Your throne room is vast, carved out the very living rock with the magic and labour of your minions. Blue flames burn in deep sconces set into the walls, filling the cool air with the smell of incense so thick it's almost pungent and sending shadows dancing wildly across the ornately carved pillars and hanging trophies. This room has been the final location for a hundred final battles, the freedom of the world determined in the clashing of steel and blasting of spells.
You watch the door and sigh. The heavy wood remains shut. Your eyes trace over the ornate obsidian inlay depicting you crushing the world underfoot without taking it in.
You wish the Hero would get here and get it over with already. You'd hardly even begun to prepare this cycle. Your generals were scattered across your realm, only starting to raise your army to wage war again on the humans. Perhaps with your generals, perhaps with more time for preparation, you could have prevailed. Heroes were, however, always disgustingly proficient in rallying some team of mighty warriors and clever wizards, bonded in life-long friendships and indefatigable will. You don't imagine the minor demons and warbeasts guarding your dread Citadel have given them much trouble, and you didn't have time to reset and re-enchant most of the defences.
Oh, you'll fight, of course. Your pride demands nothing else. No doubt there would be a speech on the meaning of justice and your evil reign ends today, you'd do your best to kill each other, and then the whole thing would begin again. It wasn't like you'd lose anything, really. Your next body was already made and concealed in your most secret lair, waiting in mindless sleep to receive your soul, should you die.
An endless battle. Defeat by either side is only ever temporary. By the hundred gods, you're so… tired of it.
Finally the door creaks open. You perk up, sitting up straighter. Your face no longer rests on your hand in a dismal slump but in imperious dismissal. When the black-clad form of a minor demon tumbles through, you resist the urge to sigh again. His voice is high with fear, an annoying shrill, and you quietly despair at the state of your fearsome hordes if this wretch is part of the vanguard. He begins to scrabble towards you, needle-toothed mouth flapping and claws clicking on the stone.
"Dread Majesty! Dread Majesty! The enemy is coming! They're almost-"
A bolt of magic shears the creature in two before you can do it yourself. You raise an eyebrow.
The Hero steps through, six feet of shining steel and power.
Blond hair cascades down onto gleaming bright armour, framing a defined face. Her eyes are a bright gold, shining with life and power, her mouth set into a determined line. A thin scar traces its way along her brow, and her nose is slightly crooked from where it has been broken in the past. Her torso is covered with silver armour, the breastplate carved with a sigil of the god of hope, and her arms are bare. The muscles ripple beneath the skin as she moves, folding her hands over the hilt of her longsword as she looks up at you. You meet her gaze disinterestedly.
Behind her, her companions filter through.
A burly man, greataxe rested casually on one shoulder. His bearded face is gnarled with battle, the tanned skin of his exposed torso riddled with scars. His hair and eyes – so dark brown they're almost black – reveal him as one of the northmen of the Farmarch. Demon blood drips from his weapon and hands, dripping blue splotches on your floor. Open wounds leak slowly on his arms and chest, but he seems to pay them no heed.
A young-looking mage – perhaps eighteen at most – steps past the demon's corpse, hands clenched nervously around a staff. She brushes wavy auburn hair away from her glasses, green eyes peering nervously but determinedly up at you. Her robes are singed, and you smirk slightly. The fire traps had been one of the first defences you'd brought back into working order. Perhaps she's lucky she's so short, because the top of her pointy hat is also missing from an axe strike, by the looks of it.
A Kolian assassin, swaddled in the dark robes of their order. Even with all your power, and knowing he's there, you have difficulty focusing on their existence. You begrudgingly admit this one is better at Illusion magic than you. Honestly, it's almost giving you a headache to focus on it, so you let it sit in the corner of your awareness.
A marble-skinned Dwarf is the last to clank into your throne room. It holds a heavy stone mace casually in one hand, bronze-coloured metal wound in thick bands around its body and engraved in hexogrammatic wards. The light of the braziers is caught on the smooth rock dome of its head, reflecting the light and revealing the gold used to fill in an ornate pattern along its scalp. It lifts its mace, pointing it at you in challenge, and grins, revealing blocky teeth.
"You're here at last, Hero," you proclaim, still seated on your throne.
The Hero opens her mouth, then closes it again. She looks at her companions, and they look back. She looks nervous – and even in your first meeting, it seems unfitting for such a face.
"Demon Queen!" she starts. "I..."
You wait as she hesitates.
"I don't want to fight!" she suddenly bursts out. You glance at the corpse, but she continues. "Can't we live in peace, side-by-side? Why must we continue this pointless war?"
Your previous lives are distant memories, like pages behind thick glass, but nonetheless, you can recall them, nearly all the way back to the very beginning. You think of countless years of battle, defeat and victories, and how none of them seemed to have mattered at all.
"Fine," you say.
"Very well, a fight it- wait, what?" The Hero gapes in surprise. Behind her, her various companions have various expressions of shock and suspicion. "You said yes?"
You frown. You've never liked having to repeat yourself.
"I said 'fine', Hero. I accept. I will try living in peace. But-"
The Farmarcher growls in anger.
"This is a trick! We should slay her now! There is no talking with demons!"
He spits on the floor, and your brow twitches with annoyance.
"Gunfar is right. We can't trust it," the Kolian says, voice echoing strangely out the ivory mask they wear. "It's a demon. They only know bloodshed."
The Hero raises a hand placatingly.
"Wait, wait." She looks up at you. Gold eyes meet crimson. "You, err, you're really willing to try it?"
"Yes," you repeat. "But… not here. My kingdom is no place of peace."
No, you've had quite enough of this place. Several hundred years too much, perhaps, over all your lives. Perhaps you will tour the human lands? Just not at the head of a rampaging warhost, this time.
The Hero's group has descended into frantic conversation. You smirk. Despite your newly-stated willingness for peace, you notice none of them take their eyes off you for long.
Wise of them.
Finally, the Hero steps forward again. The rest of the group hangs back, looking unhappy.
"Look, er, Demon Queen. Some of us have a few doubts on your intentions-"
"A few," you admit dryly.
"So we've talked it over-"
"Still say it's a trick," grumbles the Farmarcher, and the Hero shoots him an annoyed look.
"So we've talked it over, and there's a solution. Come with me."
You raise your eyebrow.
"With you?"
"My old home has enough room for another person. You need somewhere to stay while you're trying your new life out, right? Come with me."
She holds out her hand and smiles.
---
The carriage is thick with an uncomfortable silence as Quillfall rattles into view. It's larger than you expected, to be honest. You ignore the stare boring into the back of your head as you regard it imperiously out the window.
Quillfall nestles between hills, vibrant green studded with the fluffy white balls of distant sheep. A vast forest stretches off into the distance not far away. On the hills either side, a tower rises from the hills. One, you know, is a wizards tower hosting the local arcanist and their apprentice, the other – thicker and square-sided, crenellations rising proudly – is no doubt the keep of the local lordling.
Of the town itself, tall stone buildings with cheery red roof tiles rising either side of a fast-flowing river. A rustic stone bridge crosses it at the centre of the town, busy with foot-traffic. The spires of a temple rise upwards next to it, seemingly far too large a building for such a town. It's almost a cathedral. A large mural of Saint Oria watches over the human habitation, smiling benevolently down. You scowl.
You begin entering Quillfall's outskirts, fields of young green shoots giving way to small wooden buildings and groves of apple trees. People can be seen about their business, protected from the warm sun with large straw hats or stripped to the waist in the heat. The poles of fishermen rise from the river banks.
The town wall is short, barely head-height for a human, and overgrown with ivy. It would be easy to climb. Peace has reigned in this part of the world for a long time. Too lo- ah, no. That's not how you need to think. Indeed, it doesn't even have a gate, but the carriage still slows down as it approaches the entrance. The singular guard is a young man, clad in chainmail and a helmet too large for him. His shifts his voulge from his right arm to his left as he wanders up to the carriage.
Verana Sommer, Champion of Light, First Warrior of Ulsan, Hero of Humanity, and your mortal foe, leans out the window of the carriage to give a cheery hello. The wood creaks under the weight of lean muscle. She's smiling, obviously happy to be back home.
"Hey, Sam! Didn't expect to see me back so soon, eh?"
"Not at all, Miss Sommer! You done with that demon business then?"
The Hero laughs. The guard smiles as well, though slightly quizzically. He wasn't in on the joke, after all.
"In a way, you could say," the Hero says.
The guard – Sam – stands on his tiptoes to see into the carriage. He waves as he sees the other occupant apart from you. The mage – Ysila – briefly stops glaring daggers into you to offer him the most insincere smile you've ever seen. Turns out her and the Hero were childhood friends, so she came along too.
How super.
You're not sure where the Hero's other companions are – they split off as you passed through the Spine Pass and headed north-east into human lands. You imagine they're not too far, but honestly – you're at the disadvantage here, not them.
The guard turns to look at you, seeing not a demon queen, but a human. This kind of shapeshifting is doable, though you were never particularly proficient at that kind of magic. You always excelled at the more… direct kind, aside from your alchemy. Your contained power shifts beneath your skin, like a breath held and not released.
"Oh, hello. Don't think I've seen you before. What's your name, miss?"
The Hero looks back at you. Come to think of it, she doesn't know your name either. You've always been Demon Queen. You decide on a name and open your mouth.
"My name is-"
-----
What is this?
In this quest, you control the Demon Queen as she attempts to avoid battles for the fate of the world, her irritating minions, discovery by the church, and all manner of things which could interfere with her retirement.
To that end, we need to decide on a few things, mainly:
[]Name - Write in
You are the Demon Queen. Your name is what you say it is. That said, something like Ravager the Murderqueen probably wouldn't be very conductive to keeping a low profile...
Your true form is:
[] True form - Monstrous
Your true form is only vaguely humanoid, clad in armoured scales and bone spurs, fingers ending in razor sharp claws. No one could mistake you for human, but the advantages of naturally being armoured and armed are obvious enough.
[] True form - Humanoid
Your true form is only vaguely monstrous, unlike most demons, with only your eyes and horns to make you anything but a coldly beautiful human. Easier to pass for human, but more vulnerable if discovered.
[] True Height - Huge
You tower over the largest of mortals. Truly, they are beneath you!
[]True Height - Tall
Only the tallest humans, such as the Hero, are close to your eye level. Most are at a satisfactory look-down-upon-able height.
[]True Height - Average
Truthfully, your height doesn't matter so much - your demonic might and magic make it unimportant that a few mere humans are taller than you.
[]True Height - Short
You're not short, you're... compact. A smaller target. An advantage, really. It's nothing to comment about.
[]True Height - Tiny
You made a slight mistake in creating this body. An insignificant error with the formulae that determine height that will not be commented upon!
Of course, that's your demonic true form. Transformed, you've managed to appear human - but what kind of human?
Your transformed form is:
[]Transformed - Muscled
A demon is far stronger than an ordinary human, and you wear that strength like a cloak.
[]Transformed - Ordinary
Neither muscled nor slender, fat nor thin. As close to average as you could get.
[]Transformed - Slender
A deceptively dainty appearance belies the inhuman strength within your frame.
[]Transformed Height - Tall
You are as tall as humans generally get, eye-to-eye with the Hero herself.
[]Transformed Height - Average
Some mortals are taller, and some are shorter. You're in the middle.
[]Transformed Height - Short
You might have to look up to most humans in body, but you can still look down on them in spirit, right?
[]Transformed Height - Tiny
No demon queen could possibly be this short, surely? You'd be below suspicion, wounded pride beside.
Humans have a whole range of hair colours. Yellows, browns, blacks, reds - even blues and purples on humans across the boundless sea.
[] Hair colour - White
[] Hair colour - Black
[] Hair colour - Blonde
[] Hair colour - Brown
[] Hair colour - Write In
Much the same can be said about their eyes. Glowing red probably isn't a good idea for keeping your identity secret...
[]Eye colour - Green
[]Eye colour - Brown
[]Eye colour - Blue
[]Eye colour - Silver
[]Eye colour - Write In
