Erissium
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Attributes
| Home Dimension | Somnus-Ter |
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| Species | Dragon |
| Age | ~13,200 years old |
| Elements | Earth, Life, Water |
| Name Pronunciation | 'AIR-iss-ee-uhm' |
| Gender | Cis woman |
| Pronouns | She/her |
Hatched on Somnus-Ter 13,200 years ago, Erissium is one of the oldest still-living travelers in existence. But her tale is far from a triumphant one.
By the time Erissium hatched, the Triumphant Legion was already in the throes of conquering the dimension, and was actively making an effort to cleanse the dimension of its native dragons, who posed a real threat to their efforts due to their agelessness and the higher level of power they tended to have as a result of it. Despite their efforts, however, the dragon clade she was born into was ultimately destroyed, and its hatchlings taken prisoner to be slaves to the empire.
Erissium ended up being trained as a gladiator from a young age, to entertain the civilians of the Triumphant Empire with blood sports. Despite her fears and her overall hatred of violence, Erissium was forced, from a very young age, to get over it and fought to save her own life. She honed her protective barrier magic here, and proved her entertainment value by developing a fighting technique of wearing her opposition down to the point of exhaustion, and then lashing out explosively to end the fight.
As she grew older, Erissium grew to understand the Legion more from the inside. She learned that they coerced prisoners of their bloodthirsty expansionist efforts to perform menial tasks of all kinds. In fact, one of the sirens that took care of her and other gladiators between matches turned out to be in a situation very similar to her. His name was Marce, and he quickly fell head-over-heels for Erissium, sympathizing with her for her situation. However, Marce also believed that if he pretended to assimilate well into the Legion, he might gain their trust, and be able to gain access to resources he otherwise wouldn't have.
Marce learned of interdimensional travel from siren elders that had been taken prisoner by the Legion and also made into gladiators, learning that it was a secret he should have learned as he grew older with his siren family. They told him of a powerful heirloom their family had managed to keep hidden despite being captured, and Marce began to believe that such an heirloom, combined with some of the Legion's technology, could allow him and Erissium to escape the dimension entirely.
However, Marce's theft of the machine didn't go unnoticed. He succeeded in creating a device capable of crossing between dimensions with the heirloom, naming it the Concentrated Eye, but only barely managed to give it to Erissium before he was accosted by Legionnaires. In a panic, Erissium fled Somnus-Ter using the device, and... was too afraid to go back and try to save Marce.
Ashamed of herself for her past deeds and heartbroken by Marce's presumed death, she listlessly drifted through the Wellspring for a little under two centuries. Nowhere seemed to catch her eye for long, and she fostered an unhealthy, deep-seated phobia of any and all conflicts, further developing her barrier and reflective magic until she was nearly impenetrable by any magic or weapon.
Erissium created Inersia 13,000 years ago out of an act of grief and longing, pouring energy from the Concentrated Eye into the space between dimensions, as she so badly wished she could have a world free of the horrific violence she had known in her youth and a world that she and Marce would have been happy on together. In doing so, she created an empty void of a dimension, which would one day become Inersia, and also Nihera, an elemental made of sheer chaos.
Together, she and Nihera created Inersia. Nihera shaped much of the physical dimension itself, carving it from chaos and into being. Meanwhile, Erissium created further guardians to help keep her world balanced, such as Rasmuri, Cirra, Mozaya, and Exoria, each of whom had their own respective roles to play.
However, Erissium's deeply unhealthy upbringing would come to scar her new world. Her aversion to violence and, indeed, to even the very chaos that sculpted the world, led to her inadvertently baking in contradictory instructions to Mozaya, asking impossible things of Cirra, and creating her other archangel "children" with steep flaws that would harm them and the world they cared for in the long run. Eventually, Erissium began to see the way her past had left marks on Inersia, and she began to grow paranoid, afraid that she had created the opposite of what she set out to do instead.
It dawned on her, eventually, that Inersia was something of a house of mirrors: everything reflected back at her, and everything was as peaceful and prosperous as she wanted only because of her forcing it to be. This gnawed at her mind until, eventually, Erissium couldn't bear to stay in Inersia any longer. She announced her leave to her archangels, much to their chagrin, and then... she left. 3,000 years after Inersia's creation, she was gone.
Her leave had catastrophic effects, as Nihera briefly lost control of her power in grief and Wildtouched an entire continent, mutating its people all at once. Meanwhile, unknown to Erissium, Cirra had required Erissium's presence to draw upon some of her power; as a result, when Erissium left, she could no longer do so. She grew frailer and confused, incapable of making memories or recalling old ones. She began to see the world through a static, silvery gray. Her leave also meant she was not present to see when Mozaya began to go haywire as a result of the contradictory directives she had been created with.
In the time since Erissium has left Inersia, she has had a role in sealing Splczelcru inside of Umbrafith's surface, and she has picked up Valeri from Carovast after his parents were killed and she happened to find him. In an effort to "start over," she took in Valeri as her own child, and began to wander the Wellspring with him, never intending to stay in one place for long.
Only when Erissium saw the Triumphant Legion outside of Somnus-Ter, scouting for other dimensions to conquer some 10,000 years later, did Erissium ever return to Inersia, only because her childish fears drew her to feel the need to warn her archangels. She was dismayed to find Inersia in such a sorry state, and soon realized the problem with Cirra. Using some of the last remaining power in the Concentrated Eye, she finished Cirra - 10,000 years too late. It wasn't long before the rest of her archangels arrived to face her, and made their grievances well-known.
An angry Nihera nearly succeeded in killing Erissium in a fit of rage, forcing her to flee... and leave Valeri on Inersia, where Nihera quickly took pity on him and tried insisting to him that he was better off without Erissium. Still, Nihera has no intention of forcing Valeri to stay; if Erissium returns for him, and if he wishes to leave, she will let him.
Abilities
Barrier magic. Erissium’s primary magic revolves around putting up powerful, crystalline, semitransparent white shields, which can absorb an enormous amount of damage before being destroyed. These can be fitted to the exact shape of an object or person as well, meaning she can put such a barrier on any person or thing she chooses.
Reflection. Erissium can choose to make her barriers ‘reflect’ any damage done to them back at the attacker.
The Concentrated Eye. Erissium possesses an object of Somnic-Terran origin that, when held in close in front of her chest, she can concentrate magic into. Concentrating on what she wants and what elements she wants to go into the final result, this machine can produce just about anything, within a certain cap of power. It was what allowed her to originally shape Inersia and its archangels, but doing so drained her and it of much of their power permanently, and now, it can no longer create fully permanent beings as it once did. It can create permanent objects of a certain size (and is how she made the vehicle she and Valeri traverse the Wellspring with), but not living things and certainly not entire environments anymore.
This object was given to her by Marce to aid in her escape from Somnus-Ter. It was not a standard item in the Triumphant Legion’s arsenal, but rather a Triumphant Legion machine that Marce had taken and combined with an enchanted item, originally from Somnic-Terran sirens, to create. He gifted it to Erissium with the belief that, together, they could escape Somnus-Ter and create a world all for themselves.
Hurricane breath. Erissium does have a breath attack, a vortex of water that, if she puts enough power into it, can have as devastating an effect as a powerful storm due to her sheer size. She can control the temperature of the water, meaning she can shoot a spray of scalding water should she so choose.
Ice breath. Erissium can also spew a harsh spray of ice instead of water, which rapidly flash-freezes anything it touches, meaning the ice typically spreads from whatever she strikes.
Gladiator training. Erissium survived for years as a gladiator on Somnus-Ter, and while she shuns physical combat and it has been a long time since then, those instincts still lie dormant. In stressful situations and/or if cornered, she can revert to her more primal, survivalist instincts and can be a ruthless close quarters combatant. Her needle-sharp teeth and massive claws can inflict serious damage, especially given her sheer size.
Art
