Essimore Darkenchyl

Essie in the Crib of Aro, 200 AYO

Essimore Darkenchyl was an Aordés from Oreland and the hero of *The River Against the Sea*. Like most of her people, she was talkative, good at memorizing information, mildly cannibalistic, and capable of performing complex magic. In 200 AYO, she worked as a shipping coordinator for the Blessed Agency of Shipping Coordinators.

### Birth and Youth

Essie was born in 180 AYO to Ludem Darkenchyl and an unnamed woman. She had one younger brother, Krioffus Darkenchyl. Her mother died during the birth of her younger brother when Essie was four years old.

Like most Aordés, Essie was raised to keep the magical secrets of the god of death and print, stamp, and steal trade negotiations. At a young age, she began reading pirate novels and developed an obsession with the ocean.

When she was thirteen, a small group of humans stole books from one of the satellite libraries in Oreland and Essie's father hunted them down with her and a few other Aordés. The group attempted to fight her father and the other members of the hunting party, and the humans were all killed.

At fifteen, she acquired a copy of "Blood and Booty: Book One of the Dreiwick the Deserter Saga" and begged her father to leave Oreland to study at the Academy of the Blessed Agency. Her father agreed, and, at sixteen, she entered the Academy of the Blessed Agency as one of its youngest students. There, she experienced discrimination for her glowing red eyes, purple horns, and jokes about eating people. But she got high marks and attracted the attention of important teachers such as Dean Vizgout, a dean famous for throwing a student out of a window.

Essie's dissertation subject was disembowelment.

In 199 AYO, Essie interned on a riverboat that ran goods along the Blackwater River.

### Pyrinnay Civil War and *The River Against the Sea* (spoilers below)

In 200 AYO, Essie got her first job as a shipping coordinator onboard the Brigand Noble. But she immediately became suspicious of Captain Winnie Conilto when she couldn't find his license.

She soon found out the cargo she thought was flour was actually weapons destined for the Peace King of the Pyrinnay Islands. However, shortly after they arrived on the islands, the Peace King was murdered by his rival, the War King. In the resulting chaos, Essie and a group of refugees including Peace Queen Two Rabbit and a political prisoner named Salamander escaped on the Brigand Noble.

As they attempted to leave the island chain, they came across the evidence of a strange zombie fungus, which, according to the ship's doctor, differed from the run-of-the-mill zombie plagues caused by rotten snowberries and filthy water. Around this time, Essie found out she was immune to the zombie plague, apparently because of the magical meninges which protected her brain.

When the crew was surrounded by zombies, Essie killed multiple zombies with her pen, destroying the pen in the process. However, this act made her understand her magic was stronger than she'd realized. Shortly after, she learned the fungal infection was the work of a hive mind which projected its essence into the zombies it possessed. The fungus monster, as she started calling it, was an ancient god-killing being created by the Old God to kill the Earth god Mother.

To her distress, Essie learned that she, and all the Aordés, contained a fragment of a similar being known as the Smoking Star. This was the source of her magic. While she was unhappy to learn she had a fragment of a god-killing monster in her heart, it also made her realize she could consume the fungus monster the same way her people typically consumed the dead. So, once she found the creature's heart, she ate it.

Once the monster was dead, she gave credit for the creature's destruction to Salamander, who became Queen of the Pyrinnays after Queen Two Rabbit abdicated.