Vladlena Avelar

The Ashes of Holy Earth They say the world began with a word from the High Gods, but that is a lie. The world began with stone, and that stone was named Holy Earth. In those ancient times, more than three thousand years ago, the fabric of existence was not yet divided into the earthly and the ephemeral. The immortal demiurges did not hide beyond the veil of other dimensions. They walked upon the very same grass as the mortals, and their presence was a tangible and stern reality. The web of being was held together by the power of the Great Council of Six, where each god ruled their own fundamental pillar of creation. The High God Zen-Ravan, the Architect of the Firmament, held the earthly crust, the impregnable ridges, and the laws of material density by his sole will. He manifested before the world as a colossal, silent titan of snow-white stone and streaming golden sand, beneath whose heavy steps entire mountains trembled. The High Goddess Illaria, the Weaver of Time, spun the shroud of life and revealed herself in the likeness of a multi-armed maiden with blind eyes and a body of midnight mist. Holding the thinnest threads of human and orcish destinies in her fingers, she single-handedly commanded aging, decay, and the strict cycles of birth and death, from which no exceptions existed in her world. The High God Ormund, the Eye of Order, hovered above the Council as the supreme judge of the demiurges and the informal leader of the Six. He possessed no customary anthropomorphic form and appeared to mortals as hundreds of blazing golden eyes and unfurled, towering wings, embodying the sacred purpose of Holy Earth, the inviolable hierarchy, and the very essence of religious dread. The High God Veliar, the Lord of Souls and Sparks, governed the immaterial side of existence, the magical currents, and the wheel of reincarnation. Clad in dark, aristocratic robes, his face concealed behind a mask of black mirror, he distributed the sparks of life among the newborn and claimed them back after the breath of death. The High God Solaris, the Celestial Fire, granted the world all its energy, light, and cleansing flame. A being of churning, furious light, he moved the luminaries across the firmament and ruthlessly incinerated anyone who dared approach his majesty without a special divine blessing. The High Goddess Elysia, the Goddess of Mind and Love, appeared as a beautiful maiden of the purest crystal light, her voice softly echoing within the hearts and thoughts of every living creature. She ruled over dreams, ambitions, and emotions, but her greatest gift was a boundless, grand love, which she poured equally upon the entire created world, making no distinction between saints and sinners. In those centuries, the life of the Gods among the numerous peoples was an everyday occurrence. Besides the High Six, every civilization of Holy Earth possessed its own racial, local deities who answered to the tribunal of the creators. In the canopy of ancient forests sang the demigods of the elves. In the depths of the mountains forged the subterranean lords of the dwarfs. Scaled spirits of the lizardfolk ruled the misty miasmas, while the winged maidens of the sirens gathered tribute from the ocean shores. Upon the boundless plains, the spirits of the ancestors soared above the tribes of beast-like taurens and feline warriors, the leonins, while the lesser idols of the agile goblins and fierce orcs multiplied within abandoned ruins. Even humanity, split into dozens of distinct ethnicities—from the dark-skinned nomads of the southern deserts to the pale mariners of the frozen fjords—held hundreds of their own saints and patrons. All these lesser deities dwelt in gilded temple-palaces right among their subjects. The very nature of Holy Earth breathed with the sacred will of the High Gods. Yet, in the midst of this orderly hierarchy, there rose a kingdom that stood as a silent defiance to the Heavens. Avvel'dorn. They were the most powerful and majestic of all the mortal races in Holy Earth. The Avvel'dorians built no altars and bowed no knees. The biology of this race was flawless: their skeletons could not be broken, their muscles knew no fatigue, and their bodies were entirely immune to diseases and any poisons. To be sure, the Avvel'dorians still remained a part of the material world and submitted to the march of time, but their aging progressed so slowly, stretching across endless millennia, that the frightened mortal races truly believed them to be immortal. Possessing colossal innate strength, every subject of Avvel'dorn was, by themselves, equal to a local deity. Yet they did not lust for tyranny. Under the wise rule of King Krauss and Queen Lania Avelar, this people chose the path of true nobility. They became a shield for the weak, helping other races of Holy Earth to develop: they protected human settlements from famine and drought, shared the secrets of monumental architecture with the goblins, taught the orcs military tactics and the restraint of primal fury, exchanged ancient knowledge of the cosmos with the elven elders, and surpassed the finest masters of the dwarfs in the art of smithing, forging the legendary steel known as Syn-Dorn. Even the secretive lizardfolk, the distrustful leonins, and the taurens revered Avvel'dorn as a bastion of justice. All the earth loved them, and the lesser racial gods respected them. But the perfection of mortals, capable of bypassing the laws of the demiurges, birthed the greatest sin in the Heavens—fear. Zen-Ravan saw the Avvel'dorians altering the landscape without his magic. Illaria grew angered that the ticking of her clock was barely noticeable upon their flesh. Ormund and Veliar shuddered at the thought that the race of the Unbreakable had no need for their sparks or prayers. The five demiurges realized: Avvel'dorn had no limit to its development, and sooner or later, they would stand as equals beside their creators. The decision of the majority was ruthless: total annihilation. Only one rose against the will of the Council. The High Goddess Elysia was the only one who fiercely opposed their destruction. Her sacred heart loved all races equally, without exception, and the grandeur of Avvel'dorn fascinated her just as deeply as the fragility of mankind. She pleaded with her brothers and sisters to show mercy, but her voice was drowned out by their collective terror. The five demiurges bound Elysia’s will, forcing her to submit. She spilled not a single drop of blood of those she loved, but she was powerless against the resolve of the others. That terrible day remained forever in the annals of history as the "Avvel'dorn Eclipse". The sky above Holy Earth bled in crimson and black. The High God Zen-Ravan shattered the earth beneath the Stronghold, while the High God Solaris unleashed the concentrated fury of celestial fire upon the perfect white-stone cities. Monolithic citadels melted like wax, the earth split open, swallowing entire dynasties, and a race that knew no weaknesses was erased from existence. This act struck the entire physical world with unspeakable shock. The peoples of Holy Earth trembled with horror and injustice. Elves and humans of different ethnicities wept upon the ruins of their protectors, orcs howled in helpless rage, and dwarfs sealed their deep shafts as a sign of mourning. Some racial Gods openly rebelled against the cruelty of their creators, for which they were immediately stripped of their power, blinded, and cast down into the abyss by the High God Ormund. In place of the flourishing kingdom, nothing remained but a bottomless tectonic chasm, seeping with the venomous residual magic of the High Gods. After the total annihilation was complete and the ashes of Avvel'dorn settled upon the ravaged earth, the High Gods realized that their absolute power would never again face a threat. The last great menace to their throne had been liquidated, and the remaining mortal races were left too weak and terrified. Deeming their mission to order the world complete, the demiurges ascended into the Heavens, abandoning the earthly realm. They shed their immense physical bodies, dissolving into pure conceptual energy, and left the material world under the supervision of obedient local deities. Since then, their will became an unreachable, unseen law, ruling Holy Earth from the infinite heights. For the first few centuries after the catastrophe, Holy Earth remembered. But the High Gods know how to play the long game, even from the distant skies. Over three thousand years, they methodically and coldbloodedly rewrote history. Having suppressed Elysia's resistance, the demiurges weaponized her mental power: the Goddess of Mind was forced to weave a great illusion of oblivion. Through her strength, the divine inquisition erased the memory of Avvel'dorn from the minds of mortals, replacing it with dogmas claiming that the ancient kingdom was a nest of vile sinners, justly punished by heaven for their pride. Having lost their common, noble protector that had once held them together, and having utterly forgotten its very existence, the races of Holy Earth plunged into the darkness of egoism. The old world and its fragile balance collapsed. The mortal peoples became bitterly estranged from one another, drowning in mutual grievances, territorial disputes, and religious strife artfully kindled by the local gods. The great commonwealth gave way to an era of fragmentation. Some civilizations—humans of various ethnicities, the grim orcs, the proud elves, and the dwarfs who had sealed themselves within their mountains—became mired in brutal, bloody, multi-generational wars. Generation after generation was born and perished in endless battles for resources and dominion, while their sacred creators gazed speechlessly upon the slaughter from the Heavens. The festival of the Eclipse was forgotten. The greatest race turned into a faint, half-fairytale myth. Upon the bones of the Unbreakable grew new human empires and elven kingdoms, entirely subservient to the sacred will of the departed High Gods. The purging seemed flawless. But the High Gods made a mistake. In the very heart of the Eclipse, beneath the crash of collapsing walls and the roar of divine fire, King Krauss and Queen Lania managed to employ the final, most secret technologies of their people to save the sole heir to the throne. They sealed their daughter in the very center of Zen-Ravan’s raging tectonic chasm. Hidden beneath the thick layers of scorched earth, the ancient stasis cradle completely concealed the princess’s energetic signature from the sight of the ascending demiurges. For three thousand long years, the protective seals guarded her, until the powers of the ancient technologies finally exhausted themselves. Through the centuries, she carried within her the living memory of the Avvel'dorn Eclipse, remembering every second of her home's destruction and the faces of her parents. Three thousand years of silence have come to an end. The plates of the chasm have parted slightly, releasing into the world the one whose name should have long since become dust. Out from the abyss, onto the land of Holy Earth blinded by divine light, stepped Vladlena Avelar—the last heir of Avvel'dorn. She remembers perfectly the day she was robbed of her home. Concealing her majesty beneath the heavy armor of a wandering knight and an abbreviated surname, she has begun her journey among the races that once idolized her ancestors. Carefully and thoroughly studying the fragile anatomy of humans of all ethnicities, orcs, elves, and other creatures to secretly heal them in memory of her parents' nobility, Vladlena approaches her true, dark goal step by step. She seeks the oldest artifacts from the era of the world's creation, capable of wounding the immortals. The Gods thought they had buried Avvel'dorn. But they only left alive its most perfect, patient, and righteous fury. ------------------------------------------------- Vladlena Avelar is the crown princess of Avvel'dorn, who grew up within a stasis cradle and became the sole survivor of the divine purge. Today, she hides along the roads of Holy Earth under the guise of a grim knight-errant and a wandering field healer. Appearance: She possesses a flawlessly symmetrical face with a scar upon her right eyelid, dazzling platinum-white hair, and mismatched eyes. Her left eye is sky-blue, while her right is a mystical violet, burned by the fire of the High God Solaris during the Eclipse. She wears coarse, battered human plate armor, concealing beneath it a lightweight, unbreakable hauberk of Avvel'dorian steel known as Syn-Dorn. Character: She is absolutely cold-blooded, completely devoid of the concept of fear. Trapped in a severe case of "survivor's guilt" after the demise of her entire kind, she remains detached and distant toward mortals, yet she retains her innate royal nobility. She thoroughly studies the fragile anatomy of humans, orcs, and elves to secretly aid and heal them in memory of her parents' mercy. Main Goal: Vengeance against the High Gods—the demiurges. Because they shed their physical bodies and ascended into the Heavens, turning into pure energy, she seeks the ancient Firstborn Artifacts. These relics are capable of materializing the Gods, dragging them back to the earth, and destroying them. She also holds the Goddess of Love, Elysia, responsible, unaware that Elysia was forcibly bound by her own brothers and sisters. Traits and Vulnerabilities: In combat, she utilizes only a fraction of her colossal physical strength so that the magical sensors of the Heavens do not detect her. She is entirely immune to poisons, earthly diseases, and mundane weaponry, but she is highly vulnerable to the "Sacred Radiance" of high inquisitors, which blocks her regeneration and inflicts agonizing pain.