The Goetia: Aiyana

The bind has been split. She still has ties to the grove but additional ties in Acedia and Gula where pieces of her own soul now grow into trees resembling those within the grove. They're growth has changed her in ways she has yet to fully forsee. Now she strives to leave pieces of these trees across Gehenna so that she may feel at home everywhere there and deter the advances of the grove who now hunt her because of her new found freedom. Her magic is strongest during the day when she is close to these new found homes.

Rot Aiyana has begun to study water magic under the war hero Chai. Despite many mishaps in her mentoring, his teachings have opened her eyes to a new form of life: mold. By focuses on her touch for an hour she can cause organic material to decompose so long as moisture is present.

Personality:

:Inquisitive: Fearless: Resourceful: Restless: Envious:

To outsiders, Aiyana is quiet and a little eerie with a habit of sneaking up on people or just watching them from afar. Curiosity runs with naivety in her. Foreigners and outsiders fascinate her. She cannot speak but will sign everything to try to make herself and her interests understood. She longs for a voice of her own, that those with ears can understand and admire. She is hard working and determined to finish what she starts, and while capable of incredible patience, she has her limits and gets frustrated easily with the long time it takes for her ancestors to resolve anything and their preference for inaction. She envies others not only for their voices, but for their mobility and prowess over other elements. While she appears to be kind in helpful to others, her motives are far more selfish in seeking how might she better herself by observing others and asking them of their day so she might try in vain to imitate them. She is restless for a greatness, her life cannot seem to amount to.


History:
Long before Mt. Ea erupted, when Invidia was the jewel of the world, legend holds that there lived a prosperous and powerful earth demon. At the time she was the sole heir of the Onos, who were once a noble household in the region in these times of old. She had outlived all her suitors and bore only stillborns. As she neared the end of her child bearing years, heavy with shame, she fled to the forest. There she came across a mercenary dying in the woods from plague. She restored him to health. As time passed she grew fond of him and he of her. He had no desire for children and cared not for her noble status. He worked as guard for the caravans that passed through Invidia then, but he always returned to meet her. Fondness turned to love and she longed to be with him, so one year she decided to accompany him. She grew weary of their travels though, and eventually learned of his infidelity in other kingdoms. Disheartened and inflamed with jealous, she headed home. He followed after her though, seeking forgiveness and her comfort. She told him to meet her in her grove back in Invidia and in one months time she prepared a paralyzing poison and a blade. Luring him deep into the forest, she vivisected him, spreading his innards around his body before taking her own life over him. She had buried his heart and from his hollowed chest grew a tree. As punishment for his infidelity and denying a devotion she longed for, he would bear her children and their heirs would serve them, forever bound to the soil where their blood mixed. If she could not have him in life, then they would be joined in a second life.

From his corpse grew a grove that is believed to have covered a good portion of Mt. Ea before it erupted and the Onos prospered. Upon eruption though, a great calamity fell upon the region, especially the Onos as the molten rock wiped out almost all the grove. All that remained and continues to remain lies closer to the border and human settlements though some parts still trickle near the volcano. The original tree was burned but not destroyed, though it stands as an ominous testimony to the destruction of Ea. Rumor has it, that this was because the doomed lover was in fact a fire demon. The Onos have since fallen from glory and even memory, as the grove descended into centuries of mourning. No new children were born and the grove stood in silence as if to be forgotten. Their land disappeared and changed around them.

Aiyana is the breaking of this silence as the grove seeks to restore itself to former magnificence and reconnect with the rest of Invidia. The grove is both strict and protective of Aiyana. Aiyana though, hardly has the confidence of the grove, as they still deem her naive and weak in their shadows and test her constantly in hopes of strengthening her. This has only inadvertently pushed her away from them. To add insult to injury, she stumbled upon human children playing at the edge of the forest, and immediately became fascinated with them. Thus assuming a physical form closer to them in appearance than any other animal or demon.

Aiyana's work is humble, her clothes brightly colored but plain, reflecting the Ono's fall from status and her own childlike air in the shadows of her ancestors. She tends to a small farm alone to sell her produce and various herbs to traders. Truth be told, she tends to the entire grove as if it were a farm. She gets most of her income from selling more unconventional products, anyways. Occasionally she will wander off to help others in their own fields or to pester them about their days and adventures before heading off into the grove for lessons in the ways of the ancients and to tend to them. Her life is hard but simple, though she longs to journey to foreign lands.

Lust
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Gluttony
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Greed
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Sloth
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Wrath
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Envy
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Pride
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Likes / dislikes:
✓ PLANTS, exploring, BLOOD, fighting, SUNLIGHT, studying, listening to people talk, foreigners
X Eating plants (it's cannibalism for her, unless circumstances are truly desperate), drought, dark dry places, houseplants

Additional Information:

-Aiyana is best described as a Kodama with some features similar to dryads. These two overlap for the most part though, although where she deviates from the two is in her ability to literally absorb fluids and nutrients through her fingers, toes and hair as a means to eat/drink and even temporarily rob others of their energy and power. If left in a liquid too long, they can become rooty. Aiyana is still considered too young and weak to hunt on her own, thus relying on nutrients rationed by her grove. Using this innate ability outside of sipping simple liquids and taking nutrients allotted by the grove is inconceivable for Aiyana at this level.

-She is susceptible to symbiotic relations should she fail to keep her own humors balanced. Too much moisture, especially, may result in the growth of moss, funguses and even other plants in her hair and even her skin.

-The loyalty of the grove to Invidia and it's overlord is unbreakable. Few pass through the grove without the Overlord herself being informed. And they would sooner perish than betray Invidia.

- Aiyana's variety of demon, upon reaching a certain age (around 1000-2000) and as a part of the family's curse begin to hear a call to return to their tree. This call only gets stronger until they are consumed with it and cease comprehensible communication or action until they are joined with their tree and enter their "second life" for however long that may be (they basically live the rest of their life like this). Though traditionally long lived, it's debatable whether they're really living at this point, as they obtain a kind of collective, hive mind. To enter this second life, a ritual similar to the murder of the doomed lover is performed. The Grove never bury their dead and the ground is strewn with bones.

-The Grove and Aiyana what they lack in speech is made up for in emotion. Aiyana communicates through exaggerated expressions signs, while the grove literally make its sentiments known and know those of whoever may visit, if they have the capacity of empathy to speak to them, otherwise, walking through the grove may just fill an outsider with an "odd feeling".

-In desperate times, a tree may cut itself from the grove to provide shelter, fire and other necessities to their allies. As Aiyanna should she fail to make enough to sustain her physical body and home, and should no alternative exist, will sever parts of herself to sell as alchemical ingredients.

- The shell earrings, Aiyana bought for her self in exchange for some rare medicinal herbs. And the cloak of leaves she made as a part of an experiment to dampen the effect of the sun on her when working out in the field and to see if it would allow her to journey a little farther away from her grove.

- Her "pants" are actually a skirt that has been wrapped up around her calves for better mobility but can be undone to become a hakama again.

-Aiyana's hair is seasonal. In the fall, it begins to turn reddish, in the winter, it is completely black, by the spring time though, it begins to bloom (fav.me/d5bfhr5, by the end of this season there are sometimes white cottony balls that fall from her hair.) and finally lightens to a dark brown during the summer months.

-As an RP related note, Aiyana is the only character I'm RPing, the grove is an NPC of sorts, and can be used as leverage over Aiyana but otherwise, it's more of a a part of the environment and scenery than anything.