Mauretania

Mauretania is an Old One in the form of a Gelth. Given as a gift to Thrace to celebrate the births of the second batch of squidlets.
==Bio==
Write the first section of your article here.
==Trivia (interactive)==
01. Mauretania was born in the fourth generation of the Primordial as a female. She was the daughter of a pair of siblings, Arymnatin and Aurbereo. It took a little more effort to trace herself back to the Twelve (they were her great-grandparents, rather than parents or grandparents) but she never felt she was lacking for this. Indeed, a lifetime of being firmly in the "beta" category of any familial structure made her secretly believe that tracing yourself to the Twelve was overrated.
02. Mauretania matured between rulers, during the war between Illium and Illyria. As such, her general understanding of how life operated was largely based in chaos, battle and upheaval. The peace that came after the war ended was actually jarring for her, and she never appreciated it as much as others did.
03. Unsurprisingly, Mauretania was not a follower of Illyria.
She wasn't a rebel, either (Mauretania had no plans to die, after all) but the new structure of the Empire was something she always found dissatisfying, and she began to enjoy being of the fourth generation purely because of the favorable odds that she'd live to see a world in which Illyria wasn't king.
04. Mauretania's closest compatriots in the Primordial were the Dream Children. This was often viewed with disdain by her parents and others of her peer group--comparable to either befriending the servants or consorting with animals, depending on the ego of whoever was speaking about the tendency--but it was a disdain she ignored. Dreams were an incredible resource outside their entertainment value, and were also easy to identify with, at least insofar as they didn't care much for law and order, either.
The closest to her was called Orseanae (Or [door, floor[ - see - an [plan, man] - ay [play, fray]). Even though she never thought of him as her property, he always considered her his mistress.
05. Mauretania had few acquisitive instincts for land or material objects, but she was always intrigued by the concept of political power. She had none, and never associated with any who did (e.g, she never even met Illyria or Thrace during the golden years of the Empire), which made the young Mauretania almost glamorize the idea. She had infantile power struggles often with her own siblings, but never truly accomplished any political ambitions.
06. Mauretania had both a mate and children in the Primordium. Her mate was Jugurtha. They married later in life than many Old Ones of the Primordium chose to, and had fewer children. (This is not because Mauretania's fertility ended--pure Old Ones did not have menopause; this was because neither of them lived long enough after their marriage to have more.) They had four offspring, all male.
07. Mauretania had land of her own in the Primordium, though no subjects other than her own mate and children. (Mauretania dominated Jugurtha early, easily and often) They lived on the far outskirts of the continent, near the ocean, just outside Illyria's reach. Mauretania loved the ocean and living by it...mostly because of the freedom it represented.
08. Mauretania loved the chaos of war, but she never fought in one. Her parents submitted readily and willingly to Illyria, and as such were permitted to keep their children off the frontlines while they did the fighting. (They weren't really that useful for fighting, anyway, in Illyria's opinion; had Mauretania and her siblings been born under Illyria's rule, he would've had them killed at birth for being flawed and unimpressive) Mauretania hated that, and while regret wasn't a normal emotion for an Old One, she regretted having never gone to battle.
09. Mauretania was soft with her sons, and often negligent. As long as they bent to her will, she had little interest in them in any other area of their lives. They were not trained in magic, politics or war. Two of them died before adulthood, unable to survive socialization with other Old Ones.
10. Mauretania was killed during the Purge, though not by Illyria personally. Illyria still had servants and soldiers then, and Mauretania was not important enough to be killed by Illyria himself. Mauretania in the present is at least as bitter about that fact as any other of her death.
11. Mauretania's cult of worshippers in the present is made up entirely of Scions--the (at least) nine-tenths corporeal descendants of the Dream Tribe, who are so very barely of Dream stock at this point that Noctis has no interest in them. They revered Mauretania, rather than Noctis, because corporeal Old Ones had higher status than Dreams, and Mauretania was particularly ingratiated with some of the early members of the Tribe. Mauretania's title--then and now--is Dreamfriend.
12. Mauretania's host is a gelth that, during its life, was called Hermione. (Gelth are genderless, but this does not prevent their servants from giving them binary-gender names.) Hermione was infantile, for a gelth, and was willing to become Mauretania's host because it failed to understand that its consciousness would be destroyed. (The cult explained to it that souls are consumed by Old Ones infecting a host body, but Hermione had no soul, and therefore didn't see the problem.) Hermione believed that sharing its essence with Mauretania would keep both of them alive. In the physical sense, this is true; Mauretania's nigh-invulnerability as an Old One allows the gelth essence to feed from her soul so that the vaporous semblance of a body does not dissipate. Obviously, however, Hermione's not around to appreciate this.
13. Mauretania is embodied in the magical essence of its gelth host, but as it lacks true physicality, it did not have to deal with the absorption of new emotions or memories. The "body" had no brain to store these things in and they vanished when the consciousness they were linked to did. Mauretania remembers nothing of Hermione's life. (This turned out to be problematic for the cult--they had to spend a good six months struggling to muddle through Old One-ish so they could teach Mauretania English.)
14. Mauretania does not know if Jugurtha or their children are alive in the present.
It also doesn't care.
15. Prior to being enslaved to Thrace, Mauretania was actually more powerful in its current incarnation than its previous one. It has formidable magical gifts, is much harder to kill (it no longer has a physical body to wound and the weapons of its day and age are buried in a cave in England), and it had a score of worshippers and servants ready and willing to obey its every whim.
Having power for the first time meant that Mauretania guarded it quite jealously, and wished to destroy any and all possible threats to it--hence its attempt to slaughter the kenthas in the nursery.
Since that attempt has resulted in its enslavement, Mauretania has noted aloud: "In the vernacular of my servants: Irony is a bitch."
16. Mauretania's territory and holdings were all in Cuba, and it resided mostly in Havana. Mauretania liked it--mostly becuase it was happy to have a territory to call its own, but also because the relative small size, general isolation and turbulent political situation amongst the lessers meant that it was unlikely any other Old Ones would want to take it.
17. Another pleasing article about Mauretania's host being a gelth is that Mauretania has retained all of its former senses. This only gives it three or four more than many of the other risen Old Ones, but any advantage is better than none, and this compensates well enough for the loss of a physical body and most of its original powers.
It doesn't miss having a gender.
18. Mauretania's favorite of its servants is Alice Hargrove. Alice is a British Scion from Cardiff, Wales and did not actually become part of Mauretania's cult through being an Old One worshipper. Alice was the sorceress that named and served Hermione, and her cousin Phillip just happened to be Mauretania's Qwa'ha Xahn.
The relationship between the two--at least on Alice's end--has a history of being odd and complicated. Mauretania does not remember the four years that Alice spent lovingly caring for her gelth, and Alice didn't think of Mauretania as being a god for months after Mauretania's rise.
Things changed between them after Mauretania tried to kill the kenthas. Alice was so unrelentingly furious at Mauretania for risking itself that way and for "attempting to kill a bunch of children" that Mauretania became impressed by her "loyalty." (It had known how hard it was for Alice to adjust to losing Hermione and magically maintaining Mauretania instead.) That occasion also startled Alice, because it was the first time she realized that she actually cared about what happened to Mauretania and what kind of leader it was becoming.
It wasn't long after that that Mauretania chose to demote Phillip and make Alice its Qwa'ha Xahn instead. Slowly, through immersion in the rituals and daily life of being a priest, Alice came to think of Mauretania as her lord and god.
Mauretania is fiercely proud of Alice and considers her to be one of its greatest victories.
19. Mauretania likes broken-down places as much as its host did (Phillip claims this is just gelth instinct mainfesting itself; Alice chooses to believe it means that Hermione wasn't wiped out as completely as they think). As such, none of its strongholds in its own holdings are anything but condemned buildings. Mauretania actually likes to make them even more derelict in appearance than they start out, and collects lots of rusting junk to add to the ambience.
Mauretania maintains that this is strategy. Being underestimated is surprisingly helpful.
20. So far, the only thing Mauretania likes about being enslaved by Thrace is that the theme of most of his strongholds and their locations is aquatic. Mauretania still loves oceans and seasides, and hopes that their presence in its life is an omen for freedom that it will someday have again.
Category:Characters
Category:Old Ones
Category:Gelth