Name: Ilshar Ard’sabekh Maraknat; also known as
Halch’aldurnat (
Seventh Worm-Ring, ritual name in the Manifold Spiral, sometimes used as an alias nowadays) and
Teffn (
the Marked).
Age: 68 years.
Species: Tarrhaidim.
Appearance: A broad, burly Tarrhaidim, Ilshar looks squatter than he really is due to his head, or what passes for it, being barely separated from his torso. His face is little more than folds of flexible epidermis around a putrid chasm of long, sharp teeth. Thick, knotted strands of fungal tendrils, fused together by rot, give an impression of a muscular body, though one that would be deformed and tumorous by human standards. Though moderately augmented, most of Ilshar’s implants are biological or etheric in nature and buried in the oozing tangle of his inner bulk, making them invisible at a glance besides some odd ridges and twisting outlines protruding around his shoulders, upper arms and thorax. What is immediately obvious about him is the design that covers his light gray membrane-skin from head to toe, an intricate pattern of connected and intertwining rusty-red spirals. Formed by a symbiotic lichen, this living ornament grows and contracts, slowly shifting over a period of months. Ilshar displays his tapestried body with pride, rarely covering himself aside from sparse bolted-on pieces of armour.
Background: Ever since the Helios Subjugation, Enthuur, Ilshar’s home planet, had been an Yrrkradian vassal in all but name. The world, along with a smattering of underdeveloped colonies in nearby systems, was nominally under the rule of a harsh theocratic regime headed by the
Mutrebb Alazann, the Manifold Spiral, a Tarrhaidim sect whose methods if not beliefs made most interstellar dismiss them as extremist warlords rather than a legitimate government. In truth, however, while the Spiral comprised many skilled agitators, etherealists and even scientists, whose influence and experimental combat assets had allowed their swift rise to power during the fragmentation of the OSLF, precious few of its members had any aptitude as administrators or military leaders. Their independence and their very grip on their population was tenuous at best, and would have rapidly dissolved had the Dominion not stepped in to prop them up with an influx of funds and weapons, in exchange for the tacit acceptance of its authority and acting as a buffer for its interests in the region. The Spiral leadership did not give its de facto submission much weight, for its true goal was a more esoteric one - to use a combination of widespread genetic and psycho-social engineering in a vast experiment, or ritual, that would supposedly transform the whole of Enthuur into an ethereal conduit to the Nexus of Teeth, the Tarrhaidim’s legendary origin.
Born in 4169, Ilshar has lived to see the death throes of the Liberation Front, the meteoric rise of the Spiral, whose ranks he joined shortly afterwards, and its unofficial alliance with the Yrrkradian Dominion. As a talented etherealist himself, he was inducted into the sect’s decentralized priesthood and played a role in its subtle decades-long preparations for the great rite. At times, this involved ethically questionable methods, as coercion, eugenics and outright assassination were required to fashion Enthuur according to the cryptic dictates of the great plan. As the Spiral’s militant arm had never evolved beyond the haphazard organisation of its earlier days, he was occasionally also called to defend the planet and its colonies from incursions by neighbouring local powers that attempted to absorb them.
The Spiral’s ambitious scheme was never completed, however, as the Veiled War would eventually reach Enshuur’s once-remote corner of the Expanse. The pressure from its regional rivals, now backed by the Dominion’s own adversaries, as well as the Yrrkradians’ own more and more exigent demands for involvement began to mount, and the Manifold Spiral’s leaders panicked as the global order they had carefully cultivated for so long was threatened. In an effort to stave off the rising tension, Ilshar and his fellows were dispatched on covert strikes against enemy-held systems, aimed to disrupt and intimidate. All this did, however, was inflame further reprisals, until Enshuur found itself isolated, having lost its colonial holdings, and as vulnerable as ever.
Surprisingly enough, it was the Yrrkradians who reached the planet first. Prevident minds in the Dominion’s military command had anticipated that the Unified Celestial League and their local allies would attempt a push through that region of the peripheral Expanse, and a vrexul legion was deployed to block that access corridor to core imperial space. Ilshar was gnashing his teeth at the lumbering insectoids’ intrusion on his homeworld when the UCL advanced in earnest, and battle broke out over Enshuur. The struggle was long, bloody and indecisive; Ilshar and his fellow Spiral members found themselves alternatingly pushed back to their planetary strongholds and painfully reclaiming ground, and narrowly escaped complete annihilation as the UCL deployed vrexul of its own.
This proved to be the turning point of the war, as after some destructive clashes the great arthropods on both sides withdrew. The remaining Yrrkradian forces found themselves outmatched, and, unwilling to commit to the defense of what was to them a disposable puppet world, retreated to defend the Dominion’s holdings. The Manifold Spiral, never truly an effective fighting force on its own and battered after years of combat, was swiftly and systematically eradicated by the advancing UCL. Ilshar was among the few of its members who managed to escape, fleeing on board a handful of salvaged civilian craft and scattering over the Expanse.
His home, purpose and compatriots lost, he drifted through contested space for a time, paying his way with sporadic mercenary work, until he at last fell in with the Intranszjednota. Resentful against both the UCL that destroyed his world and the Dominion that pushed it into war before abandoning it, Ilshar joined its forces for a chance to avenge the Manifold Spiral, and perhaps one day assembling the resources to rebuild it.
Character Evaluation: Driven and taciturn, Ilshar moves with the quiet deliberation of a lifetime of precise, meticulously calculated action. Used to thinking in terms of years and decades, a habit that not even the war has fully dislodged, he can be infuriatingly slow to act, pondering and weighing the possible consequences of anything, but when he moves at last it is with irrevocable certainty. With this sluggishness comes detachment, sharpened by the cosmic nature of his worship of the Nexus; people are to him but minuscule cogs in the immense workings of the universe, occasionally suborned for the even lowlier purposes of someone’s individual plans, and there is nothing strange in accepting this fact as it is. Despite this, he is at rare times capable of genuine passion, whether in his faith or his camaraderie with the bygone confraternity of the Spiral. The loss of the latter has left him somewhat vacant in recent times, and this may have contributed to his readiness to join the Intranszjednota, his alignment with which is altogether a matter of convenience rather than truly shared goals.
Skills: Besides being a veteran fighter whose frankly shoddy training and poor discipline are evened out by years of experience in the thick of the Reckoning, Ilshar is expert at sabotage and terror operations, having grown skilled in causing disruption by way of engineered malfunctions, explosives, dispersion of pathogens and many other means. By a combination of augmentation, armour and Tarrhaidim resilience, he is comfortable traversing and fighting in various hazardous environments. Despite his often subordinate role in the past, he has developed a certain aptitude for strategic thinking at as far as a planetary scale in his work at the Spiral’s behest.
Etherealism: A trained etherealist, thanks to the Spiral’s unorthodox ritual practices Ilshar can notably draw upon both the Chasm and the Abyssic Plane, though for obvious reasons not both at once. Like most, he has a far greater ease manipulating the former and can access it under combat conditions; he usually employs it to blight the enemy with flash infestations of parasitic ether-growths and materialize vermiform Chasm creatures to wreak havoc. Contact with the Plane is much more arduous, and Ilshar can only accomplish it by entering a trance with the aid of meditation and psychoactive drugs. The ways in which he can control it are nevertheless fundamentally similar, involving the manifestation of either disruptive Plane debris or Abyssic creatures; those he often finds more difficult to direct than their Oneiric counterparts.
Loadout:-Ulvath Light Machine Gun: A weapon of Tarrhaidim make, characteristically capable of delivering an imposing amount of firepower while being light enough for members of the species to carry and handle even in arduous conditions. Ilshar carries a supply of various types of ammunition for it, including fragmentation, armour-piercing, incendiary and even a few ether-disrupting rounds.
-Dauvnil Piercer Gun: A bulky, hefty sidearm that fires metal flechettes with enough strength to pierce thin metal and shatter bone or carapace. It is rather inaccurate and ineffective at longer ranges, but quiet, robust and easy to maintain. Ilshar sometimes coats the darts with toxins.
-Combat Armour: Not so much a suit as a patchwork of several pieces mostly held together just by being attached to the same body. Ilshar’s armour is an odd assemblage of Yrrkradian and Intranszjednota elements, some of which are fastened to his skin in Tarrhaidim fashion. Thanks to his anatomy, it protects him in hazardous environments despite only individual parts of it being properly sealed. Its vambraces and gauntlets have sharpened edges which serve as close combat weapons.
-A supply of plastic explosives, regularly restocked when possible.
Actions Of Interest: Several of the disruptive actions Ilshar took part in during the Veiled War would be considered criminal under the laws of most major nations; incidents like the incursions on the planets Rvastre and Utkal ended in considerable losses of civilian life, and his association with the Manifold Spiral makes him at least complicit to the rest of their activities.
