Post by Zealot on Jan 6, 2013 15:59:04 GMT -5
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=valign, top][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=style, border: 10px solid #f1e3b4; width: 450px; background-color: #f6f7f1;] PERSONAL FILE HIGHLY CLASSIFIED AND CONFIDENTIAL  GENERAL INFORMATION NAME: Lady Zannah of the Red Lament ALIAS: Zealot (literally the closest English word to her name’s meaning – ‘Holy Death Without Hesitation’). She has also used a number of aliases throughout history, the most recent of which is ‘Lucy Blaze’. GENDER: Female AGE: c. 10,000 years old. OCCUPATION: Warrior, adventurer, ALIGNMENT: Good (though this is highly debatable) AFFILIATION(S): Coda Sisterhood, formerly Team One and the Earth Coda PHYSICAL PROFILE HEIGHT: 6’0 WEIGHT: 160 lbs EYES: Blue HAIR: White CLASSIFICATION: Kherubim UNUSUAL FEATURES: In battle, Zannah wears the war paint of the Coda – in her case, this also marks her rank and consists of a single red circle in the centre of her forehead and three red triangles on either cheek, rising from her jawline. BEHAVIOR PROFILE The first and most important thing that can and must be said about the Lady Zannah – Zealot – is as follows. She is a warrior. She was born a warrior, she will die a warrior and she cannot imagine a life where she was not a warrior. It is her life and it almost certainly will be her death. It is simple in its way, but it is a frame of mind that those who lack the purity of her vision can struggle to understand. Life is a battle, enemies are there to be broken rather than merely beaten and there is no use in fighting a war unless it ends in victory. True, Zannah has standards, morality and code that she will not break, but her single-minded focus can be intimidating in how exclusive it is. Violence is closer even than second nature to her to a degree that is actively terrifying and she is aeons beyond merely being ‘good’ at it. After all, to Zealot and the others of the Coda, it is much more than just violence. To them, combat is dance, it is ritual, it is sex, it is holy purity and it is their religion all in one blood-soaked storm of death and life, and very few outsiders understand that even among the Kherubim. This ideal is enshrined in the Coda’s Blood Dance, an ancient ritual where the female warriors literally dance with blades, demonstrating their skill by drawing blood with the lightest cut possible and mixing their blood as they do so. In this respect at least, Zannah is a traditionalist. The traditions and rituals of the Coda are to be respected, though she has little respect for art or culture in the soft sense of the word. Certainly things like music or the theatre are of little importance or value to her next to fighting. It is particularly hard for others to understand this because they struggle to understand the simple scale of her life. Zealot has been a warrior for far longer than almost any other living creature and it shows. She is dedicated to her art, seeking perfection in every strike and every cut of her swords, unable to even contemplate the notion of surrender or retreat no matter how she might be outmatched. This is not just arrogance – Zannah can be quite aware that she is about to die and she will still fight on until the literal last breath left in her body rather than take one step back. To do otherwise would shame her and, even if no one else knew it, she would know. Aside, perhaps, from failure, dishonour is one of the only things that she fears. On a side note, Zealot considers herself to be the single best fighter on Earth or Khera. Some would call this overconfidence, but she has the abilities to back up her opinion and no one Zealot has fought over the thousands of years that she has been alive has even come close to decisively defeating her in one on one combat. Her arrogance has been earned many, many times over. She is also ruthless in battle. To win, she would do almost anything that falls within her code of honour, including run a sword through her own body to hit an enemy behind her. That, in fact, is a death she saves for the most worthy of foes, because it mixes their blood – a great honour among the Coda. As noted above, she has a code that governs her actions and, in fact, was the reason for her breach with the sisterhood that she helped found. Though she would argue it is beyond the understanding of lesser beings, it is in fact quite simple. A true sister of the Coda will only kill in battle. That’s it. In fact, it is phrased the opposite way, with many prohibitions on what they are not allowed to kill, which shows a lot about the mindset of the Kherans who wrote it. This includes such restraints as not being allowed to kill for pleasure alone or because a lower life form irritated the sister in question, though there have been plenty of sadists among the Coda over the millennia. It says nothing, however, about hurting, injuring or even permanently crippling said lower life form and Zannah has started and finished her share of fights over the years for assorted minor insults, petty attempts at flirting and simple boredom. Needless to say, her idea of what constitutes a fair response can differ substantially from that of the men she just trounced. True, she won’t kill. But, as the old saying goes, you’d be surprised what you can live through. Nor are there any rules about her provoking an enemy into trying something stupid like going for her with a broken beer bottle though Zannah considers such things beneath her. About as far beneath her as humans, in fact. The second truism, therefore, regarding the Lady Zannah is that she is Kheran and, more importantly, she is Coda. The first means that she is basically what humanity might call a speciesist. She is a Kheran supremacist, a woman who believes firmly in the superiority of her own species over the rest of the universe and has absolutely no qualms about saying as much. And, admittedly, it is hard for humans to argue it, given the sheer difference between a Kherubim and a human in terms of lifespan and physical abilities. But she also believes that the militaristic, feudal and near-fascist culture of her home world is superior to the chaos of democracy. Oh, and if you happen to be a Daemonite or Daemonite hybrid? Congratulations, she wants to see your species exterminated – a total genocide. As far as she is concerned, every last one of them is a monster and deserves nothing else. However, that is not the limit. Within Kheran society, she believes that the Coda sisters are, to borrow a human phrase, the deadliest of the species. The Pantheon, the opposite party, are weak; the Shaper’s Guild are technicians; the Brotherhood of the Blade are a pale shadow of the Coda’s greatness. Zannah does not quite qualify as a misandrist but she verges on it at times, favouring females over males and believing that they have greater potential, while she would never trust a male of any species absolutely. Of course, she is currently not affiliated with the Earth-bound Coda, but then she views herself as the last member of the true Coda while the rest of them are merely assassins hiding behind a name. So, as a Coda warrior, it must be noted that Zealot is an elitist of the worst sort. If not a warrior of uncommon prowess, she will not respect them. Nor will she consider them worthy of her time. This is where that superior attitude comes out to play – Zannah can take condescension to new levels without trying and this can certainly rub humans who are deservedly proud of their achievements the wrong way. Of course, usually she is not trying to be offensive. It just comes naturally. Yes, she will stand between a weak woman and attack, but she will be just as scornful of the victim’s weakness afterwards. Basically, as has been said of her, Zannah is “a cold racist bitch” and basically she is proud of it. On the other hand, if called that to her face, the speaker can expect a nice scar to remind them of it. She will even ask them where they want it. Zannah is thoughtful that way. And she is at her coldest when she is angry. Rather than shouting and raving, an angry Zealot bites out each word with vicious precision, her eyes as warm as a winter storm. It is also when she is at her most dangerous. When she is angry, when she feels that she has been wronged, then she is even more willing to kill at the drop of a pin. And Zannah can hold grudges for millennia, nursing them down the ages. So, she certainly has feelings. But a lifetime of fighting has buried them deep and her training is such that she would rather die than reveal them to others. Indifference, arrogance and remote disinterest are all that most get from her, other than the rare moment of rage. Some call her the ‘Coda’s ice queen’, a moniker that is most appropriate. Zannah is also extremely bad at dealing with her emotions, preferring to suppress them as noted above than to confront them. She is callous and places little value on life in and of itself, though she does value the lives of those few she is close to or those of her allies. There is one exception here. Just one. Her ‘sister’. Her secret daughter. Kenesha. Savant. Zealot has gone to great lengths to keep her safe before and loves her as best as she is capable of, but does so from afar to protect her. She has also never told Savant the truth nor does she ever intend to, because her daughter’s survival cuts to the very heart of the lies that birthed the Coda, and she would kill to keep that secret. It is also one of the few things that can break her icy façade. To finish then, Zannah is not a nice person in the slightest. She is not the sort of girl to be taken home to meet her lover’s mother, she is not sweet or dainty or anything of that sort. She is ruthless, she is violent and she is sharp as her swords. Her name is as apt as possible – she is indeed a bringer of holy death without hesitation – and despite the myriad prejudices under which she struggles she is very intelligent. Underestimating Zealot is done at one’s peril. |
DOCUMENTED HISTORY
Lady Zannah of the Red Lament was born before millennia before humanity built its first city or had written its first words. Long before the apes that would evolve into homo sapiens could do more than look up at the moon and stars with wonder and dread, her people – the Kherubim – had gone to those very same stars and built themselves an empire. She, in turn, was born at the height of their power and, also, at the height of their greatest war.
Zannah’s mother was named Harmony and she was a priestess of Hecate, goddess of Khera. But the young girl had no interest in the life of a priestess. She wanted to be a warrior and she was born to be one, with a soul destined for that life. After all, her mother had looked into her eyes when she was born and chosen her name based on the fire that she saw there. Zannah, in the tongue of Khera, means ‘holy death without hesitation’ and, even at a young age, she proved that it was more than well-chosen.
In that time, the young girls of Khera were taken at a young age away from any male influence. They were raised entirely by their mothers and female tutors. This would not be unknown in human culture, but they were taught to be warriors. While the Kherubim were and are mighty, they had few children and could not afford to spare any children from the war effort. Zannah was no exception but, from her first days of training, she proved that she was exceptional. Even as a mere girl, she could best tutors with years of experience or face odds of five to one without suffering a scratch. They called her Khera’s invincible sword princess, the best seen for generations, while her beauty was legendary. Indeed, despite her youth, she was asked to train a young woman named Charis, one of the Adrastean underclass of Khera. As such, the two – the daughter of the elite and the child of the streets – never saw eye to eye and Charis’ training was marked by growing acrimony even as Zannah herself continued to excel.
However, skill and beauty provided no protection from the traditions of Zannah’s people. It was required that all Kherubim women submit to mate with a male Kherubim chosen for them by the elders. Few of these result in a live child – less than one in ten thousand even conceive and only one in ten thousand of those lives through the birth. No Kheran in living memory has had two children 0 indeed, at that time it had happened only once in all of Khera’s recorded history. And Zannah was chosen for this. Her picked mate was Majestros, a High Lord and the lover of Charis, Zannah’s ‘student’. Aside from further separating teacher and student, the pairing had its result – Zannah became pregnant.
The mothers of children were required, after the birth, to give up their lives and become high priestesses of Hecate. Still young, Zannah vowed that, if the child lived, she would not for she had no intention of giving up her life as a warrior. And, as she went into labour, she swore as much to her mother once again. Delivery on Khera was as formalised an event as any other. The mother to be was sequestered away with only her own mother and the midwives present in the family home, in this case the Tower of Red Lament. And when the birth was complete, the mother would announce the result by means of a sign. If the child were to live, the sign was red – the colour of blood and life. If not, then the sign was black, the colour of death.
Zannah went into labour as usual. Her last memory before unconsciousness took her in the aftermath was of a small, silent body and of her mother casting down a black flag. Her child was dead. She could remain a warrior and her last thought was of near-treacherous glee. Except that, when she woke, it was to the eager cry of a baby. Confused, she demanded her mother explain, only for Harmony to tell her that she would keep the child. For her daughter and granddaughter’s sakes alike, she would hide the girl. In time, she too would take another lover and then pretend that she had conceived again. As a high priestess in her own right, no one would dare question her and the girl would be raised as her daughter – Zannah’s younger sister. No one other than Harmony and Zannah would know the truth – not even Majestros or the newborn girl.
And so it came to pass. Harmony pretended to conceive again, seemingly was delivered of a baby daughter and became revered as only the second Kherubim in history to have two children. Her name acquired near-mythical status. And the girl? She was named Kenesha.
‘Survivor’.
Zannah, however, returned to her warrior training with renewed vigour. And it was only partially for her mother’s political connections and how revered she had become that the young warrior-woman was chosen to be one of the first recruits into the newly founded cult that was begun soon after Kenesha’s second birth. They called it the Coda. At first, of course, she was just a simple member. But her prodigious skills ensured her steady rise to full sister. And it was those same skills that, along with her ‘sister’ and Charis (now a Coda sister in her own right), saw Zannah chosen for a mission aboard an Explorer ship. She had already experienced combat against the Daemonites on the war fronts, of course, but this was still a sign of trust for one so young.
Even so, it took on a very different spin when they were intercepted by a Daemonite warship. Both ships took heavy damage in the battle that followed and the crews were forced to abandon them in escape pods. The pods fell to the planet over which they had fought, at that time unnamed but which its primitive inhabitants would one day call ‘Earth’.
There, they picked their war up right where they had left off. Reinforcements were soon called, battlelines were drawn and Earth became the two species’ battleground. Zannah and her Coda sisters were ever in the war’s forefront, their skills applied most often with the blades of their swords but sometimes with more subtle instruments. One such mission saw Charis sent to infiltrate the Daemonite camp after a string of ‘suicide’ missions. She was meant to find and engineer the recovery of fragments of an artefact known as the Creation Engine. The Coda, not trusting her, sent Zannah as an observer but, through poor luck, she was found by the Daemonites. They in turn ordered Charis to kill her but she refused and saved Zannah’s life. Zannah in turn was furious that Charis had put her life before the mission and allowed the rival Brotherhood of the Blade to gain the fragments of the Engine for themselves. So she challenged Charis to a trial by battle.
The two fought in the Coda’s Earth fortress. They were nearly evenly matched but Zannah has always claimed that she would have won had it been allowed to continue and most believe her. But they were not. The stadium was attacked by Daemonites and one of their superiors ordered Zannah to fly a fighter through the blockade to summon help. Despite her desire to stay and fight alongside her sisters, she left. And, by the time she returned, they were all dead. The only one missing was Charis. Zannah held the missing sister responsible – she was after all of the Adrastea, a known group of criminals – and has hunted her ever since.
Regardless of the loss, the war had to go on. Only three sisters of the Coda had survived the attack: Zannah and two others who had been elsewhere at the time. And, by this time, the homeworld had ceased answering their transmissions while they had no way of returning to it. The long war had destroyed all spacecraft and they had no means of building more. Yet the Daemonite filth seemed endless while the Kherubim had sustained a heavy blow with the loss of the Coda. So, they did the one thing they could – they began a new Coda. However, instead of Kherubim, they used human girls, taken from their mothers and put through intense training and (if they survived) the Blood Dance. In sharing blood with the Kherubim founders, they gained long life.
It took time for the new force to be established, of course. At first, Zannah herself was the Majestrix, until eventually she and her two fellows stood aside to allow the humans to rule their own kind. The Kherubim remained as near-legendary warriors and advisors, but they did not wish to rule on a day to day basis. For centuries, therefore, the war continued. In time, the last of the Daemonite powerbases were smashed and the cult began to lessen in its purity. The final straw came at the infamous siege of Troy.
By this time, Zannah called herself Zealot among the humans. As an advisor, she was responsible for making an arrangement with the human king Odysseus. In exchange for 99 girls to be brought up as the next generation of Coda, she would enable the Greeks to take the city – it was Zealot’s plan to infiltrate Troy via a wooden horse and it was Coda warriors that packed the horse alongside the Greeks. However, when the city was broken open, she found her warriors slaughtering all in sight – many of the Coda were Greeks and they sided far too easily with the other Greeks in killing all Trojans. Zannah refused. Instead, she protected much of the royal family, allowing them to escape unharmed as well as shielding whatever women and children she could.
However, she had not been alone. With her was a woman of the Coda named Artemis, who had been Zannah’s student and shared her blood. Believing that her mentor was breaking the first rule of the Coda, she confronted Zealot. Despite the best attempts of the Kherubim to persuade her otherwise, Artemis forced a battle which, inevitably, ended with Zannah victorious. Under most circumstances, the result would be Artemis’ death. And, indeed, that is what she wanted because no Coda could accept living through failure. But, thanks to the Bond and her own code, Zealot let Artemis live. In so doing, she caused her student great shame and ensured her own exile from the group that she had once founded.
Despite that, Zannah viewed it as a betrayal of her by the Coda, rather than the other way around. She felt no shame and, indeed, would take great pride over the centuries in slaying every Coda sister that tried to kill her. It has, naturally, been quite a number. It would be pointless to detail every adventure that she has had since departing the Coda. However, she has had many in her time. She has fought wars, slain monsters, torn down cities that she once helped build and battled alongside legendary heroes. She has been both murderer and saint; cynic and saviour; bloody angel and pale demon.
In particular, she filled the latter role for a full hundred years almost two thousand years ago. A Coda assassin, seeking to weaken her, poisoned Kenesha. Though Zealot butchered the assassin, she could not save her sister-daughter alone and she was forced to turn to a darker power: the Soul Weaver, Tapestry. A powerful witch and sorceress, Tapestry viewed all of Zannah’s kind as interlopers but, despite this, she was more than delighted to exchange the cure for Kenesha’s illness for a century of Zealot’s service as a slave to her whims. As pet killer and apprentice both, Zealot learnt much during this time, but it was also a dark period where she was forever reminded that her soul now belonged to the witch. It was a weight from her shoulders when her time was done and she could leave Tapestry’s web.
Since then, she has continued to fight her private war against the Daemonites in company with the few remaining Kherubim on Earth in secret, drawing upon a handful of human allies down the years where necessary but preferring to rely on herself and the other Kherans. Thanks to this, the two sides became blurred with myths, taking on aspects of angelic or demonic forces respectively, as they waged their shadow war for the control of the Earth. Neither side realised that the war itself was long since over. And, perhaps, it would not have stopped them if they had known.
By the twentieth century of the modern era, Zannah had come to America, where she used the name Lucy Blaze and can be found behind many of the covert initiatives of the American government. In particular, she served on the short-lived Team One and worked for the Department of Defence for much of the 1960s and 70s. In more modern times, she retains contacts in the US government and elsewhere (some of whom are fellow Kherubim survivors) but her ongoing feud with the Coda has taken much of her focus. For now, it is not known what role she will play in the affairs of the world, but history shows that she should not be ignored as a factor and that those who oppose the Lady Zannah may not be long for this world…
Zannah’s mother was named Harmony and she was a priestess of Hecate, goddess of Khera. But the young girl had no interest in the life of a priestess. She wanted to be a warrior and she was born to be one, with a soul destined for that life. After all, her mother had looked into her eyes when she was born and chosen her name based on the fire that she saw there. Zannah, in the tongue of Khera, means ‘holy death without hesitation’ and, even at a young age, she proved that it was more than well-chosen.
In that time, the young girls of Khera were taken at a young age away from any male influence. They were raised entirely by their mothers and female tutors. This would not be unknown in human culture, but they were taught to be warriors. While the Kherubim were and are mighty, they had few children and could not afford to spare any children from the war effort. Zannah was no exception but, from her first days of training, she proved that she was exceptional. Even as a mere girl, she could best tutors with years of experience or face odds of five to one without suffering a scratch. They called her Khera’s invincible sword princess, the best seen for generations, while her beauty was legendary. Indeed, despite her youth, she was asked to train a young woman named Charis, one of the Adrastean underclass of Khera. As such, the two – the daughter of the elite and the child of the streets – never saw eye to eye and Charis’ training was marked by growing acrimony even as Zannah herself continued to excel.
However, skill and beauty provided no protection from the traditions of Zannah’s people. It was required that all Kherubim women submit to mate with a male Kherubim chosen for them by the elders. Few of these result in a live child – less than one in ten thousand even conceive and only one in ten thousand of those lives through the birth. No Kheran in living memory has had two children 0 indeed, at that time it had happened only once in all of Khera’s recorded history. And Zannah was chosen for this. Her picked mate was Majestros, a High Lord and the lover of Charis, Zannah’s ‘student’. Aside from further separating teacher and student, the pairing had its result – Zannah became pregnant.
The mothers of children were required, after the birth, to give up their lives and become high priestesses of Hecate. Still young, Zannah vowed that, if the child lived, she would not for she had no intention of giving up her life as a warrior. And, as she went into labour, she swore as much to her mother once again. Delivery on Khera was as formalised an event as any other. The mother to be was sequestered away with only her own mother and the midwives present in the family home, in this case the Tower of Red Lament. And when the birth was complete, the mother would announce the result by means of a sign. If the child were to live, the sign was red – the colour of blood and life. If not, then the sign was black, the colour of death.
Zannah went into labour as usual. Her last memory before unconsciousness took her in the aftermath was of a small, silent body and of her mother casting down a black flag. Her child was dead. She could remain a warrior and her last thought was of near-treacherous glee. Except that, when she woke, it was to the eager cry of a baby. Confused, she demanded her mother explain, only for Harmony to tell her that she would keep the child. For her daughter and granddaughter’s sakes alike, she would hide the girl. In time, she too would take another lover and then pretend that she had conceived again. As a high priestess in her own right, no one would dare question her and the girl would be raised as her daughter – Zannah’s younger sister. No one other than Harmony and Zannah would know the truth – not even Majestros or the newborn girl.
And so it came to pass. Harmony pretended to conceive again, seemingly was delivered of a baby daughter and became revered as only the second Kherubim in history to have two children. Her name acquired near-mythical status. And the girl? She was named Kenesha.
‘Survivor’.
Zannah, however, returned to her warrior training with renewed vigour. And it was only partially for her mother’s political connections and how revered she had become that the young warrior-woman was chosen to be one of the first recruits into the newly founded cult that was begun soon after Kenesha’s second birth. They called it the Coda. At first, of course, she was just a simple member. But her prodigious skills ensured her steady rise to full sister. And it was those same skills that, along with her ‘sister’ and Charis (now a Coda sister in her own right), saw Zannah chosen for a mission aboard an Explorer ship. She had already experienced combat against the Daemonites on the war fronts, of course, but this was still a sign of trust for one so young.
Even so, it took on a very different spin when they were intercepted by a Daemonite warship. Both ships took heavy damage in the battle that followed and the crews were forced to abandon them in escape pods. The pods fell to the planet over which they had fought, at that time unnamed but which its primitive inhabitants would one day call ‘Earth’.
There, they picked their war up right where they had left off. Reinforcements were soon called, battlelines were drawn and Earth became the two species’ battleground. Zannah and her Coda sisters were ever in the war’s forefront, their skills applied most often with the blades of their swords but sometimes with more subtle instruments. One such mission saw Charis sent to infiltrate the Daemonite camp after a string of ‘suicide’ missions. She was meant to find and engineer the recovery of fragments of an artefact known as the Creation Engine. The Coda, not trusting her, sent Zannah as an observer but, through poor luck, she was found by the Daemonites. They in turn ordered Charis to kill her but she refused and saved Zannah’s life. Zannah in turn was furious that Charis had put her life before the mission and allowed the rival Brotherhood of the Blade to gain the fragments of the Engine for themselves. So she challenged Charis to a trial by battle.
The two fought in the Coda’s Earth fortress. They were nearly evenly matched but Zannah has always claimed that she would have won had it been allowed to continue and most believe her. But they were not. The stadium was attacked by Daemonites and one of their superiors ordered Zannah to fly a fighter through the blockade to summon help. Despite her desire to stay and fight alongside her sisters, she left. And, by the time she returned, they were all dead. The only one missing was Charis. Zannah held the missing sister responsible – she was after all of the Adrastea, a known group of criminals – and has hunted her ever since.
Regardless of the loss, the war had to go on. Only three sisters of the Coda had survived the attack: Zannah and two others who had been elsewhere at the time. And, by this time, the homeworld had ceased answering their transmissions while they had no way of returning to it. The long war had destroyed all spacecraft and they had no means of building more. Yet the Daemonite filth seemed endless while the Kherubim had sustained a heavy blow with the loss of the Coda. So, they did the one thing they could – they began a new Coda. However, instead of Kherubim, they used human girls, taken from their mothers and put through intense training and (if they survived) the Blood Dance. In sharing blood with the Kherubim founders, they gained long life.
It took time for the new force to be established, of course. At first, Zannah herself was the Majestrix, until eventually she and her two fellows stood aside to allow the humans to rule their own kind. The Kherubim remained as near-legendary warriors and advisors, but they did not wish to rule on a day to day basis. For centuries, therefore, the war continued. In time, the last of the Daemonite powerbases were smashed and the cult began to lessen in its purity. The final straw came at the infamous siege of Troy.
By this time, Zannah called herself Zealot among the humans. As an advisor, she was responsible for making an arrangement with the human king Odysseus. In exchange for 99 girls to be brought up as the next generation of Coda, she would enable the Greeks to take the city – it was Zealot’s plan to infiltrate Troy via a wooden horse and it was Coda warriors that packed the horse alongside the Greeks. However, when the city was broken open, she found her warriors slaughtering all in sight – many of the Coda were Greeks and they sided far too easily with the other Greeks in killing all Trojans. Zannah refused. Instead, she protected much of the royal family, allowing them to escape unharmed as well as shielding whatever women and children she could.
However, she had not been alone. With her was a woman of the Coda named Artemis, who had been Zannah’s student and shared her blood. Believing that her mentor was breaking the first rule of the Coda, she confronted Zealot. Despite the best attempts of the Kherubim to persuade her otherwise, Artemis forced a battle which, inevitably, ended with Zannah victorious. Under most circumstances, the result would be Artemis’ death. And, indeed, that is what she wanted because no Coda could accept living through failure. But, thanks to the Bond and her own code, Zealot let Artemis live. In so doing, she caused her student great shame and ensured her own exile from the group that she had once founded.
Despite that, Zannah viewed it as a betrayal of her by the Coda, rather than the other way around. She felt no shame and, indeed, would take great pride over the centuries in slaying every Coda sister that tried to kill her. It has, naturally, been quite a number. It would be pointless to detail every adventure that she has had since departing the Coda. However, she has had many in her time. She has fought wars, slain monsters, torn down cities that she once helped build and battled alongside legendary heroes. She has been both murderer and saint; cynic and saviour; bloody angel and pale demon.
In particular, she filled the latter role for a full hundred years almost two thousand years ago. A Coda assassin, seeking to weaken her, poisoned Kenesha. Though Zealot butchered the assassin, she could not save her sister-daughter alone and she was forced to turn to a darker power: the Soul Weaver, Tapestry. A powerful witch and sorceress, Tapestry viewed all of Zannah’s kind as interlopers but, despite this, she was more than delighted to exchange the cure for Kenesha’s illness for a century of Zealot’s service as a slave to her whims. As pet killer and apprentice both, Zealot learnt much during this time, but it was also a dark period where she was forever reminded that her soul now belonged to the witch. It was a weight from her shoulders when her time was done and she could leave Tapestry’s web.
Since then, she has continued to fight her private war against the Daemonites in company with the few remaining Kherubim on Earth in secret, drawing upon a handful of human allies down the years where necessary but preferring to rely on herself and the other Kherans. Thanks to this, the two sides became blurred with myths, taking on aspects of angelic or demonic forces respectively, as they waged their shadow war for the control of the Earth. Neither side realised that the war itself was long since over. And, perhaps, it would not have stopped them if they had known.
By the twentieth century of the modern era, Zannah had come to America, where she used the name Lucy Blaze and can be found behind many of the covert initiatives of the American government. In particular, she served on the short-lived Team One and worked for the Department of Defence for much of the 1960s and 70s. In more modern times, she retains contacts in the US government and elsewhere (some of whom are fellow Kherubim survivors) but her ongoing feud with the Coda has taken much of her focus. For now, it is not known what role she will play in the affairs of the world, but history shows that she should not be ignored as a factor and that those who oppose the Lady Zannah may not be long for this world…
POWERS AND ABILITIES
KNOWN POWERS:
KNOWN ABILITIES:
STRENGTH LEVEL: Meta Human – As a particularly fit and strong example of a Kherubim female, Zannah is capable of lifting up to ten tons. However, her experience and skill allows her to best apply her strength, which means she can appear to ‘overpower’ stronger opponents with leverage.
WEAKNESSES:
- Metahuman Strength – Kherubim are naturally stronger than humans, enough to qualify for this regardless. As noted, however, Zannah is hardly a common example of her species and can lift up to ten tons compared to two for more common Kherans.
- Metahuman Speed – While she is hardly as fast as the Flashes, Zannah has demonstrated the ability to move at speeds of around 30 MPH under ideal conditions.
- Superhuman Durability – Setting aside her remarkable willpower, Zealot is simply tougher than an average human. Her skin is more durable, meaning that regular bullets will have no effect – though armour-piercing and above will. It can be pierced by swords of good enough workmanship but is highly resilient to impact as are her bones and organs.
- Superhuman Reflexes – Zealot has outstanding hand-eye coordination and reflexes, allowing her to actually dodge bullets in a pinch or to simply snatch slower projectiles right out of the air.
- Superhuman Stamina – Thanks to her Kherubim physiology (and training), Zannah is able to push herself to her limits for a day before collapsing.
- Superhuman Agility – Purely due to her natural agility, Zealot is able to pull off feats of acrobatics that shame many human gymnasts. Again, her talent is superior to most of her race.
- Superhuman Senses – Kherubim such as Zealot have naturally better senses than those of humans. Zannah’s ability to see is easily at the same levels as the best possible human vision, allowing her to see comparatively great distances and precise levels of detail. Her hearing, however, is exceptional, which means she can detect even the sound of a human breathing very quietly or pick out the sound of gunfire amidst a large explosion or similar feats.
- Near-Immortal – Zannah is ten thousand years old (if she is a day) yet she continues to appear to be in her late twenties at most, nor has her appearance changed throughout her time on Earth. Like almost all of her species, she is extremely long lived and, to humans, may as well be immortal. This only preserves her from old age, however, and carries no guard against death in battle.
KNOWN ABILITIES:
- Swords Mistress – The Coda had a saying, in the old days on Khera. ‘To stand against Lady Zannah with a blade in her hand is something sought only by the fool or the madman’ – in short, they regarded it as suicide to go against Zealot when she was armed with a sword. That was ten thousand years ago. She has become more skilled in the meantime to the point that, with a sword in her hand, it is safe to consider her unmatched.
- Master Martial Artist – While she is not quite as insanely deadly unarmed as she is armed, Zannah is still a mistress of virtually every martial art on Earth worthy of the name and many now forgotten by everyone else. Actually, she invented several of them, or at least their distant ancestors. To this, add the Kheran fighting styles that she knows and mastered before coming to Earth. And, if she is not quite the same without a sword to hand, the difference matters not at all to almost any fighter who crosses her path.
- Master Assassin – Besides being a near-peerless fighter with or without a blade in her hand, Zannah remains the unchallenged best of the Coda and has been called one of if not the most deadly woman on Earth. Armed or unarmed, alone or with allies and fighting a single enemy or many enemies, Zealot is almost undefeated.
- Weapons Mistress – As well as her swords, Zealot is at least familiar with almost every melee weapon from the lance to the improvised club (including the beer bottle and the pool cue) and is perfectly capable of wielding them in a fight. This includes throwing weapons. She is at her best with bladed weapons however, though she has kept up with the times and can use firearms and high explosives just as easily.
- Uncanny Aim – Speaking of which, while she is not as good as some with them, Zealot is an excellent shot.
- Acrobat – Though she does not perhaps look the type, Zealot is an excellent acrobat, both by physical ability and personal inclination. Her level of ability makes most mere mortals look like amateurs though, again, being Kheran helps considerably. That said, her skill is extremely impressive and, mixed with her fighting skills, simply makes her even more insanely deadly in a fight than she already was.
- Languages – This almost goes without saying, but Zannah’s native tongue is the musical Kheran language of her youth. As such, given she has gone almost undetected on Earth for millennia, she speaks human tongues that range from modern English or Chinese to Middle High German or Brythonic to Aramaic or Sumerian. Does she speak every language? Hardly, but there is at least an outside chance that she knows how to invite you to surrender in it regardless.
- Tough – A question both of willpower and physical toughness but, even for one of the Kherubim, Zannah has a high level of endurance and she will do whatever is necessary to win. To defeat her, an enemy would have to kill her because, as long as she is physically capable, she will keep fighting no matter what. It is not that she is invulnerable, simply that Zannah’s willpower is quite literally inhuman and allows her to push herself beyond such limits as she has.
- Peak Physical Condition – Though it is an unfair comparison given her alien heritage, comparatively speaking Zannah is as far beyond a Kheran equivalent of an Olympic athlete as the best of the Batfamily are beyond a human Olympic athlete, to the point that she is as fit as any Kheran female can possibly achieve.
- Motorcyclist – Though not an exactly enjoyable experience for any passengers, Zannah has rapidly mastered the art of driving a motorcycle. Thus, she is extremely capable of using one in a chase and of taking it through gaps or over jumps that most would not be capable of. Of course, so far as she is concerned, human traffic laws are there to be ignored and she tends to drive fast and with the sort of attitude that makes most of her fellow motorists swear loudly.
- Interrogation – A combination of being naturally intimidating, having thousands of years of experience, being mean and very good at hurting people means that Zealot is extremely good at getting information out of people, quite often without having to actually resort to violence.
- Arcane Knowledge – Once upon a time, Zannah was forced to pay a debt by placing herself in the service of the sorceress named Tapestry, a weaver of souls who attempted to corrupt Zealot with her knowledge. While the warrior escaped that fate, the century spent as Tapestry’s apprentice and servant did teach her significant amounts about magic, souls, the arcane and other similar topics. It is not a subject that Zannah relishes discussing, but it has come in useful on more than one occasion since.
- Forgery – You do not get through ten millennia of human history without some idea of how to create new identities. Therefore, while Zannah is not fully up to date with the most recent computerised versions, she is quite capable in the field of written forgery and mimicking other people’s handwriting.
- Medicine – Technically, this covers first aid – Zealot is not a doctor. But she has a lot of practice at stitching up battle wounds and the like, having as brutally pragmatic an attitude to this as she does to anything else. It also is helped by an excellent knowledge of anatomy, usually learnt by means of inserting swords into her enemies.
- History – This covers both human and Kheran history – the latter because she learnt it and the former because Zannah lived it. Either way, though she is not a historian by training or inclination, Zealot can be a fund of information on history if the topic is right.
- Tracking – Escaping Zealot once she has set her eyes on a target is hard. She is an excellent tracker in the wilderness and the city alike, with her experience and superb senses both making it hard to elude her.
- Survival – Another skill picked up through both training and necessity. Zannah learnt survival in the training camps of Khera but also through time alone on Earth. While she much prefers to avoid it, there is no doubt that she can survive in the wilderness if she has to do so.
- Surveillance – Stealthy as she is, Zealot can be extremely good at spying. She just usually finds it beneath her, so this skill does not get as much use as it might.
STRENGTH LEVEL: Meta Human – As a particularly fit and strong example of a Kherubim female, Zannah is capable of lifting up to ten tons. However, her experience and skill allows her to best apply her strength, which means she can appear to ‘overpower’ stronger opponents with leverage.
WEAKNESSES:
- Kheran – Zealot most certainly is not a mere human. She is stronger, faster and just plain better than that in virtually every physical respect and has lived long enough to see every human empire rise up and crumble to dust. Despite that, while she is tough and dangerous, she is not the most powerful alien on Earth. Thus, though she is not easy to kill, there are ways in which she is vulnerable. Armour piercing bullets, for example, or other similar weapons can hurt her or kill her with sufficient effort. Poisons specific to the Kherubim affect her as any other member of her species, while sufficiently powerful explosions can destroy her body or break her bones. Finally, while again this is relatively minor next to a human, Kherubim do need to sleep, eat and breathe.
- Arrogant – Going back to the part where Zannah is better than mere humans? She knows it. Basically, Zealot goes into almost any fight with the expectation that she is going to win. And ninety nine times out of a hundred she is absolutely right, because ten thousand years of experience and inborn skill of her level means that very, very few can touch her. However, there are situations where this is not true. Now, while Zealot knows this, she has been known to engage in fights she cannot win or to allow her pride to lead her into such fights. Sometimes, she still wins because she is that good. But she has still lost fights, some of which she should have won, because she allowed her pride to get in the way.
- Elitist – This also spins out of the above. Zealot is basically a Kheran racial supremacist. Her people are the elite, all others are beneath them. This goes particularly for Daemonites and Daemonite hybrids who are regarded as a plague to be exterminated as rapidly as possible – though the long war has left Zannah with a tiny grudge. However, this on top of her sublime fighting skill basically means that Zealot will only work with (and God help you if you suggest you are her superior) those she considers close to equals. This means Kherans or those who display martial talents on a level that she can respect. And given that she is a warrior to the core, this tends to be expressed openly and bluntly. Understandably, a number of people will not take kindly to this attitude.
- Renegade – What makes the above even more noticeable is that Zannah is currently rather lacking in allies. She ‘betrayed’ her Coda Sisters, has spent the years since killing the Sisterhood’s best and brightest when they try to kill her and there are few other Kherubim on Earth. In short, she has powerful enemies though they have yet to prove a real threat to her. Anyone in her company, however, may have to watch their backs for a Coda blade in it for not all of Zealot’s sisters are as honourable as she is.
- Infertile – Kherubim are almost infertile and many will only produce a single child throughout their long lives. Zannah already has a daughter, though the woman in question is not aware of this, and thus she is unlikely to be able to have another child. However, very few know this.
- Obsessive – Perhaps this is a product of a long life but Zealot has a tendency to focus on one target or idea to the exclusion of all others. In some cases, this can most certainly be a strength as it means that she is focused and disciplined, able to set aside distractions to do what must be done. In other cases, such as her old hatred for the Daemonites, it can blind her to reality.
- Strict Code – It may not seem it from the outside, but Zealot has an extremely precise code – this was, after all, the reason for her exile from the Coda. Remaining true to it can, in certain circumstances, be a significant weakness for her when her enemies do not hold themselves to the same standards.
- Proud – This may seem a touch redundant. However, the Lady Zannah is very proud. This, quite aside from her arrogance and elitism, can further cause her difficulties because she is too proud to show any weakness to another, let alone ask for help. She would rather die, alone and pointlessly, than admit she needed help and this is doubly true when it comes to emotional weakness. She bottles her emotions up or at least those which she regards as frailties.
PARAPHERNALIA
EQUIPMENT:
TRANSPORTATION:
WEAPONS:
- Body Armour – It would be pleasant to be able to describe Zealot’s war gear. However, it is not quite as simple as that. It tends to vary considerably, ranging from a skin-tight bodysuit that covers her from neck to toe to a skin-tight swimsuit with a plunging neckline and armoured boots that bares her arms, her thighs and collarbone, and virtually any possibility in between the two extremes. The fact of the matter is that Zannah likes a choice. More recently, her taste has ranged towards the latter, but the only constants are that her uniforms are armoured, tight even if they are not revealing and blood red.
TRANSPORTATION:
- Motorcycle – Naturally coloured blood red, Zannah’s way of getting around is the most advanced motorcycle she can buy.
WEAPONS:
- Swords – Zannah’s preferred weapons are a pair of Kheran swords known as Kusar blades. Roughly five feet in length from the blade’s tip to the end of the hilt, these are thin slashing swords with a single edge and a sharp tip. They also include a crossguard and a guard for the hand, while the hilts are long enough to be used either one- or two-handed. Due to their Kheran origin, they have a comparatively high-technology appearance for swords and their metal (forged to be impossibly sharp) is capable of cutting a Kheran warlord or a Kryptonian as if they were a mere human. It was said that a Kusar blade is sharp enough to shave an electron and resilient enough to absorb the heat of a thousand suns. Regardless, only a handful still exist, while the art of making them has been lost so it is a mark of Zealot’s skill that she wields them.
- Knives – While her favoured weapons are her precious Kusar blades, Zannah is rarely without at least one other blade. These are more human weapons, ranging from small daggers that can be hidden about her person and thrown to short swords as backup weapons.
- Back Blades – These are of unknown origin, but a number of variations of Zealot’s costume include sharp red weapons attached to her back like either a flower or an insect. These, while appearing purely decorative, can in fact be removed and thrown like a boomerang.
- Swords – Aside from the Kusar blades, Zannah has a large arsenal of swords from all eras and countries of Earth’s wartorn history. And she is equally good with all of them - her favourite is the katana.
- Coda Clef Blade – The traditional and ceremonial weapon of the Coda. Appearing as a long, shark-fin shaped blade on a pole, it is deadly in the hands of an expert but rarely seen.
- Guns – These are not something Zannah likes to use. But she keeps some regardless and ensures that she knows how to use all standard firearms just in case.
EXAMINATION RECORD
An empty room in a near-derelict house. A simple cloth robe tied around her waist. Only the sound of her breathing to break the silence. Not even the comforting familiarity of the blood-paint in its traditional patterns, the three triangles rising up on each cheek from the line of her jaw or the perfect circle between her brows, could distract her from what was not there. The empty room in an abandoned house where once she had danced in the grandest halls on Earth and Khera. The simple cloth robe where once she had been adorned in silk or fine furs. The sound of her own breathing set against the silent movements and quiet breaths of a host of her sisters.
Zannah, the woman known to those humans who had had the honour of meeting her as Zealot, stood in the semi-darkness, her eyes closed and her breathing even. And yet she was aware. Aware of her surroundings, naturally, but also aware of what was not there. She could not help it. A child of Khera and the true Coda, what she was about to do was as jarring in her thoughts as the notion of mercy or of retreat. And yet she had no choice. For she was the last true sister of the Coda alive on this distant, primitive planet and she had no one to dance with. Her mouth curled disdainfully. Or was she supposed to dance with humans? Or worse, Daemonite filth?
Another breath in. She held it for the requisite beats. And then she released it, opening her eyes simultaneously. Nothing had changed, of course. She was surrounded by empty night, an empty room and an empty house.
Deftly, her long fingers slipped the knot that held her robe together apart and a simple, elegant flex of her shoulders saw the coarse garment shrugged off to drop to heap on the floor, forgotten in the second it left her flesh. The body revealed as it fell could – and had – been used as a model of anatomical perfection. Seemingly carved from cold, flawless marble, the Lady Zannah had a statuesque body that few could equal, whether as a fighter or as a woman. In both senses, she was faultless, from the swell of her curvaceous chest and taut buttocks to the toned, hard musculature of her elegantly long and shapely limbs or her sculpted abdomen. Her white hair, cropped short for now, failed to obscure the features of the woman called the most beautiful of Khera’s children, frigid blue eyes staring at nothingness, set over pursed full lips and beside a patrician nose.
She wasbeautiful. And she knew it, needing no mirror to admire her perfection.
Sheathed in red leather, the warrior-queen turned, selected a blade from where it leant against the wall. It was already unsheathed and she wielded it with the ease of long, long familiarity. The sword spun through the air, a blur in the near-dark until well-trained muscles drew it to a halt at her side. Then she took up its twin.
And then she danced.
This was no dance known to man, of course. This was the Blood Dance, the Coda’s dance, the dance of blood and purity. Zealot’s lean form leapt and spun, twisting through arcs that would be beyond any mere human’s ability to mimic. Her swords described arcs around her, each precisely chosen and faultless in their timing. If this had been Khera, then each cut would have just broken the skin of another of the Coda, their blood mixing together on Zannah’s sword just as hers would be taken in turn.
That was the essence of the dance. To take and be taken from. To bleed and be bled. To be one and to be all. To be Coda.
It was easy to lose herself in the dance, in the familiar rhythms of the drumbeat of her heart and the burn of her muscles, but she was not even sweating when she at last came to a halt, falling out of one last somersault into a crouch with one leg bunched under her, the other stretched out to the side. Zannah’s breath was a touch harsher. Her eyes were focused now on the tip of her sword, where it pressed against the throat of an imaginary partner. She could almost feel the tip of the blade pressed in turn against her own throat, could certainly imagine the sense of a drop of blood as it welled up there and traced its way down her collarbone.
This was something that no one who was not Coda could understand. Not the humans, not the pale ghosts that called themselves ‘Coda’, not the others on Khera even. This was theirs, alone. It had always been so. Since the ritual had been taken up, millennia ago, only the Coda had practiced it. Only the Coda had the determination to allow themselves to be bled or the discipline or the skill for it.
She hissed a laugh, whirling her swords through a figure of eight as she rose to her full height once more. It was not a nice sound, closer instead to the sound a sword might make at the sight of blood if it could laugh. And now it was hers, but a Blood Dance alone was worthless. True, it was a means of refreshing her skills. But, as she felt the first of the shadows move into the room with her, there were always more effective methods of maintaining her edge.
”Come, ‘sisters’.” Zannah’s voice was languid, arrogant, utterly self-assured and the first intruder faltered until the contempt that dripped from the Kherubim’s last words cut through the unfamiliar sensation that had filled her limbs. ”Who will be the first to dance with me?”
Zannah, the woman known to those humans who had had the honour of meeting her as Zealot, stood in the semi-darkness, her eyes closed and her breathing even. And yet she was aware. Aware of her surroundings, naturally, but also aware of what was not there. She could not help it. A child of Khera and the true Coda, what she was about to do was as jarring in her thoughts as the notion of mercy or of retreat. And yet she had no choice. For she was the last true sister of the Coda alive on this distant, primitive planet and she had no one to dance with. Her mouth curled disdainfully. Or was she supposed to dance with humans? Or worse, Daemonite filth?
Another breath in. She held it for the requisite beats. And then she released it, opening her eyes simultaneously. Nothing had changed, of course. She was surrounded by empty night, an empty room and an empty house.
Deftly, her long fingers slipped the knot that held her robe together apart and a simple, elegant flex of her shoulders saw the coarse garment shrugged off to drop to heap on the floor, forgotten in the second it left her flesh. The body revealed as it fell could – and had – been used as a model of anatomical perfection. Seemingly carved from cold, flawless marble, the Lady Zannah had a statuesque body that few could equal, whether as a fighter or as a woman. In both senses, she was faultless, from the swell of her curvaceous chest and taut buttocks to the toned, hard musculature of her elegantly long and shapely limbs or her sculpted abdomen. Her white hair, cropped short for now, failed to obscure the features of the woman called the most beautiful of Khera’s children, frigid blue eyes staring at nothingness, set over pursed full lips and beside a patrician nose.
She wasbeautiful. And she knew it, needing no mirror to admire her perfection.
Sheathed in red leather, the warrior-queen turned, selected a blade from where it leant against the wall. It was already unsheathed and she wielded it with the ease of long, long familiarity. The sword spun through the air, a blur in the near-dark until well-trained muscles drew it to a halt at her side. Then she took up its twin.
And then she danced.
This was no dance known to man, of course. This was the Blood Dance, the Coda’s dance, the dance of blood and purity. Zealot’s lean form leapt and spun, twisting through arcs that would be beyond any mere human’s ability to mimic. Her swords described arcs around her, each precisely chosen and faultless in their timing. If this had been Khera, then each cut would have just broken the skin of another of the Coda, their blood mixing together on Zannah’s sword just as hers would be taken in turn.
That was the essence of the dance. To take and be taken from. To bleed and be bled. To be one and to be all. To be Coda.
It was easy to lose herself in the dance, in the familiar rhythms of the drumbeat of her heart and the burn of her muscles, but she was not even sweating when she at last came to a halt, falling out of one last somersault into a crouch with one leg bunched under her, the other stretched out to the side. Zannah’s breath was a touch harsher. Her eyes were focused now on the tip of her sword, where it pressed against the throat of an imaginary partner. She could almost feel the tip of the blade pressed in turn against her own throat, could certainly imagine the sense of a drop of blood as it welled up there and traced its way down her collarbone.
This was something that no one who was not Coda could understand. Not the humans, not the pale ghosts that called themselves ‘Coda’, not the others on Khera even. This was theirs, alone. It had always been so. Since the ritual had been taken up, millennia ago, only the Coda had practiced it. Only the Coda had the determination to allow themselves to be bled or the discipline or the skill for it.
She hissed a laugh, whirling her swords through a figure of eight as she rose to her full height once more. It was not a nice sound, closer instead to the sound a sword might make at the sight of blood if it could laugh. And now it was hers, but a Blood Dance alone was worthless. True, it was a means of refreshing her skills. But, as she felt the first of the shadows move into the room with her, there were always more effective methods of maintaining her edge.
”Come, ‘sisters’.” Zannah’s voice was languid, arrogant, utterly self-assured and the first intruder faltered until the contempt that dripped from the Kherubim’s last words cut through the unfamiliar sensation that had filled her limbs. ”Who will be the first to dance with me?”
subject examined by Doctor Cyber
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Z E A L O T
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