Tsien Chiang

Tsien Chiang, the Darklord of I’Cath, is a brilliant, heartbroken autocrat cursed to endlessly rebuild the dream of a perfect city and family—only to see it crumble night after night. Once a healer and visionary queen, she is now a tyrant of ghostly precision, her domain a haunting warren of ruined ambition and clockwork delusion.

Tsien Chiang rose from devastation. After escaping invaders who razed her childhood home, she survived in the frozen peaks where she studied forgotten arts from a mysterious dragon—learning magic, alchemy, and the secrets of life and death. When she returned, she liberated her homeland with uncanny power and wisdom. She was hailed as a savior, made queen, and seemed destined to bring peace and glory.

But memory is fragile. As the people’s gratitude dimmed and their obedience waned, Chiang’s desire for love and unity turned into obsession and control. She watched her carefully built order collapse—and when she struck the Nightingale Bell, it summoned the Mists and delivered her to I’Cath, a place where her curse would unfold eternally.

Every night in I’Cath, the city’s citizens labor in their sleep to reconstruct her perfect vision—a glorious metropolis of beauty, order, and obedience. But every morning, it collapses again, undone by flaws in design, rebellion, or entropy. Each failure wounds Tsien Chiang deeper, yet she cannot abandon her goal. It is a dream she cannot let go.

• The Nightingale Bell, her magical masterpiece, allows her to reshape I’Cath through dream-magic, issuing commands to the sleeping populace.
• Her four daughters, reanimated after their deaths in a past uprising, live again—but only as twisted echoes of who they were. Chiang pretends they are unchanged.
• Her ministers, including the undead Minister Suen, carry out her will with fanatical devotion, ensuring no voice of dissent rises louder than a whisper.

Nature of the Darklord

• Ambitious Idealist Turned Tyrant: What began as a desire to heal and protect has become a nightmare of authoritarianism.
• Haunted Mother: Chiang’s love for her daughters is genuine, but twisted—she treats their undead forms as living, ignoring their discomfort and suffering.
• Control Obsession: Her curse ensures everything she builds is impermanent, forcing her into an endless cycle of planning, rebuilding, and commanding.
• Divine Will: In her mind, she is not a villain, but a chosen steward of perfection. Anyone who disagrees is misguided or dangerous.

I’Cath is a labyrinth of ever-changing beauty and decay:

• During the day, it is a city of crumbling ruins, half-finished palaces, and exhausted citizens who barely remember what they did the night before.
• At night, through the Nightingale Bell, the city transforms in dreams, becoming an ideal version of itself—but only in illusion.
• The borders of I’Cath are closed by walls and dense, impenetrable Mists, sealing all inside the queen’s unending project.

Tsien Chiang is a visionary queen doomed to remake her broken paradise forever—never realizing that the perfection she demands is what drives her world to ruin.