Keisara

Keisara is the god-empress of the Kolshet Empire. She is a hero deity, and amongst those she's just about the most powerful one.

## Biography

### Adventuring Career

Keisara was born at least 1450 years ago in an isolated irda stronghold located geographically within the Lung Empire. Due to her shunning of the traditional irda art of spellcraft and her nzunta-like temperament, she became a social outcast within her community. Soon after her 120th birthday, she left home, adopting the name Reisende, and became an adventurer.

Early in her career, she was a disciple of Saint Shang the Great, and his teachings influenced many of her later actions. She was there when Shang defeated the evil fox spirit that had taken control over the Lung Empire.

Afterwards, she returned to her home, only to find it in ruins. It was destroyed by the emperor of the Lung Empire in retribution for her helping Shang the Great kill his consort. She spent some time searching for any survivors of her people, but found none.

She had heard rumours about an adventuring party, consisting of Luvese, Atli, and Caerwarum, and decided they would be a good fit for her. She stowed away on their ship, making use of her irda shapechanging abilities to do so. She was eventually discovered by Luvese, leading to Atli attempting to kill her for stowing away. During this, Captain Kirnov, a prisoner of the party, managed to escape, stole Keisara's equipment, and tried using her rowboat to escape. Keisara, who had jumped overboard and taken the form of a dolphin, saw this and returned to her true form to attempt to kill Kirnov. Due to irda customs though, Kirnov, being the first man to see her eyes, became her husband by irda law. This made Keisara madder, and she and Atli worked together to kill him. She and Atli bonded over this act. After returning with her equipment to the ship, she learned that Caerwarum had been abducted to the pits shortly before she had arrived, much to Keisara's sadness.

Some time after this, when she was roughly 250 years old, the curse of the irda made itself known to her, and to avoid becoming sterile she seduced the hero Ultheow, and later gave birth to her first child: Artwulf. After the fact, she was disgusted by what she had been put through by the curse, feeling it a violation of her. Whenever the curse made itself known afterwards, she still went and had a child though, as she didn't want to risk becoming sterile in case she fell in love with someone in the future. Starting with the second time the curse made itself known, she decided to seduce a powerful being, generally for safety or to secure an alliance with them. There was no love in any of this, and she typically had the child raised by someone close to her as a fosterling. While she wishes to break the curse of the irda, she herself is unable to break it, not being a powerful enough spellcaster, with her epic spells themselves arising from the power of her prodigious shapeshifting abilities.

At some point, Keisara was tutored by Aongorm, an ancient british hag, and became the first person in centuries to complete her training regimen. Keisara and Aongorm kept in touch after this.

She spent some time travelling through Gigaheim in an attempt to gain the respect of a number of the Giant Lords. During this time, she broke into the palace of King Skerkun and challenged him to a game of petteia, which she narrowly won. They became friends after that, and every century or so visit each other for at least a year at a time.

### Empire Building

After many years and a number of wars, Keisara and the subordinates she gained travelled to The Frontier along the Bay of Gold. There, she founded the Kolshet Empire, with herself as its leader.

While her government is an absolute monarchy, she has tried ruling it benevolently. Some outside observers suspect her to be a follower of The Way due to similarities between her political choices and the teachings of some of that philosophy's saints. Keisara instituted one of the first state education systems in the world to help her citizens learn. Her belief is that giving her citizens the means to innovate and reach their potential means that her empire as a whole becomes more powerful. While her empire is still in its early stages, with many inhabitants either remembering its foundation or having migrated soon afterwards, this belief is showing promise, particularly for the inhabitants with shorter lifespans. This has resulted in her empire developing a number of new technologies and magic, such as advanced golemancy. For the most part, these innovations are kept within the empire to prevent potential future conquests from gaining access to it, but occasionally some of it turns up outside.

### Troubles with the Rogue Eternal

Shortly before the present day, Keisara's capital city of Ordning was attacked by a rogue Eternal. Keisara fought her, but it ended in a stalemate. Keisara found her inability to defeat this adversary to be insulting, so she instructed her generals to find ways to help her become stronger so she could end this threat. This order is what led to General Kleightus causing the events of The Plateau. Concerned about the fanatic Kleightus' plans, Keisara went in disguise to the plateau to observe Kleightus' plans. She arrived soon after the party and decided to see whether Aongorm's idea of an elite training regimen for Kleightus' subordinates was bearing fruit. She did this by watching the party's fights and occasionally influencing events around them.

When the party reached Kleightus' lair and started fighting against him, she tried to stop the fight before Kleightus' bestial rage started but was ignored by the party. She then put down Kleightus before bringing him back to life and sending him back to Ordning for later punishment. She spoke to the party and became *mildly irritated* by Keeper, to the point that she added as a term of breaking his pact with Mora that if he ever spoke while knowingly within her presence, she would end his life. After ending the pacts Keeper and Runfinn made with Mora, she used epic magic to awaken some of the ancestry of the party as an apology for her subordinate causing them this trouble. She allowed the party to take Kleightus' Pa Doden due to the risks it potentially posed for her. She called Aongorm to her side, and then teleported away to deal with a vampire.

While Keisara destroyed the vampire's coffins, Aongorm led a force of goblins to face her. Many of the goblins were killed, and Astarte subdued and fed Aongorm her blood, turning her into a blood ghoul, something which wouldn't be possible for most vampires. When Keisara returned to see how the battle had gone, she flew into a rage, killed the newly turned vampires and lycanthropes, and rendered Aongorm unconscious. Astarte used this as an opportunity to flee. Keisara then took her remaining goblins and Aongorm to Aongorm's keep in Ur Tirsgaile. She had to chain up Aongorm with adamantine bonds and had some elite guards posted to make sure she didn't escape her confinement, while Keisara herself went to try finding a cure for Aongorm's condition. Fearing potential effects if she fell prey to Astarte's magic, Keisara took the form of her deceased husband, Captain Kirnov, and went to Kena to look for competent sellswords she could hire to acquire Astarte's head, both for herself and for Aongorm.

While looking for sellswords, Keisara found the party. In disguise, she approached them and offered them the job, which they accepted. Within an hour of the agreement being made, Keeper caused the Destruction of Kena, which Keisara survived unscathed. She then made her excuses and left. A day later she sent an Ingolth runestone to the party as a down payment for the head. The party managed to defeat Astarte and did most of the steps to kill her as permanently as possible. They took the ashes of Astarte's head and were sailing to the ruins of Kena to bury them by one of the temples there. Keisara, realising this, went to the Great Forest disguised as Kirnov and explained Keeper's deeds to the council, who promptly banished him in absentia. She then went, still disguised, to her flagship, The Marcellus, and met up with the party who were travelling on Arne Erling's longship. She gave Keeper his order of banishment, her excuse for meeting up with them, and gave them their payment of a nigh-complete set of elder runestones in return for the ashes of Astarte's head. She then sailed off, returning to Aongorm's keep to begin helping her.

She and the All-Smith spent three-and-a-half months restoring Aongorm to normal, finishing in time for the conference before the crusade to Vafheim. The party came to Ur Tirsgaile at this time and tried entering the conference. Keisara started getting annoyed by Keeper's presence, so Aongorm took the party away to stop them from annoying Keisara. Keisara then led the strategic conference planning the crusade.

While she was crusading, it was decided that now was the time for Houndmaster to launch his invasion of the Great Forest, as she couldn't be held responsible for the actions of the Firbolg Refugees while she was on a different plane, and she hoped that a potential firbolg civil war would allow her to then go on to conquer the Manian Empire. When the firbolg traditionalist faction gained the support of the Manian Empire, Houndmaster's faction struggled, so he requested aid from the Kolshet Empire, and promised to integrate the Great Forest into the empire once he won. Following Keisara's lead, the council watching over the empire at the time didn't get the empire involved directly, instead telling Houndmaster to hire the mercenary Eshana, a daughter of Keisara and Giha. Eshana proved incredibly volatile, and caused many deaths on both sides, with Houndmaster putting lots of pressure onto her, which only caused her mental state to enter a downward spiral. Keisara, once she heard that the war was effectively in a stalemate, had the firbolg Seeker, the grandson of the leader of the traditionalist faction who was under her protection to keep him safe from Mora, enter some ancient ruins in Vafheim. These ruins led to where the huldrefolk were sleeping, and Seeker ended up waking them up, all in accordance to Keisara's plan. She knew that the huldrefolk would try to avenge their awakening on Seeker's entire family, including Elder. Seeker was quickly taken to Ordning and put in a heavily warded area within Keisara's private quarters, which were already warded to the point of being all-but completely inaccessible. The huldrefolk proceeded to kill off Seeker's parents, kidnap and brainwash his sister, and make an attempt on Keeper's life. Chronicler was freed through a divine intervention caused by Oolong, and she proceeded to assassinate Elder, throwing the traditionalist faction into total disarray and granting Houndmaster a significant advantage.

The majority of the party came to Ordning, and Keisara was made aware. She had them placed under constant surveillance as she wanted to avoid any possibilities of her city being destroyed, especially given the party's track record. She also kept tabs on the progress of Runfinn travelling through her empire with the White Goblin, and even gave some checkpoint guards permission to make crossing through the checkpoints harder in order to delay him and give her more time to observe the party's actions.

Unfortunately, another divine intervention was used to bring peace to the firbolgs, resulting in both sides claiming victory, and this led to a number of factors which ended up causing Eshana to have a mental breakdown in which she used an epic spell granted to her by her father to completely obliterate the Great Forest, killing all the firbolgs in the area with the exception of Houndmaster, who was instead severely wounded, as well as three Manian legions.

Keisara saw what had been done and was horrified. She had Eshana exiled from the Kolshet Empire under pain of death, and started preparing an effort to rescue any refugees and provide them with homes within the New Forest. This job was made much easier by Keeper when he started transporting refugees to the New Forest under his own power. When Keeper started planning on using vast quantities of magic to make changes to the new forest, Keisara intervened behind the scenes to make sure it became abundantly clear to Keeper that the firbolgs were safe and not at risk of starvation, and that it would be best to let nature take its course. She was understandably paranoid about Keeper using his magic within her domain after the destruction of Kena, which was caused when he summoned Draeg Treespeaker there. Once she felt she had enough information on the party, Runfinn was allowed to enter Ordning and the party was summoned to her inner sanctum. There, she granted Keeper permission to speak in her presence again, and granted him an enchanted axe that, if buried in an open space, would cause a forest to rapidly grow there. She viewed this as a peace offering between the two of them. With Runfinn, she accepted his gift of the White Goblin, and gave him her master rune in return for him swearing an oath on Sith to fulfil a request for the All-Smith. She also had a conversation with Oolong where he learned that she was taught directly by Shang the Great, the founder of his religion. Aly then asked Keisara if she wanted to have a girl's evening with her, which Keisara accepted. In Keisara's quarters, they were provided entertainment by some of Keisara's attendants, and in the end they ended up with a "fade to black" scenario.

Later, Keisara transported the party to her holiday home on Gigaheim, and from there to outside the city of Mano. Keisara then turned into a bird and flew off.

## Powers and Abilities

Keisara is a hero-deity, with all the powers that entails. This already makes her one of the most powerful entities on the mortal plane. She can move faster than most creatures and was able to go undetected for close to two weeks near the party.

Keisara has demonstrated the ability to use epic magic and made use of her extensive shapeshifting abilities to shadow the party. Besides shapechanging, she presumably has the other innate magical abilities of the irda.

Keisara is a proficient runecarver, being able to carve a set of elder runestones which she gave to the party while disguised as Kirnov.

She possesses a number of magic items, with most of her equipment being of at least legendary rarity at a mere glance. She also makes use of a number of magic rings to supplement her otherwise limited spellcasting abilities. Her main weapon in combat is an oversized kanabo which burns with unquenchable fire. Even looking at it causes discomfort in creatures of irda descent.