Personality

Iphemedia has lived for a long time. She doesn't feel as though she's changed much over the years, especially given that she's looked and physically felt the same since reaching maturity. She makes the same jokes, she feels like, gravitates towards the same pastimes and favorite things. It’s hard to self-reflect when the world changes and leaves you behind.

She used to be a rather gentle person, content with her lot in life. If she were in a story, she wouldn’t be the heroic type, ready to rush into danger, she’d be the side character – not out of fear or a lack of things to say when the time demands it, but because she knows she lacks the showmanship, the bold charisma, the ability and desire to command attention. It just doesn’t suit her to run into things, and she was alright knowing that about herself.

She used to be pragmatic, sensible, and honestly easy to please. Any of her favorite pleasures cut off any ill moods she had, whether it was her favorite food or offering to brush out her curly hair for her (goodness knows she never did it herself often enough, have you seen how much hair she has?) She was also an advocate for others to follow suit whenever times got hard. Her natural philosophy was moral hedonism: follow what makes you happy as long as pursuing it doesn’t become a source of excess or pain. Not to say that pleasures were the only thing on her mind, but it was always her fall-back in case something happened.

She used to be highly imaginative as well, hounding storytellers when they came to town and writing their stories and sonnets down so that she could remember them. And in the long absences between bits of entertainment, when those around her grew very tired of repeating her favorites, she took to daydreaming, and then writing her own. It wasn’t exactly....a noble pursuit, or something she shared or told. She wrote them purely for herself to give herself the widest, stupidest grin at the newest piece of villainous banter she thought up. The antagonists were the ones she paid the most attention to, fully admiring the showmanship and drama she herself lacked. She used to fill journals with them, endlessly in love with the dastardly things that she wrote down. The drama, the angst, the forbidden love between rivals-! She devoured it, and sometimes wished she had the panache to say it herself.

And for the most part, she still holds true to all of that. She still struggles under the spotlight, still returns to her simple pleasures when things get overbearing, still writes in her journals to pass the time. But after her brother naturally passed away after refusing her magic no matter how much she pressed it on him, she finds it difficult to make new connections with others, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t try. She struggles and denies an apathy she doesn’t want in herself, fighting the way she clings to the old and familiar. (In her words: "Nobody wants to be around a pessimistic old codger and that certainly won't be me! I'm not old.")

She doesn't want to be the kind of person that lingers too long over painful things. She wants to keep her good sense of humor, to be a good memory for those she meets. If someone mentions a problem, she’s very quick to bluntly tell them her opinion, no matter who it is (though if you’re the wicked sort, she might fawn over you first with stars in her eyes). She’s good at giving advice and is comfortable to be around, quick to accept even the darker aspects of others as long as she can find a justification she might’ve included in one of her journals. Her morals have...admittedly shifted from how many things she’s seen, but she still smiles at the end of the day with a cheeky grin.

She tries very hard to be someone she can be proud of, though her long life has naturally muddied what that that means for her.

(644)

History

She was born in the Ivran year 960, right at the founding of Namarast, and was slated for a background character; at least, that’s what she’d always assumed. She has no recollection of how her adoptive parents took her from the river and claimed her as her own. It was easy to think of herself as nothing out of the ordinary with the way her brother held every ounce of charisma she could’ve hoped for and then some. Every word he said was like honey, back when honey was a rare treat to savor in her family’s small kitchen. He even eclipsed the way faintly glimmering stars shone over her skin, and she was happy to let him. If ever she needed inspiration for the heroes in her stories, he filled those shoes with everything he did. She had no idea he had magic of his own – a silver tongue that charmed those who listened.

It was for his sake that she first discovered what her magic could do. He’d gotten involved in rescuing someone, bold enough to assume his charm would solve the situation, and came home on death’s door from his own foolishness. Iphemedea knew she healed quickly, and she recklessly ripped one of her stars from herself to give to him, pressing it over the wound as a last resort. Her family cried tears of joy when it worked and when he looked five years younger for it.

There were two ramifications to her selfless act. One was more immediately obvious; her insides burned like there was tar in her system, making her miserable until she coughed it up. The second was quieter, one no one realized would damn them until it was too late. Her brother’s last concept of the word ‘consequences’ was thrown out the window.

Her brother wasn’t a bad person, deep down. His magic made it so that he got everything he wanted, and everyone thought he could do no wrong. So when his little sister hero-worshipped him, he did his best to be that for her – admittedly in the worst way possible.

Concerned over Iphemedea’s sickness, he left home to find a cure for corruption. He didn’t question it when he met an old mage who claimed he could create the cure with alchemy, didn’t question that the components cost mountains of gold he’d never earn in his life, not when the mage charmed him with lofty dreams of saving not only his sister, but all of Ivras and beyond, being the hero Ivras sang for generations to come.

So he went to the lords of Ivras, crooning sweet nothings in their ears to take on the debt necessary to pay the lying piper. But no matter how much he brought to the alchemist, there was always some new ingredient necessary, just one more thing to finish the recipe. Her brother eventually ran out of lords to beg from, running into rueful denials when he finally learned that his debt had been bought up by a new lord from Siregal – one Antioch de la Voux.

And what a villain Antioch was rumored to be. Iphemenia’s brother, never knowing the concept of paying his own debts, afraid of what Antioch would do once the debt collector came to his family’s door, decided to bring down the villain before he could make due. He went to everything Antioch owned and burned it down to the ground, so sure that he was in the right. He could do no wrong, after all. Everyone had always said so.

Iphemedea had absolutely no idea this was happening until Antioch’s few remaining men knocked on their door, killing her parents and bringing her to an audience for one singular purpose: for her brother to watch her die before revenge was wrought on him for his sheer idiocy.

To this day, Iphemedea has no idea where her courage came from to offer herself up as collateral for his mountain of debt. Her clever dialogue from her journals came naturally enough, but the nervous, stammering execution was enough to make herself grimace. Regardless, when she offered immortality to Antioch in exchange for absolving her brother, he took it.

To her brother’s credit, he was shaken enough by the death of their parents to wake up from his unhealthy ego. But once she learned what he’d done, she became irreparably disenchanted with him and the idea of heroes.

Antioch on the other hand, with his undeniably villainous charisma and bewitching theatrics, stole her attention the moment he said her name. He was an undeniable bastard, but she was weak to everything he did, and he knew it. She tried to deny it at first, keeping the source of her magic to herself in case he got the idea to sell off all her stars for profit, but the longer she knew him, the more she started to care.

They formed an unlikely friendship over the years when she was summoned to heal him from a deal gone violent or for the shallow reason of removing a couple of wrinkles. Their lively banter became the highlight of her day-to-day life, filling her daydreams and making her journals pale in comparison. There was nothing like seeing and feeling such electric magnetism directed at you, and every look he gave, no matter how manipulative, made her knees weak. When he called her, she came running. When he needed her, she lifted him up with her reliable, unwavering pragmatism, and when he came to trust her, she did everything she could to return that.

Every star she gave him cost her, and her reason for keeping her methodology secret changed over time. If he knew they were finite, would he stop calling her to his side so often? And when she started to love him, would he tell her to stop entirely? Would telling him that it was killing her slowly ruin what they had, or would he continue blithely on out of selfishness, burning her candle at both ends for the luxury of it? Would she even fault him for it if he did?

In the present day, though her brother is long gone, she’s forgiven him for his stupidity. She honestly has nightmares about outliving Antioch, and the idea of watching him grow old and die feels like her own personal hell. She’s resolved herself to never tell Antioch the truth as her own form of stupidity, preferring to enjoy what she has while it lasts.

She never wanted to live forever.

(1061)

Eternal Youth