Aurelia Abrudas (2156 CE)

Aurelia Abrudas is the current Primarch of Carthaan and parriarch of House Abrudas. She has been married twice; first to Baeran Tavus, with whom she had twin sons, Anaeas and Elissan, and second to Baeran's younger brother, Tyran, with whom she had five children; Baera, Atrina, Lucreas, Sevillus and Tyrion. She is a second cousin to Desolas Arterius II and second cousin once removed to Marcia Victus, the Conjux Domina of Primarch Fidellion Victus of Palaven. Like many members of her house, she was named for her legendary ancestor, Aurelion Imperator, and is a descendant of Markus Abrudas, the first Primarch of Carthaan. Alongside the rest of her house, Aurelia was one of the few people who believed her cousin Desolas' warnings about the reapers. 
== Biography ==
=== Reaper War ===
Aurelia's life has been marked by tragic personal loss. During the Reaper War, the Reapers brought overwhelming force to Carthaan, targeting it for its strategic importance to the Aurelian Empire's military supply lines. Aurelia lost most of her family during the onslaught, including her parents, sister, husband and twin sons. She was forced to dig the bodies of her husband and sons out of the rubble of the children's school with her bear hands, breaking down when she saw that Baeran's body was wrapped around Anaeas and Elissan's, having died attempting to shield them from harm. 
By the time the war had ended, Carthaan's chain of command had been utterly decimated and Aurelia, at the mere age of 30, was the highest-ranking officer left alive. In the absence of any more senior officers or top-down command from Palaven, she was unceremoniously promoted to provisional primarch by Carthaanean Command's VI, which was responsible for collating all data pertaining to the Carthaanean line of succession. 
The beginning of Aurelia's premiership was chaotic. So many officers were either KIA and MIA that she struggled to issue commands down the chain to the troops in the field. Knowing that the troops needed to recognise their leader to be an effective fighting force, she began broadcasting her orders directly on all Carthaanean emergency channels and giving rousing speeches to bolster her people's resolve. Her actions turned Carthaan's shattered military forces into a cohesive resistance movement, fiercely loyal to their new primarch. 
=== Primarch of Carthaan ===
Losing her family fundamentally changed Aurelia as a person. While she had relatives who had survived the war, very few of them lived on Carthaan and she was not well acquainted with any of them. Her husband, Baeran, had been a dear friend to her and her sons had still been children. Without any close family left to support her, Aurelia struggled to process her grief. In her anger, she convinced herself that the Imperial regime, in its creeping complacency following the Krogan Rebellions, had gradually allowed Carthaan to become under-defended. Thus, in her mind, Palaven was directly responsible for her family's deaths. 
She began to prioritise Carthaan above all else, holding back the bulk of the colony's dwindling food stores and charging inflated prices for what little she chose to cede to the Merchant Marine, insisting that her people needed the lion's share of what they produced just to survive. As Carthaan produced the majority of the empire's food, this decision put her at odds with the rest of the Council of Hierarchs, who began placing military sanctions on her in retaliation. Knowing that this powder keg of a political situation had the potential to explode into the anarchy of an empire-wide food riot, the newly appointed Primarch Adrien Victus of Palaven decided to visit Carthaan to treat with Aurelia personally. 
Upon his arrival, Adrien was utterly shocked at the state of Carthaan. The colony had been rendered near uninhabitable by the Reapers; 80% of all arable land had been destroyed and the livestock population had been driven to near-extinction. Its citizens were starving and, barring Aurelia herself, there was no clear chain of command left to keep them under control. It was then that Adrien realised Aurelia was not acting purely out of spite; her people were dying and she was the only person holding them back from a full-scale separatist rebellion. Adrien knew that if the empire lost Carthaan, it would collapse under its own weight into absolute anarchy; as a staunch Aurelian, that was not an outcome he was willing to entertain. 
During their meeting, Aurelia accused Adrien of abandoning the empire's greatest asset in its hour of dearest need, leaving her people to die in their millions. Rather than react defensively, Adrien accepted her scorn and apologised for his failings, displaying a level of genuine sincerity that caught Aurelia off guard. He then pledged a great number of the Engineering Corps to her service, swearing on the spirit of his late wife that Carthaan's agricultural infrastructure would be restored and properly defended from then onwards. But he knew that political promises would not be enough to bridge their divide; he had to show empathy for her personal plight as well.
Adrien then presented Aurelia with a precious gift - a collection of hand-carved Bostran prayer figurines which depicted the likenesses of her deceased family. He explained to her that it was the tradition of his people to make such totems in honour of their dead, so that they would be remembered by all who look upon them. Finally, he reached across both their political and physical divide with a consoling hand upon her shoulder, followed by the words: "I know what it is to lose a child." Seeing her own pain reflected in Adrien's eyes, Aurelia chose to defy protocol and embrace him. From that moment onwards, they no longer stood on ceremony; they were but a mother and a father, mourning the loss of their children as equals. 
In the following days, Aurelia invited Adrien to attend a memorial service for the dead of House Abrudas, during which she placed the figurines he had gifted her upon the corresponding tombs of her family. Adrien later confirmed her appointment as Primarch of Carthaan and attended her anointing, where she swore obeisance to him as the rightful Heir to Aurelion. Adrien's empathy for Aurelia's loss sparked a lifelong friendship between the two primarchae, significantly strengthening Palaven's relationship with Carthaan. Every year, on the anniversary of the end of the Reaper War, Aurelia sent Adrien gifts in honour of his son, Tarquin; Adrien always did the same in return for her family. Years later, Aurelia attended Adrien's funeral, during which she laid an offering of a bolt of Tyrian purple silk, upon which a funerary inscription had been stitched with golden thread:"Our most noble Primarch Victus, Adrien The Bold, The Builder, Reapers' Bane. Lay down your sword and rest in the glorious peace you have restored, to be forever exalted among the living. May Divine Aurelion bless you to sit at his right hand, for all eternity. Your dear friend, Aurelia Abrudas, Primarch of Carthaan." 
=== Marriage to Tyran ===
Knowing that it was her duty to secure the future of House Abrudas' bloodline, Aurelia reluctantly chose to remarry. While she would have preferred to marry one of Adrien's relatives, to further strengthen the friendship between the ruling imperial house and Carthaan, there were no eligible Victuses for her to take as a husband. She instead chose to marry her late husband's younger brother, Tyran Tavus. In the years following their marriage, Aurelia would give birth to a daughter, whom she and Tyran decided to name after Baeran. Aurelia and Tyran's relationship was one of familial devotion. Aurelia had known Tyran for years and was conformable in his presence but, as his former sister-in-law, she initially struggled to view him as anything more than a younger brother. These feelings were only exacerbated by the fact he was eleven years her junior, albeit things became easier for her as he grew into himself. Eventually she began to feel more romantically inclined towards him, and he to her.
=== The Night of Martyrs ===
==== Funeral of Maea Arterius ====
As Maea had been born an Abrudas, Aurelia and the rest of House Abrudas attended her funeral in Cipritine. Aurelia brought an offering of jewellery with her - a pair of silver bracers, inlaid with cut orange topazes and engraved with a motif of broken chains - which, with Desolas' permission, she lovingly placed around each of her cousin's wrists before her tomb was sealed. 
===== Promise of vengeance =====
After the funeral, Aurelia had a heart-to-heart with Desolas, in which she confessed that her spirit could not endure any more senseless death. Desolas, broken, reacted with anger towards the galaxy and how it kept taking those he loved away from him, mourning all the years he and his mother could had together if not for the Hierarchy. He turned that anger inward, roaring that his mother and cousin had only been killed because of who he was. Overwhelmed by his grief and his rage, his biotics became wildly unstable and, fearing that he would hurt his cousin, he told Aurelia to get away from him and leave him alone. But rather than back away in fear, Aurelia reached out and embraced him tightly, holding him in place and telling him that she was not afraid of him:"You are my cousin, my family. I'm not afraid of you. And, right now, being on your own is the last thing you need."She held him close as he began to sob into her shoulder. After some time, she whispered in his ear: "We are going to avenge them, Des. Maea, Gaius, Euphemia... We are going to make their killers pay." 
==== Funeral of Gaius and Euphemia Abrudas ====
Category:Turians
Category:Females
Category:House Abrudas
Category:Carthaaneans
Category:Primarchs
Category:Primarchs of Carthaan
Category:Carthaanean Primatial Family of Aurelia Abrudas