BIOGRAPHIES: HEROES & VILLAINS
Lilliea lives with her eight-year-old sister, Rose, in the port town of Graton on the southern coast of the One Sea. Due to her advanced intellect and the lessons provided by her reclusive "Stargazer" father, Merowin Mathonway, Lilliea stands apart from other girls her age and from the townsfolk in general.
Lilliea's love for reading and thirst for knowledge leads her to an understanding of the universe centuries beyond her time and the superstitious teachings of her school, which often brings her into conflict with her teachers. Following an experimental mishap involving the bending of space-time and the formation of a singularity, her hair turns from a "forgettable" dull brown color to brilliant white.
Appearances: The Magiq of Aenya
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Rose lives with her sister, Lilliea, in the port town of Graton. While she loves her sister dearly, whom she affectionately calls 'Sissy,' the two girls couldn't be further apart in terms of personality. While Lilliea worries incessantly over every little thing, Rose tackles the world head-on and with reckless abandon, often getting herself into trouble. Rose isn't afraid to get dirty, climb from the second-story rafters of their home, or go careening out of control on her self-made, barely functioning wagon. She arrives late for dinner with scraped knees and bruised elbows and couldn't be happier about it. Where Lilliea notices dreadful things around every corner, for Rose, the world abounds with magic and wonder. When events in her life become frightening, she turns to her fertile imagination for courage, becoming "Dragon Rose," a staff-twirling warrior.
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Appearances: The Magiq of Aenya
Ecthros's fondest memories involve watching his father, Xenox, perform remarkable feats of accuracy with bow and arrow. Before his sixth year, Xenox leaves on an urgent summons to the southern coast of the One Sea. Waiting patiently for Xenox to return, the boy practices relentlessly with his bow, hoping to make his father proud.
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In his formative years, Ecthros's mother succumbs to illness, and the orphaned boy is taken under the wing of his uncle, Davos. Aboard Davos's airship, the Cloud Breaker, he visits every port along the Potamis River. In time, they become the first outsiders to set foot in the mythical kingdom of Tyrnael.
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Looking upon her beauty, Ecthros falls smitten by Radia, the Princess of Aenya, but when she ascends to the throne of the kingdom, he abandons Tyrnael to seek his other uncle, Davor, in the coastal town of Graton. There, he meets Lilliea and Rose, two young girls who have also lost their father, Mathonway, a reclusive scientist and stargazer lost to a collapsing Fantastigate --- a magical gateway built by the Zo. To help the girls find and rescue him, the young archer joins their caravan as they cross the Great White Flat into the fabled Oasis City of Shemselinihar, where a second gate is purported to exist.
Since she was a child, Princess Radia has known the pain of every living creature as intimately as her own. Now, her empathic power may cost her her life.
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Radia is the 54th descendant of the Zo and heir to the throne of Tyrnael. But at 15 years of age, she is innocent to the cruel realities of her world. Possessed by the innocence of youth, her idealism soon clashes with the machinations of her stepbrother, Zaibos, a cold and ruthless commander who insists that the future of their people can only be preserved through bloody conflict.
When Zaibos seizes control of the capital city of Tyrnael, Radia is forced to flee for her life. Betrayed by those she most trusted to protect her, she finds unexpected loyalty in Demacharon, an old sword from Hedonia. But neither Demacharon, her adopted brother, nor Radia herself fully realize her importance to the future of Aenya.
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Appearances: The Princess of Aenya.
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Like all eight-year-old boys of Hedonian citizenry, Demacharon is taken from his mother’s arms to train in the navy and, for the next ten years, is taught how to kill more efficiently. After a number of naval victories, he is promoted to Regent Commander and charged with the subjugation of the tribal peoples of the northwest. After two decades of campaigning, Demacharon is permitted to take a wife. The honeymoon is short-lived, however, as he is sent out again and again to expand the Empire's territories.
Far from the One Sea, his legions meet with increased resistance. Less than half his men, a mere nine thousand, return to Hedonia after a year-long campaign. In the city, he is heralded a hero, given lands and titles, but the ghosts of his friends and enemies continue to haunt his dreams, and with the birth of his only child, Astor, he begins to doubt the creed of his nation. Does he desire such a life for his son? And how can he justify the murder of barbarian children, knowing what it means to be a father? Soon after his return home, five-year-old Astor is killed on the beach by merquid, at which point his wife, Niobe, is overcome by despair. Having lost the only two things that meant anything to him, Demacharon becomes disillusioned, a broken man in search of redemption.
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Appearances: Ages of Aenya, The Princess of Aenya.
Thought to be a demon spawned from the fiery depths of Aenya, Zaibos’s appearance throws adversaries into a panic, his boundless cruelty only serving to perpetuate the myth of his inhuman origins. No wonder that he, born as a man, comes to be known as the Monster King and Lord of Agonies.
He arrives in Tyrnael with his father, Anabis, from an unknown land, in answer to the summons of King Solon. To cure Princess Radia, who is fallen deathly ill, Anabis asks only that his son be adopted, and Solon acquiesces. During their briefly shared childhood, Radia finds her adopted brother's utter lack of empathy disturbing. By the time he is nineteen, the boy's interests turn to battle and the warlike history of the Zo, the ancient ancestors of the Tyrnaelian people. After the untimely death of Solon, Zaibos seizes control of the army, and without Radia’s knowledge, engages in campaigns of aggression beyond the city’s mountain borders.
As time in Tyrnael flows more slowly, so does Zaibos age more rapidly in relation to his sister, so that upon returning from his campaigns, he is grown into his thirties, while Radia remains a mere fifteen. With the full bent of the army behind him, Zaibos usurps the throne, and Radia is forced to flee for her life. The days following her flight are marked with despair and dread the likes the kingdom has never seen, as torture and executions become commonplace, and Zaibos’s true, sadistic nature is revealed to all.
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Appearances: The Princess of Aenya.
Thelana is born in the Braid River Valley of Ilmarinen. Her eldest brother, Borz, is sold into slavery when she is very young; it is an event that haunts her all of her life.
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On the eve of her womanhood, famine forces her into the Wildwood, where Thelana struggles to survive, hunting prey while hiding from predatory saurians. She eventually stumbles into Makria, a small village nestled along the edges of the jungle. Naked and emaciated, she is taken in by a kindly old woman, Kabira. But Thelana returns to the forest after killing a local boy in self-defense.
Many more cycles pass until she is rescued from a halfman by Dantes, a military captain from Kratos. Proving her archery skills, she is quickly recruited into his army, becoming a valuable scout. On the Plains of Narth, Dantes's forces are overrun by bogren, and Thelana, torn with longing for the idyllic life she knew, abandons the battlefield. Returning to Ilmarinen, she finds no traces of her family. She then manages her way to the coastal city-states, impoverished and alone, where she meets Kinj, who instructs her in the ways of the thief. But when he tries to violate her, Thelana steals his mechanical bow-sword and leaves him to die in an alley.
Fleeing to Hedonia, Thelana hides in the slums with the city's other outcasts before climbing up into the pyramid Temple of Sargonus. As she pries the giant pearl eye from the idol of the Hedonian Sea God, she is caught by the zealous High Priest, Urukjinn. With the aid of an Ilmarin stranger, she is apprehended and thrown into a pit beneath the city. There, she waits, wondering about the man she has just met. Is he a traitor to their people? Or will he come to rescue her?
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Appearances: The Feral Girl, Ages of Aenya.
Cast off from civilization, Xandr is without home or country, or possessions of any kind, but for an ancient sword with a will of its own. Utterly naked in battle, he stands intrepid and shameless, as his people, the Ilmar, have stood for millions of years.
Ilmarin by birth, Xandr is raised by monks in the Mountains of Ukko, where he is taught history, philosophy, and swordplay. At fourteen, his home is destroyed by armies from the dark hemisphere. With the death of QuasiI, his mentor, Xandr becomes a recluse, with only an enigmatic sword---Emmaxis---to guide him. He wanders the wilds of Aenya until he meets Ouranos, the bird man. Together, they set forth to undo the evils of the world, but in time Xandr falls into despair. Shunned as a barbarian by the civilized peoples of Aenya, he remains in the Marsh of Melancholy, until called to the city of Hedonia. There, he finds the one thing he never thought possible, another of his kind. Thelana, an Ilmarin girl, is sentenced to die for her crimes against the Hedonian faith. As Xandr seeks desperately to rescue her from the dungeons of a zealous civilization, he must also find the strength in himself to fight for a world that has rejected him and his people.
Appearances: Ages of Aenya.
(Major Spoilers!!!) Emma is born in Northendell, in the frigid Pewter Mountains, to Dak, a scholar of Zo history, and Ilsa, a singer and musician. At the behest of his wife, Dak gives up his pursuit of immortality, breaking ties with his friend and partner, Mathias. When King Frizzbeard's men-at-arms learn of Dak's golem creation, their home is ransacked. Knowing the punishment for dabbling in the forbidden arts, Dak and Ilsa choose immolation over capture, trusting in their golem protector, Grimosse, to steal their infant daughter, Emma, into the night. Mathias receives the child with reluctance.
During the early years of her upbringing, he takes an academic interest in teaching her to read, but as she ages and begins to question his research, he becomes reclusive, and she is told nothing of her parents. Before the age of nine, Mathias keeps her a prisoner in her own home. When Emma is at last given the freedom to explore the labyrinthine avenues of Northendell, she is treated cruelly by other children. She is later imprisoned for perusing Mathias's study. Freed from her bedroom after a year, Emma finds solace in forgotten places, befriending the ravens that populate the city's narrow streets, with whom she imaginatively converses.
When a neighbor miscarries, the strange girl who talks to ravens is implicated in witchcraft. Emma is brought before the king and is sentenced to death by exile, to be ousted into the cold beyond the city walls. But a sympathetic soldier, Duncan, lessens her sentence to slavery. On the way to the southern kingdoms, her prison cart is overturned, and her captors are brutally killed. And yet her saviors are just as frightening: wild humans, a man and a woman, soaked in blood and not wearing a stitch of clothing. If Emma hopes to survive, to discover the secrets of her stepfather's study, she will need to follow them, but what faith can she put in such savage creatures? Still, there is something strangely familiar and comforting about their third companion, a patchwork life form, a thing of dead flesh given life, a golem named Grimosse.
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Appearances: Ages of Aenya
(Major Spoilers!!!) As a young healer living in Northendell, Mathias is troubled by his inability to help wounded men-at-arms. The problem of death plagues him until he meets Dak, a scholar of ancient artifacts. Working in secret, the two men discover how the Ancient Zo could transfer their minds into invincible bodies called golems. When Dak falls in love and marries, however, he abandons their pursuit of immortality, leaving Mathias to study the countless tomes of the Zo on his own. One day, King Frizzbeard discovers Dak's research, and he and his wife are burned as witches. Dak's infant daughter, Emma, escapes the flames in the arms of Dak's golem, Grimosse. Grimm delivers the infant to Mathias, but fearing the discovery of his work, he commands the golem to head south, to the Sea. Along the way, Grimm kills thirty Hedonian soldiers as they attempt to seize him. The High Priest, Urukjinn, also tries to control the golem, but fails. But when the Urukjinn's daughter, Merneptes, is caught in a riot, Grimm tears free of his bonds and pulverizes her attackers with a church bell, which is later fashioned into his hammer. Grimosse would later find new purpose in defending Merneptes, or anyone reminding him of the child he was made to protect.
Appearances: Ages of Aenya.
Days before the cataclysmic destruction of their world, the Zo Ascendancy vote to transfer their minds into an invincible golem body called HORDE. The golem possesses a number of advantages to a starship. Powered by a heart of nuclear decay, there's no need to store food or water. The fusion of organic and metallic materials, surrounded by a magnetic field, is impervious to cold, heat, and radiation, and never ages. The golem's greatest flaw, however, is in maintaining a sense of awareness, for the council members wanted to feel "alive."
As the sun explodes into its final phase, the golem launches into space, but Aenya is not destroyed. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Kjus and his devoted followers, the planet moves into a safer orbit, becoming the moon of the gas giant, Infinity. Recognizing their error, the collective attempts to return home, but a solar flair from the newly formed star strips the golem of its magnetic field and damages its propulsion systems. Falling into an irregular orbit, the body gathers icy particles near the system's outer rim, forming a comet-like cocoon. Alone save for the voices in its head, the Zo council members go insane.
Horde returns home ten millenniums later, encased in ice, crashing onto the surface of the planet and obliterating the nearby town of Kiathos. But the world is far different from the one they abandoned; it is now a primitive world with two moons and one Sea, where science has become magic, and the Zo are long forgotten.
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Appearances: Ages of Aenya.
More People of Aenya
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Avia: The rebellious daughter of King Azrael, Avia contests the notion that her people are superior to the other humanoid races of Aenya. [Learn more.]
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Nessus: In his obsessive quest to achieve immortality, Anabis transforms himself into Nessus, the half-human, half-horse creature that lurks in the bowels of the Compass Tower. [Learn more.]
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Grumblestump: A bogren warrior who suffers a terrible fate. [Learn more.]
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