Character Backstory: Artoxares

Artoxares was born to a commoner family somewhere in rural areas of Greater Mesopotamia. At birth, he was found to be of great affinity to the Light, and was sought after by the Ahura Mazda clan after he turned 5 years old. His parents sent him to the clan, partly in exchange for financial support, and partly because at that time it was a high honour to have an offsping being trained to become a Magus, especially in the Ahura Mazda clan which have very high social standing.

Since at a young age of 10, Artoxares's Light affinity was peerless, even rivalling the existing Mazda High priests. His strong magical talent and capacity turned him into a very strong Magus at that age. In addition, he was extremely handsome and got in the good books of most the Ahura Mazda priestess. Although the High Priests are jealous of his innate abilities and looks and tried to ostracise him, he was heavily favoured and protected by the incoming Ahura Mazda High Priestess, who was around the age of 20 at that time. The High Priestess candidate doted on him and made him his personal attendant, and gave him access to the innermost knowledge vault of the Ahura Mazda clan. There, Artoxares continues to hone his skills and learn high level magic. Due to his great intellect, he began to understand some of the forbidden secrets and techniques that are normally unrecognizable by the other Priests.

The special relationship between Artoxares and the High Priestess candidate slowly evolve into a one-sided love on Artoxares. Although the High priestess loved him too, due to her training and indoctrination of the clan, she does not see Artoxares as a potential partner, rather a very close brother. However, Atoxares has gotten the wrong signal and tried to pursue this forbidden love.

When Artoxares turned 15, the High priestess candidate turned 25 and became fully mature, and thus took over the position as the High Priestess. Like all Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu Priestess, she was visited by the spirit sage Zarathustra, who brought the Ahura Mazda seeds and impregnate her. When the baby was born, Artoxares was extremely mad to think that the High Priestess rejected his advances to bear a child with another lover. He knows that it is the tradition of the clan, but in his heart he was yearning to change the tradition to pursue his selfish love.

Driven by this jealousy, Artoxares locked himself in the vault of knowledge and collected all the forbidden knowledge. He even sourced some of the forbidden knowledge that were held outside the clan. From there he understood the nature of the vessel of Ahura Mazda, and how the power must be passed from mother to daughter that are all born from virgin births. However, during the long research and keeping himself secluded, his love for the High priestess waned, and jealousy has turned into hatred and desires instead. Artoxares delved into the possibility of seizing the Godly powers to himself, which has no precedent in history.

He has tried all sorts of methods to prevent the gradual transmission of Ahura Mazda's power from the High priestess to her daughter. He had tried to siphon off the power for himself through forbidden techniques, however, the High Priestess's daughter's affinity to the power is too strong that it eventually flows back to her. At one point, Artoxares became intoxicated with crazy ideas: one of them in which he castrated himself, thinking that it now makes him a "woman" that is suitable to be a vessel. In the end it didn't work out as well. He also looked into the possibility of killing the daughter, but eventually learnt that the power will be transmitted elsewhere to another vessel not of the current bloodline. Artoxares eventually knew what must be done: he has to imprison the daughter in a very intricate prison where the Ahura Mazda spirit cannot find her, yet cannot acknowledge that she is dead. Stuck in the limbo, Artoxares can use this confusion to offer himself as a "temporary" vessel for the God.

He began to put his plans to action. To build the magical prison, he has to sacrifice the lives of a few hundred thousand men, and use that as an energy base to activate his magical incantations. For that purpose, he approached Darius, and helped him with his rebellion to overthrow the warring princes. After Darius was installed king, he continued to brainwash and convince him of the greatness of Ahura Mazda and suggest him to form a religion. After King Darius was madly devoted to the religion, Artoxares instructed him to built a giant monument at Mount Behistun that chronicles how Ahura Mazda has chosen Darius to be the King of the Greater Persia empire. Unknown to King Darius, the inscriptions on the Behistun monuments actually contained the forbidden incantation of Artoxares. During the construction of the monument, Artoxares orchestrated a lot of accidents that resulted in the deaths of a hundred thousand workers.

When the Behistun inscription was completed, the High Priestess daughter is now 10 years old. Artoxares hatched a plan and abducted her daughter and imprisoned her daughter in the Behistun Inscription. The High Priestess, learning of her daughter's disappearance, had gone into depression and became very weak. Artoxares kept her by his side and slowly poisons her, planning he death in 5 years when the Ahura Mazda powers fully leaves her body. When the 5 years was up, the High Priestess died and Artoxares gained full control of Ahura Mazda.

Artoxares is still not satisfied with this outcome, and wanted to be the one and only God of the world. He knew that an opposing force equivalent to him was the Ahriman God. Hence, he started to hatch another plan to try to steal the power of Ahriman as well. That led to the final great battle between King Darius Persian army and the Babylon empire supported by the Angra Mainyu clan. His plans partially failed, however, when Houri was transported to the future. However, since Ahriman disappeared from the world for 5000 years, Ahura Mazda is only God left, and thus Artoxares became the sole supreme power.

Artoxares, not satisfied yet, seized the throne by killing King Darius. From then onwards he waged war against Babylon and swallowed the whole empire, uniting it into an empire called Greater Asura. The empire expanded during the thousand year period and Artoxares nearly united the whole world under his command. As long as the High priestess's daughter is kept in stasis in the Behistun Inscription (where 1 year in the stasis is equivalent to 1000 years on normal time), Artoxares's soul is immortal and has lived throughout the century, and he will live for another 4000 years and beyond by changing bodies. This also caused Artoxares to become bored, and as such he left the empire to the rule of someone else. In the shadows, he orchestrated enemies powerful enough to counter the forces of Greater Asura and caused the empire to shrink. And on some occasion he did the reverse, as he watched from afar to his amusement. These types of conflicts, some small and some huge, goes on for 5000 years to entertain Artoxares.

Character Backstory: King Darius

Darius was born to a noble family of Satraps serving King Cyrus the Great. King Cyrus greatly expanded the Persian empire. But after King Cyrus's death, the royal family was in turmoil over succession to the throne, where his sons Cambysses and Bardiya plotted to kill each other.

At that time, Darius was serving as King Cyrus's bodyguard and personal war strategist. On Cyrus's death, Darius watch the warring princes with disgust. Although he planned on supporting one of the princes, subconsciously he wanted to seize the throne, as he felt that he was the closest to King Cyrus and can continue Cyrus's ambitions. Artoxares caught wind of his desires and approached him to encourage him. As Darius spends more time with Artoxares, he was tempted even more and finally made up his mind to carry out his rebellion. With the help of Artoxares's Ahura Mazda forces, Darius killed both princes and usurped the throne.

King Darius then installed Artoxares as the Grand vizier, and put his trust on almost everything includes running of the government. Due to Artoxares previous brainwashing, King Darius began to think that he is the chosen one by Ahura Mazda, and that Ahura Mazda has made him King through divine intervention. He began to dwell deep into religion and ignore all other affairs. The Ahura Mazda clan became a very important part of the government, and now the Persian government is ruled though the clan's doctrines. Citizens are now mandated to adopt Ahura Mazda as their religion.

King Darius became even more arrogant and mad with the spiritual world. Everyday he revels in religious service and rituals and celebrations while ignoring worldly affairs. The ministers and people around him began to distrust him, and even his Queen, a political marriage from the Babylon empire, eloped with one of his ministers. He was enraged and vowed vengeance against the Babylon empire.

Artoxares puts a suggestion that the Babylon empire is actually being controlled behind the shadows by the Angra Mainyu clan, which is a heretic cult that opposes Ahura Mazda. King Darius, with cognitive bias, is now convinced that it is the evil Ahriman which causes all the problems in his empire. Slowly with each day, Artoxares briefed him with all the bad news in his empire and put the blame on Babylon and Ahriman. King Darius was enraged and wanted to declare a holy war against the evil Babylon empire and the Angra Mainyu clan. Alot of his ministers did not agree with the plan and tried to dissuade him, but all were put to death by Artoxares's men.

Soon enough, King Darius declared war. Due to both his fame and the late King Cyrus, he managed to gather alot of vassal kingdoms and smaller clans to his side. Artoxares became the chieft strategist while King Darius now only functions as the puppet King to rally the forces.

The great battle broke and as expected, the Persian forces overpowers the Babylon and Angra Mainyu clan. However, during the heated battle between King Darius and Anna, Artoxares managed to slip in and kill King Darius. As Anna also fell in battle. Artoxares returned to announce that King Darius had been killed by the enemy and proclaimed himself as interim commander of the battlefield. By the time the war is over, Artoxares officially became the next king and changed his name to Artaxerxes.

Character Backstory: Anna

Anna belongs to a long line of Angra Mainyu High Priestess, and a vessel for the Dark God Ahriman. Like all Ahriman vessels, Anna is born from a virgin birth. The spirit sage, Zarathustra, carried the seeds of both Ahriman and Ahura Mazda. He then impregnates Anna's mother, who is the former High Priestess, with the seed of Ahriman to continue the sacred bloodline.

Each high priestess has their own distinctive personality and abilities. For Anna, she was uniquely a fighter-type priestess, a very rare trait among the bloodline. She was born with extremely good physical strength and agility. She is a master of most melee weapons, and specialises in fist fighting. Due to the Angra Mainyu clan consist of mostly scholarly Magi, she has to find training elsewhere. Due to the clan's proximity with the Babylon empire, Anna often train with the Babylon's royal army and their finest generals. She often offer her services in battles by the army of king nebuchadnezzar as a battle magus. Anna's personality is often rash as she charges into battle without care of defense. She maximises her training on power of her strikes without bothering about accuracy.

As a priestess, Anna also possess innate great magical abilities. However due to her style of fighting, she rarely cultivates any advance techniques. Her most used magic are for fortification and buffs for her physical attacks. Due to this combination, Anna is often thought as a one-man army. The sheer power combination as both magus and warrior is the first among the history of both the angra mainyu and ahura mazda clans, making her very formidable and unrivalled among all generations of Priestesses. It is also possible that she has become the most powerful person of that time.

As the vessel of Ahriman, Anna possess the Ahriman avatar ability which is unique for all High Priestess. The special ability of Anna turns out to be able to manipulate time. The use of the avatar ability, however, will eat into her life force. When she was 5 years old, Anna can already stop time at a radius of half meter for 5 seconds. Her powers grew gradually as Anna's mother slowly passes the power of Ahriman to her, which happens until Anna's maturity age. By 15 years old, she is fully mature and become the vessel of Ahriman. By that time, her time manipulation ability grew so gigantic that she could stop the time for legions of army. Her time manipulation ability eventually become the basis for setting up the time-warp portal to transport Houri into the future.

By the time she was 25, the spirit sage Zarathustra visited her again, this time bearing the seeds for the next Ahriman vessel. After impregnation, Anna's mother relinquished her status as High Priestess and passes the position to Anna, and so Anna now commands the whole Angra Mainyu clan. 9 months after that, Houri was born.

The rules and traditions of the Angra Mainyu clan are often passed down from each generation High Priestesses with the help of the spirit sage as well. However, each generation High Priestess is free to follow a different path to suit the situation of that era. Anna place more importance to maintain non-interference with the politics of kingdoms and empires, a policy which started from her grandmother, as she felt the power of the gods are too great and will cause great destruction if used in war. However, the downside is she have to bring the clan to even greater seclusion to minimise their influence on the world, and the side effect is that their presence becomes lost to the greater community. This eventually became the Achilles heel for the clan as not many people knew the Angra Mainyu, they began to fear the unknown.