"NO ONE WILL KNOW THE VIOLENCE IT TOOK TO BE THIS KIND."

An isolated daughter of an isolated kingdom. Gilia is in equal halves the pride of the role and the product of her people and simultaneously terrified in stepping outside of it. She in consumate to her role of the reserved daughter. Quiet, polite, never reach for things first. She believes and has always believed in acting for the good of her community, putting others first, and that prosperity is to be shared.

Some of it isn't acting, she is used to and comfortable with her relatively simple life. She is thankful for the bond that protects her family and glad that it is removed from the war. Rather than suffering from some deep loneliness, there can be no denying that the emptiness of her lands and the lack of contact they have with others suites her. The sort of person who has always been content sitting alone doing their job and finding peace in making the world a little bit better every day.

But as she has grown, she cannot deny that she can no longer tell whether that is the conditioning of her life, fear after seeing her brother's fate, the overwhelming nature of her bond with the sea spirit in the form of her dreams, or if she truly desires it because she wants it herself. So long and so deeply wound into the ways of her people as she is. But it is the peace of one who knows she carries a great and terrifying power that is a burden as much as a gift.

Gilia St. Loe was the third child born to the royal family of the Isle St. Loe, a magical royal family who are connected to a powerful spirit of the Sea called the Sea-Father. The third child of six, born to one mother and two fathers (polyamorous families are the norm). The rulership is split between the first two children of the family, who receive the titles First Child and Second Child. Her two elder brothers, Nikolai (First) and Godfinn (Second) took the throne upon the death of the previous First Child. The First Child becomes something like the Pope, seeing to all religious matters of the island. The Second Child primarily has the next round of heirs but also becomes the more public face of the family, seeing the foreign relations. Gilia, being the third child, was likely to just be a political pawn for her family, expected one day to marry well, but that is all. She was happy with this lot in life, being neither particularly outgoing and not noted for much else but being pleasant and kind of a wet blanket who'd rather just stay inside and mind her business.

She was however noted for her singing voice and utmost devotion to the Sea-Father. Because of this, at fourteen upon becoming a 'woman', she was granted the position of Singer to the Royal Family - this is a cultural position of passive guidance as due to their magic powers, displays of heavy emotion are not allowed in the Isle of St. Loe because it can have a destructive consequence as they can if done too strongly, rouse the Sea-Father. Instead, it is expressed through long-form ballad songs for major events in life to help guide people, which Gilia took very seriously.

Only unfortunately for her, Godfinn the newly crowned Second-Child, was a traitor and broke one of the most important rules of their people: they aren't supposed to get involved in external conflicts of the world around them. Godfinn hated this and sought to gain a more respected position in the world by beginning to orchestrate other countries into wars, and better trade deals for himself and the Isle of St. Loe. Because of this, he was executed in the most brutal way their people consider: he had his legs broken and thrown into a bog where he slowly sunk down for hours. Gilia, being Singer, had to quite literally sing the entire time he died to stop the pain drowning them all. That sure didn't mess her up at all.

With his death and lack of heirs as he had never married, you guessed it, Gilia was now the Second Child, and it was a terrible idea and everyone knew it. 19-year-olds shouldn't be put under that kind of pressure, and Gilia was a notably passive person to begin with who showed little to no leadership qualities, not to mention having been gaslit and emotionally abused by Godfinn for most of her life. There are doormats with more backbone and she knew she was going to be an awful Queen. But that's how nobility works, so whether she or anyone else liked it, she was coronated in short order and become the new Second-Child. Thankfully, her mother, the previous Second-Child was still alive, was firmly the power behind the throne, old as she was. Hildegard was nothing like her daughter and had a will of iron and the ability to bring grown men to their knees with a single glance. Between her and Nikolai, who had always been wise beyond his years, could make up for Gilia's shortcomings as a ruler.

Except unbeknownst to everyone, Godfinn's plans were far more reaching than some small back door deals, he had gone into a deal with another disenfranchised Lord, Lord Onfroi, with a much bigger goal. They wanted to totally destroy the power balance of all other nations and had been orchestrating a world war in back rooms for years, and it had begun to work so well, that now it had begun, it could not be slowed down. A war was spreading from one land to another, sucking in more and more kingdoms. St. Loe which was the land sworn to eternal peace, quite literally barred from war completely - was the last safe haven, to which hundreds of refugees began to flee.

St. Loe is an incredibly hard place to live at the best of times, this sudden influx of refugees that Gilia's incredibly bleeding heart refused to turn away left them floundering internally to keep everyone fed, and forced them to put some of their external dealings on hold and begin to ask for more in their trade negotiations (or 'gifts' as they are called, this is the 800s and function on a gift economy rather than anything quite so standardly monetary-based ).

While this is happening, the Lord Onfroi had been cozing up to Gilia. With her nature to believe people's good intentions, lack of worldly experience, emotional vulnerability and fear of making the wrong choices, she fell for it, hook line and sinker. So he guided her along the lines of what he and Godfinn had planned all along. He began to isolate St. Loe politically: internally making Gilia believe she was doing the right thing and promising that everyone would see she was just acting in compassion, whilst externally sending out letters that were fear-mongering, implying that Gilia's taking in the refugees was about building St. Loe an army they lacked otherwise, combined with their terrifying ocean powers - this gave everyone concern.

Thankfully the rest of Gilia's family wasn't so naive and began to suspect something. Namely her hotheaded sister Elspeth. Who broke family protocol to begin to investigate for herself what was happening and quickly realized something was vastly wrong with the incredibly cold reception she was being given even in countries who they had always maintained good relationships. Lord Onfori eventually realised Elspeth was snooping and found a way to have her arrested and stopped. Something that would normally carry a death sentence. Gilia couldn't kill another sibling, and she allowed her sister to escape in the dead of night. Elspeth went on to become a pirate. Yarr.

Now no one trusted Gilia's rule, because to their mind she just refused to punish her sister for doing wrong and it looked incredibly weak of character to them. After an assassination attempt on Gilia failed, scarring her permanently and leaving her terrified, they required she marry someone of their choosing. This was a lesser son from the Kingdom tied to a spirit of forging metal, Lord Aadav of the Cut-Fire. A neutral family in the conflict who had no close personal ties to St. Loe who was there to help keep the peace and make sure that the rumours weren't true. At this point, Gilia's mother is now in her 80s, and finally passes away, leaving the power vacuum truly open at long last, and the focus directly onto Gilia and her new marriage.

There was no great romance between Aadav and Gilia, but no animosity either. They were both royal children doing their duty, so love was not the goal, but they came to respect one another. Neither were cruel, but they also didn't have a great deal in common. They went on to have three children together over the next five years and never treated each other badly. Gilia by this point was trying to pour everything into the refugees that had come to them, and stop her kingdom from tipping into famine in the meantime. It began to lead to more civil unrest when the ever-expanding war began to cut off supplies from other countries that they needed to survive.

The final breaking point came when the neighbouring nations ordered her to stop helping refugees outright, and for the first time in her life, Gilia stood her ground, she would not and could not turn the ships around when they came to her for help. To do so would mean hundreds would die (sea voyages are not pleasant in longships), and for as little as she ever had opinions - she could not willingly endanger helpless people by inaction, as her inaction had lead to so many terrible things already. This refusal was taken as a formal declaration of war by the other great powers, as encouraged to believe so by Onfori. Onfori, who had wanted St. Loe to go to war on his side, finally had everything where he wanted - and assumed that Gilia would just fold into it by now, having been treated like this.

However in his need to push her that last time, he accidentally exposed his own plans by demanding instead of coercing and Gilia finally, after all these years, worked it out - and realized she had been pushed and played and tricked into the position where she now had to go to war, the thing she was most afraid of doing. After all, who wants to be the ruler who ends a 700-year peace on top of the fact she had always had a pacifist nature and truly believe in peace? When she realized she had no way out from this, and someone had essentially forced this to occur that she had trusted, she lost her mind to grief. She did the worst thing she could have done to the armada of ships that had come to siege them. She opened her mouth and began to scream out her pain. After being a Singer for years, as well as always being devout to the Sea-Father to the point she had begun to receive prophetic dreams, the sound of her screaming caused him to rise from the depths. But first and foremost, Lord Onfori gets ripped apart limb from limb by her tentacles for being a bitch ass self-serving traitor.

The Sea is the sea and it comes crashing down as a tidal wave on them all. Everyone and everything. She sunk an armada to protect her island, and she washed away the royal palace, killing her eldest child, one of her sisters, and many of her extended family in the process, not from drowning but the rubble. The powers of the Sea-Father were the unbridled power of the ocean after all, and when did natural disasters get picky? The aftermath was so devastating, even neighbouring islands had bodies washing up, and the war in all its forms stopped. Ground to a halt in the horror of what had happened on such a scale. This also, unfortunately, killed one of Gilia's own children amongst others. Her marriage which was built on friendship at best, was now as you can imagine, dead as far as trust and love went. Out of respect for him, Gilia sent for her husband's first lover, to be their next wife, so he would have someone to grieve with. She has come to care for the woman, as well, if distantly.

At long last, everyone comes to the table for peace - because a war with St. Loe will destroy them all, but nor can they allow that kind of power to go unchecked. Gilia at this point is a cracked shell of who she was, and had agreed to abdicate on behalf of her two remaining children and her husband to rule in her absence and until the children come of age. But before that can occur, she has travelled from island to island to sign a new agreement on peace. It's going well, at least, now everyone is terrified of her and what her flickering insanity might do to them. She isn't insane, but she has truly become her mother's child, and it has become a stubborn refusal to give ground on this one topic: She will have peace, and safety for those around her, no matter the battles she has to fight to get it. Anyone who refuses it, she is uncompromising and calls down the power she has to destroy them.

But at the very least, she makes sure of one thing, the Empire her brother and Lord Onfori had been building? Any shadow of it, she destroys so violently it may as well be ash. In a few hundred years she will be acknowledged for the destruction of the feudal system, though it isn't her goal. All she wants is to terrify everyone into never wanting to lift their swords again. She has destroyed widespread trade and ease of connections between lands by either actively destroying ships or the towns that challenged her on the coastlines.

SPIRIT-BOND The remaking of the human soul to share the nature of the chosen spirit, which gives them all their other powers. Gilia's spirit is the Sea-Father, the spirit of the ocean, and the primordial manifestation of the beginning of life as those small forgotten ameobas on the ocean floor. The bond has negative and positive effects, granting her powers, but making her moods at the whims of the weather patterns when they are strong enough to effect sea conditions. The more choppy the large bodies of water around her, the more unhinged she becomes.

SPIRIT-FORM. Gilia's secondary form, and the wearing of the soul, outside of the body. In Gilia's case, this is the manifestation of a 7' tall, tentacled, living aquarium, where her skin turns clear like the surface of a clear ocean that allows her to be 'looked' into. Inside of her, many glimpses of many places in the ocean may be seen, and her internal organs turn to a coral reef, ocean plants, and sea creatures all make their home inside her. Secondary sets of eyes open on her forehead. Her clothes seem like tattered sails that drift around her, and her hair turns to sea-kelp and drifts above her head. You can touch her, and it still feels like a person, and the tentacles are very real and all eight of them are extensions of her movement and are as strong, and able to rip anyone apart. Any wound she receives, however, is literally to her soul, and will never heal like normal wounds after the fact. It is also the most intimate way to embrace her, it is more intense and more pronounced a sensation, as can be imagined, and is usually reserved only for lovers to embrace one another. This form may also become exposed in moments of emotional intensity, rage, love, mirth, religious fervour, etc.

SPIRIT-SCAR After an assassination attempt at a holy festival where her throat was slashed, Gilia now bears a scar to her soul, that is a open wound at her throat, which the same ocean be can seen into. It will never heal or close together, so instead her throat is held together by a starfish. It is for all intense and purposes a normal starfish, you can even touch it and pick it up, however even if you try to run away with it, it will just reappear back on Gilia's neck. It has no outward effect and has only one ability. If someone is stupid enough to stick their hand in it, there are shark teeth on the inside that will rip it off.

SEA-STEP. Gilia can step into her own shadow like a puddle of water and re-emerge in the nearest body of water. Sea, lake, river, bathtub or fountain. She has some determination about her destination but it can be difficult to be specific. She might want to turn up in the middle of the village fountain, but she could just as likely accidentally spring up in someone's bathtub in the build right next to it.

PROPHETIC DREAMS. Usually involving a habit of sleep-walking, these dreams are indecipherable as a whole but hold snatched portions of the future. If questioned in this state she'll speak in confusing metaphors rather than anything direct.

WATER-MANIPULATION She can affect the flow and direction of certain amounts of water, fine control is only on small amounts of water, large amounts tend to be destructive and in one direction only.

WATER BREATHING. She cannot drown, no matter how long she's underwater. Can still starve to death, etc, however. Just no drowning.

WATER CRYSTAL. Shape water into small objects (crystal glasses, beads, little ornaments) and 'freeze' them to solid objects.

YES	MAYBE	NO
✓ Oral sex ✓ Clothed sex ✓ Rough sex ✓ Gentle sex ✓ Vaginal sex ✓ Bondage ✓ D/S or M/S dymanic ✓ Roleplay within roleplay ✓ Impact play ✓ Biting/ scratching ✓ Restraint (other than bondage) ✓ Masturbation ✓ Voyeurism ✓ Hair pulling ✓ Sexy outfits ✓ Handjobs/Fingering ✓ Threesomes/moresomes ✓ "Fail"/awkward sex ✓ Silly sex ✓ Femdom ✓ Teasing/Dirty talk ✓ Orgasm denial ✓ Body worship ✓ Nonstandard anatomy ✓ Marking ( permanent ) ✓ Humiliation ( Mild ) ✓ Sexual Acts as Service during in other activities	◌ Abuse ( Physical or Psychological) ◌ Abduction ◌ Age Differences (I would need to discuss it, but she mentally wouldn't think anything of being with a older partner) ◌ Dub Con ◌ Humiliation ( Heavy ) ◌ Pain Play	✗ Noncon ✗ Scat ✗ Vomit ✗ Vore

art (c) all my own work