Valissia ce'Xalotl (val-LISS-i-ah seh-sha-LOTL)

The Witch-Queen of Toluca

Clever, beautiful, and cold, the Witch-Queen of Toluca is everything that Tseketon society considers admirable. She is beloved by her people, but that love comes hand in hand with a certain cowed respect, for the Witch-Queen's—and her city's—triumph has not come easily. As one of the last Tseketon rulers, she is intimately acquainted with the costs of the battle for her people's survival: grief, solitude, and hatred. But, for four centuries, she has fought that battle and won. In exchange for her people's victory and her own redemption, she has paid the terrible price of her own humanity. Hundreds of years after her natural lifespan should have ended, the Witch-Queen remains, a hollow back like rotting wood serving as the only sign of her descent into druidic undeath.

Origins

Since the Xalotl dynasty's rise in the early days of the Ceth Tseket, the city of Toluca has been the heart of the dynasty's territory and the seat of its power. Thousands of square miles of territory now under the dominion of the Federation of Vay were provincially governed by Xalotl rulers during the life of the empire. Even in the aftermath of the empire's near-apocalyptic destruction, the city thrived as one of the last bastions of Tseketon life, as refugees from far and wide flooded into the surviving city. In time, the people of Toluca became a unique cultural group, referred to as the Xalotl Tseketon folk in reference to their origins across the Xalotl province. The Tolucan people remain under the rule of the same family. More than a hundred Xalotl rulers have presided over Toluca in the four millennia of Xalotl reign, a heritage that may well make the Xalotl family one of the oldest hereditary monarchical lines in Aotra.
It was into this ancient family that Valissia Xochihua ce'Xalotl was born in the searing midsummer of 286 YC. As the eldest, and only, child of Tlohui IX, the Iron King of Toluca, Valissia was raised with the understanding that the Xalotl crown would soon rest upon her head. She was educated in modern Common and Eldercommon; through this and the importation of a Vayan legal scholar as a tutor in the art of diplomacy, Tlohui imparted on his daughter the implicit message that she would be the one to bring Toluca out of isolation. She took as well to her father's lessons on politics as she took to Tseketon sacred magic. As a student of ancient druidic arts, she proved herself to be frighteningly powerful, able to bestow life with as much facility as she could take it away. With a whisper and a flash of her obsidian totem, she healed the common folk that came to her for aid and blighted the lands of disloyal courtiers that she took to be aiming to undermine her family's authority. The Lady Witch had her people's hearts and her court's compliance long before the throne was hers.
But it didn't take long for the throne to become hers. The Iron King ruled for thirty-two years after his daughter's birth. In 318 YC, Valissia underwent the ceremony that created her ascendent form: an emerald-scaled snake body beneath her torso and a resplendent pair of eagle wings extending from her back. At the end of the three-week-long ceremony, she slew her father—as he had slain his father before him—and became Valissia ce'Xalotl, the Witch-Queen of Toluca.

Reign

Early Years

Upon her coronation, Valissia set out to do what was raised to do. She was uniquely situated, as a fresh start monarch already bearing her people's trust, to embark on the fated quest of drawing Toluca out of isolation. But she was far from naive. This was something that had been attempted by previous Xalotl monarchs, including her great-grandfather, Tlohui VII, the Martyred King of Toluca; the earlier attempts were met by aggressive rejection by the Federation of Vay at the behest of the Circle of Nine. So Valissia built an army.
The Tseketon people had a martial tradition stretching back millennia, and the culture was one that venerated military service. But in isolation, there had long been little to fight against. Valissia personally oversaw the rebuilding of the Tolucan military, and she handpicked the best and the brightest to serve as her personal guards: the Blades of the Witch-Queen. Like other Tseketon monarchs had done before her in times of war, she prayed to the Mother of Storms. And, like in the great wars of old, the Mother responded, blessing Toluca with nine Thunderbirds: sacred warriors capable of defying death itself as defenders of the Tseketon way.
When Valissia called for a meeting with the ruling Tetrachs of Cethandir in 322 YC, she came with a coterie of nineteen elite guards lead by her champion, Azoxia Ilhui, a warrior called Twice-Sacred for her dual role as a Blade of the Witch-Queen and a Thunderbird. In ceremonial regalia, she met the four Tetrarchs: elders Exandra Casca and Pantera Vitalis and juniors Eridanis Ūdris and Stannis Ykar. Only thirty-six years old, after having held the throne for four years, Valissia stood before four seasoned politicians and laid out a proposition. She argued for Toluca to become an independently-governed enclave state economically united with Cethandir, sharing its ancient wealth and culture in return for peaceable exchange. The Tetrarchs entertained the idea. As much as the lives of the remaining Tseketon people were an unknown to the Vayans around them, oral histories of Tseketon military prowess made an alliance desirable while the recent cultural revolution in Oristhane seemed a creeping threat to the Federation's stability. Valissia left the meeting with a promise from the Tetrarchs of another meeting on the horizon to further lay out the terms of Toluca's integration into Cethandir—and into the Federation at large.
That meeting never came. On the 25th of Nightwinter, 322, a Federal army descended upon Toluca.

War and its Aftermath

The mighty but comparatively-small Tseketon army did eventually manage to repel the Federal military, but not without enormous costs. Federal artillery had razed much of Toluca; thousands were displaced, and tens of thousands more were wounded, dying, or already dead. Grieving over the devastation of her city and the loss of many of those closest to her—including her champion, the Twice-Sacred, whose status as a Thunderbird would have made her revivable, but her body was never recovered—the Witch-Queen prayed for her people's salvation and received a vision of a place where her people would settle, rebuild, and thrive.
Over the course of months, the people of Toluca made a mass exodus to the place Valissia had seen, a place on the narrow isthmus of land between two of the lakes of the Northern Basin near Caelus. While the aftermath of the war could easily have turned the Tolucan people against their monarch, it had an entirely opposite effect: seeing their sovereign try to build bridges with the outsider folk, only to be met with violent betrayal, galvanized the people in support of Valissia and in antipathy to the outside world.
Rebuilding Toluca was difficult, and to attempt to rebuild the thousands of years of history running through the old city's veins would be impossible. But New Toluca was built, and the people of Toluca found peace again in isolation, far from the site where so many of their community members had been slaughtered as recompense for the crime of proving that the remaining Tseketon people still considered themselves part of a sovereign nation. Once again, Toluca, and the Witch-Queen, turned inward. As New Toluca rose, the Witch-Queen devoted herself to her studies. While she had borne a potent spark of magical potential since adolescence, the five years after the war marked a dramatic new period for the Witch-Queen. Magic obsessed her. It seemed, at times, to consume her. Shrouded in the deep privacy of shame and loss, Valissia made the ultimate trade: she bargained with her own humanity, and she bought herself more time. Through rituals almost lost to the ages, Valissia became a druidic lich.
When she was young, her ambition manifested in action. She was eager, aggressive, and bold. Now, her ambition has not withered in the slightest, but now, the Witch-Queen of Toluca is in no hurry; she has all the time in the world.

Date of Birth

37 Sunsummer, 286 YC

Year of Birth

286 YC 432 Years old

Birthplace

Old Toluca, near Cethandir

Current Residence

The Garden Palace of Toluca

Eyes

Gold with slit pupils

Hair

Long, sleek, and black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Bronze-brown

Height

6'0" (1.83m) upright
36' (10.97m) body length

Aligned Organization

The Ceth Tseket

Ruled Locations

• Toluca

Ethnicity

Xalotl Tseketli