Tajna Rasha

Tajna Rasha was the final Arashi in the cycle of Genesis preceding the events of Dead on Arrival. After destroying his own world and being forced in a persisting state of existence, Tajna sets plans into motion to resurrect Eos and grant himself a final and true death. Parading as a former lieutenant of Mundus who fought and was defeated by Sparda during his rebellion against the Demon Realm, Tajna masterminds his own execution to pass as a soul-devouring wraith living in the Underworld. He eventually becomes one of the driving forces behind the Council of Legion until he is finally unmasked as the ultimate antagonist of the Arashi storyarc.
==Description==
====Appearance====
As a testament of his role as the final Arashi of his cycle, Tajna Rasha's appeareance is a travesty of his former angelic beauty; tattered rags of flesh rest in place of wings while his body bears a skeletal, corpse-like composure. He has cloven, trydactyl claws and feel, and short jet-black hair that parts evenly over his radiant, pupilless eyes. A brownish cowl bearing demon markings masks his disfigured, jawless mouth, which glows a bright white upon devouring souls.
====Personality====
Tajna Rasha is a detached figure with very few links between him and those that surround him. Known to speak in a monotonous and detached tone of voice, fits of emotion were exceedingly rare for the phantom. Though considerably more vocal and forthcoming than many other antagonists, Tajna Rasha was proven an expert manipulator when he single-handedly orchestrated the events of the Arashi storyarc in an effort to summon Eos and end his life. This revealed Tajna Rasha as a nihilistic figure who lost all attachement to creation willing to go to any lengths to accomplish his fatal goal and ultimately destroy every realm in existence.
==Story==
====Arashi====
Little is known about Tajna Rasha beyond the fact he was once an angel chosen to wear the Shroud and became the Arashi, Eos. After consuming every realm in existence and his fulfilling his purpose, reality was made anew and Tajna Rasha was prevented from passing on, becoming a wraith - a broken shadow of his former self anchored to an unending existence. After millions of years of living as a devourer of souls, Tajna Rasha became a frightening and mysterious force in the Underworld. Still, Tajna's incurable immortality shaped the sorrow he had harbored for his sins until it became nothing but hatred for the Creator and his Grand Design. This spawned such deep-seated nihilism within Tajna Rasha he would set in motion the means to resurrect Eos and end the world once again.
====Lieutenant of Mundus====
Tajna Rasha first appeared disguised as a demon pledging allegiance under the reign of the Emperor Mundus upon his rallying of the different Demon Realms. Maintaining an image of servitude, Tajna Rasha became a prominent figure in Mundus’ army as one of his lieutenants while earning himself good standing among the ranks of other devils including the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda. This was a ruse to keep an eye on Mundus’ progenies; divine descendants powerful enough to harbour the power of the final Arashi. Tajna Rasha would set his sights upon Amoura Ethelia and time his manoeuvre with Sparda’s uprising to instil the seeds of rebellion within the child’s mind – the first of many steps the ghost would take to forge the girl into his living puppet. Satisfied, Tajna deemed the subterfuge as Mundus’ pet to have outlived its usefulness and masterminded his own execution by purposefully failing in stopping Sparda from separating the demon world from the human realm and banishing all demons from existence. The demon lieutenant a memory, Tajna would continue to observe Amoura from the spectral realm unhindered and set events into motion leading to her own exile from the Demon Plane.
====The Ghost of Legion====
Two millenia would pass before Amoura would free herself from her father's clutches after his defeat at the hands of the Demon Hunter, Dante. The Underworld left without a Emperor, Tajna rallied the most powerful demon lords of hell over the years to constitute what would be later known as the Council of Legion. Meanwhile, Tajna followed Amoura's progress in the human realm. Understanding his constant proximity to a divine being would cause an imbalance, Tajna willingly manifested before Amoura as a shrouded figure, stirring the first Arashi Veran to awaken and warn Amoura of her being chosen to become the End. The warning would be lost on her however upon being infected with the Waking Nightmare as well as the memory of her encounter with the ghost.
It wasn't until two years after that Tajna Rasha revealed himself once again as a member of the Council of Legion and an enemy to the human realm. Presenting himself as the Ghost of Legion, Tajna fought with the recently resurrected Legendary Dark Knight Sparda and easily crushed him - sending a message as to the Council's immense power. Tajna was quickly recognized as a cold and ruthless figure that would stop at nothing to re-establish the demon world's dominion over the human race. The conflict between the defenders of the realm and the Council of Legion rampaged across human cities for months. Eventually the members of the Council were systematically assassinated and defeated, leaving Tajna Rasha as one of its last surviving icons. In a final confrontation with Amoura Ethelia, the ghost trapped her in an alternate timeline where Mundus had killed Sparda and ruled over humans for centuries.
The severe temporal distortion served two purpose for the phantom - first as a method of control for Amoura and mold her into a being capable of being manipulated towards attaining the Shroud, and second to disrupt the balance of the realms in a way that would force the Downward Spiral to appear. Once this occured Tajna released Amoura from her imprisonment, at which point she was guided to the second Arashi by the Waking Nightmare on the world of Genesis.
====The True Enemy====
: ‘‘He wishes death, but cannot die. He wishes the end, but has none. He would see all life destroyed to grant his wish.’’ -The Creator
Tajna Rasha resurfaced on Genesis, this time as a far more pragmatic figure after the divine nature of the Arashi was discovered by Amoura and her allies. While the group was aware of the destructive role of the End in the grand scheme of things, many elements regarding Amoura's significance were left in the dark. Meeting with the heroes on different occasions, Tajna offered guidance under the pretense of his impending doom in face of the last Arashi and inability to view the events of the timeline passed it's insurrection. Aware of Tajna's omniscience and power, the defenders of Genesis begrunginly alligned themselves with the ghost in hope of finding a means to stop Eos from appearing. 
Tajna Rasha revealed more about the purpose of the Arashi as guardians of balance among the realms as well as their infinite power. Gradually he revealed the existence of the Shroud - lying about it's true function - and introducing it as a mean to challenge and even defeat an Arashi. The lie was carefully implimented in the minds of all the heroes until Amoura herself sought to go and search for it within th realm of Utopia where it was discovered being. The reasons for the imbalance still left unchecked, Maricul proved a perfect scapegoat for the wraith due to her plans to merge the realms as one world once Veran re-emerged and continued on apath of destruction, killing thousands. Weakening the witch and stopping her plans for her Grand Utopia silmutaneously, Tajna appeared a hero before dissapearing in Utopia where Veran followed Amoura.
 
The Ghost protected Amoura from the Arashi after a long chase until she finally happened upon the Shroud and understood it as being the mask of an Arashi. Revealed as the true enemy, Amoura unleashed the sum totality of her power against the phantom to no avail. Refusing to wear the Shroud, their battle raged on until Veran caught up to the two. At this point Tajna froze Veran time, showing to Amoura that even the infinite power of the Arashi dwindled in comparison to the abilities of the ghost. In one last effort to convince Amoura to wear the Shroud, Tajna invited Amoura to remove Veran's mask and gaze upon his face. Doing so revealed Veran's idendity as Ranka - Amoura's sire - whom Tajna had brought back in time to corrupt into an Arashi. Broken, Amoura reached for the Shroud before transforming into Eos - finally killing the Ghost of Legion. 
==Powers==
‘‘Do you know what is the cruel fate of those who become the End, Amoura Ethelia? They are forever bound in a persisting and irreversible existence in the new world made by the Creator, while having no place in it. Their essence is scattered - unable to be fully whole after experiencing the endless void of being an Arashi. Time and space are benign constructs that contain life. To the one who wore the mask, it is a maddening curse - an inescapable cycle of torment and inextricable anguish.’’
: -Tajna Rasha, the Ghost of Legion
As a former Arashi, Tajna Rasha is one of the most dangerous individuals to exist within the universe of Dead on Arrival. As a wraith, Tajna Rasha is allowed to freely traverse between the mortal world and the spectral realm as well as being able to devour the life-force of his enemies. His most powerful and important ability however resides in his unique power to bend and travel across time. As his time-travelling is not intransient to the events of a timeline, Tajna Rasha is able to duplicate his body and exist in multiple spaces at once. On top of using it to great extent during battle, this particular gift ensures that Tajna is exceedingly difficult, if not entirely impossible to kill, as not only is he able to have a theoretically infinite number of bodies but also because he is able to accurately predict any and all tactics employed by his enemies. This single ability is thus the reason for both his omniscience and omnipresence. The origin of his power is never explained, though as Tajna Rasha speaks through telepathy like all the Arashi, it is widely believed that it came as a result of being exposed and having shared their essence.
Tajna's prowess was first observed in a fight against Sparda inside the Temen-Ni-Gru. The phantom dispatched his opponent easily a number of times, going even as far as toying with him as evidenced by the hundreds of corpses left by the Legendary Dark Knight from alternate timelines where the two had the same encounter. Tajna also displayed a frightening amount of power in the same battle by destroying the Temen-Ni-Gru in a single attack infused with the energy of other apparitions of himself. Even when Sparda believed to have vanquished the ghost, Tajna Rasha merely restored himself after devouring a large part of his soul, leaving the devil vulnerable and powerless, forcing him to flee.
Tajna Rasha continued to prove himself an overpowering opponent against an array of enemies including Chloe even though she posessed the soul-stealing weapon Kasul in her arsenal during their confrontation. As the weapon acted as a conduit for the spirits it absorbed, Tajna forcibly fed himself a number to the blade until the resonance of his own power threatened to tear her asunder. The resulting shattered Chloe's mind, and rendered the mythical weapon unusable.
During the events of Grand Utopia where Maricul attempted to use the Downward Spiral to merge the realms together, Tajna displayed an intricate knowledge of the tower's mechanisms even greater than the Seductress, shutting it down in spite of her best efforts to stop him. After the both of them were destroyed in the aftermath, Tajna merely rematerialized in Utopia, unphased.
Tajna's manipulation of time could be extended to seal off even an entire realm in its own continuum, freezing all of Utopia and its denizens in a moment until Veran continued on his assault, giving the impression that only moments passed while entire months transpired elsewhere. Even a confrontation with an Arashi would prove non-fatal to Tajna Rasha: The ghost attacked Veran in an effort to stall the monster from killing Amoura before she could reach the Shroud. While Tajna was destroyed multiple times in the process, he would remain unhindered by the event - saving the Night Angel from certain death.
==Quotes==
*(To Sparda)‘‘Do you know what is insanity? Repeating the same task, over and over, expecting different results.’’
*(To Sparda)‘‘Your blood will begin to boil, before your soul begins to consume itself like the light of a candle: This power will render you hideous, you will go mad and will not know it.’’
*(To Maricul)‘‘Free will is an illusion.’’
*(At the Downward Spiral)‘‘History is ours to dictate.’’
*(To Amoura) ‘‘We are fate.’’
==Trivia==
*The image chosen for Tajna Rasha is Raziel from Soul Reaver, with whom he shares many traits.
**They were both destroyed, and became wraiths as a result.
**Both have the power to devour souls.
**While Raziel cannot manipulate time on his own, he still travels across many eras and eventually slays himself in the past - something Tajna Rasha does repeatedly.
*Tajna Rasha was originally planned to be defeated back on Devil May Cry: Endgame by using the Kasul to seal his soul.
**Chloe uses this exact same strategy and is instead defeated by the Ghost of Legion.
*Tajna Rasha speaks in third person; a reference to the fact that it has become a hive-mind after devouring countless souls.
*Tajna Rasha is one of only two members of the Council of Legion (the other being Validus) to cross over from Devil May Cry: Endgame on Dead on Arrival.
*Tajna Rasha is technically the oldest character in the story since his age is cumulative to the number of years he has lived through by consuming himself to relive history over and over. By that logic, Tajna is older than time itself.
*Tajna Rasha is played by Gui.
Category:Tajna Rasha
Category:Council of Legion
Category:Antagonist
Category:Gui