Ahkriss, the Godqueen

The firstborn female naga and the daughter of one of the three Sons of Flame, Ahkriss presides over her people as their immortal Godqueen and sole ruler. While she once ruled alongside her brother and mate, in his absence she's been desperately trying to find a new way to keep their bloodline viable in order to prevent the naga from dying out altogether.

Personality

To those who aren't familiar with the naga, Ahkriss comes across as intimidatingly inhuman as the rest of her reclusive race. Often presenting outsiders with a disinterested and cool demeanor, she is actually intently observant and relies on her senses to keep track of others in a way that isn't immediately apparent. She's hard to read, making any strong emotion such as anger seem to come out of nowhere due to the warning signs being too subtle for most to notice. Outsiders almost always find her both impressive and threatening, with Ahkriss making no attempt to hide her predatory nature. To her people and those who learn to recognize her moods, Ahkriss is a mercurial creature by nature; while she's merciless and unyielding in enforcing her rule, the naga think of her as their stern mother who's fierce in both her love and her protectiveness. She's reserved in overt shows of affection as a result of her immortal lifestyle, but doesn't hesitate to show her approval of those who earn it. Those who are close to her treasure her rare shows of humor and affection.

Abilities

Like all Naga, Ahkriss has far more strength than her relatively slender upper body would suggest; she's significantly larger than most naga as a result of either her advanced age or the deterioration of the race's genetics by the present day, and has a heavily muscled lower body stretching nearly thirty feet in length. She has a heightened sensitivity to smell and vibrations in the ground, and her eyesight leans more towards the heat spectrum than the visual light spectrum though she possesses both; she also has the highly venomous paralytic bite characteristic of female naga, made even more potent over the centuries. Ahkriss is only two generations removed from the Immortal Flame, the immensely powerful demon from which both naga and Seraphs claim their heritage, and is accordingly very powerfully infused with demonic blood. In addition to granting her immortality, it means that Ahkriss has a very strong affinity for fire and is able to wield destructive casting to devastating effect. Her lifeforce is strong enough that she can cast spells on a scale that is far beyond the scope that most mortal mages can manage.

Backstory

Ahkriss and her two brothers were born the monstrous offspring of Zahak, one of the Immortal Flame's three sons. Begotten on a human woman, the three siblings proved their father's undoing; they exposed his demonic heritage and resulted in him losing the goodwill he'd built for himself among the humans of the Fertile Crescent. While Zahak himself would later be killed by the Jackal Reaper, Ahkriss and her brothers wouldn't be there to see it. Though he saved his children from being killed at their birth and fed them on his blood, Zahak would then abandon the young naga in the desert to make their own way. Despite their rough beginnings, Ahkriss and her brothers not only survived but thrived. Led by Karkess, the eldest of the three, they grew to maturity feeding indiscriminately on desert wildlife and later human victims from the settlements on the desert's edge. Despite their half-human heritage, the naga felt no love for their mother's people and saw themselves as naturally opposed to a race that had deemed them monsters from the moment of their birth. Upon reaching maturity, Kar'kess and their younger brother Laoss fought for the right to mate with their sister; Laoss lost and was killed and devoured, with Kar'kess and Ahkriss going on to mate and bear a large clutch of offspring. The numbers of the fledgling race increased rapidly, giving them enough strength as a group to begin forming their own culture and sense of identity. In time they discovered the struggling beginnings of the Seraph bloodline who shared their same ancestry. Feeling a sense of kinship and facing similar threats from the rest of humanity as well as the other races, the naga took in the Seraphs and for a time the two races were closely allied. The alliance was short-lived, with the Seraphs turning on their kin and saviors within a century. Despite coming from the same demonic ancestor, the Seraphs were able to mingle unseen among humans in a way that the naga never could, and had quickly come to regard the naga as a threat to the narrative they were fast developing around the Immortal Flame. Faced by enemies on all sides, the naga were driven into seclusion in the deep desert. They never forgave their kin for the betrayal, developing a particular hatred for the Seraphs. Though they were originally joint rulers of their descendants, somewhere around the year 1200 BCE Kar'kess disappeared and left Ahkriss as the sole protector and ruler of the naga. While she was more than capable of fulfilling this role, a larger problem was emerging; millennia of dilution was weakening the demonic blood of the naga, resulting in generations that were progressively less powerful and long-lived. With Kar'kess's similarly immortal blood removed from their genetic pool, Ahkriss could only reinvigorate the bloodline so much by mating with later descendants. Despite her best efforts, including the creation of Vyskass Shard during the shattering to give her people a secret and secure home, it seemed that the naga were doomed to slide into a slow extinction. Their fortunes were finally reversed in the year 2034 CE, when Ahkriss formed an alliance with the Reaper Artemis Hunter and the former Huntlord of the Seraphs, Darius Seraph. In exchange for Ahkriss and her people's aid against the Seraphs and their forces, the Reaper would release Kar'kess from where he had been imprisoned by a past Reaper long ago. The naga proceeded to enter the Second Siege of Darkmere in alliance with the elves of the city; following the Seraph defeat, Ahkriss and Kar'kess were reunited and returned to Vyskass with renewed hope for the future of their people.

Important Relationships

KAR'KESS, THE GODKING
Her brother and mate, Kar'kess has always been Ahkriss's stalwart ally and counterpart. The two don't have a typically affectionate relationship, but trust one another implicitly and act as two halves of a single whole. Though they were once evenly matched in status, millennia of ruling alone have left Ahkriss as the dominant force in the eyes of her people and Kar'kess has offereed little challenge to his sister's new position of power. DARIUS SERAPH
Though her initial reaction to Darius was the same hatred she would feel for any other Seraph, Ahkriss was impressed by his boldness in coming alone to bargain with her and came to appreciate their mutual status as outcasts. She considers him a worthy ally, and the former Seraph is one of the few outsiders who could truly be considered welcome within the Cistern.