Astera Aenai
The Youngest and Cruelest Princess of the Aenorian Empire
Princess Astera Lavinia Aenai (a.k.a. Astera the Army-Eater)
"SEEKING AN AUDIENCE WITH THE TWO-FACED PRINCESS? FOLLOW PONTIUS'S ADVICE FOR AN EASY TIME." "STEP ONE: YOU ARE UNHAPPY AND UNLOVED. YOU ARE ESPECIALLY SINGLE AND HAVE NO LOVERS. YOU DO NOT WISH TO HAVE EITHER." "STEP TWO: GRAB YOUR EGO AND KILL IT." "STEP THREE: YOU ARE A TOOL THAT PROVIDES SOMETHING TO HER. CONSISTENCY IS SURVIVAL." "STEP FOUR: [ILLEGIBLE]" (the following text was carved below the above text, likely by a different hand) "PONTIUS IS DEAD. CONTACT MARCUS OF CYRUS AT THE FORUM IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING HIS FUNERAL. PONTIUS IS SUCCEEDED BY HIS DOG SILVARI, WHO HAS BEEN TAKEN IN BY BRAVE ARCHELAUS. HIS NUMEROUS BARKS SHALL ANNOY US CONSTANTLY."
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
As one of the children of Loscivia Aenai, Astera had a body that was every bit the image of perfection. Her skin was a beautiful porcelain white(An oddity for her family, who often had dark or jet-black skin), her arms and stomach decorated by subtly bulging muscles that detracted none from her femininity, and a beautifully plump chest, hips, and body that, like most High Lamia, was fueled and grown by the digestion of untold millions.
She was healthy and fit, in fantastic physical shape, and as she later became a true Goddess after swallowing so many millions of creatures, she never knew disease nor ailment in all her life.
Body Features
Her body was incomparably beautiful and supple, decorated with faint muscle definition poking through her soft skin that was often layered with oils and perfumes. Her chest was bountiful and buxom, her hips and thighs wide and plump, and her body was the envy of all, even her enemies...despite their knowledge such a body came through the digestion of their comrades. Her tail was a beautiful rainbow pattern with thick overlapping scales that coated her cheeks, shoulders, and arms, wide enough even in her reduced form to crush many dozens of creatures into paste, with scales that glittered like mirrors in the midday sun, and like pale moonlight in the evening.
She was incomparably massive in her true form, and was even quite large in her reduced form as well, such that she often had a crew of workers she kept around to scrub and clean her body each morning from her head to the tip of her tail, as well as to apply the oils and perfumes she so enjoyed as well.
Facial Features
Long derided and mocked by her siblings as possessing a "Baby face", Astera's face was pale, soft, and supple; possessing none of the sadism or evil that she so often displayed. Instead, her face was widely regarded as cute - something that often annoyed her.
Her lips were full and plump, her eyes gentle and kind despite her true nature, and her long wavy golden hair often cascaded down her head like a flowing river of gold, falling down around her shoulders and chest.
Identifying Characteristics
Compared to her siblings, Astera was known to change the color of her scales depending on her mood or as disguises demanded and often hid the scale growths that decorated her cheeks and body with her shapechanging abilities - making identifying her difficult. Her most identifying features were perhaps her bright golden hair and love of roses - which she often kept on her person or clothing in some form or fashion.
Physical quirks
Greatest of all of Astera's quirks was her sheer enormity - while all her siblings in The Aenai Family were undoubtedly huge, as big as cities and mountains even, only Astera's mother Loscivia Aenai could possibly hope to match her in sheer enormity and physicality.
Astera, even from birth, was big in every possible way that mattered - unnaturally massive even as a young girl Astera had a hard time even into adulthood taking a normal sized humanoid form with her shapechanging abilities, and was possessed of so much sheer mass all across her body in her chest, stomach, arms, tail, and more that she grew to truly monolithic proportions, more than doubling the size of her next tallest siblings. While never quite spoken of as being quite as large as her mother(Who herself was supposedly large enough to devour planets at the height of her power), Astera was simply enormous - towering over the tallest mountain ranges with a head that scraped the upper limits of the atmosphere before she dramatically skyrocketed in size and power in the wake of the collapse of The Aenorian Empire.
For good reason was she called "The Army-Eater" - for her mere size allowed her to simply press her enormously plump lips to the ground and eat entire armies millions strong, or to simply dangle herself in the air above a population center or army encampment and allow her sweat and bodily scents(Which she was famous for concocting) to sweep over the land like a hurricane, brainwashing or enacting effects across entire countrysides as whole realms drowned in her scent.
Special abilities
Like all High Lamia, she possessed a massive Pheremone Aura that prevented all but the strongest willed creatures from taking hostile actions against her, and that brainwashed any who got close enough to smell her and allow her pheremones to worm into their minds. She also had notoriously lethal stomach that acted more as a demiplanar space capable of containing hundreds of creatures at a time to digest at her leisure as quick or as slowly as possible, could knock creatures unconscious with a squeeze of her tail, could tear them in half with either of her arms, and much, much more.
In more personal abilities, she was also an unparalleled master of Hypnosis and the art of Scent as an avenue to control the minds of others - often combining her mastery over the two to great effect. Regardless, her sheer hypnotic talent bordered on and is said to have reached the realm of the divine by the end of her reign in her family's empire - her talent often extreme enough that with body motion, rythmic words, and extreme subtle alterations to her pheremones she could hypnotize nearly any creature in seconds.
Most uniquely, however, was a special property of her body that only she possessed; her pheremones, when exposed to the right conditions and under the right circumstances(Which she later learned to wield flawlessly), could rapidly shrink down others the longer they remained close enough to inhale her scent and her pheremones...almost without end.
Apparel & Accessories
Like many High Lamia, Astera preferred minimal coverings when in her true serpentine form both for ease of motion and to promote natural beauty of one's body and all that came with it, for good or ill. She was never one for jewelry or baubles, and while she favored simple dresses of blue and white while in her humanoid form, she always appeared to many in both forms as something of a "Plane Jane" - favoring simple adornments like flowers or ribbons rather than gaudy bracelets or gems or jewels.
In times of war, she eschewed armor entirely - relying on her sheer weight and mass as well as the natural resilience of her skin and scales to win the day.
Specialized Equipment
She fought with her bare hands and her words alone, and did not use weapons often.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Born to her mother Loscivia Aenai as the sole egg of an accidental brood her mother birthed during one of her COUNTLESS debauched parties, Astera was born nearly 1/3 or 1/2 of the way through her family's and their empire's reign over the planet of Ea - a child unexpected and some say unwanted by her own mother and siblings - and as a result missed most of her family's meteoric rise to power. Despite this(or perhaps because of it), Astera's reign is perhaps the most storied of all her sisters and colored with the most dedication and drive out of most all of them as she sought to prove herself almost constantly as worthy of her family name.
However, the unfortunate circumstances of her birth would not keep Astera shackled for long - for while even her own family seemed mostly disinterested in her as if she were an afterthought, Astera utterly devoted herself to all the tasks that her sisters saw as "Beneath" them with a zeal that was supposedly beyond compare, intent on making a name for herself to make her family proud. In short order, her efforts even bore fruit - earning the attention of her mother, young teenage Astera was given over to her Eldest Sister Appollonia Aenai, who is believed to have served as a surrogate mother and mentor figure to the young Astera throughout much of her early life, teaching her of the ways of politics, statescraft, and more.
Though her motivations remain unclear, the results of Astera's dedication speak for themselves - see the Reign section of this page for more info on her accomplishments during her reign over The Aenorian Empire - and she remained one of the most dangerous and effective threats to the Empire's enemies(Even going so far as to reportedly consume a Skycity of The Aurelian Hegemony of Man wholesale in the opening hours of The Third Scalewar) right up until The Scalekin Failure which led to the death of her mother Loscivia Aenai and the Fall of the Aenorian Empire at the hands of the Five-Way Alliance.
Thankfully, of course, Astera had little interest in attempting to salvage the forces of the crumbling empire her mother had built - and after depositing her siblings in parts unknown, promptly became one of the most wanted figures of the next ages. Refusing to retreat into hiding as her siblings had done, she alone amongst them remained active on the world stage in the coming centuries - roaming from land to land and devouring their greatest heroes before vanishing for a time only to re-appear far away as the scourge of a new land. This cycle continued for centuries until the Age of Heroes thousands of years later - where a mighty rising kingdom's finest heroes, believed to be capable of slaying the seemingly last surviving Aenai, finally located and challenged The Army-Eater in her lair only to be faced with the sickening realization that Astera had not only been largely responsible for the empire's founding centuries prior, but had been controlling its very government to train the heroes she had been feasting on towards her own sadistic goals. The heroes, ultimately, were devoured utterly - and as Astera subsequently gorged herself on the kingdom(Growing to such colossal proportions that her bites that devoured the kingdom's heartlands are believed to have created the four lakes in the Draconian heartlands) which was no longer of use to her(Having exhausted its mightiest heroes to feed and amuse her over centuries), she finally vanished utterly from the historical record after her victory for reasons unknown, not returning until mere decades prior to the modern day where she proved instrumental in helping defeat the armies of Vecna, The Arch-Lich during his second bid at world domination foiled by The Travelers.
Sexuality
She herself was most likely bisexual, though this unconfirmed. She enjoyed using sex and love alike as a means to manipulate others, and often delighted in breaking up couples and ruining happy marriages and lives personally - a fact which makes ascertaining her true sexuality difficult as it seemed, like much of her life, to take a backseat to her own whims.
Education
As a Princess of The Aenorian Empire, she was given only the finest education and was afforded every single privilege in the world - a true spoiled brat in every sense of the word whose education, given by the finest tutors at the height of the Empire's power, encompass subjects that have long been forgotten to history.
Accomplishments & Achievements
See the timeline of the Age of Scales and the Reign and Personal History section of this page for more information on her accomplishments and achievements.
Failures & Embarrassments
Rather frustratingly, she has never lost or been defeated or even embarrassed during her long life - a fact which she never ceases to rub brattily in the face of those who would seek to defeat her.
Mental Trauma
Unknown.
Intellectual Characteristics
For much the same reasons as to why her Personal Motivations cannot be ascertained, her intellectual characteristics are difficult to ascertain through the haze of history and her own penchant for disguises, trickery, and shapechanging.
Morality & Philosophy
For much the same reasons as to why her Personal Motivations cannot be ascertained, her morality and philosophy are difficult to ascertain through the haze of history and her own penchant for disguises, trickery, and shapechanging.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Astera's motivations are mostly a mystery due to her two-faced nature, left only to the concern only of historians who seek to derive some meaning in the madness she wrought.
Above all, however, one thing remains abundantly clear - ringing down through the milennia as an undeniable truth:
Astera was only ever interested in herself. Not even her own family or her own empire seemed of particular interest to her beyond "a thing that benefits her to keep running well" - making her perhaps the most dangerous and unpredictable kind of evil of all.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Surprisingly, she was known to be an extremely talented Beautician - and in rare moments when her mood was right could be known to offer free beauty services to the populace free of charge and without fear of death. She was also known to be a savvy businesswoman, avid gardener who delighted in all kinds of plants and flowers, and was of course an extremely talented politician, combatant(Having received hand-to-hand and close-quarters-combat training from her Elder Sister and Mentor Appollonia Aenai), liar, extrovert and social speaker, and all-around seductress and manipulator. For bette or worse, she was also an extremely talented torturer who was exceptionally skilled at breaking others down and moulding them into obedient, loyal drones.
Rather comedically, though many of her ineptitudes were not recorded for fear of incurring her wrath and thus did not survive the test of time, the one that remains is a seemingly reoccuring dispute with her mother about bad table manners, chewing her food with her mouth open, and not saying "please" when she should - all rather amusing ineptitudes that unfortunately are all that has survived the passage of time.
Likes & Dislikes
Likes: Flowers, Plants, Beautiful Scents, Destroying Love and Happiness(Especially of couples), Beautiful Things and People, Her Mother, Gardening, Her Elder Sister Appollonia, Doing Hair and Beautifying Others, Hypnosis, Doing what she wants, Being able to do what she wants without being nagged or pestered, Eating sentient creatures(Especially humans), Being praised(Especially by her family and mother), Shrinking others down and watching their reactions, Squashing shrunken creatures, Playing with shrunken or tiny creatures like dolls, The High Vampire Ritsuka, Being recognized, ???
Dislikes: Mornings, Storms, Disloyalty/Being Betrayed, Humans(Especially High Humans), Couples, Lovey-Dovey Displays of Affection, Those that try to threaten her with her obligations or with something they claim is stronger or "above her", Feeling left out or left behind, Unpleasant Smells(What is unpleasant for her usually changes often), Being told "No", The Major Gods, An Empty Stomach, Those who don't match her effort or dedication to the task at hand, ???
Virtues & Personality perks
Though few and far betwee, Astera Aenai was not devoid of virtues - she was known to be strangely diligent in performing the duties that she set her mind to(Though not ones she was told to do or assigned), and often developed an odd and almost fetishistic fondness for those who had survived in her service long enough in a way a young girl might cherish a doll she has had for a long time. To that end, her complete disregard of authority and obsessive relationship with those who served or benefitted her often led her to viciously challenge any, even her own siblings in The Aenai Family, who dared mess with "Her stuff" - making her a somewhat decent woman to work for if one learned to tolerate her chaotic nature and accepted that their lives were always in her hands. Nonetheless, to a certain breed who could look past her faults, she inspired a certain kind of twisted loyalty during her time leading The Aenorian Empire - protecting them from all other threats so long as the worshipped her, never denied her, and accepted the inevitability that while no other beings would kill them, she undoubtedly would when the time was right.
Beyond this, Astera's own personal drive for excellence made her a natural enemy of incompetents, betrayers, and the disloyal - all of whom she rooted out with a particularly zealous fervor as cancers that chewed away at her own state of mind(The benefits to the wider Aenorian Empire an afterthought at best). Ironically, her own disregard for the Empire and its people is one of the reasons she proved so utterly essentially to keeping it running effectively - for all quickly came to fear the Army-Eater's attention at their place of employment, for it meant any who failed to meet her high expectations would be digested in short order.
Yet, while many claimed her to possess a spark of insanity, that same chaotic mind that made her so flawed often led to equally kind moments - leading her to open beauty parlors for all to come to free of charge where she simply wished to have fun beautifying others, to open fashion boutiques where her only concern was finding the proper outfits to wear, and more; when Astera's bratty nature set her on an obsession, she was almost like a different person entirely - all thoughts of violence flown from her mind in a pure, innocent passion for her craft that could almost make her seem schizophrenic at times, yet at others...downright cute. This borderline schizophrenic nature was something of a perk, as well - for so long as one escaped her line of sight and waited a day before returning, she was likely to forget all about you unless you made a particularly strong impression, meaning she rarely held grudges or remembered much of the affairs of strangers unless one gave her a reason to.
Finally, while hard to confirm, Astera is known to have a rocky relationship with her family yet seemed to care for them in her own way - even going so far as to spirit some of them away during the final ours of The Aenorian Empire and saving them from death.
Vices & Personality flaws
Astera's vices and flaws were almost infinite - she was a supremely arrogant woman who delighted in indulging her Ego even at the expense of everything and everyone around her(In may way much like her mother Loscivia Aenai) and was fairly notorious for her "No Forgiveness" policy towards others as well as the extreme punishments used upon those who earned her ire.
Possessing an almost fetishistic love for ruining love and happiness, Astera delighted in torturing couples and those she deemed as having too nice or too idyllic a life - personally enacting all manner of cruelties on them and eventually killing them once their minds and bodies had been savaged beyond imagination. In the vein of fetishistic desires, Astera had a similar obsession with her own body and forcing others to appreciate it to a similar degree - every pore of her body, every scale and every pore was to be worshipped, delighted in, and adored . Often spoken of as attracted to herself above all others, Astera was narcissistic to the extreme and made sure no part of her body went unadored or unworshipped - forcing others to worship her body for days without end until she deemed they properly "appreciated her".
Needy, petulant, and bratty, Astera was a privileged princess to her very core - she tolerated almost no refusals, no backtalk, and would resort to fantastic violence at the slightest provocation unless her demands her met and her bratty needs fulfilled. One stubborn man, speaking out of turn, may well doom his entire village to death beneath her should he speak of out turn - a fact Astera often delighted in reminding others of when they dared speak back to her. Whether others had good points or were correct or not was immaterial to her - she saw herself as a Goddess who was right by virtue of claiming something to be so; all words and arguments to the contrary, to Astera, was blasphemy(And punishable by death).
Hygiene
True to her moniker as Astera the Aromatic, Astera loved indulging in perfumes and oils - her hygiene and appearance was always her foremost concern, and she spent hours each morning fussing over her body from the top of her head to the tip of her tail inspecting and altering each pore to make sure she was as flawlessly "clean" as a High Lamia could possibly hope to be.
Fastidious and obsessive, Astera's hygiene was so thorough that she was often reprimanded for her mother for clogging up her pores and thus her pheremones which her species often used to communicate with one another with perfumes, oils, and other hygiene products.
Her hygiene was, as well, another weapon in her arsenal - for while she delighted in making the way she smelled an entire emotional journey for those who encountered her, she equally relished in the power of scent to manipulate the mortal mind; making standing near her an experience that could as easily be transcendentally pleasurable as it could be dangerous for one's free will. Even something as innocuous as a seemingly harmless woman asking a passersby to examine a harmless spot on her arm, under her arm, behind her neck, or elsewhere could in truth allow Astera(Undoubtedly in disguise) to subtly hypnotize with body motion and scent alone.
Representation & Legacy
While her mother Loscivia Aenai and much of her family's legacies are mixed with positive and negative, Astera's is almost entirely negative - hated and reviled even by many of her own citizens at the time, Astera's reputation has only worsened with each passing year as a monster beyond mortal imagination who must be slain at all costs for the safety and security of the world.
Her lasting legacies are almost likewise entirely negative - having become almost a mythological figure for adventurers, their "White Whale" of creatures that they would one day like to hunt who more often than not gobbles up arrogant warriors and chews them to bloody mush, Astera's legacy is one of pain and suffering on a scale unimaginable. In many ways, she has become the literal personification of Chaotic Evil as a concept and as an "alignment".
Only in a very few select enclaves does she maintain a decent legacy - remaining worshipped in a handful of small familial units and organizations descended from her original followers during the time of The Aenorian Empire and favored by alchemists and those interested in beauty products, hair care, perfumes and oils, and the like who chase her innovations and accomplishments with the same fervor as Wizards chase the magical secrets of the ancients.
Social
Reign
Compared to all the rest of her siblings, Astera's reign during the age of The Aenorian Empire was much shorter - born nearly 1/3 or 1/2 of the way through her family's and their empire's reign over the planet of Ea, Astera was born rather unexpectedly long after The First Scalewar and The Second Scalewar, having missed her family's meteoric rise to power. Despite this(or perhaps because of it), Astera's reign is perhaps the most storied of all her sisters and colored with the most dedication and drive out of most all of them.
Even during her teenage years, it was clear to all who beheld the young Aenai that the true, unbridaled greatness of The Aenai Family had not passed her by during her birth - others watching on in awe as the teenage Golden Child helped her elder sister Appollonia bring about The Aenorian Renaissance with sweeping reforms to the now planetary empire's failing economy(ruined after centuries of wars for planetary conquest), bureaucracy(Which had yet to be updated to support the empire's vast new size, as it now owned the entire planet of Ea), infrastructure, and more.
Yet even as she helped bring about a new golden age for her family and The Aenorian Empire, Astera still could not escape the shadow of her family as much of her own work in this regard was credited to her admittedly genius sister Appollonia Aenai in her stead. Despite this, Astera forged ahead and spent decades training herself in every possible discipline and studying every possible scholarly topic - eager to prove herself in any way she possibly could.
In the end, she got her chance - and it was solely thanks to Astera and her vigilance during her reign as Youngest Princess that she stood against The Warband that nearly slew her mother and defeated it single-handedly when they had defeated even some of her elder sisters during their attacks. She also proved instrumental in The Third Scalewar where her tactics and ideas, assembled via countless hours of study of The Aurelian Hegemony of Man's past battle tactics, victories, and defeats, is believed to have largely responsible for the wildly successful invasion of the Hegemony's Sky Citadels and her mother's subsequent Feast of the Magister Lords that broke the back of the Hegemony forever. Though, again, this victory is largely credited to her siblings in the history books - namely Appollonia Aenai, ever her mentor for much of her life.
Yet even still, Astera's perfection had not reached its end - charged together with her sister and long-time mentor Appollonia Aenai with the assimilation of The Aurelian Hegemony of Man into her family's empire after its defeat, Astera yet again is believed to have radically restructured The Aenorian Empire's planetary economy and bureaucracy to accomodate the newly absorbed hegemony and their Sky Citadels such that, instead of collapsing in on itself due to its own enormity, the Empire grew larger and greater than ever. Although, yet again, credit for these successes has largely fallen on her sister in the centuries since the collapse of her family's empire.
She is also believed to have played some role in the construction and activation of the Mindwash Tower, continuing her duties as economic advisor for centuries after the tower's activation until The Scalekin Failure and subsequent The Fourth Scalewar which saw the collapse of The Aenorian Empire.
Yet, even as her family's empire crumbled around her, Astera's achievements do not end there - proving invaluable during The Fourth Scalewar, she faced many of the armies of the Five-Way Alliance personally and alone. This strategy, though unusual, proved instrumental in turning the entire war into the utterly nightmarish and Pyrrhic Victory it truly became for the Alliance - who worn the war and slew Loscivia Aenai at the cost of 90% of their fielded armies(Most of whom had been consumed wholesale by Astera herself during the waning days and months of the war as the alliance left many of their forces exposed in favor of a suicidal direct assault on the Aenorian Palace).
In truth, the victory of the Five-Way Alliance over Loscivia Aenai was decried even at the time as a victory that had, essentially, created an equal if not greater evil; For while Loscivia Aenai lay dead Astera had ravaged their forces, devoured them utterly, and grown so astronomically powerful that she essentially escaped the battlefield utterly unharmed - spiriting away a handful of her sisters utterly uncontested even as her mother was slain and cast down, leaving the few surviving Alliance forces to return from their assault on the Aenorian Palace only to find empty camps and vanished troops.
It is precisely because of this rampant gorging that Astera is credited in the history books as largely responsible for the Five-Way Alliance Dissolving and their inability to fully cleanse the territories of her family's empire or hold them themselves - their numbers utterly decimated and totally incapable of organizing in the wake of Loscivia Aenai's death and her empire's collapse.
Contacts & Relations
Though by little exaggeration all members of The Aenai Family were known across the planet during the time of The Aenorian Empire, Astera was one of the most infamous. As the head of business and trade in The Aenorian Empire and youngest of the daughters of the God-Queen Loscivia Aenai, Astera was known by all be they peasants or nobles or slaves as the cruelest, most capricious, brattiest, most tempestous of all her divine siblings.
To them, from the lowest slave to the highest noble, Astera's very mood often meant life or death for those interacting with her - and while that held true for most of her siblings in The Aenai Family, it held especially true for the chaotic and vile Astera, who held little interest in the rule of law or even her own family or their empire, preferring instead to focus on matters of her own amusement and entertainment.
Unfortunately for the world at large, she handled all matters of trade for The Aenorian Empire, and as such became acquainted with nearly all cultures and peoples across the entire planet of Ea - all of whom learned quite quickly that she cared little for how deals would benefit her family or her empire, and much moreso about how those deals would benefit her personally(At least, moreso than if she simply digested them and took their wealth).
Family Ties
Astera was the youngest children of her mother Loscivia Aenai, and she had one brother and seven other sisters - none of whom she particularly got along well with aside from Appollonia Aenai, who served as the young Astera's mentor during her youth teaching her matters of state, combat, politics, and more.
She produced countless broods during her lifetime(Though only two of those broods produced viable offspring) when her tempestuous, chaotic mood allowed for it - giving her two gorgeous daughters(Chloe and Rhea) who continued her bloodline long after the fall of The Aenorian Empire with countless children of their own, making her bloodline one of the longest lasting of all her siblings.
Religious Views
Moreso than almost any of her sisters, Astera believed in no other Godly being than herself or perhaps her mother. Having lived through an age where she witnessed her mother devour hundreds of gods and their religions firsthand, Astera developed a naturally warped view on religion - seeing gods as weak and unworthy creatures, little better than food, and believed herself and her mother(And arguably her siblings) the only true Goddesses worthy of the title.
Gods, to her, were things that must be stronger than any other - and thus when even the Major Gods themselves cowed before her mother Loscivia Aenai for fear of being digested at the height of her power, Astera realized that they were truly unworthy of her worship.
Social Aptitude
Astera was as much an unparalleled master of Social Situations as she was a master of war and death, and she was infamous amongst her brothers and sisters and the Empire at large for her legendary acting talent. She kept up a facade of the helpless, weak princess almost constantly, using her deceptively innocent and beautiful appearances and disguises to charm and beguile others into underestimating her, then taking great glee in defeating them and taking all that was theirs as her own.
To Astera, every social situation was a contest that she intended to win at all costs - no mere paltry words were enough for her. No, Astera delighted in tricking, beguiling, and even outright hypnotizing or brainwashing others with every spoken word and conversation given - to rely on words when she could ensure her own victory lay at the core of Astera's social aptitude. Every psychological trick, every social cue, every gaslighting technique, everything - she indulged and delighted in it all, even as her own social aptitude was already bordering on the supernatural.
This, ultimately, was the source of her two-faced title - Charismatic, Confident, and Ruthless on one hand while playing the part of a Meek, Helpless Woman to utter perfection then dancing between the two with the finesse of a ballerina and the conviction of an actor. So long as she was winning, so long as she was profiting, so long as she was being entertained, Astera was delighting in her situation - and while even those who had been informed well ahead of time believed themselves capable of outwitting her, in the end none proved up to the task, as Astera used her masterful acting talent and social aptitude to slip the net of her captors hundreds of times long after her mother's death and the collapse of The Aenorian Empire.
Mannerisms
Due to her own two-faced nature, Astera's mannerisms are hard to properly describe - her own acting talent and shapeshifting nature making her essentially impossible to define. She can and likely has taken every form, behaved in every way, and adjusted her body language accordingly to fit nearly every situation and scenario imaginable - from the meek and reserved facade of innocence she loved and excelled at so well to the heartless, ruthless sadist she so often was.
As to her true nature, none can really say - save perhaps Astera herself, or her family.
Hobbies & Pets
She was never known to keep pets, but her most well-known and perverse hobby(Of which she was known to have several) was breaking up couples and romantic partners - delighting in seeking out such couples, convincing one to cheat on the other(Usually with her) or sometimes even outright conquering one of them by force and forcing the other to watch or even cheer her on as she forced their partner to swear themselves to her forever, breaking their minds. Oftentimes, when she had grown bored, she would finish by devouring the two whole(or occasionally only one) to torment them one last time.
In many ways, Love and Happiness were the greatest insults Astera often tolerated - as if each couple were an affront to her twisted mind, or each little slice of paradise a cancer desperately calling for her to destroy it.
Wealth & Financial state
As a princess of The Aenorian Empire and sole manager of its economy and trade(A station she had inherited from her Elder Sister and Mentor, Appollonia), Astera had access to the untold, nigh-infinite wealth of her kingdom and could do with it whatever she wished in whatever ways she wished. And while her policies were responsible for the empire's runaway success and even directly contributed to The Aenorian Renaissance, Astera is largely believed to have ruthlessly and heartlessly embezzled gigantic sums of money to fuel her own desires, achieve her own goals, and most important to Astera herself, further her own power. This embezzlement went essentially totally unnoticed(Or more likely, was noticed but simply not cared about) for the entire lifetime of The Aenorian Empire - as her family had solely entrusted her with the Empire's coffers and, so long as she continued to maintain the legendary success she had displayed, seemed uncaring of her personal failings with the treasury to an almost unusual degree, as if assuming she would stay her hand out of respect for her family and their empire. Why exactly her Elder Sister and Mentor Appollonia Aenai never intervened in Astera's rampant, bratty consumption and corruption of the Treasury has been much speculated upon, but remains unknown.
Regardless, Astera stayed no hand - and by the time of the Empire's collapse, is believed to have become so utterly flagrant in her corruption and her treatment of the Empire's coffers as her own personal playground that the empire's citizens(From the highest noble to the lowest slave) had effectively ceased paying taxes and tribute to the Empire, and instead had become twisted tribute slaves to Astera herself; paying her and her alone PERSONALLY, who in turn "loaned" her family the money they needed to keep the empire running. For those who chafed under Astera's ruthless taxations and tribute schemes and the sadistic punishments levvied against those who dared defy her, there was unfortunately little recourse - for while other members of The Aenai Family could be beseeched for aid, there was rarely a point. Instead, those who sought to complain to Astera's elders simply found themselves facing a family who was largely uncaring about materialistic plights and even eventually acquiesced to Astera's bratty demands to confiscate all personal property and resources across the Empire and relinquish them over to the Kingdom's Vaults(Which were laughably empty, as Astera herself had long moved all valuables to her own private vaults) to be distributed as needs required.
These socialist policies, while hugely unpopular initially, soon proved successful as yet another avenue of control was relinquished from the Empire's subjects and given wholesale to Astera herself to manage as her own using the Economy Laws and Policies written by Astera herself, so labyrinthine that only she could understand them.
So flagrant was her abuse of her family's treasury, that she is believed to have made off with it entirely following the Death of her mother - leaving the armies of the Five-Way Alliance with virtually no funding for post-war reconstruction as she happily made off with the wealth of her family's planetary empire.
Finally, as a final insult during the waning days of The Fourth Scalewar, Astera was said to even have managed to steal the tribute and plunder the armies of the Five-Way Alliance had gained during their conquests, taking the hoards of dragons, dwarves, elves, men, and more as her own and leaving the world utterly penniless in her wake.
Alignment
Chaotic Evil
Current Status
Unknown - resurfaced a century ago to aid in a battle against Vecna, The Arch-Lich but has since vanished back into obscurity.
Species
Honorary & Occupational Titles
The Army-Eater, The Shrinkwarden, LIttle Miss Miracle, The Golden Girl, The Dusk Herald, The High Hypnotist, The Warender, The Architect of Ascension, Astera the Invincible, The Sugar-Sweet Reaper, The Two-Faced Princess, Astera the Mad
Year of Birth
900 BF
3020 Years old
Circumstances of Birth
Astera's birth, spoken of as accidental, marks her as the youngest of her siblings by a wide margin - and an odd one at that, who was supposedly born from a single-egg clutch yet displayed power equal to or greater than her sisters.
Circumstances of Death
Believed to have perished in the year 1253, near the end of the Age of Heroes slain by a hero in single combat, but has recently reappeared alive and well - calling this fate into question.
Birthplace
The Capital of the Aenorian Empire
Children
Current Residence
Unknown.
Pronouns
She/Her
Gender
Female
Eyes
Pale blue, Reptilian
Hair
Long, Wavy, Golden
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Porcelain-White
Height
30ft(9m) in humanoid form. True form immeasurable.
Weight
Immeasurable
Belief/Deity
Athiest
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Comments