Axiaothea

Born 10 VEL 1169 in the house of Varixion. Died in the Frodbrokna 1 URE 1200.

Widowed wife of Anesimasios, last Aautokratir of Aversaria(Disputed) and arch-rival of Aeschraes. Aeschraes and Axiaothea famously fought a great civil war across Aversaria for control of the empire, which ended when Aeschraes unleashed Frodbrokna and ended the world.

The Atovid family, who had ruled Malcois for several generations, had sided with Axiaothea in 1199 and remained one of the last major remnants of her realm after the event.

Godherja Lore doc(Needs editing)
Axiaothea, the second daughter of Metricon, Governor of Aironoi. Axiaothea spent most of her life secluded away by her father, who feared his political rivals assassinating his daughter and a necessary part of his political plans. Axiaothea’s constant attempts to free herself led to him marrying her off early to Kothexir Lathaxos Sitharask, one of his most powerful vassals, known for his deviant proclivities and the untimely death of seven previous young wives. While her father may have been nervous about such a reputation, the impressive bride price and Lathaxos’s promise to support Metricon’s second son, Kutharos, in his bid in the next Blood Senate with his political backing, training, and the gift of several artifacts he believed would assist him.

After an impressive wedding in which attendants noted Axiaothea to be simultaneously distraught and enraged during the entire procession, Lathaxos had her detained and dragged off to her bridal room after nearly killing several guests in a sudden outburst of magic, the first sign she had shown of magical ability despite many tests finding none before. While this rapidly raised the worth of her hand, Governor Metricon had already signed the pact and ordered their family to leave her despite the protests from her brother and sister, Kutharos and Methenia.

What happened next isn’t clear, though the conclusions are obvious. Axiaothea was sequestered within a tower in Lathaxos’s keep for a month, during which servants claimed none could visit her, and Lathaxos only brought her paltry rations able to do little more than sustain her, then spending several hours within every night. Servants claimed to have attempted to sneak some items to the young Axiaothea, not even of teenage years yet, which she apparently used to make her escape.

While it is said the servants had brought her simple tools to pick her lock and climb down the tower, she had somehow instead used them to form a ritual circle of her own blood. Tales differ on whether Axiaothea had memorized an older ritual or if she had somehow invented or guessed one for herself, but the next time Laxathos opened her door, Axiaothea immediately struck him with a massive blast so impressive it tore the walls from the tower and caused the upper floors to crumble to the keep below.

Laxathos’s men watched from the ground as she held him suspended within the circle atop the ruined tower, where she magically tore the Magi’s skeleton from his body. This was especially surprising, as Laxathos was a seasoned Battle-Magi nearly eighty years in age who most regarded as one of the most impressive of this age, and who had used impressive magics and artifacts to extend his life and vitality.

Axiaothea cut a bloody swath through his estate, slaughtering anyone standing in her way, whether they were attempting to stop her or simply fleeing. She stole a horse and made her way west, nothing left behind her besides the ruins of Laxathos’s estate. Most of his family and retainers killed as Axiaothea had torn through the building and dragged entire floors down to the ground. Word traveled rapidly, Axiaothea not only having slaughtered one of Aironoi’s most powerful rulers and Magi, but also a dozen of his close lieutenants, who each had a hundred stories told about their prowess before the event.

While her family attempted to track her down, as did hunters hired by Laxathos’s surviving family, Axiaothea escaped to the Mayikprolollan, who decided that her political worth and now-apparent magical aptitude made it worth the political scandal to hold her from those who hunted her. In the academy, the Magi declared her their ward and eagerly awaited the opportunity to tie her to their puppet strings and one day rule Aironoi, and possibly even all of Aversaria, with their ‘student’.

Axiaothea’s importance to the greater fate of Aeras began the moment the Mayikprolollan began her initiation and placed her under the tutelage of Magister Peltra, alongside Aeschraes. The two were in a class of ten, Peltra creating her own curriculum in Mayikprolollan tradition both designed to give her students the greatest chance to reach their potential and also to ensure their indoctrination for the Mayikprolollan’s use.

In Mayikprolollan Aeschraes and Axiaothea are said to have often been close, seemingly being the only one to understand the other. This relationship could be seen as rivals being friend though it was romatisised as love from certain litteratuers. This friendship was not to last as Peltra saw this, and decided to push the rivalry aspect of their relations as she saw their friendship as a weakness that needed to be ironed out were they to become truly perfect Magi free of petty worldly constraints like companionship or independent political interest..

This was further pushed as the Mayikprolollan realized that they could control the two most powerful Governorates, Etepezea and Aironoi, through Aeschraes and Axiaothea.

Despite their friendship, nearly every day of their years in the Mayikprolollan became an endless competition between the two and other students. Together they’d end up killing over two dozen other acolytes or instructors during these competitions, far too powerful for their duels to be safe.

At one point it is even said that Peltra ordered both to drain the blood from one another with magic in a competition to see who would fall last. Both refused, and Peltra ordered their eight fellow students and ten members of the Diakóthogrífax (the academy’s guard force of Magi trained to strike down other Magi and police the academy) to strike them until they did so.

To everyone’s surprise, the two joined forces, and an entire wing of the ancient Mayikprolollan collapsed in the crossfire. The building built so well by techniques long forgotten that they had been the only ones able to cause such destruction. Only Peltra and two of her other students survived and escaped, and Aeschraes and Axiaothea turned forty-seven rooms and halls of the Mayikprolollan to rubble, and the council forever cordoned off twice that many from either latent magics or from the dangers of further collapse. In the destruction were the remains of over a hundred members of the Diakóthogrífax, various Magi instructors, and other students. Despite the great destruction, the Mayikprolollan’s council celebrated. They had drawn out true power here. They only needed to refine and control it.

Aeschraes and Axiaothea both were finally subdued after exhausting the magic in their bodies and confined. While the Mayikprolollan has forever claimed it does not ‘torture’ students, they attempted endlessly to force them both into submission and to turn one against the other. The instructors fed and cleaned them only after they did whatever demeaning demand or petty trick Peltra demanded, or when they betrayed the other in some form.

After years, the Mayikprolollan had succeeded in half of their goals. Axiaothea and Aeschraes were finally willing to betray and attack the other, but they were not to be controlled. Both pretended to be the model student, doing exactly as bidden by their instructors, and both furthered to study and perfect the art of magic. The Mayikprolollan’s instructors kept a public list announcing the rankings for the greatest and the worst of students and continuously threatened the worst students with expulsion. It had become known that Aeschraes and Axiaothea would always be at the top, constantly trading places with one another, only the one in first getting any form of positive reinforcement or treatment from Peltra.

Aeschraes and Axiaothea both had reasons to stay in the Matikprolollan as Aeschraes had to rise above his brothers and Axiaothea to attain freedom from constant attemps of controling her will.

But as the council and Peltra cound't controll both they made the final trial to become a magi, a fight to the death.

The duel caused many death, destruction of many halls and rooms, and lasted for 6 hours. Both students were so covered in lacerations; acid, heat, and cold burns; and had drained and spilled so much blood from the other that gore completely hid their skin and steam and magic openly radiated from their bodies that their bodies actively burned and scarred from the magic-sickness. Aeschraes fell to his knees, verging on death. He and Axiaothea exchanged several words, too far from earshot to be recorded, and both laughed, cried, and then both at once. As Aeschraes seemed about to pass out, Peltra encouraged Axiaothea to finish him. After Axiaothea responded with anger at this, Peltra shouted at Axiaothea from across the tournament grounds.

Unverifiable tales would say Axiaothea gave Aeschraes a sad look, who nodded at her in acceptance, and then she instead attacked a surprised Peltra. The Magister, despite her fame and power, only just barely blocked the spell thanks to Axiaothea’s collapsing health. Peltra managed a single shot in retaliation, piercing Axiaothea’s stomach with a summoned blade, but a second strike caused Axiaothea’s tutor to be charged with so much electrical force that Peltra’s blood instantly turned to vapor and her body exploded violently.

She would then proceed to threaten the council to rewrite the rules of the duel so, none of the combatants would have to die. She collapsed afterward and Aeschraes who managed to stay awake was declared victor. As such Axiaothea didn't get the tillt of Magi and no backing from the Matikprolollan. Whilst unconsious the coucil hurriedly sent her home and sent to marry the Autokratir Anesimasios "Kindblood". Their marrige was seen as a chance to bridge the east-west divide of Averaria. The marrige seemed happy with how Axiaothea seemed to be warm to her husband and helped him with matters of state.

At a feast to celebrate their marrige at a feast the Autokratir was in a troubled mood, where none could cheer him up. He appered even more troubled after seeing Axiaothea and Aeschraes having several secret conversations, and got even more distressed when got a letter informing him of the destruction of Aironoian Noble Legions XXI ‘Heartrenders’, XLIV ‘The Kartharaddi’s Fear’, LXIV ‘Gravitas’, and XCII ‘Swords of Tharenion’ in the ongoing Three Cities War. At the feast end he was offered a glass of his bloodwine, which Anesimasios drank far faster and slovenly than was normal for him or appropriate for his station. He took several steps down from his dais, smiled at Axiaothea and shook the hand of the late-arriving Kothexia Othrycia of Nadost, and then died. Oraispol fell into great chaos, it's claimed that Axiaothea was apperently  distraught at the event, rushing to her husband’s side and demanding he get up to no avail, though many claimed this as a simple cover. It is also noted that she stood up after realizing her husband was dead and had not shed a single tear, did not appear any sadder than she had before the event, and possessed a demeanor both ‘grim and horrifying’. Her supporters would later point out that Axiaothea showing any emotion other than annoyance or anger was already an aberration, detractors claim it as evidence for her initial reaction being false.

Before Aeschraes relinquished control to the local legion and fled the city, soldiers noted him and Axiaothea having a last conversation. There are likewise greatly contradictory tellings of this event, most tales either saying that the two celebrated an assassination well performed, immediately accused the other of killing Anesimasios, shared a final loving kiss or a final platonic embrace, or simply asked the other what had just happened. These words are the more speculated of the conversations the two had the night, as this conversation was the last time anyone would know of the two speaking in person.

Whether they had reaffirmed or killed their friendship, however, Legon Aeschraes and his men fled Oraispol.

Governor Metricon of Aironoi faced his own level of accusations. Anesimasios may have wanted to join east and west with Metricon’s blessing, but the merger also proved an explicit threat to Aironoi’s increasing position as the dominate Governorate of Aversaria. Were Aironoi to reconcile with Etepezea, Aironoi’s trajectory would by necessity freeze, and Metricon would lose his dynasty’s chance to secure rule of the true center of prosperity and power in Aversaria. Others pointed out that his own daughter was in a prime place to kill the aautokratir, that he had mysteriously not traveled to Anesimasios’s festival feasts, and that his marrying of Axiaothea placed one of his own children in an easy position to usurp power. Metricon would later blame his own daughter, and use this to deflect much blame, though his honesty in the accusations was uncertain.

More than any other, however, accusations settled on Axiaothea. Many declared that her history of murdering those who controlled her leash and her clear ‘blood-madness’ meant she was likely to brutalize any man within arm’s distance of her. Every public disagreement she had with Anesimasios went from a clear sign she was his respected equal to an obvious example of how she had publicly plotted and desired to kill her husband. Likewise, Axiaothea had never been private about desiring power and freedom, and which better way to attain these things than to become the absolute ruler of the world’s greatest empire? Even if she did not wish this herself, she had possibly killed Anesimasios at the orders of her father, or at the orders of other nobles, or by puppet-masters in the Mayikprolollan. And most damning of all, she was the one who had handed Anesimasios the chalice which most believed poisoned him.

She, of course, protested this. She claimed to have found Anesimasios a good man and pointed out time and time again that killing her husband so soon into his reign and when she remained so controversial would have been the most idiotic of plays. She had gained far more than enough power and freedom as his wife, especially as, by all reports, Anesimasios had no interest in pressuring her to join his marriage bed or possibly even in the fairer sex altogether. She had extreme amounts of autonomy to do as she wished, and could satisfy her desire for political power through her valued counsel to her husband. Others believed she had done the act with Aeschraes, out of a desire to take power with him or to marry over Anesimasios’s corpse, their secretive conversations considered highly suspect.

The easterners claimed Aeschraes had ordered the assassination and wished to blame Axiaothea to degrade Aironoi, and the westerners claimed the opposite.

In the following Blood Senate, Axiaothea placed herself into the listings despite objections from her family, who had sent her sister and childhood companion, Methenia. Methenia was her father’s chosen heir-apparent, as he wished for his much more agreeable and politically trained daughter to take control of the realm. Not only this, but he also publically claimed that his daughter had performed the assassination and betrayed the family, and wished for her removal from the dynasty.

There were over two hundred in the following listings, even after the standard brutal politicking had ended with most applicants being killed or pressured to withdraw. Nearly every major noble family in Aversaria was in attendance, for all knew that the Empire sat on the verge of civil war, and knew that whoever controlled the throne would hold the advantage.

Axiaothea entered the tournament grounds and faced her sister as all watched, even her father. To lose would be to return to her family’s control at her most fortunate, to win would finally give her control.

The blast of magic that Axiaothea unleashed killed every single living being besides herself within leagues of the Blood Senate’s grounds. She had blasted the ground to ash, and she stood seven steps deep into the ground for the great crater she had formed. Observers from as far as the Imperial Isle reported the beam of light burning out of the horizon and bringing clouds to swirl.

In a moment, she had assassinated the heads of nearly every major dynasty, as well as their chosen strongest Magi, and hundreds of other members of the court and local citizenry. Aversaria reeled in shock, and the succession became even more unclear. Aaxiaothea had won the Blood Senate in a way that cemented herself as the strongest Aversarian Magi in history. She had also done it in the most politically devastating manner, and Aversaria nearly fell to civil war just over the matter of whether her power as a Magi outweighed the need for vengeance.

Aeschraes jumped at this. As she traveled home from the Blood Senate, his Legion rushed towards Oraispol and performed a coup of the city, purging it of Axiaothea loyalists and forcing her to flee east. He wrote the great Declaration of Blood-Right, which was circulated across Aversaria immediately. In it, he decried Axiaothea as a pretender and the murderer of Anesimasios, and the results of the Blood Senate to be illegal. Axiaothea traveled east to her family lands, the succession of Aironoi in chaos with Metricon and Methenia both dead and no aautokratir to declare a new governor. Axiaothea entered Asiupoli and used her (disputed) authority to take control of the Governorate and declared herself the rightful Aautokratia. In the west, Aeschraes did the same.

Etepezea and Aironoi, the strongest and most important Governorates of Aversaria, were at war. Kalathipsomi quickly declared for Aeschraes and the poorer and noble-entrenched north of Opakhasia followed, while the wealthy reform-minded and merchant-led south of the Governorate went for Axiaothea. Katraddia had long burned in its own civil conflicts already, and Malcois began its own civil war between those wishing to remain neutral and those who believed Aeschraes’s cause was just.

While Aversaria had faced many civil wars, only one would become known as the Imperial Civil War. The following fourteen years of conflict were the most devastating in Aversarian history, Aeschraes and Axiaothea both so great and powerful and with circles comprising the most powerful generation in the history of Magi to that point with great legions that marched and destroyed one another.

Axiaothea betrayed the ancient truces with the Öltenic and brought order in the east into collapse. Others would name Axiaothea the ‘Magi of Blades’, so named for her impressive martial ability, which she used on the front-lines just as often as she used magic. She would claim many enemies, such as Alphioxis the Elder at the Battle of the Stellarnar Fields or Legon ‘Darkblood’ in a magical duel in the citadel of Axarathad.Aeschraes himself had slain many, Legon Mechondagr through an ordered execution, Amon ‘the Pious’ with poison, and the Orydrian Dynastic League with a four-month long ritual that turned every single one of their cities and members to ash after spies informed him they had sold a shipment of weapons to an Axiaothea-aligned mercenary company. This spell took months of preparation however, and would have been impossible had the Orydrian’s had stronger Magi or knew how Aeschraes intended to punish them. A powerful symbol of Aeschraes’s power, but nowhere near enough to destroy Axiaothea.

Both had become desperate. They saw their rightful realm crumbling around them, and the increasing fragility of their claims to rule. The more they destroyed the realm against one another, the more the realm seemed to turn on them for causing its destruction. It seemed to be a race for not who would take Aversaria, but who would end up killing it in doing so.

They each sent explorers across every ancient library and tomb in Aversaria and to every library and place of power around the known world. Paid researchers from the Aversarian Cartographer’s Union, hired foreign mercenary groups, or small and elite units in enemy territory searching for the oldest of lore. They used every weapon and ritual they found against one another with devastating effect, and Aversaria in her entirety went from one of the richest and most prospering regions of the world to an unpopulated wasteland wracked by constant famine and disease. Magic had turned once great cities to ash and some of the world’s most prosperous farmland was now forever uninhabitable. The largest economy in the Continent and its most powerful Empire was now a blighted land empty of citizenry. More than half of the population had died before it finally ended.

Both Axiaothea and Aeschraes learned of Self-Replicating Blood Magic during their schooling and dreamed of finding the ancient spell to destroy the other. The Sarradonians had nearly wiped out their entire continent with it, and they had possessed half of Aversaria’s magical power. Both reasoned their personal Magi Cabals and their own power combined would be what the ritual needed to be controlled. The Sarradonians had lacked power and had not understood what they played with. The Aversarians could control and refine it, target it at their enemies, wipe out all who fought them in an instant with no chance of the spell being blocked, and could easily end it whenever they wished. Once their foe was dead, they could hold the ritual above the heads of the world, securing their rule forever. Their personal hunters scoured Sarradon as they searched for any sign of the long-erased ritual.

It is unknown if they finally found it or if they had both found enough of the ritual and had become so desperate that they attempted to guess or deduce the rest. Both found Self-Replicating Blood Magic near simultaneously, and both prepared to use it while they knew the risks it brought to all of Aversaria. They both raced to complete the ritual first, and the victor was Aeschraes.

Aeschraes had since formed a new family, a political marriage with a vassal dynasty granting him several children. His oldest was still a young girl in 1200 IS, named Arias after his lost sister and possibly the only person he still remembered fondly. He had around him a cabal of the hundred most powerful Magi of his era (those not among Axiaothea’s hundred finest, at least), and legions of slaves and soldiers both.

He gave them all to perform the ritual.

Romanticization would later say that Aeschraes lost his last chance of redemption when he sacrificed Arias to perform his ritual, along with the rest of his children, his wife, and hundreds of slaves and less important Magi. He and two dozen of his greatest Magi began the ritual and aimed Self-Replicating Blood Magic directly at the east, hoping to kill Axiaothea in Asiupoli and annihilate a dozen other major lords and rebel cities.

That night in 1200 IS would be the beginning of the world’s true end. It would bring forth Frodbrokna.

Self-Replicating Blood Magic tore through Asiupoli and half of Aironoi, Axiaothea and her entire court wiped out in a moment along with the most powerful city in Aversaria. As every major rival turned to ash and Aversaria saw the consequence of resistance.

But during the Vilnian Assault, Legan Isacaea of State Legio XXI ‘Axiaothea’ declared Aeschraes the greatest threat to Aversaria in history. While many agreed that his destruction of Axiaothea proved him the stronger Magi and technically by law right to rule, his great evils and refusal to state he would not cast Self-Replicating Blood Magic again if he had the resources disturbed the nobility so much that Aversaria stood united against him. Her Legion had once been Aeschraes’s own, Aeschraes having gifted it to his oldest brother after he had began the war, the Legion then going to one of his closest companions upon his brother’s slaying by Axiaothea, who then betrayed him and went over to Axiaothea as he grew disillusioned with Aeschraes’s cause. Isacaea had spent her time as Legan being hunted like a dog by Delenel, and her and what allies she could gather began an assault on Oraispol aiming to kill Aeschraes once and for all.

Artifacts/Remains
The skull of Axiaothea, widowed wife of Anesimasios, last Aautokratir of Aversaria and arch-rival of Aeschraes. Aeschraes and Axiaothea famously fought a great civil war across Aversaria for control of the empire, which ended when Aeschraes unleashed Frodbrokna and ended the world. This skull was discovered in the ruins of Asiupol by Gorassos Skull-Taker, sent by Aeschraes years after to ensure that none were left alive in hiding.