Eruca Ad Papilionem
| Eruca | |||||||
| Female Succubus | |||||||
| Player: Ven The Jen | |||||||
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| General Information | ||||||||||
| Full Name: | Eruca Ad Papilionem | |||||||||
| Nicknames: | ||||||||||
| Age: | ||||||||||
| Deity: | The Hebdomad | |||||||||
| Alignment: |
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| Occupation: | Excommunicated Crusader, The Order of the Planes Militant | |||||||||
| Faction/Rank: | Free League | |||||||||
| Place of Birth: | Pazunia, The Plain of Infinite Portals | |||||||||
| Physical Attributes | ||||||||||
| Height: | Variable | |||||||||
| Weight: | Variable | |||||||||
| Eyes: | Variable | |||||||||
| Hair: | Variable | |||||||||
| Complexion: | Variable | |||||||||
| Physical Build: | Variable | |||||||||
| Physical Features: | Variable | |||||||||
| Skills | ||||||||||
| Charm and Suggestion, Dark Blessing, Divine Might and Divine Shield, Disguise, Divine Spellcraft, Cooking, Teleportation, Clairevoyance/Claireaudience | ||||||||||
| Equipment and Items | ||||||||||
| Spellshield, Justicar, Circlet of Persuasion, Lantern of Revealing, Talisman of Glory, Commander's Ring, Towel | ||||||||||
That Which is Seen
This creature no longer wears the dressings of the Order of the Planes Militant. No longer does she watch where the Harmonium cannot and no longer does she stand by the aid shelters to do the good work of the Order for the common man. No, instead she stalks, and has been seen keeping a careful eye on a few infamous Planeswalkers...
That Which is Heard
Some say that this creature is evil. Some say that she is playing a long, ruthless game to drag down those she wants to inflict petty vengeance upon. Some say she is simply lost and without a home. Some say she is hunted from above and below. The truth is, the chant is that no body seems to know.
Without
Emotions run across Eruca in every shade, every colour, ideal and expressive. She carries tremendous weight on her shoulders, something personal that isn't just her wide, powerful wings. Her lucid, symmetrical and predatory features are summoned from deep dreams. It's a stark contrast, soft eyes against her raptor talons.
She carries conviction like a banner and hope like a beacon. There is a burning heart, a mission or crusade, that has brought this creature up into the forefront of the fight for what is right.
Within
Three words for myself: Violent, unpredictable and sick. It's difficult to look back at what I thought was my life. I suffered and retaliated.
I did terrible things because I had to.
I did terrible things because I wanted to.
I did terrible things because I was expected to.
Every day my need consumed me. I had to hurt people. They threatened me. They had what I needed. It became a release. Scar some other poor mind to just forget about that constant, grating, migraine misery that I was in.
It becomes a tired old turn of phrase. Demons are evil. Yeah, it's easy for me to speak about all of this blex up here, when I'm holding a halo and pretending to be one of the good guys. Maybe I'm pretending hard enough that it counts. Maybe I'm building myself up for a bigger fall. I could sit back and quietly nod my head and agree that I was once insolent, ignorant and most of all dangerous. I could pretend that the lessons I've learned mean that I know better.
But it's not that simple. Is it? You think a Fiend is just wrong?
In some places life is cheap. It's the same as here, though. You've got a problem and you've got to fix it. The money is blood and sweat and tears. I'll explain that. Some minds think they could carry the world on their shoulders. That's fine. Up here it's the right thing to do. You have an idealistic economy, infrastructure that cares for the vulnerable and that defends itself from corruption. You have those creatures of belief, these Angels that aren't going to be boxed up. They can do anything and will do anything just to help you.
Anything - they can nurse you when you're ill. They pick you up when you're down. You can lose something and they can find it. You never had something and they can create it. Reality bending, indestructible, awe inspiring, righteous - I've had a lot of time to think about that.
Wasteward things are run by the Fiends. But it's not just that. We have the crush of everything, every damned soul, every cheat and every mistake. Nature slams these things down on us.
An orphan child steals bread to feed himself. Well, a benevolent soul just gives him bread. A wise soul teaches him to make bread, or earn the gold to buy bread. We all know that yark. I'm from the Abyss. There isn't bread there. You can't feed yourself. No soul will give you food. There's no place to work to buy bread. There's no flour to make it.
So I'm exaggerating maybe? Welcome to the poison pit. The air burns you. The jagged ground gives you ulcers. The weight of the worlds and the mibix that everyone's preaching everywhere presses down on you. Everyone's hungry for something. There's only one good thing you can say about it:
You can escape.
The multiverse isn't a kind place. There's good for bad. There's probably a reason for that. I don't know what it is. But that means there's good. Now, you say that to a Fiend and they think: Fantastic. That means there's passion and energy for change.
You can stand in Pazunia. There's no life there. The red sun blazes above you. You'll never grow food under it. The dusty soil is poison. What you bring with you is good to eat and to rot. You'll never build a city out of its rocks (not a real city, not like up here). They call it the Plain of Infinite Portals. It's the way out. It's the way in. You know that people are stupid enough to go to the Abyss? We, us minds, spend thousands of years trying to claw our way up and out. They walk in. They jump in. They shift in. They come with food, they come with tools and they come with magic.
They come with energy, with hope and sometimes with the kind of blaze idiosyncrasy that would make a more cynical mind think that they didn't deserve better.
I used to hunt them. I used to sweep over the landscape on my wings, when I could sense their Joyward nature, and find them. Sometimes we moved as a group, silent, coordinating through the mindscape. I was good at it. I would trick them or cut them or doom them. If we worked together we fled with the spoils, far apart, or risked bickering over the scraps that we needed.
I nearly always got to taste them.
As I made them wither, I would lap up their mind and their thoughts, those memories of a better world, their hopes and dreams. Sometimes those aspirations were surrendered at the end and, vicariously, I would weep at their beauty.
Have you ever shared a mind with someone, known their fantasies, their loves and passions? I have experienced a thousand growing families. I know what it is like to overcome disability and discrimination (ha). Irrelevant histories merge together. Personalities reveal themselves as little more than trained reactions. I was compulsively hurting people to tear their emotions away, to take a tour around their final imaginarium and feel some kind of release.
So I understand Fiends. I am a Fiend, the best of the worst of the scum from the pit.
It's a sad story when you go into detail. I'm a scarred sod (ha) who got lucky and gave the laugh to those too entirely addled to see what I was doing. I think. I've got to admit a certain wash of paranoia. How can something that's gone so incredibly wrong end up so undeniably fantastic?
It can't.
To step back, give a little perspective, the cliché is that one day everything changed. I was hunting over and across the Plain of Infinite Portals. The rewards were petty and (I remember) I was being especially sadistic. Overconfident is a good word for it. I forgot the first lesson that my Mind had ever grasped. Demons are both hunters and prey. Knifespiders, huge retrievers, with eight limbs dancing incoherently meant my death (usually). However, my torn form was dragged down and down.
And then there was a moment, I remember, of clarity before I lost my last remaining dignity. I was carried (stiff chitin and cold metals against my flesh) looking upwards, having lost all sense of time. My body was shocked from injury and I saw the ponderous and gnarled form of a tree. I had never seen one with my own eyes. I thought, with the reduced faculties open to me, I thought of the Abyss. So huge and expansive that it generates its own material planes - only to induce further misery, tricks and traps. My delusion convinced me that this was my own personal damnation. Things fell into perspective. I had to be free.
It was a transient thing, as I admit most life changing circumstances are. As I soon lost track of the reality so too has gone my lucid memories. I know - I know - that I could not have seen that tree where I was on the path I was forced. Still, the Mind is a wonderful thing.
I remember Aldinach. Her needle fingers were under my flesh, her mahogany mask above me. Pain, the kind some people fortunately never experience, that coats you with sweat, leaves you trembling without motor function and an idiot, incoherent, demented train of thought.
Oh, but I did escape, so many times. My first attempt was poor. Sometimes I even escaped her domain, the fortress of Aldinach's Egg at the edge of the Grand Abyss, and her pet Chaos Beasts. Always, the knife spiders returned. Scar them all, then, and the domination and fear and control they pressed down on my weak Mind. I became a tool then, servile and oppressed, when it was clear I would do anything to be away and not to return, a jabbering fool because I knew that they could snatch me back - anywhere.
That is the hierarchy of the pit. Control what you can, work with others for your own gain and self-preservation. I know that it's a common mistake - those that believe demons are less intelligent or organised than the (wretched, foul) Baatezu, the Archons, Angels and Guardinals. I assure you that it is exactly that sort of ignorance that keeps the evils in power.
Of course you know what my mission was. It was one of corruption, to snatch away that child ordained for greatness. Get to him by his father Truban (what intelligence, to underestimate everything so). The dice scattered and, well, let's just say that I had the right spell key on the wrong plane. I had to make my move early. It was a flawed motion and a sign of things to come.
You know how it ended, my defeat, in awe of that seemingly infinite power. The child saw through me - mysticism, premonition and complete knowledge. I get it now, why he's Excelsior's prodigy. I know why the Tanar'ri Queen Aldinach wanted the boy for herself. I don't think that I could have understood it without seeing it firsthand. But I sprang my trap. I drank from the child's mind and he actually reciprocated. I found peace and, with both conviction and compassion, he - a child - sealed me away in that diamond for what might have been an eternity.
Or a year - it was a year. I could feel the threads of my thought pulled, woven and I was shown things from across the multiverse. There was clarity. It made sense, while I was in there anyway. On my release I knew everything would be different. There was no going back. I could not face the royalty. I could not throw myself down, again, just to become a bottom feeder. Something had to change and it was me.
So I'm here. You know me, what I've done since I was spared and offered a chance to Do The Right Thing. I took it up. I bet that surprised everyone because I did it well. But I'm not some addled cove. I know a good thing when it comes. I'm not here to corrupt you (anymore) or undermine you or deceive you. Like I said, I'm up here now, holding the halo, and I think I might just be able to save a life.
But that's what you're here to test. This little interview - you want to see what I'm made of.
How did I do, lily?