Vile
"In MY name and MY name alone!" -Vile moments before completing his failed ritual to absorb a God, starting The Great Schism.
Vile Ignis, remembered simply as Vile, is less a name than an ugly scar, a curse carved into both The Hells where he had spawned; And the realm of The Folklands, where our world Gaiatia dwells, and was made his victim. Among Devils, his name is spoken only in mourning or rage. Among mortals, it is shorthand for betrayal itself. He was scholar, general, and sorcerer, each title devoured by the next until none remained but tyrant. Born amid the eternal battlefields of The Hells, Vile refused the destiny of endless war that defined his kin. While others bled for survival, he studied: the old runes, the forgotten pacts, the language of control. He branded his findings into flesh, his own first, creating living sigils that bent soldiers into unity. Where once there were warbands, he forged a legion. Where there was chaos, he made obedience. The branded Devils became his instrument, fighting as one body, dying at one word. In their terror, they called him “The Branded General,” and they were right to fear him, for his command reached past death itself. It was then Xaethra, goddess of greed and war, took notice. She whispered across the fires of the Hells, offering him more than conquest, apotheosis. Vile accepted, but only as long as it served his plan. When she made his legions herClerics and doubled their might, he saw not salvation but an opening. In the chain she laid upon him, he glimpsed a weapon. Thirty years of annihilation called The Fall followed, as we tried and failed to stop him from burning our old world to the ground. Vile’s legions razed kingdoms, ground empires into dust, and turned Gaiatia into a graveyard of banners. His war was method, not madness, each campaign a rehearsal for divinity. At the end, he unveiled his masterwork, The Tiamat, a colossal winged hydra golem forged to house a god. Xaethra, blinded by vanity, entered the vessel willingly. But the trap had already been sprung. Vile slaughtered his legions in one stroke, harvesting their branded souls to bind her as he had bound them. For a heartbeat, it worked, the goddess of hunger was his prisoner. Then she fed. The ritual turned inward, his triumph becoming consumption. Vile’s body burned from within, his soul devoured by the very void he sought to command. Xaethra watched him collapse into cinders and laughter, withdrawing her essence and letting the empty Tiamat fall. It struck Tarmahc like a meteor, breaking the continent and birthing The Great Schism, a scar that never healed. Vile’s empire vanished in ash and echo. His name became profanity, his symbols forbidden. Yet the whispers remain, that he survived the collapse, not as man or devil, but as shadow, a fragment of Xaethra’s own hunger still wearing his voice. Cults of claim to hear him in the dark, a god of ambition without body, still calling for legions in his name. Vile proved the horror of mortal perfection. He conquered Hell, betrayed gods, and broke both of our worlds as he left. His story endures as warning, that knowledge and power without humility becomes contagion, that will unbound by mercy births only ruin. He wanted to master destiny itself, and instead became its definition. Every Devil still bears his mark in the scar of memory, every mortal still walks upon the crater he left behind. To some, he was the first true god of order. To most, he is the reason even gods fear mortals who dream too loud.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Vile maintained a lean, soldier’s frame honed by centuries of war and ritual discipline. His body was whipcord strong, every muscle tempered by both battlefield experience and the sustaining fire of his runes. Though scarred heavily, he bore no limp or frailty until the end of his life, save the one lasting injury gifted him in battle against Valtren White-Flame. Even then, the limp only deepened the menace of his stride, a permanent reminder that he had faced one of the greatest of Gaiatia’s champions and walked away.
Body Features
Tall and imposing at 6’5”, Vile’s skin bore the pale, smoke-scorched hue common among Devils, streaked with ash-grey and faint crimson lines where his rune-scars pulsed faintly with buried power. His hands were calloused like a blacksmith’s yet marked by ritualistic burn patterns, the visible legacy of years spent crafting spells into steel. His horns curled upward in jagged asymmetry, as though even bone had bent to ambition. His tail though is entirely missing, allegedly removed by Vile himself in his early years as he felt the extra limb granted him an 'unfair advantage'.
Facial Features
Vile’s face was angular, severe, and perpetually stern. High cheekbones, a squared jaw, and eyes like molten coals gave him a visage that felt carved from volcanic stone. Deep ritual scars ran across his brow and cheeks, not haphazardly but in precise geometries, his very countenance a battlefield of his own design. He rarely smiled, and when he did it was without warmth, a cruel curl of lips that promised ruin.
Identifying Characteristics
- The living runes burned into his body, still faintly glowing when his will flared.
- His horns, thicker at the base than most Devils’, tipped with obsidian-like crust.
- A permanent limp in his left leg, legacy of his battle against Valtren White-Flame.
- The sword-hand, always wrapped in blackened steel bracers, its flesh half-ravaged from overuse of rune-fire.
Physical quirks
Vile had the unsettling habit of standing death-still for long minutes, save for the faint flicker of his burning eyes. He often traced sigils absentmindedly into the air with his fingers, leaving afterimages of faint smoke that dissipated only after several breaths. His limp made his gait uneven, but he turned it into a rhythm of menace, each step striking like a drumbeat.
Special abilities
- Rune-Mastery: Vile perfected the art of binding runes into flesh and steel, creating soldiers who fought as extensions of his will.
- Spellblade Prowess: He merged martial skill with sorcery, wielding both with equal lethality.
- Soul-Harvesting Rituals: Innovator of mass necromantic vortices, capable of devouring entire armies to fuel his own ascension.
- Tactical Genius: Beyond raw magick, his greatest ability lay in unifying fractured peoples and bending chaos into obedience.
Apparel & Accessories
Vile’s attire was an extension of his ideology, every thread woven to intimidate, command, and endure. He wore armor wrought from brimstone-forged iron, engraved with endless spirals of rune-script that crawled like brands across his frame. His cloak was a mantle of scorched hides, the pelts of beasts slain in the Hells, charred yet preserved as trophies. At his throat he bore a torque of fused fang-rings, each one once belonging to a Devil he had conquered or commanded. To face Vile was to see history itself worn as regalia, every piece of his apparel a record of domination.
Specialized Equipment
- The Branded Halberd: His most recognizable weapon, an unassuming weapon at first glance, yet inscribed with runes that could siphon strength from those it wounded. It was said the blade cut through both flesh and oath, severing loyalties and memories alike.
- The Rune-Brand: A ritualistic brand-iron he carried at his belt, used to sear the loyalty of his soldiers into their very skin. The sight of it alone kept legions in line.
- The Tiamat Construct (Masterwork): Though ultimately his downfall, the colossal hydra-shaped golem he forged remains one of the most terrifying creations in recorded history. It was both weapon and trap, proving his mastery over both artifice and deception.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Vile Ignis was born into the scorched battlefields of the Hells, where Devils waged ceaseless war against one another. From the outset, he refused to be just another soldier in the endless cycle of fire and blood. He sought knowledge as much as survival, studying runes, histories, and infernal rites that most of his kin had forgotten or discarded in favor of the sword. He rose as scholar, warrior, and mage in turn, honing himself until he was a legion unto himself. His true legacy began when he achieved the unthinkable: uniting the Devils under a single banner. Where chaos had ruled for millennia, discipline now marched in lockstep, bound by the living runes he seared into their flesh. They were his soldiers, but also his captives, for he alone could unmake them with a word. Under Xaethra’s influence he turned this legion outward, conquering Gaiatia in the Fall, only to betray both god and kin in his ritual to absorb divinity itself. His failure shattered his people and reshaped both worlds into ruinous shadows of their former glory, making him both legend and curse.
Gender Identity
Among Devils, gender is a matter of form and role, not hierarchy. Vile adopted the masculine identity given to him at branding, but he treated it as another battlefield title, a shape of self worn for clarity and command. His authority was never tied to gender, only to power, discipline, and the obedience he could demand.
Sexuality
Vile’s appetites were infamous, not for their indulgence but for their coldness. Devils often court with fire and passion, but Vile’s relationships were transactional, tactical. He pursued liaisons when they bound loyalty or secured alliances, but love, lust, and sentiment were tools he neither trusted nor valued. To his enemies he was accused of being incapable of affection at all, though some whispered that Xaethra’s seductions were the only time he ever yielded to desire.
Education
Vile was largely self-taught, an anomaly among Devils. While others memorized war chants, he unearthed forgotten histories and mastered the structure of rune-litanies. His education was threefold: the battlefield, where scars taught what books could not; the archives of ruined Devil-fortresses, where he scavenged knowledge thought lost; and finally the whispers of Xaethra herself, who fed him secrets as one sharpens a blade. No Devil had ever learned so broadly, nor dared to blend scholarship, warcraft, and sorcery as he did.
Employment
His “employment” was conquest. First, he rose as a commander of smaller Devil warbands, proving his discipline stronger than feuds. Then as a general, he forged the first true Devil legion, branding his soldiers into unity. In Gaiatia, he became warlord and tyrant, orchestrating campaigns that burned the Folklands to ash. His final role was self-appointed, would-be godslayer, and ultimately god himself.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Vile’s deeds were many, each more infamous than the last:
- Unification of the Devils: Accomplishing what no Devil had before, binding them into a disciplined legion through branded runes.
- Conquest of the Folklands: Leading thirty years of systematic war that broke entire kingdoms.
- The Tiamat Construct: Forging a colossal, rune-wrought vessel that deceived even Xaethra.
- Necromantic Innovation: Perfecting mass soul-harvesting rituals that gave rise to what would become modern necromancy.
Failures & Embarrassments
Yet for every triumph, his greatest deeds became his ruin. His ultimate failure, the ritual that slaughtered his own legion and sought to enslave Xaethra, annihilated his armies, scarred the world, and birthed the Great Schism. To Devils, his name is taboo, a brand of shame. To mortals, it became a synonym for betrayal. His brilliance collapsed into a legacy of disgrace.
Mental Trauma
Though remembered as iron-willed, Vile bore the scars of his own genius. From youth, he despised the endless, purposeless wars of his kin, a disdain that grew into hatred of fate itself. His need for control, of others, of destiny, even of the gods, was both trauma and obsession, born from his revulsion at the chaos of the Hells. In the end, it was this same obsession that devoured him.
Intellectual Characteristics
Vile was defined by ruthless logic and cold calculation. His mind was a crucible of strategy, history, and arcane mastery. He valued discipline above all, believing emotion to be weakness unless weaponized. He thought in centuries rather than days, in nations rather than individuals, and treated even gods as variables to be solved. His intelligence was legendary, but also blinding; he mistook cunning for invincibility.
Morality & Philosophy
Vile’s morality was not absent but inverted. To him, order justified atrocity. Unity was worth slaughter, and betrayal was a tool of progress. He taught that destiny was not to be followed but forged, even if the forging left the world in ruin. His philosophy became law for his legions, obedience without question, conquest without hesitation, remembrance without forgiveness. His one true creed: “In my name and my name alone.”
Taboos
To Devils, Vile is the greatest taboo, his name is not spoken outside of curses or mourning. For him, however, taboos were chains to be broken. He profaned god, kin, and flesh alike in pursuit of dominion. Yet he too held certain prohibitions: waste was blasphemy, cowardice unforgivable. His own hypocrisy, slaughtering his legions while preaching discipline, remains the ultimate violation in Devil memory.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Vile’s life was shaped by a single consuming hunger: control. From the moment he rejected the ceaseless chaos of the Hells, he sought order, not peace, but dominion. He believed the world itself was a forge, and that only those strong enough to hammer it into their shape deserved to rule it. His every conquest, every ritual, every betrayal, was driven by the conviction that he could master destiny itself. Power was never his end; it was merely the tool by which he would become the architect of reality.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Savvies:
- Master strategist, capable of turning fractured warbands into an unstoppable legion.
- Brilliant rune-caster, innovating necromantic and binding magicks never before seen.
- Skilled duelist and spellblade, feared even in single combat.
- Commanding presence, able to bend entire armies through fear, respect, or sheer charisma.
- Utterly blind to humility, incapable of recognizing limits when staring at eternity.
- Poor at diplomacy that required compromise, for Vile, agreement was always submission.
- Incapable of genuine trust, every bond to him was a chain waiting to be snapped.
- Contemptuous of art, faith, or joy unless bent to his designs.
Likes & Dislikes
Likes:
- The sight of drilled ranks obeying as one body.
- The smell of burning steel, scorched flesh, and blood-soaked soil.
- Silence before a ritual, the tension of an entire world holding its breath.
- Broken enemies forced to kneel, their oaths torn from them like marrow from bone.
- Chaos for chaos’ sake, the endless feuds that had once defined Devil-kind.
- Weakness paraded as virtue.
- Wasted potential, whether in an untrained soldier, a misused artifact, or an unclaimed world.
- Gods, whom he viewed not as sacred but as rivals and parasites.
Virtues & Personality perks
Vile was disciplined beyond measure, never faltering in conviction or execution. His vision gave Devils their first and only taste of unity, transforming a doomed race into a force that shook two worlds. He was courageous to the point of fearlessness, standing against armies, mortals, and gods without hesitation. His brilliance as a tactician and innovator left behind legacies of strategy and spellcraft that survive even his name’s disgrace. In another life, stripped of arrogance, these virtues might have made him savior instead of curse.
Vices & Personality flaws
His arrogance devoured him, blinding him to limits that even gods obey. He was addicted to control, to the thrill of bending reality to his will, and could not abide any force, be it fate, faith, or Xaethra herself, standing beyond his grasp. Secretly, he feared chaos more than death, and this fear curdled into obsession. He could not stop, could not relent, could not imagine a world in which he was not the one shaping it. This flaw, more than any foe, ensured his ruin.
Personality Quirks
- Traced runes into the air absentmindedly, smoke curling from his fingers.
- Often paused mid-sentence to let silence hang, a deliberate weapon in command.
- Spoke to his branded blade as though it could answer.
- Limped heavily on his left leg after his battle with Valtren White-Flame, but never masked or concealed it, he made the limp part of his intimidation.
Hygiene
Vile was not vain, but neither was he careless. His armor was scorched and scarred yet always functional, never rusted or unkempt. His runes required precision, and so he kept his body clean, his brands sharply maintained, his weapons free of blemish. To him, filth was weakness, disorder made flesh. Even in war camps he would demand ritual cleansing with ash or fire, a habit that unnerved his soldiers but left him perpetually grim and imposing.
Representation & Legacy
Vile’s symbol, the seared rune-circle of his legion, has long since become a mark of terror. Among Devils, it is taboo to bear or speak of, yet fragments endure in Fang-Rings, hidden tattoos, and forbidden banners. Among mortals, his legacy is whispered through curses, cults, and cautionary tales. To some he is the Devil’s Devil, the nightmare that proved mortals could challenge gods themselves. To others, he is simply the architect of ruin, a warning that brilliance unbound by humility leads only to catastrophe. Even in death, his shadow lingers, his name a scar on language, his fall a scar upon the world.
Social
Reign
Though not a monarch in the traditional sense, Vile’s reign was the thirty years of the Fall, when his word was law across two worlds. His most memorable acts included the unification of the Devil warbands, the systematic burning of the Folklands, and the construction of the Tiamat, his colossal golem. His “reign” lasted from the day he first marched his legions as one body until the moment of his betrayal, when his ritual turned his empire to ash and his people to ruin. It is remembered not for prosperity or stability, but for devastation, discipline, and the scar it left across all of Gaiatia.
Contacts & Relations
- Xaethra, the Wanting Maw - Once his patron, then his intended victim. Their fleeting partnership ended in betrayal that destroyed them both.
- The Legion of Branded Devils - His greatest creation and his greatest sin, an army bound to his will that perished in his ritual.
- Valtren White-Flame - The legendary Mage-Smith who fought Vile during the Fall. Their duel left Vile with a permanent limp, one of the few wounds he never overcame.
- Cultists of the Ash Chain - Secretive cells that still whisper his name in the dark, claiming to hear his voice beyond the veil.
Family Ties
Little is known of Vile’s bloodline. Some Devil clans claim him, but most deny him, preferring to cast his name from their genealogies as curse rather than kin. If he ever sired children, no record remains, whether slain in the purges, hidden under false names, or simply erased by history. His only true “family” was the legion he forged, and he murdered them all in his final act of ambition.
Religious Views
Vile spat upon gods and saw them as rivals, not masters. Though he swore fealty to Xaethra, it was only to test her chains and later turn them against her. To him, gods were resources, not divinities; wells of power to be tapped, deceived, or devoured. In his teachings to the legions, he replaced faith with discipline, prayer with obedience, and sacraments with scars. His philosophy was sacrilege incarnate, gods are prey, and mortals are their hunters if only they dare to try.
Social Aptitude
Vile was a paradox, charismatic yet terrifying, a commander who could inspire absolute loyalty even as his soldiers feared him more than the enemy. His confidence was total, his ego immeasurable. He was extroverted only when it served his dominance; otherwise he preferred silence, letting his presence speak. Etiquette to him was the art of command, not courtesy. His mannerisms made him seem less man than embodiment of discipline, his every gesture deliberate, his pauses calculated to tighten the leash of fear and awe around those who served him.
Mannerisms
- Paused dramatically mid-sentence to let silence weigh heavier than words.
- Walked with a limp after Valtren’s strike but turned it into a symbol of endurance, never concealing it.
- Traced burning runes in the air while speaking, the smoke coiling around his fingers like serpents.
- Kept his head unnervingly still while others moved, his gaze cutting as if searing flesh.
Hobbies & Pets
Vile had no pets, he viewed animals as beneath his attention, unworthy of survival unless they could march in ranks. His “hobby” was war itself, practiced as an art form. He trained relentlessly, not just with blade or spell, but with tactics, drills, and the endless refinement of runic branding. His private indulgence, if it can be called such, was the crafting of weapons too dreadful to use, prototypes of binding rituals and soul-engines that remained locked in vaults even after his death.
Speech
- Tone of voice: Cold, steady, each word spoken with the weight of inevitability.
- Pitch: Deep, resonant, carrying across battlefields like a warhorn.
- Accent/Dialect: Formal Infernic, but sharpened by a scholar’s cadence and a commander’s bark.
- Catch phrases: “Discipline is destiny.” “The flame bends to the brand.”
- Common phrases: “Ash knows its father.” “In my name.”
- Compliments: Rare, and always laced with control: “You have not failed me, yet.”
- Insults: Weaponized, meant to break resolve: “You are smoke, and I am the fire that devours it.”
- Greetings: A nod, rarely words; in Infernic, often simply, “Stand.”
- Farewell: “Remember this.”
- Swearing: Blasphemous invocations of gods, using their names as mockery.
- Metaphors: War as forge, soldiers as steel, destiny as a chain to be broken.
Wealth & Financial state
Vile’s wealth was not coin but conquest. His assets were his branded legions, his rune-forges, and the plundered riches of a dozen kingdoms. He had no debts, he killed those who would have claimed them. His disposable income was irrelevant; when he wanted for something, he took it, and if it did not exist, he commanded it to be made. His greatest investments were in the necromantic technologies and rune-binding practices that died with him, innovations too blasphemous for Devils to continue and too dangerous for mortals to imitate.
Ethnicity
Honorary & Occupational Titles
- The Branded General - For the rune-marks he carved into his own flesh and into every soldier who served beneath him.
- Conqueror of the Hells - The one Devil who broke the endless cycle of war by forcing it into unity.
- Architect of the Fall - For orchestrating the invasion of Gaiatia and shattering kingdoms in fire.
- God-Eater (derisive, posthumous) - Used mockingly by mortals and Devils alike, a reminder of his failed ritual against Xaethra.
Age
361 years old by his death, far greater than a Devils' normal lifespan.
Children
Sex
Male
Eyes
Orange.
Height
6'5"
Weight
200 lbs
Quotes & Catchphrases
- “In MY name and MY name alone!”, uttered in the moment of his great betrayal, now a curse whispered by enemies and cultists alike.
- “Discipline is not mercy; it is the brand upon flesh that makes the weak endure.”
- “Fate is no chain. It is a blade. And I am its wielder.”
- “The god is no master. The god is prey.”
Character Prototype
Vile is Alexander the Great crossed with Lucifer, wearing Sauron’s armor. He is the archetype of the warlord-scholar who mastered every tool of dominion, blade, book, and brand; He would fall in the end because his ambition crossed the path of divinity itself, his mortal body far outstripped by the sheer power of the god he foolishly believed he could betray. Though with how easy his every victory came to him before, perhaps it was not hubris at-all, but the only challenge the monster truly had left.
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