Once upon a time, there were four brothers, who decided to make deals with demons. They each promised their souls to four demons, in exchange for the gifts the demons could offer.

The eldest brother wished for the strength of one hundred men, so he could fell any beast with his bare hands. The demon Azdormang granted his wish.

The second brother wished to be ravishingly beautiful to any woman who saw him, so he could marry the princess of the kingdom and become king. The demon Horfaer granted his wish.

The third brother wished for magical prowess, so he would no longer have to work his family's fields. The demon Raez granted his wish.

The youngest brother could not decide his wish. He asked of the demon Mepheles if he could bring his loved ones to him whole, and the demon could not. He asked if he could truly live without pain and suffering, and the demon could not grant this. He asked if visit worlds entirely different from his own, and the demon said he could not grant this.

The youngest brother asked to keep his soul until he had decided on his gift. The demons, bound as they were to their own laws, obliged him.

The eldest brother set out to become a hero of the land, to save people from fell beasts and roving evil. He soon fell in combat, however, as the demon had given him strength, but not the cunning to use it. And so Azdormang claimed the eldest brother's soul.

The second brother went to among the royals, and soon married the princess as he had wished. However, unfit for the life of a prince and surrounded by jealous noblemen, he was assassinated. And so Horfaer claimed the second brother's soul.

The third brother learned his magic, turning the mana of the world to his own ends. He soon became a magewright, and began serving the nearby towns as a hundred men working the fields could do. However, the perils of the magical world are greater than those of normal men, and so eventually he found himself beset by a foe he could not best, and was killed. And so the demon Raez claimed the third brother's soul.

The demon Mepheles visited the youngest brother, to tempt him with greed, and with lust, and with envy, but each time the brother refused him. The demon asked the other demons, and they came to tempt the youngest brother, as well, offering wealth, and fame, and power, but each in turn was turned away.

In time the youngest brother found a wife, and growing tired the demons Mepheles took her away and would only promise to return her when the youngest brother had made his wish.

Distraught, the youngest brother went to the demons Azdormang, Horfaer, and Raez. From them, he asked to be given a portion of each of their power, and in exchange offered the head of the demon Mepheles. The demons discussed this among themselves, and drafted a contract binding the youngest brother to his word. He signed, and when once he had received the strength of three demons, he went to find the demon Mepheles.

The youngest brother made no deal with Mepheles, fighting and killing the demon who had kidnapped his wife. As promised, he brought the head of Mepheles to the demons which had claimed his brother's souls. However, all the youngest brother had retaken from the demon was his wife's soul, and his own soul had been tainted by the power of demons.

The youngest brother retreated from the world, guarding his wife's soul. Now he is known as a new demon, and taken on the name of the demon he slew all those years ago.

Edawin Morhen

"You don't understand. This discovery could change the very fabric of our reality!"

Edawin is a young mer researcher from the plane of Nyrvaalecs. A gifted magical student, she focuses her energies on testing and finding the deeper truths of her world. Recently, she has found a piece of the sky, and is spending all her time investigating it as a window into her world and beyond.

History
"I've always tried to follow the will of the divine."

Born in the kingdom of Obsem, Edawin was afforded an advanced magical education and became something of a star pupil at the Rama-Obsem Academy. A devout Lecsan, one of the major religions of Obsem, she constantly delved the depths of the Academy for secrets of the Star-makers.

A rather gifted student, her studies have earned her a tentative research position of her own, despite still being a student. Under the auspices of the Elder Educator Axl Freid, Edawin is allowed her own research laboratory and can requisition materials and tools from Axl. In exchange for this patronage, her research is considered the property of the Academy. For her part, Edawin is merely concerned with advancing the collective knowledge of her world.

Recently, after pouring over ancient attestations and religious doctrine, Edawin has found a piece of the stars, crashed down to Nyrvaalecs and undiscovered for centuries, and she finds herself compelled to learn everything she can about it and the worlds of the Star-makers beyond.

Relationships
"I don't understand how you can think about that when the entire world is at our fingertips!"

Edawin's first concern in all things is how she can make life better by exploring the minutiae of her world. With such activities as breaking apart tea leaves to make better tea, studying leylines to purify spellcasting, learning healing by tracing the flow of mana through a body, Edawin has never been short of subjects to study.

Her second great drive has been her religion. As a Lecsan, she believes that the beings who made the world are among the stars, which were the last things they made in the world. Edawin prays to the Star-makers and believes they have guided her on her path since she was born, and guide her still.

She looks up to Axl Freid as a kind mentor. He was one of her instructors at the Academy, but he took her under his wing and eventually became her patron. She has a close relationship with Axl, almost as a second father, and he mostly allows her to do as she pleases.

Personality
"What do you mean, 'I'm too distracted'?"

Edawin is driven, obsessive, and headstrong. She is always curious of what is capable, not just by her but in terms of the natural world. From the time she could read, she had bullishly pursued all the information accessible to her on the sciences: zoology, metamagic, natural law, etc. Eager to test her knowledge, she found her talent for magic at a young age, and her parents had her tested for acceptance into Rama-Obsem before she had even reached full maturity.

Her faith gave the headstrong young mer a needed calm as she was repeatedly turned away from the more advanced material and the "forbidden" knowledge that the Academy kept. She found her own share of trouble, but nothing greater than any "normal" girl her age.

Once Edawin has something set in her mind to explore, she tends to spend every waking moment thinking about it, and can seem distant or distracted if she's out with friends or family. This has led to a few ended relationships, but Edawin still has a few friends who accept her in full and stick with her through highs and lows.

Strengths and Flaws
"It's perfectly safe, I promise. I've read extensively on the subject."

Edawin is capable of learning quickly any number of topics that catch her fancy (mostly of the natural sciences). However, her extensive testing and often inexperience with the practical has led her to trouble more than once. While she stays as safe as she can be reasonably certain of, more than one experiment has blown up in her face, and more often than that her stalwart stubbornness to acquire reading material has found her on the receiving end of a punishment.

She is very good at channeling magic and casting prepared spells, but her personality is unsuited to on-the-fly casting or split-second manipulations, meaning she is hopeless at battle-magic. Even her spellwork in general is dependent on much preparation and planning, though she is capable of highly complicated magic such as transmutation, polymorphism, or fabrication.

Edawin is also kind to a fault. She is willing to share nearly anything she owns with another, and is especially willing to teach anyone what she has already learned. It often doesn't occur to her that others would want to take advantage of her generous nature. She holds a rose-tinted view of the world, and has had the great fortune not to come across the uglier parts of her world.

Being a mer has brought its own set of problems for Edawin. Her dependence on water was a bit of a barrier before she mastered her race's tribal magic and learned to walk rather than swim. The Academy and much of the city has an extensive and well-kept channel system for its mer occupants, which Edawin takes advantage of frequently.

Powers
"No, not yet. The elemental ratios have to be just right."

Edawin has access to the tribal magics of her race, though as with all her magic, she requires preparation to do so. She is able to shapeshift her fins into a pair of legs to allow her to walk on land, but this spell has a time limit to it. Typically, Edawin cannot hold her bipedal form for more than an afternoon, though she can keep it from sunrise to sunset if she has enough mana and water available. Her tribal magics give her an affinity for water, allowing her to manipulate its properties more easily than any other material. She has even developed a way to keep things in water without the water affecting them.

Beyond that, Edawin has learned to cast a number of academical spells, and has even developed easier manners of casting them. She can cast identity and analysis spells, calling spells, and simple alchemy with ease. She has an extensive knowledge of runes and spell-circles as well, which she uses frequently in her research — her laboratory is criss-crossed with them.

More complicated spellwork is part of Edawin's great interest. Advanced transmutations, changing the ratio of base elements in a material to transform it, are a particular gift of hers as so few students are able to properly learn the art. The roughly equal art of polymorphism, where a living creature is shaped into another creature or given traits of another, is another complex spell family which Edawin can wield, in some ways more completely than others. Polymorphism can actually be performed much more easily than transmutation, by imparting the spirit of form of a creature onto another, but the effect is often temporary and occasionally lethal — Edawin's polymorphs, however, have been proven, on the small scale, to be permanent. Fabrication, the art of creating material out of mana, is also within her repertoire, though it is far from her strongest school. Whole-cloth fabrication can be a simple process, but a failing is its inability to create organic matter. Edawin, however my has been able to fabricate several simple foods such as tea, kelp, and nuts, and she has been exploring the possibility of fabricating a live organism that won't dissolve back into the aether.

Skills and Interests
"I know the kings of Obsem and can quote the fights historical, from Egasrif to Rreyavkin in order categorical."

One of Edawin's favorite pastimes is cooking. For years she has sought out magical and mundane methods of making tastier dishes and entirely new flavors. While not recognized as an accomplished chef in her own right — her student work far overshadows it — Edawin is still capable of unique and delectable dishes. As a personal principle, she also tests all her new dishes on herself, something her friends are grateful for.

With such an fascination in reading, it is unsurprising that Edawin has picked up a few literary interests on the side. She quite enjoys poetry and wordplay, and is fond of looking for the hidden meanings in them.

Recently
"For centuries, we've sought to be close to the gods. Now we have the ability to actually touch a piece of their world. We may even have the chance to walk among the Star-makers, and I'm not about to let that opportunity pass me by."

Edawin has managed, with the support provided her of Axl Freid and the Academy, to unearth an ancient piece of the stars which had fallen to Nyrvaalecs. Such a momentous discovery was proclaimed to the world, and the star-piece possessed by the Academy to make it available public and researchers. By virtue of both her unique position and being the discoverer of the piece, she is among the dozen or so scientists working on examining the piece of the stars.

There aren't as many gods around the multiverse nowadays as there used to be. There are even fewer planes made by these gods that haven't faded away into the aether. Only a handful of these old gods still take an interest in those planes they themselves created. Aijerelana is one of those gods.

History
Aijerelana is an oldwalker, one who had been obsessed with creating an "ideal world".

After she had decided that her home plane was too far beyond her powers to shape and subsequently destroying all civilized life on it, Aijerelana created an entirely new plane in which to create her perfect world. She brought undeveloped tribes into her new world, shaping them into what she thought of as perfect with magical and mundane influence.

Then she did it over again. When the civilizations she had tried to cultivate didn't grow as she had expected, she wiped the races of the world with a magical plague and started the process over from scratch.

She has wiped her plane clean of civilizations many times over the millennia. Since the Mending, her power to summon diminished, she's modified her methods slightly. Now that Aijerelana is aware of her own mortality, she seeks to create a child in perfect mirror to herself to live in a world better than what she grew up in. What she's created may be among the weirder sights in the multiverse for some, but in her mind, she's still creating the perfect world.

Appearance and Personality
Aijerelana is a centaur, with a blue roan coat and skin so dark as to be nearly be purple. Her tail and head hair are a raven black, which she usually keeps long and braided. She keeps herself looking young by absorbing the mana of her own artificial plane.

Aijerelana is always looking to the big picture, and can sometimes lose sight of the finer details of her actions. She has worked on making her ideal world for so long that she’s become ruthless at it, even when the situation may call for more subtlety. She is more than willing to sacrifice an entire town or contribute to genocide if she thinks it will get her closer to her ultimate goal.

On a more personal level, Aijerelana is fickle and quick to anger, often forgetting that others don't have the millennia of experience that she does. She values what she sees as goodness, though — personal sacrifice and acting for the benefit of the majority, even at the sacrifice of the minority — and will act amiably around those who show those traits.

As a Character
Aijerelana is on a strict countdown, in more ways than one. As an oldwalker, she has been rendered mortal by the Mending, and fights the effect of aging; however, she is also using up the mana of her artificial plane to keep herself alive and youthful, sending it ever closer to oblivion.

This is a woman who has the weight of several wasted lifetimes on her shoulders. She overreacts to outsiders, and is used to being treated like a goddess or queen. However, Aijerelana is also so stuck in her ways that she no longer thinks of the multiverse outside of the little greenhouse she's constructed around herself. Ultimately, her world will fade around her, and her unwillingness to leave it will see her succumb to the chaotic aether between worlds.

I tried to borrow a page from Eakin's story Hard Reset, wherein the protagonist becomes stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario, and one of the "bad endings" sees her dying of old age just as time finally unravels at the end of the universe, after living through untold lifetimes. Aijerelana even takes the idea of “breeding a clone” from said story, and as such I wanted to have her story arc reflect that full circle and final note of reflection, of her “youth” being ill-spent rather than enjoying what she had.