Chlorida - Blossoming in Darkness
Kudos to Genso-X of DA for the picture, commissioned by one of my regular readers, RockLeone145WD.
I've introduced a fair number of side characters the deeper I've gone through The Inconquerable. But no character is as important or, I suspect, well-received than Chlorida.
Chlorida is the daughter of Viasmos, one among many of his children. Despite the high bar that comes with being a child of the greatest warrior in history, she still manages to stand out as one of the most powerful among his progeny. Primarily a practitioner of nature magic, she estimates herself to easily clear into the Top 10, and suspects she'd be in the Top 5 among her many siblings.
But I'm sure if you asked most of my readers, her power isn't what they find compelling. It's her growth.
Chlorida is introduced in the 23rd chapter of Part One, Slave Girls: Gaiden. She is revealed to be an overseer instituted by Viasmos to manage the interdimensional girls. It's a role she's initially reluctant to adopt, but she does as her father asks, out of respect for him. What becomes clear right away is that there's a significant cognitive dissonance in the way she views the girls and their enslavement.
She wasn't entirely unsympathetic towards the plight of the women, but she'd also been raised in an environment where rape and war trophies were normal things, especially among kings and emperors. Her sympathy did not equate with moral outrage, viewing this as simply the way things were.
This makes Chlorida one of the few figures in Tharsis who doesn't relish in their bondage. At the same time, their bondage is normal and expected, so it balances out to what's roughly indifference. I say "roughly", because she does not consider herself above helping the girls where she is able. Despite her ruthless professionalism contributing to her cold reputation, the girls in her care are generally fond of her, as the closest thing to an ally they have outside each other.
For a while, this was what she was. A not quite good, not quite bad character who wasn't completely without sympathy for the enslaved girls, but was ultimately a cog in the machine. She was seen being stern, inexpressive, and maintaining a professional distance from the slaves.
Where this changed was in the 34th chapter of Part One, Chlorida: Gaiden. As you can guess from the title, the chapter focuses exclusively on Chlorida and her day-to-day life as the slave girls' overseer. We see her not so much in the technical side of her role, but the emotional tenor of a woman who keeps her most intrusive feelings repressed, because that's just the custom of the culture she was raised in. She fights the growing sense of attachment she feels towards the girls in her care, but she also can't deny those feelings outright as they get increasingly stressed over the course of the chapter.
It was the great paradox of the nigh-global empire Viasmos had created. War had essentially ceased to exist for a people who had evolved for it. They lived for war, yet their lives had no war. A woman like Chlorida belonged on some great battlefield somewhere. Yet, by the time she was born, all the great challengers had already fallen. The recent war with Cydonia was the first in nearly a century, and it had been over in a flash. Power was everything in Tharsis, and yet, Chlorida couldn't help but feel like it was merely decoration for her.
But Viasmos, he could fight who he wanted, rape who he wanted, kill who he wanted. Everything that happened in this world happened on his whim. He was the only one who got to actually feel powerful.
What Chlorida shows - though it's ambiguous whether or not she's internalized this yet - is that she does feel fulfilled. Not through war, but as a caretaker. The thing that satisfies her isn't exercising her power arbitrarily, but using it with purpose.
The thing about Chlorida is that she's not a rebel. She operates within the system, providing institutional reforms for the slaves' benefit when she can. Yet, she fundamentally abides by Tharsian principles of power, and the associated "Might makes right" philosophy that results. Thus, she's caught in a middle ground where she can't side with the slave girls too completely, but she also can't emotionally abandon them.
But what this chapter did was provide her with a necessary first step to potentially breaking beyond the chains of her society. Since then, she's become increasingly willing to speak openly and honestly with the slaves, and does a worse job of hiding the care she feels for their well-being. Where will she end up when it's all said and done? Nobody can say. But I think this is the reason Chlorida has been such a popular OC of mine - that she's the only one who's shown a capacity for growing outside the expectations of the culture that raised her.
That feels like an appropriate place to end it, but I won't just yet. Here are some more tidbits of information about Chlorida.
For one, besides being one of the strongest characters in the series, she's also extraordinarily cunning. Despite her father's own considerable intelligence and perceptive talents, she was successfully able to hide the fact that she was married for nearly two decades before she just outright told him.
Her affinity for nature magic comes from her mother's side. That half of her blood hails from the Amazonis Commune, who were effectively the equivalent of eco-terrorists in their world before being destroyed by Tharsis. Nature magic is generally looked down on by warriors, as it's primarily used by farmers and the like for food production. However, it's also incredibly versatile, and perfectly capable of being molded with an emphasis on combat.
Despite her long-standing image as a cold woman, she is generally caring towards her siblings. Even if she doesn't get along with all of them, she still maintains a feeling of familial responsibility. The exception to this is the second-eldest son, Aktinovo, whom she absolutely despises and will probably have his own page written about him someday. She has one older sister she's especially close with, though she hasn't been seen in the series yet at the time of this writing.
Oh yes, and of course, she just recently had a child of her own. Her infant daughter, Stelle, who we can expect to see grow alongside another recently-birthed child as the series continues.
There's more I could say, but I think that'll do it for now.