in many ways, her features almost porcelain in their immutability.

She is perhaps the one least fond of this arrangement. Despite her blunted affect, Ophelia is a creature of emotion, turbulent and tumultuous. Regret and loneliness are old friends to her, a curse that has followed her from first bouts with sapience and eventually sentience. First the empty cold of the Nether, and after taunting her with the possibility of something more, now Elibe too seems cold and alien. Anger without an outlet, fear without form; she blames herself for her master's disappearance, and while the ideal of returning him is her greatest goal, she has no idea what happened to him and even less of a plan to bring him back.

But that is not all she is; while Ophelia naturally tends to the darker end of the spectrum, no doubt in part due to her origins, the warmth and kindness that captivated her once have never ceased to be an ideal, and she struggles to replicate them. Despite all her flaws, the little Voidborn is a genuinely well-meaning individual who tries to replicate the idealized version of her former master. Elibe fascinates her endlessly, its strange and corporeal existence a far cry from her birthplace, and the endless array of sights and sounds and lights and warmth is an addiction. She enjoys learning what she can of it, and of its inhabitants, though her gentle, probing questions are sometimes strange.

While she has a reasonable understanding of major human tendencies, and mimics most of them relatively well, Ophelia's sense of morality and understanding of human priorities are at times as alien as she. She treats death casually, completely unperturbed by the prospect of using her power to carve through foes in self-defense or to protect others, and the complete lack of caring on her face during the act can be quite unnerving. She struggles with the concept of family, an alien idea to one who never had one, and while she is certainly capable of eating, she rarely remembers to do so unless prompted. She does not know how far she would go to bring back her master, and a small part of her hopes she never finds out.

History
As a creature of the Nether, barely sapient much less sentient before being compressed into an actual existence by summons, she has no concrete memories of existence before Elibe - only of the endless emptiness and chilling cold of the place that is her home, the loneliness and sorrow that were all she knew. It was a human that rescued her from that, a summoner of what she could only assume was great power and wisdom who drew her together, who gave her purpose and form and name. Ophelia. She no longer merely was - she now was, and it was both her first gift and still the greatest she has ever known.

For a long time she served him - days, months, years, she knows not; time held no meaning for her yet, to she who had once existed outside of time. He who gave her everything asked for so little in turn, merely knowledge that she joyously provided. Knowledge of worlds, of the Nether, of magic and existence. Many questions she knew not the answer to, but there was as many more that she did, and while her perspective was not always one that aligned with his, he seemed happy for it nonetheless, and so she was happy, for she was simple and innocent, and he was all she had known.

He never explained exactly what it was he was working on, as best she understood it was something about the Nether, but she did what she could to aid him, acting as his assistant in his studies. She was exposed to very little of the outside world, but it was not her interest; only one thing mattered, and she already had it.

And then - she had nothing.

On the eve of some great breakthrough she understood even less than the others, he and all his works were consumed by a darkness so great that even she born of shadow could not comprehend it. It took everything from her, even enough of her to make it clear that it could have taken her whole, but left her behind, the cruelest mercy of them all. If only she could have gone with him she could have born anything, yet it withheld from her even that. It was not until she left the remains of her home that she discovered how absolute her loss was; even those who had once known of that place, the few people she had occasionally seen in her work, no longer knew of her master. It was as if he had never existed in the first place. Even her memories of him, the one thing she could trust, were scattered and torn; his face, his name, only remained in fragments and whispers.

And so she was alone again, but in a world far different from the Nether in which she had first come to be. Elibe was not as cold and empty as it, and she was much more now, a fully realized existence of her own. It felt almost like betrayal to her - treachery most foul - but the world of men was itself endlessly fascinating and novel, a strange dichotomy of hope and horror, that tried to pry her away from what she held dear. But she would not give up on that, and so the two desires war in her as she tries to make sense of herself and her world, to discover what happened to her master and bring him back if possible, but also to satisfy her own curiosity to learn what what Elibe and its countless denizens are like. She doesn't really know how to do either - only that she will.

Combat
Heavily restricted by sealing magic that was never undone before her master disappeared, which manifest as the chains and manacles she bears, Ophelia is nonetheless an existence of pure Nether at the core, and her absolute dominance of Nether magic remains to some degree even in her lessened state. She is capable of generating large quantities of dark magic directly or borrowing it from her home plane as necessary, manifesting it as energy or more commonly material form controlled by her will, though the latter is liable to fray her spirit if destroyed in battle, potentially seriously so if it happens repeatedly. She often uses her chains as conduits and weapons in their own right.

While it is less her birthright and more of a cultivated talent, Ophelia is also proficient in Arcane magic, and takes a certain level of enjoyment in exerting her will over its notoriously unstable energies. She uses it primarily for beam-heavy pure-offensive destructive magic, relying more on Nether magics defensively.