Zelisha Scynth the Heroine of Faith, Anathema to the Empire, Breathless Purgator, Justiciar of Thera

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Role

Chapter 3

The birds called loudly outside her window as Zelisha awoke to the sun
illuminating her room through the slats of her wooden blinds. She threw the
blinds open, granting her plants the nourishment of the sun. She looked over
them lovingly. To her, they represented what she had come to understand as
the true order of the world, separate from the sham "law" imposed by the
Empire. What mattered was life, and what served life was death. Without
death, life could not exist, for each creature fed to live. That is the way
of nature, the way of everything. Even in her early youth, she had understood
and had tried to express these ideas. But only in being freed from the
clutches of her father's house had she come to truly understand.

Zelisha
knelt and said a prayer to Rarywey, guardian of the River of Souls. In these
past two years, she had found faith in Rarywey that she had never felt in the
Church of Destivius, forced upon her by her father. In Rarywey was a true
order, a reverence for the cycles that guide the world. The cycles of the
moon, the movement of the stars, the movement of souls from one life to the
next... yes, that most of all. Zelisha felt a connection to this idea, a
calling. If death was necessary for life to flourish, as she knew it was,
were not those who served death truly doing the most important work?

While
some others might see society as outside of nature, Zelisha did not think so.
The order of the world is complete, and necessarily must encompass all. For
society to function to its fullest, like nature, it must follow immutable
rules. No deviation should be tolerated. No exceptions, like the elders
skimming from the temple. NO! Zelisha smiled in her prayers, imagining
herself bringing society to an order as perfect as the order of the moon and
stars, the tides, life and death. Those who would stand in the way of that
must be culled, for the order to thrive. Their souls would be washed clean in
the River. Their deaths would serve the greater life of all. Zelisha would
see to it. Weakness in a forest was rooted out by disease. And afterward,
what life would bloom? Zelisha would be that disease, and society her forest.
It all made sense!

Role

Chapter 2

Two years before, Zelisha had been a junior priestess in the Church of
Destuvius, student of the Grand Order. Her father was a bishop in that same
order, and it was a foregone conclusion that Zelisha would rise to greatness.
She had the money, the upbringing, the education. Everything seemed to be in;
place. Yes, perhaps she had a strange interest in documenting natural
phenomena. Yes, perhaps she had written a dissertation on the order of the
cycles of life and death rather than the order of societal castes. But the
rich were allowed these eccentricities. What was the point of being rich if
not to be able to indulge in certain fancies? She had been the first in her
class to give her blood oath, and had begun to serve in the Divine Sect House
as an elevated "commoner," as her age did not allow for full sect status.

It was there that Zelisha discovered how flexible Imperial "Law" could be. In
her work in the Sect House, she collected tithes to the temples to be
processed into Imperial coffers. After a short time, it had become clear to
her that a certain percentage of these funds did not make it to the bank. She
did what she did best: she documented, observed, waited patiently. And
eventually, she discovered a small network of influential members of the
temple who were skimming these funds for themselves! This was an act clearly
against Imperial Law. But when she brought it to her father's attention, he
advised her strongly to hold her tongue and not make waves. "This is how
things are done sometimes, Zelisha," he said. "Do not put your future in
jeopardy by stirring the pot!

But to Zelisha, order was immutable, like a
law of nature. If a Law is to matter, then it must ALWAYS matter. And surely,
here in the Church of the Grand Order, all would agree. Ignoring her fathers
advice, she took her findings to the Sect House Elders. They acted concerned,
listening to her carefully. They took the notes she had made as evidence,
praising her for her diligence. But rather than act on the evidence she had
found, they transferred her to a different, lower posting in the Sect House.
She was enraged! She petitioned the Office of the High Priest himself, but
her petition was intercepted and rather than finding justice, she found
herself cast out for "violating protocol.

The supposed "order" the Empire
had built was just a scam, to give power to those who could take it. Zelisha
saw that now. And the Grand Order was just an excuse for those in power to
declare rules that benefitted themselves, and to change those rules to stay
in power. That was not true order! It was a sham. Her father gave her enough
money to live, and secreted her out of the city. With her future plans in
ruin, Zelisha began to search for new meaning.

Role

Chapter 1

Zelisha looked up at the moon, then double-checked her notes. Within, careful
carts and drawings of the moon phases and positioning of the stars.
Satisfied, she moved down the rocky embankment toward the gently lapping
waves of the Dragon Sea below. If Zelisha's calculations and research were
correct, tonight was a rare opportunity. And she was confident they were
correct, because all things follow an order. The cycles of the moon. The
stars. All of nature. Where others saw chaos, Zelisha recognized the order
beneath. To her, it was everything.

As she had expected, she saw a dim,
phosphorescent glow in the water. It bobbed up and down as the waves lapped
the beach. Ever so gently, careful not to let the water touch her skin,
Zelisha extended a silver scoop, gathering a small amount of the glowing
material and placing it within a glass jar. "Hello, beautiful," she whispered
to the jar, which now contained what appeared to be a softly glowing tuft of
moss. But Zelisha knew it was not just moss, it was what sea captains
superstitously called the "death wave," rarely seen but greatly feared on the
high seas, which only came to shore once every two hundred years. A
carnivorous plant, the rarest in the world. She smiled, whispering a quick
prayer of thanks to Rarywey.

Zelisha had risked much to come here this
night, skirting Imperial lands and its defenders. Anathema, they called her.
Anathema! So be it. She would rather be considered such than to bend to the
false "order" imposed by Imperial law. True order was immutable, unbending.
Imperial order was not truly order at all, but a self-serving set of
changeable rules to benefit the few at the expense of the many. She had
learned this the hard way, for once she had been the most promising young
priestess in the the Divine Sect. The star pupil. Once she'd had dreams of
becoming High Priestess. But all of that had changed when she learned just
how bending the supposed Imperial Order could be, just how little it served
everyone, despite their grand claims.

She slipped into her home in Hamsah
Mu'tazz, lighting candle after candle until the dark interior was illuminated
in flickering firelight. Her meticulously neat home was decorated sparsely,
aside from one wall. On that wall were shelves laden with exotic plants. The
fly trap, the pitcher plant, the dewleaf, the viper lily, and many more. A
place of honor had been reserved in the middle of the largest shelf, a small
tank of clean water. Zelisha moved to the shelf, carefully transferring the
contents of the jar to the tank. From a container on a lower shelf, she
scooped a tiny fish and placed it within the tank, watching in wonder as the
"moss" came to life, darting quickly to cling to the tiny creature. The
poison, the death, the digestion. The natural order. Life flourishes from
death.

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