Mirriam Artori

Mirriam Artori (known to the world at large as Red Knight) was one of the bigger mysteries of the Hellfire War. Hero of the White Accord, and a perfect image of what a knight should be - that has never introduced themselves with their name, and kept wearing a magical armor that completely covered their body while altering their voice.
There was a very good reason for the secrecy, although that's something that only a very small number of people out there know about, with even most of the Hero Company members never finding out.
Today, she is one of the few survivors of the Hero Company. She has returned to the White Accord and settled somewhere within its territory after getting married to a fellow knight that she fought side by side during the war. However, her desire to see Flamelight killed properly might just make her pull out of the retirement, at least for some time.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

She is an archcubi. Expect horns (although she got rid of those for the helmet to fit, so it's more of a pairt of stumps), dark red skin and red-black eyes. Her hair is black and straight, typically cut short but she can - if she desires so - regrow it much longer literally the second she takes her helmet off due to her limited shapeshifting capabilities.
She, similarly, keeps her black leathery wings and a tail hidden or downright compressed in her body, though she can deploy them at will if needed.

Specialized Equipment

A pair of magical armor that not only fits her body perfectly and covers it all from toes to the top of her head, but also quickly regenerates damages so that if it's cut through to avoid her skin colour becoming visible. While she can change it temporarily through her shapeshifting, it would require concentration, and that's not something that she can spare in the middle of combat.
Other than that, her equipment includes a kite shield and a long sword. Both of them heavily enchanted.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Early Life

The true story of her life begins with someone completely (and originally) unrelated to her. A mother superior of a small religious convent somewhere deep in the White Accord territory, that secretly despaired. Despite years that she dedicated to religion, deep inside she always regretted not having a child of her own.
She was approaching the age where having children became impossible without a divine intervention. She considered abandoning her position and status as nun in hopes of getting herself a family - however this felt like a betrayal of her own religious beliefs. Hence, she prayed to the Highmost for a sign on what to do.
The prayers were answered. A group of adventurers from the area stormed headquarters of a small group of Ashen Covenant cultists, and slaughtered everyone inside. However, while killing active cultists and summoned demons was one thing, slaughtering a small child (4 or 5 years old, and most likely given birth to by one of the cultists after a sexual affair with one of said demons) was another thing entirely. Even if they were an archcubus.
If it was after the Hellfire War, there'd be no quarter given to the child. But while even before it the demon-summoners were frowned at and pursued by law (all while demons were generally a kill-on-sight target), the knowledge about them among the simple folk was extremely limited.
As a result the adventurers didn't know how the demons of this caliber are born as naturally and instinctively evil, and only saw a child. Now, they could kill the child and call it a day, but none of them really felt like doing it (even if they considered it). Eventually they decided to throw the hot potato in their hands to someone better prepared to deal with such issue - and promptly dragged the child to the nearest religious institution.
The mother superior saw that event as an answer to her prayers. She knew that the archcubi were naturally evil. However, while people weren't evil naturally, they could still grow up to be evil. So, perhaps while any larger group of archcubi (or other demonic Fulls) had to be evil, the same couldn't be said about an individual, especially if someone worked on them since early childhood?
Sure, it was going to be an incredibly complicated endeavour. But the mother superior saw the difficulty level of the feat as a form of repentance for considering to abandon her vows. This only strengthened her conviction to do it. She announced her decision to raise the girl in the convent (to a combination of outrage and surprise), before giving her position to another nun so that she could focus on the feat in question.
Despite seeing that as an act of madness, the authority she amassed during the years of hard work as a regular nun (and then as the mother superior) made the replacement not immediately cast the child outside, and instead allowed the attempt to continue, although Mirriam Artori spend most of her childhood with armed guards not far away from her.

Childhood

Throughout her childhood she was kept secret from the people outside of the convent, to avoid accusations of the convent itself falling into Ashen Covenant's grasp. She was an odd and troubled child, as one can expect from her heritage.
Her lack of conscience and her natural tendency to find enjoyment in acts of evil were a large hurdles to pass. This wasn't a mountain that could be scaled with love and support alone. Punishments were as common if not more than words of love, and a large part of education was attempting to make the child understand how being good is the logical and rational choice.
If Mirriam couldn't feel empathy naturally, she had to understand how acting as if she did was beneficial, not just to the world as a whole and other people, but also to herself. It was, as stated, a complicated job. And a great feat.
However, by the time Mirriam began to approach adulthood, most people in the convent began to think that it was actually working. She behaved odd at a time, often taking a longer while to decide on what to do when faced with a moral dilemma, as to her none of that was instinctual, and making such decision required running it through her knowledge of her mother's moral teachings to decide what to do.
Even before that happened, she took up to training her combat skills, quickly proving herself to be an incredibly skilled swordfighter. The doubts as to whether she should be allowed to learn skills that could help her escape and kill people were mostly squashed out when she proved capable of casting theurgies of the Highmost, a fact that meant being recognized as a non-evil entity.

Pre-Hellfire War

The biggest test happened when Mirriam reached adulthood. She couldn't be kept in the convent eternally, besides with the speed of growth of her skills, it was only a matter of time before she could walk out of it at her own leisure, even if the nuns tried to stop her. But what if Artori went back to her natural instincts without constant oversight?
Besides, what if the world outside found out that the convent has housed an archcubi the whole time?
Eventually, a lot of favours were called. Mirriam Artori left the convent with a magical armour that hid her actual species perfectly, in a company of several knights errants related to nuns from the convent. The knights in question were apalled or simply shocked after finding out the identity of their companion, but they knew fully well that if said identity become public knowledge, their families would be implicated.
They were told to protect the secret, but also make sure that Artori wouldn't relapse. And to a surprise of all of them, despite the deep trust issues from the side of the knights, she didn't.
Their party has soon became increasingly famous throughout the White Accord. A party being led by a mysterious knight whose identity was secret led to many speculations (including that of the Red Knight being royalty) and only amped their fame. For the next decade, Mirriam's party continued to strike against bandits and cultists, in a few cases striking against local feudal lords that they discovered to be evil and abusive towards their subjects in secret, which made them popular among the commoners too.
It is generally believed among those close to her (with Mirriam herself admitting it later on), that striking against the evil groups was, in a way, a form of a positive outlet. Allowing her to indulge (to a more humanitarian degree) in her more bloodthirsty desires, while staying on morally good side.

Hellfire War

By the time the Hellfire War broke out, the Red Knight and their party were already famous. It become a surprise to no one when they joined the war effort. Their fame only grew further during the early war, when their party become known for taking some of the most dangerous jobs voluntarily.
It was at that time that Mirriam has finally became a demigod. Her new class was born for a reason. Her party (typically together with ragtag assortments of survivors from crushed army units she could rally around her banner) has engaged in often rather hopeless rearguard actions against Hellfire forces, typically in order to delay them to help as many civilians as possible flee to safety.
Despite apparenty hopelessness of such acts and often horrible casualties (that began to toil away at her own knight party's ranks), somehow her group has always persevered, leading to the Red Knight becoming even more famous. By the time the Hero Company began to be organized, her candidature for the representative of the White Accord was accepted nearly unanimously.
At some point of the Hero Company's history, she became aware of Flamelight's true nature and his plans for other heroes. This led to a group of heroes opposing him to form around Artori, which involved at least January 34th and Tertius Syllus (perhaps more).
Her final act during the Hellfire War - once the demon lord was slain - was to run her sword through Flamelight, just as January 34th melted his face, esophagus and lungs. The remaining heroes were forced to flee before the area was devoured by Conflagration, a raging storm of infernal mana erupting from the collapsing multiversal gateway to Gehenna that Hellfire almost managed to activate. This allowed the Flamelight to escape.

Post-Hellfire War

After the Hellfire War ended, the Red Knight mostly disappeared from public eye. Her status as a living saint has been effectively made a public knowledge in the process, which made this sort of act a most logical way of dodging excess fame and potential assassination attempts by fellow demigods.
Mirriam returned to the convent she was born in to donate her spoils of war to it, before getting officially married to one of the companions she met during the war - a human knight from White Accord. The two of them has retired from active combat, at least for some time.
The discovery that Flamelight has survived has spurned Mirriam into action again, as for as long as he is alive, she sees the Hellfire War as still on-going. However with any direct attack on him (head of the sovereign country) would probably spark a continental war, she is instead training herself hard and waiting for a good moment for another confrontation.

Gender Identity

Like all archcubi, her gender identity is something of a complicated matter. She is a limited shapeshifter (even if she sticks to a single form), who can feel comfortable in any body shape. While she sticks to female form (at least externally), she borrows at least certainly bits from a male form.

Sexuality

As an archcubus, her sexual orientation can easily be summed as 'yes'. However, she has strictly avoided in indulging that before and during the Hellfire War, at least partially through a number of alchemical potions that suppressed desire for such acts. This appears to have changed afterwards, as she decided to get married to her female companion and a fellow knight, that she fought side by side during the war.
A lot of things can be speculated about their relationship, especially form the fact that said companion got pregnant not soon after, although thanks to a lot of prayers to appropriate deities the child was born as a human.

Morality & Philosophy

As one can expect, this is perhaps the most complicated element of Mirriam Artori. She is an archcubi - so a full demon. This means that her natural morality was effectively flipped in reverse. Demons of this order consider murder, sexual violence and theft to be as natural as it's unnatural for normal people.
In fact, for them not performing such acts is unnatural and wrong, leading to the society of Gehenna being a place full of violence, with vestiges of society only kept afloat through a vast variety of deals. After all, killing the other demon is perfectly natural, however if you have a use for them, you can postpone that indefinitely.
The result of that is a hierarchical society based on oppression, with demon lords at the top and everyone else gunning for their position so that they will be able to exploit everyone beneath them for their own good. With those beneath them following them for protection and mutual gain... at least until they can kill them and take their position for themselves.
Mirriam has been brought up in a completely different environment, which succeeded in overwriting at least most of her natural instinct. Typically by a more rational reasoning, with - for example - normal empathy replaced with realization that the more 'good' aligned societies where empathy is more common are significantly less likely to devolve into an cuthroat environment, which would have eventually become a threat to herself.
The result of that is something akin to a personal code of ethics, based mostly on teachings of the Church of the Highmost (enough, in fact, for Artori to be able to use some of the most powerful theurgies of the Church). She is sticking to it, no pun intended, religiously. And expands if needed, after thinking over new additions/changes deeply and often consulting people whom moral guidance she trusts.
This makes her sometimes act somewhat strangely. It's not uncommon for her to take a while to come to a decision in a moment of moral doubt, which sometimes might be about something that most humans would decide on nearly instantly, only on a basis of their conscience.
Other example of her behavioural quirks might be her tendency for participation in hopeless last stands during the Hellfire War, which were not motivated by empathy or even a genuine wish to save people. But by her moral code superseding her self-preservation instinct. She attempts to avoid being 'evil' at all cost. and in this case leaving people to die would make her 'evil', so she acted in the opposit way - as per her own ethical system.

Basic Information

Species: Archcubus
Class: Living Saint of Last Stands
Level: 120

Attributes

Strength: 145
Endurance: 170
Agility: 98
Intelligence: 87
Willpower: 162
Charisma: 108

Class Skills

Command, Tactics: 102
Lore, Theology [Highmost]: 112
Combat, Long Swords: 144
Combat, Shields [Large]: 132
Combat, Armors [Heavy]: 123
Theurgy, Aspect of Knight: 122
Theurgy, Aspect of Crusader: 111