Salice Trivia: The Devil
So in most scenarios, Salice leaves behind her past as a descendant of the Elsma bloodline and chooses love over the Devil's influence.
Warning: Devil Worship, lots and lots of blood
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(I'll add a cut later)
But there is a universe in which she doesn't pursue love and all of her trauma leads her down the "dark path". From losing her family, to living in servitude, to being assaulted, to losing her adoptive father, to losing Asra... she doesnt quite see any other purpose for herself, and is driven to uncover the truth about herself and fully take back the only power she's ever had:
Being the Grand Communicator of the Elsmaic Followers.
So upon losing her adoptive father, she drives herself insane, trying to find out things about herself and her old religion from books, museums, ancient writings, etc.
Between this and the Devil coming to her in her dreams, she attempts to complete the ritual of becoming Grand Communicator by drinking her own blood, The Blood of Life, and pledging herself back to him. Like a Baptism. Asra ends up stopping her, and she cannot forgive him.
She has grown resentment toward Asra and the two fall away from each other. She gives him her shop, which her father Dabney had left for her. She leaves the city and spends a few years in a small village near Nopal. She works as a surgeon there, slowly developing her Devil Magic. She falls back into loose Elsmaic practice.
Here in this village, she's reunited with her childhood friend Shuhei Kumagai, who had been living as a wanderer.
In this universe, he had graduated Ishikawa and had turned his back on his father. He blamed him for everything, including the discrimination he and his siblings faced as children, his mother's loss of identity, and ultimately Shuhei blames him for the years he spent at that awful school. He wouldn't have had to do everything he did to protect his family if his father had just agreed to move away like his mother had asked. Instead, they stayed in Kyoh and struggled. So Shuhei offers to take his mother and his two younger siblings with him to Orasas, but Naolunu and her two children are hesitant. It is Katsu (the older of the two twins) that chooses to accompany their brother out of the country, and follow him to Nopal. Shuhei also has a lot of grief in his heart toward his best friend and ex lover, Yumi Ishizaki. Yumi had refused to run away with Shuhei, telling him that Shuhei was destined for greater things than him. There was no anger or bitterness, only loss and longing. It was a sad and painful goodbye, but the two had agreed should they ever meet again, all would be right. "Together always, no matter what."
Upon meeting, Shuhei and Salice bond and become close again. They decide to return to Orasas and reclaim what was rightfully Salice's.
Upon arriving in Orasas, Salice has a confrontation with the King and Queen. She finds out her sister had passed away. Her last dying wish was that Salice would know that her sister never stopped looking for her. Salice blames the King and Queen for the genocide in which her people endured. It was their legion that had been corrupted, and they were powerless to stop them. In her time here, she also becomes aware if the few Old Way Followers, the blasphemous traitors responsible for her family's death, were still alive in the dungeons of the Orasan palace.
Driven by rage and revenge, Salice kills them. She lets their blood on the stakes outside her family's home, where her parents fell victim to the same fate. This is symbolic, and she shows the people of Orasas that crimes will not go unpunished.
Crimes against her will not go without consequence.
After this act of treachery, the King and Queen no longer welcome Salice and threaten to banish her. She and Shuhei decide that no such banishment will take place, and that they instead had the choice to comply with her rule, or be publicly killed. Salice's magic had already proved more powerful than anything they had ever seen. There is no possible way they could stand against her.
So the King is slain in a public execution, and the Queen, after succumbing to Salice's proposition, is absorbed into Salice and Shuhei's court.
The first act of Queen of Orasas was to finally become Grand Communicator once and for all. Shuhei and Sasana, an old medicine woman that used to care for the queen, help Salice with the preparations. She drinks the Blood of Life and has her first Communion with the Devil.
In the years following her Communion, Salice, now going by Lakshmi once more, gathers subjects and followers and begins to teach her Word.
Her and the Devil have a complicated relationship. Although she's pledged herself to him, she does resent him. He allowed the Old Way Followers to overthrow and kill her family. For that she never forgives him.
Shuhei extends once more for his family to join him and Katsu in Orasas. This time they accept, and leave Kyoh once and for all.
Shuhei and Lakshmi are the closest of friends, but engage in a loose physical relationship for a time. It was founded in grief and anger, but did not hinder their friendship. They made a vow however that if she were to ever decide to continue her line, he would provide her with an heir if no other suitor would fit. They agreed on this, leaving their physical relationship behind.
As Lakshmi gets used to ruling her Order, she begins to be visited by her ancestors in dreams and visions. Through these visions, she is granted the knowledge and opportunity to finally do what she has been wanting:
Replace the Devil as a Major Arcana.
The actions of Thomas and Isabella Zieragh will determine if she ever goes through with her plans.
Becoming the Devil
There is a way. With every generation of Elsma descendants the Devil is weakened as he gives them his power through blood. The Elsma bloodline never sought to overthrow the Devil. There had never been a reason to do so and they had been thoroughly kept in the dark about the process. Lakshmi has every reason to overthrow the Devil, after everything she had experienced. She no longer owed allegiance to him.
So Lakshmi uncovers hidden texts and writings in the catacombs of her temple, telling her the way to replace the Devil as a Major Arcana. After years of secret preparations, she gathers all of her ancestors from Harborage, reanimating them in the bodies of her willing followers. She bathes in their blood and absorbs all of the power that had been lost to death.
In a final battle with the Devil, Lakshmi realizes that she had achieved what her father had been afraid of. She had lost the good in her heart. Too fargone to turn back, Lakshmi absorbs the Devil into the being of herself and the ancestors behind her and becomes the new Major Arcana:
The Devil