Okalae

Illustration by Aw Anqi

## Background

Okalae was born to a large family on the quiet plane of Arithrea, the eldest of five. Their parents were craftsmen, and home life was lovely. However, when Okalae was a little bit older than eight years old, a fire broke out in their house while their parents were away at work. Okalae fled the building before realizing that three of their siblings hadn't been able to, prompting them to run back in and rescue each sibling, carrying them as best as their desperate and aching body could. Thankfully, in the end, all of their siblings managed to escape the building. Unfortunately, Okalae collapsed afterwards, passing out and eventually dying from the smoke inhalation.

Okalae awoke in a field, their face covered in the shade of an apple tree, with a pillowy cushion of golden grass under them. A voice told them that by dying selflessly to save others, they were the youngest person to ever be granted access to the paradise afterlife of Ilysia. And so Okalae grew up there, their body aging until it reached its physical prime and then staying there, surrounded by and somewhat looked after by heroes, martyrs, famed generals, and similar. They were exposed to numerous cultures of all the planes that led to Ilysia, and to endless heaps of stories of people's successes during their mortal lives.

Growing up in Ilysia influenced Okalae in many ways that the gods couldn't have expected, however. While the other inhabitents of the plane had the chance to mature as mortals, and died while understanding the scope of their mortality, Okalae hadn't. While the rest of them had the chance to grow up, experiment with morality, and decide to do good, Okalae hadn't. Instead, Okalae had been granted immortality and the eternal rewards for a single good deed that they did as a child, and they spent the rest of their formative years in an afterlife with inconsistent time flow, a class of people who glorified combat, and freely given immortality.

Okalae's spark ignited on another nondescript perfect day in an endless stream of nondescript perfect days. While sparring, Okalae's opponent tried to throw them off their game by needling them, pointing out how they never got to see or experience all the wonders that their world had to offer them. Okalae's guard slipped and their opponent struck true. But instead of waking up under the apple tree, Okalae awoke, unharmed, on another plane. Okalae began to explore, finding monuments to the people they grew up knowing, viewing famous battlegrounds where they'd heard all about the tactics, and the marks that the other heroes had made on this world. They flitted around from one world to the next, finally getting the chance to live a life outside of paradise, yet keeping all the benefits that their divinely crafted body had to offer.

## Capabilities

Okalae has no innate magical abilities. They can't cast spells or change shape or anything of that sort. However, Okalae is incredibly durable in addition to being immortal. They can walk away from falling off a cliff, or being thrown through a building. An average sword slashing at their throat is likely to cut them, but unlikely to decapitate them. Of course if it was swung by a particularly strong individual or was magic, Okalae will probably end up headless. Thankfully for them, any time Okalae dies, they wake up the next morning in the closest thing to paradise. If they are on one of the planes close to Ilysia, they'll wake up there. Otherwise, they will wake up in the nicest and safest place on that plane. For most planes, there's some spot of farmland or garden which can accommodate Okalae, but if they died on New Phyrexia, their view upon awakening will probably be less pleasant.

Okalae is incredibly strong, largely as a consequence of endless amounts of training as well as their divinely crafted body. In hand to hand combat, they are capable stabbing their hand through chainmail, or bodily ripping unarmored people in half. In combat, they prefer to fight up close and personal, leveraging their skill, strength, and durability advantage over most of their opponents.

Okalae also has a nigh-supernatural sense when it comes to understanding combat and tactics. They can anticipate violence and danger better than almost anyone else, and once a battle has begun, they possess a deeper theoretical understanding of it than most humans could ever hope to acquire in their lifetimes, born from listening to former generals argue for quite literally weeks on end about how a battle could've/should've gone.