Profile of Aleera

She has been described as smoke. Not the sort one might see for a brief moment, only to vanish on the lightest of winds leaving naught but the smell to say she was ever there. No. Aleera is much more akin to the aftermath of a wildfire. The black, sooty smoke that blots out the sun and plunges all into shadow. The thick, wiry fur that adorns her muscular form is ebon in color, making her well suited for dark places and midnight strolls. Or, rather, it once used to. Reminiscent of a tragic fire - the once beautiful Aleera has long been marred by burn marks extending down her entire right side, searing away completely her obsidian pelt and leaving behind twisted flesh in its place. This includes the right side of her face, as most of her lips have been burned away to reveal tainted ivories at all times. The burning coals that are her eyes suffer as well, for the right eye struggles with partial blindness, leaving her with only the ability to make out colors and broad shapes.

Due to her upbringing and harsh role life has forced upon her, Aleera has as many positive and desirable traits as she has negative. Determined, Aleera has never given up on anything in her life and will use whatever means she must to see the ends of her needs met. This used to have limitations, such as never killing a foe who concedes the fight or harming anyone who could not defend themselves. After the fire she believes herself no longer bound to these expectations as Empress of the Justicar and kills indiscriminately when she believes it will aid her cause. Her focus on her one goal in life has left her detached from a great many things, including her own guilt for what happened to her empire, making it possible for Aleera to commit heinous acts among even the most uncultured of brutes. Despite this, The Black Dragon still retains some form of a code of honor and will not harm children or nursing mothers, no matter what end it might bring her in the hunt. Perhaps due to her own losses that reflect in such victims.

The loss of her home and all she held dear has left her a broken woman. The scars of her flesh, while extensive and deep - may not compare at all to the scars upon her mind. Unable to process and cope with such swift, brutal losses, Aleera's only reasonable response to the reality she now found herself in, was insanity. Barely escaping death herself, the dark woman suffered a mental break which as long deformed into a type of paranoid schizophrenia. Armed with the knowledge that the thing that left her empire in ashes still draws breath, she follows the guidance of her lost loved ones to track down the creature who stole everything from her.

Confidence seethes from the ebony woman's every move. From the way she walks, talks, even a mere glance one can tell she was not bred a commoner where she came from. For those who have met Aleera and have been fortunate enough not to end up dead to form some semblance of a relationship with her they will find she is indeed loyal, up to a point. If you have done for her then she will do for you, so long as it does not conflict with her own code of honor or the hunt for her blue eyed demon. As cynical as she is stoic, Aleera views the world largely in black and white and believes herself to be of the former and absolved of any wrong doing in an attempt to save the world from a greater evil than herself. Though she wonders sometimes if the world is even worth saving. This is but another form of her attempted coping with what she has done, for her obsession for the demon who destroyed her home is more consuming than any one trait.

Aleera was born as the crown heir to her mothers throne, destined to become an Empress from the second she took her first breath. Because of this, her life had never been particularly easy, struggling with wanting to be a child but also wanting to gain her parents acceptance by growing up into the Queen they could be proud to pass their crown to. Undergoing harsh training both mentally and physically, she learned quite quickly what to show and when. When to exercise decisive force, or when to grant mercy. At two years of age, Aleera was dubbed fully grown, and her mother‘s crown passed on to her upon taking for herself an acceptable mate among one of the seven clans of whom swore fealty to the ruling Justicar. His name was Koh, a mere excitable boy among hardened men, but he had a passion for life that Aleera couldn't ignore and an innocence she wished she could have.

It was a full year into her rule that her youngest siblings finished their final training and began to take up their roles among the pack. One such sibling, perhaps the closest to Aleera of them all was the chocolate beauty named Sapphire. She was a sweet thing that reminded her that the world was not as malicious as she couldn‘t help but to perceive. This sister of hers had long been trained to become the packs new Nightingale, Master of Secrets, and as her final test she was to go to each of the seven holds and demand that the highest ranking of each come to Empress Aleera‘s birthing. To be present upon the birth of the new heir was tradition, and could not be ignored. The task itself, seemed simple enough. It was not. Sapphire left the Justicar Monolith, but she never returned. All those who were supposed to be summoned came the day prior to the predicted date of birth, and still Sapphire was no where to be found. Worried utterly sick over what might have befallen her sister, Aleera made the unwise choice of gathering everyone under the monolith and demanding that no one would leave alive if the whereabouts of her sister were not made known.

That was when the coup took place. Battle took hold of the birthing grounds, blood painting the earth in the night and somewhere along the line, a fire broke out. Aleera fought as any battle hardened Queen could while heavily pregnant, which was not well. Koh, her father Crow, and several other healthy males died protecting her and her unborn child. The fire swept in like a gale and forced everyone back, trapping and killing a great many while leaving Aleera an opportunity to run. In her escape she spied the lifeless bodies of many of her kin, but Sapphire was not among them. In the night she could hear the angered growls of the pursuing coup members, shirking into the night that they would put her down and Sapphire would rise as the rightful heir to the Justicar throne. Aleera‘s heart broke that night, in that moment she slowed to a stop out of sheer shock. It could not be true! Sapphire had staged the coup, and she was too blind to see it!? By the time the thunderous crack registered to the ebony female it was too late, the burning log was upon her, hitting her hard in the right side and breaking more than one rib in the process. Her fur burned away by the flames, searing her flesh with the intense heat before she had the chance to crawl out from the cinders and run again.

In agony Aleera ran as fast as her legs might carry her to the edge of a cliff where a river roared below. Behind her, the calls of those who still pursued her echoed out among the night and she did the only thing she could do. Jump. The water hit her hard and it hit her fast. Everything was a blacked out blur, and when consciousness came to her next she was laying on a muddy embankment, in more pain than she had ever been and yet somehow managed to crawl to safety to the roots of a fallen tree. There she curled up and prepared to die. But death never came. Days passed and she lived off what was stupid enough to pass by. Bugs, rodents, even chewed up dead bark, it didn‘t matter. She devoured them with a purpose, and that purpose was for her unborn child. Eventually, the day came and she spent hours in labor, alone and afraid for what might happen. A little black pup was born, a little female who upon birth didn‘t yelp, didn‘t cry, didn‘t even move. She had bore a single child, and she was too weak to keep it alive. Somewhere between the fire, the river, or all of it…Too much had transpired and it had claimed little Keeta‘s life before it had even begun.

Distraught, what was a mother to do? A Queen laid low by her own family. She had been betrayed. That was when the voices came to her. The ones who had crawled and crawled through history to her. The ones who had been betrayed as she had been betrayed, and together…they could have their retribution. New determination flourished with the consuming nature that revenge often was, and Aleera kept in that hole for months before slowly she began to try and venture from her make shift den. She cleaned her burns daily, began to hunt more substantial food, and within the year she was thriving. The hunt began. Aleera tore her way through each of the clans using gorilla war fare tactics taught to her by her father, taking out each high ranking member but not before she pulled as much information from them about Sapphire as they could give. They all swore she had appeared after the raid but vanished the following night and no one had seen her since. Following their information of her last known location, Aleera walked through desert, blizzard, burning grounds, everything just to follow the trail of what by then she had deemed her ‘blue-eyed demon’. Besides one fleeting engagement on a fateful evening, the burned Queen has traveled across one land mass after another to destroy this worlds greatest calamity.