Blood Rose (Hero)

Code-name: Blood Rose

Full Name: Blood Rose

Faction: Blood Watch

Just as the Necroplane is a parallel realm to Earth, so is the Astral Plane.

After the Big Bang, the Astral Plane took a wholly different path to the creation of life than on Earth. Every spark of life was given an equal chance. Inhabitants of that small reality were immortal unless they died of unnatural causes. Ageless, they were destined to be a part of the great Astral Hunt Circle. They were emotionless, for the Astral Plane was only about passionless survival.

The creator of Astral Plane was either very busy or had to abandon the project very early on. Only three species were native to the void: the asauri, the krakentueri, and the pihhiel. The asauri were the intelligent bipeds, living in tribes scattered on many tiny planets. They glided from one planet to the next, eternal nomads roaming Astral-space. Each tribe was led by a Keeper of Thorns, a spiritual being that from the moment of her birth, possessing the power to rip reality to travel in space and time.

The asauri spent most of their time hunting the colossal krakentauri, peaceful beasts with tentacled maws and wings that would propel them through the cold void. Generations of asauri mastered hunting krakentauri; the oldest and most skillful hunters found their prey by attuning their hearing to the beats of the krakenturi’s wings in space.

The krakentauri, far from smart or ferocious, would drift in Astral-space to find colonies of mite-like creatures named pihhiel, the best food they had ever tasted. The behemoths had the keenest senses in the whole universe: they could smell little pihhiel hives from light years away and tirelessly pursued them to the edges of the Astral Plane.

There was only one scent that could elude a krakentaur on the trail, that of an Astral Rose, the key link in the Great Hunt Cycle. Astral Roses were the equivalent of Earth’s human souls. They bloomed in sacred places protected by entire tribes of asauri hunters. The pihhiel launched berserker raids, their swarms slaughtering the guardians, snatching a Rose which protected them from the krakentauri, if only for a couple of days. The unlucky asauri, whose Rose has been plucked, would dissolve into nothingness over a matter of days, the process neither being painful nor tragic. This was just the way the Astral Plane was.

The force behind the Astral Plane either knew the definition of the word ‘irony’ or came up with it. For, if any being was hunted down and killed in the Astral Plane, it would re-incarnate in the form of its slayer’s species, bound to hunt down its former kin to survive. So a dissolved asauri would become a pihhiel after his former comrades’ Astral Rose, while a pihhiel would become a krakentaur, with all the memories of where his previous hive was. A hunted down krakentaur would become an asauri and so the eternal wheel kept turning.

While the symmetry of the circle appeared perfect, there was a flaw that would rip it apart. The woman now known as Blood Rose was the Keeper of Thorns for one of the tribes guarding the Astral Rose field. The pihhiel in that sector were low in numbers so she and her tribe often engaged in krakentaur hunts, gliding in space after the sleepy behemoths. On one of those hunts, the tribe set an ambush, with their hunters disguised by their star-glitter cloaks, and sharp spears ready for hurling into the big beast’s mouth. Blood Rose stroked reality, as she sought thin spots of the fabric, ready to pierce space-time at any moment and send the hunters through temporary doors to attack the beast.

Starlock, one of the most experienced hunters, gestured to signal the approach of a krakentaur. Spears flew and struck their target. The krakentaur bled and sprayed the hunters with a deep blue fluid. Then, something unexpected happened: the dying beast transformed into a weird hybrid of all species that, as surprised as the on looking asauri, attacked the nearest hunter’s throat.

This new creature not only had the strength of a krakentaur, the cunning of an asauri, and the speed of a pihhiel, but it also transformed any it touched into a crossbreed similar to itself. The void cracked and a wave of massive uncontrolled transformations swept through the realm. Crazed asauri-pihhiel-krakentaur hybrids fought each other in universe-wide chaos. Seeing impending doom, Blood Rose transported to her tribe’s Astral Rose Garden and saw it turned into a battlefield.

Since the natives to the void never knew emotion, she quickly analyzed the situation, seeing only one logical course; she teleported all of the surrounding hybrids into a black hole. Because the transformations were an incurable plague, she repeated this process in every corner of her universe.

Soon, Blood Rose was the last living being within the Astral Plane. Alone, she picked her own Astral Rose and her world ceased to exist. A massive implosion sent Blood Rose hurtling through time and space. Being an anomaly between worlds, realization dawned and she took the reins of space-time and sundered reality. Blood Rose entered our Earth in the 16th century. After hundreds of years of hiding her true identity under many guises, she joined forces with Blood Watch, who were the only ones able to understand her power without trying to abuse it. Haunted by the fact that it took only one day for her universe to die, Blood Rose is on a mission to keep the fabric of her new home-realm intact. Without her, all of the gates to other worlds would have opened a long time ago, and Earth likely ruled by the tyranny of Necroplane or worse.
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