Oidhche

Relevant Faction(s): Unknown City (citizen), The Knights of Rondi (The Black Wizard Knight)

Race/State: Human/Unaltered (as shocking as that may be to believe)

Age:Unknown

Height: 173 cm

Weight: Unknown

Original series: The Stygian

Personality and life:

Oidhche (pronounced Oy-DEE-Chae) originated from an ancient civilization that’s long since passed, of which we (the denizens of Inklend) have never received a causal strand for analysis past his own account. There are theories that it is in fact an offshoot from the Zealand base civilization, marked by their apparently high value placed on honor and codified ethics, as well as notes from their hinterland aesthetic.

All we that know of the place is from the very short amount of time that the young Oidhche spent there in the initial parts of his narrative’s “Book One”.

In it, we find a community cursed by an ever-encroaching forest that constantly overtakes the land. Our lad is offered to go to “The Outside” by his father on behalf of the city. It’s immediately clear something has gone awry in his society that all men are granted the opportunity of the suicidal task of entering the woods surrounding the city, “The Outside”, and locate the dragon cursing them with this eternally-growing forest.

The boy accepts the goal along with the promise of the wildly-high commission: a piling sum composed of all the previous commissions of all the now-dead “bannerless knights” of his city, along with the eternal title of the town’s protector.

The city gives the boy a suit of their national armor, inscribed with promises of reward for safe return. After all, no one has successfully completed the quest for as long as the quest itself has existed, so they need to save what they can in the (likely) case that he doesn’t return alive.

His father gives him the parting wisdom that, so long as he’s “Outside”, to never show his face. He must become an honorable man on behalf of not only the city, but his culture, his people, and ultimately to God, which to his people is the concept of honor itself.

Additional precepts to this code are delivered, and he agrees to them all.

The boy finds and does many things over the next five years, becoming an accomplished survivalist and navigator of the constantly-changing forest. After all this time in search, he finally encounters the dragon accused of cursing the world with the great forest. The dragon is named Etherius, and is one of the four primordials. The dragon claims that in order to protect the realms from the untold horrors brought forth by his fellow primordials, he has sealed away the planet with a world-spanning forest.

They discuss the situation, and Oidhche learns that Etherius controls an immense magical knowledge, called ether, which can, in the right hands, collapse reality as well as all its laws. Oidhche makes the secret plan to learn this magic and then kill Etherius, and so he goes into the dragon’s service in exchange for tutelage in magic. By his logic, if he could collapse the laws of reality so that it would no longer be dishonorable to kill one’s teacher, he could return home with his duty accomplished.

Now painted in the dragon’s black banner, Oidhche efficiently and brutally accomplishes the will of the dragon to protect the secrets of Ether. One day he is given a severe task: to slay the lord of his home city, prevent the raising of their army, and to clutch mankind oncemore in the grip of fear. Under the lord’s leadership, more and more men have been scouting out for Etherius’ secret realm, and they’ve become more and more confident in their attacks upon the dragon’s minions.

Oidhche is faced with a choice: go home to destroy and terrorize, or disobey and take the fight to the dragon. He realizes that to continue learning ethermancy, he must survive, and a single lord is a small price to pay for a better chance and saying the dragon. What weighs highest in his decision, however, is his oath of honor. He is a man of honor, for he considers himself a man of God, and he did swear to the will of his lord: despite that lord also being Etherius.

He accepts and goes home.

What was intended to be a clean assassination becomes a botched murderspree and a sacrifice that Oidhche would have never made five years ago. He does not break his oath to defend his city, but to accomplish that, he does in fact break the oath in doing so – a crisis of interpretation and personal confusion.

After all, what is he but his honor?

The psychological toll on Oidhche is immense, forever changed by the guilt of what he had done. He returns to Etherius, who now wholly trusts in him. The dragon reveals many secrets both of his personage and of ether as a whole, allowing Oidhche to rapidly spring to new heights in the craft of ethermancy.

Finally, a being from another dimension crosses over with the goal of stealing ether away from the dragon – Relic Hunter Veda. Oidhche’s powers have grown so great that he capably and almost too-easily defeats the assailant, wounding him grievously before sending him away.

With a newly-formed admiration for mankind, Etherius agrees to recede the forest enough to let mankind till the soil and farm outside of the city walls. Oidhche has shown him that humans can be taught to be strong, and as such can defend themselves against the evils of his fellow primordial dragons. Etherius says that, so long as he serves him, he will allow the people to eat well with good harvests. It’s here that Etherius has a dream at night, as does Oidhche. They speak on it the next morning that an augurmancer had contacted them both through their visions: a beacon for aid against the children of one of the primordials.

Etherius has grown a kind heart to Oidhche over the period of service to him, and grants him release to see the sorceress to a safety to her liking.

This sorceress’ name is Rondi.

Primary Magics and Abilities:

To put a solid tag on Oidhche’s grasp of ether is difficult, because it is on a level that surpasses even his mentor, the primordial dragon Etherius. He was the dragon’s most committed magic student in all of history, and as such he has received an education humbling that of any lower-realm institution of learning. One does not often meet one trained in a magic that was never meant to be given to mankind. That said, at the upper limit, his magical capacity in combat could effectively be compared to a nuclear bomb against thrown rocks: on a level that defies comparison and thus renders it meaningless.

Strangely enough, he could be better considered a sorcerer than a typical mage or wizard, as his studies were far less knowledge-based and closer to the realm of spiritual cultivation and introspection. Casters throughout history that know this have long attempted to replicate the methodology, but to little success. This difficulty of confirmation further fuels prevailing opinions that Oidhche is in fact a fictional construct developed by ancient Rondian theorists – but we know better, don’t we?

By employing his manamancy, Oidhche has not only expressed the ability to weaponize pure mana, but employ it as a stupendous companion to mutamancy and ceremancy. By forcibly infusing his own body with ether, he’s gained a strength, speed, and reflex that most wizards in the Omniverse would consider to be in the realm of fantasy. Over his years in service to Etherius, but especially to Rondi, he has made some truly ludicrous feats of magical prowess that not simply border on the realm of impossibility, but dive into it and emerge victorious to humiliate the magic community time and time again. He understands magic in a way that is befuddling to arch mages, terrifying to kings, and worth the attention of upper realm societies.

At the far reaches of his abilities, he’s done things including infesting a target with prepared ether mass to take hold of their will, endured a supernova, survived being sliced down to the molecular level, slaughtering an entire enemy army of 1,793 soldiers and their officers over the course of eleven seconds, collapsed a planet using mana weight alone, cut a dimension in half, and eventually taking the title as the second lifeform to kill one of the primordials… though not quite. I guess his consolation prize was murdering what was probably every single titan across the Holyverse: like all of them. We haven’t seen any living titan after his time – just a bunch of obliterated, solar-body-sized corpses floating around outer space.

Oh yeah, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s also “the quiet type” – he’s one mean dude, and your girlfriend is in serious trouble, you dig? Just kidding, he hates people, including your girlfriend – complete misanthrope.

Hobbies and Interests:

-The completion of his goal

-Haha, that’s it.

Notable Relationships:

-A soft yet intrigue-ridden relationship with his mentor and original target, Etherius

-He killed his dad

-An astounding loyalty to his goal: the Witch Goddess Rondi

-He killed his king

-A thin trust for Rondi’s White Knight: the charismatic and highly intelligent Ywn

-He killed way, way too many people (like there was legitimately no reason to go that far… was there?!)

-A vague and age-shrouded connection to High Overlord Chaos

-Seriously, he’s insanely mean

-Is not one for casual friendship, but maintains a soft appreciation for Salavaine’s knight-obsessed outlook, along with his continual goofiness

-An unspeakably prickly rivalry with Rayda

-…Really, really likes sweets

(Art at top by Gobert [ @Anontloudeac ])