From the moment Cliff first came into being, his immunity to cold made him an instant oddity—and a target—in Glacia’s realm. He tried to fit in among the other ice elementals, believing they’d share an unbreakable bond with the Icy Maidan. Yet almost immediately, whispers spread that Glacia loathed his very nature, regarding it as a direct mockery of her icy love. Cliff, oblivious, devoted himself to her with unwavering zeal, hoping his sincere acts of service might reveal her hidden affection. Deep down, he even dreamt of winning her heart, picturing candlelit nights (if they used candles) by a frost-laden lake where they could watch the stars glimmer on the frozen surface. In his mind, these romantic visions spurred him to undertake every dangerous task without complaint. He never fathomed Glacia was sending him to certain doom, yearning for a mishap big enough to end his “insult of an existence.”
His first major trial came in the form of a daunting fortress bristling with frost wraiths, an obvious death trap for any ice elemental. Cliff, however, stumbled into the fortress’s main hall while a group of bandits was feasting, and they mistook him for some terrifying champion of Glacia. Panic swept the room, and in the ensuing chaos, they triggered hidden wards that unleashed the very wraiths meant for Cliff. By the time the wraiths finished devouring the bandits, Cliff had already wandered on, oblivious to the spectacle behind him. He recovered an ancient relic as an afterthought, believing Glacia’s brilliance had engineered a perfect “test.” He returned triumphant—his heart soaring with confidence that each success brought him closer to her cold yet beautiful heart.
Despite her frosty silence, Cliff mistook Glacia’s aloofness as a regal mien, interpreting the lack of praise as her desire for him to try harder. Eager to impress, he wore his loyalty on his sleeve in spectacular ways—like attempting to carve enormous ice sculptures of her likeness. One day, she assigned him to track down a rumored champion of fire who was apparently coldproof as well, hoping the fiery adversary would obliterate him. Cliff marched off, determined to prevail in her name. In a twist of comedic fate, he accidentally challenged a much weaker knight who yielded on the spot. The true target met a different demise, leaving Cliff to believe he’d performed yet another heroic feat for Glacia’s admiration.
Meanwhile, Cliff had begun confiding in fellow elementals and mortal pilgrims that he held a genuine wish to court Glacia. He boasted romantic notions: a quiet lakeside vigil under moonlight, sitting still as glaciers, hand in hand, with snow drifting around them in perfect harmony. To everyone else, this concept was laughably far-fetched, especially given how public Glacia’s contempt for his immunity was. Yet Cliff answered every naysayer with an almost childlike conviction: “I’ll earn her favor by fulfilling her every request, no matter how perilous.” Many tried warning him that each assignment was a subtle attempt on his life, but he only shook his head, certain that the tasks were “sacred opportunities” to prove his devotion. It baffled onlookers that he remained cheerful, forging ahead as though her love was just one more impossible quest away.
Determined to see him finished, Glacia orchestrated missions of increasing lethality. When she learned of an entire underground labyrinth filled with venomous beasts immune to ice, she sent Cliff in unaccompanied. The labyrinth turned into a tragic comedy the moment he mistook a deadly lever for a secret door switch. Instead of unlocking new areas, it released a flood of toxic sludge that wiped out the labyrinth’s guardians. Cliff emerged with rare treasures, clinging to the delusion that every twist was part of Glacia’s grand plan to sharpen his skills. Upon returning, he placed the offering at her temple steps, timidly asking if she “might one day let him escort her through a moonlit frost garden.”
The more he professed his romantic aspirations, the more frustrated Glacia grew, especially when even mortals began rooting for his improbable success. Certain villagers warmed to his naive devotion, likening his perseverance to that of a lover’s vow. They’d serenade him with jestful songs about a coldhearted deity and her ever-loyal suitor who can’t seem to die. This only fueled Glacia’s disgust—immunity to her cold was bad enough, but becoming a folk hero for his unstoppable ardor felt insupportable. She began dispatching priests to shadow him, ensuring they could push him into even darker corners. Still, fortune favored Cliff: while tiptoeing on a precarious icy ledge or facing monstrous foes, he’d trip at just the right moment to unleash a collapse that buried his enemies.
In a particularly extreme ploy, Glacia urged him to infiltrate a camp of savage mercenaries armed with specialized anti-ice weaponry. She fully expected him to be riddled with enchanted bolts. Cliff, clueless, approached them openly, proclaiming he came on Glacia’s orders. Taken aback by his directness, the mercenaries fired a volley of bolts—but their own misfired contraptions malfunctioned, exploding in their faces. End result: the mercenaries retreated in confusion, believing they were under siege by a powerful ice army. Cliff thanked them politely for “their swift surrender,” then brought their hoarded relics back to Glacia’s temple, concluding yet another improbable triumph. He even whispered to her statue that he longed to “share a quiet evening watching northern lights together,” never noticing her silent, seething contempt.
Over centuries, these comedic escapades became legendary, and Cliff’s earnest wish to woo Glacia turned into one of Tilith’s strangest sagas. Some called him the “Ice-Smitten Fool,” others admired his unwavering optimism. Among her worshipers, there was a bizarre split: a few found his devout innocence heartwarming, while most recognized her open desire to destroy him and pitied his fate. Nevertheless, Cliff’s unstoppable luck in outsmarting or out-surviving every threat lent him a certain mythical status. Meanwhile, each “victory” only solidified his belief that Glacia was testing him to see if he was worthy of standing by her side. The notion that she might despise him for his immunity simply never penetrated his cheerful resolve.
One day, Cliff voiced his ultimate desire: to present her with a ring forged from the essence of a glacier’s heart, symbolizing his eternal pledge. Hearing this, the temple acolytes nearly lost their composure, anticipating a volcanic meltdown of Glacia’s patience. Undeterred, Cliff ventured to gather the required shards from a hidden ice cave haunted by mind-twisting specters. Yet in typical fashion, the specters turned on each other when he clumsily scattered a relic that distorted illusions, enabling him to collect the shards without swinging a blade. Ecstatic, he marched back with the ring’s ingredients in tow. Glacia, upon hearing he intended to propose a hand in “polar matrimony,” unleashed a bitter gale so intense it rattled the temple walls, though Cliff just took it as a sign of her majestic power.
By now, everyone who wasn’t Cliff realized that Glacia’s cordial facade was spent. She tirelessly upped the danger level: commanding him to vanquish monstrous demons in sweltering deserts or sabotage entire armies led by pyrokinetic warlords. Each time, Cliff bumbled into an outcome that left him triumphant yet thoroughly unaware of how narrowly he evaded certain doom. Where fiery barriers should have incinerated him, bizarre coincidences interfered—like an attacking warlord spontaneously dueling someone else stronger, or sabotage traps turning on the original conspirators. Observers declared that if Glacia truly wanted a final blow, she’d have to conjure cosmic forces. Yet even then, Cliff might greet the cosmic threat with a naive grin, triggering some new comedic chain reaction of defeat for the foe.
Cliff’s devotion remained steadfast, and with it grew his determination to “win her heart” by enduring any torment she saw fit. Shouldering battered armor and chipped icicle blades, he set off for each insane trial, fueled by an unshakable fantasy: one day, he and Glacia, hand in hand, gazing at the stars reflected in a still, frozen lake. All her other worshipers repeatedly attempted to dissuade him, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. For Cliff, these life-threatening missions were steps on a stairway of romance, each success proving his worthiness. The incongruity of it all—her absolute rejection and his blind optimism—formed a tale so surreal that traveling bards composed songs about the unstoppable lover of frost. Glacia’s priestesses dreaded the mention of Cliff’s “courtship,” bracing for her wrath whenever his name surfaced.
Thus, the saga endures, year after year, an unbroken chain of comedic misfortunes that ironically yield victory and deepen Cliff’s smitten illusions. Glacia, in her frost-laden palace, remains half-enraged, half-reeling in disbelief that no cunning trap has ended him. Each day she sculpts new trials, each more torturous than the last, hoping in vain to see him perish. Yet fate or cosmic humor ensures Cliff always returns, offering up his spoils and proclaiming with heartfelt sincerity that all he does is for the day they can “finally sit in silence on the ice, hearts joined in the hush of eternal winter.” She stands silent, glacial glare betraying her disgust at his immunity—and perhaps, beneath it all, a reluctant acknowledgment of his relentless devotion. Despite every reason to fail, Cliff remains the single greatest testament to the unpredictability of love, luck, and loyalty in Tilith, an eternal suitor hopelessly bound to a deity who just wants him gone.
Loyal Servant (Vital)
Towards Glacia, The Icy Maidan
Deity (Vital)
Towards Cliff the Frostcured
History
Cliff’s journey with Glacia fits into a broader pattern: she despises all ice elementals for their innate cold immunity, enlisting them only as expendable troops when it suits her. Yet from the start, Cliff has stood out simply because no matter how many lethal missions she throws at him, he returns in one piece, proclaiming unwavering devotion. Unlike other ice elementals who either perish early or become embittered by her scorn, Cliff remains blind to it, perceiving her attempts to cull him as grand opportunities to prove his admiration. Over centuries, this odd cycle has turned him into the lone ice elemental who consistently survives—and still worships her—while she grows more vexed with every success. The rest of her frozen soldiers see Cliff’s endless “luck” as simultaneously baffling and inspiring; some think he’s blessed, others see him as too naive to realize the peril. In effect, their history is a running tragedy-comedy: Glacia keeps upping the ante, and Cliff keeps bounding back, convinced each victory is a step closer to the heart of the deity who loathes his kind.
Nicknames & Petnames
For Cliff, Glacia is still “the Polar Empress,” “Moonlit Icebloom,” or any number of starry-eyed epithets he invents to show his devotion. He extends these affectionate titles to her in daily prayer or whenever he regales other elementals with tales of his “romantic mission.” Meanwhile, she categorizes him as yet another “frost drone”—her disparaging label for ice elementals—though he’s become the “stubborn one” who actually keeps coming back. Sometimes, in her more frustrated moments, she reportedly snarls something like “the unending nuisance.” Among his fellow soldiers, Cliff has picked up names like “Lucky Icicle” or “the Undying Flake,” half-mocking, half-impressed. Although none of these are official, they circulate in whispered jokes across Glacia’s domain. Thus, in a realm where all ice elementals garner general disdain, Cliff alone has acquired a mishmash of cutesy titles, while Glacia’s naming for him remains firmly rooted in exasperation.
Relationship Reasoning
Glacia’s logic is straightforward: she hates all ice elementals because their immunity undermines her dominion. She employs them as cheap, disposable shock troops, expecting them to die on her errands. Cliff, on the other hand, believes their “shared nature” makes him the perfect vassal to deepen her wintery rule. Far from noticing her universal contempt, he sees her lethal assignments as personal trials to prove himself a worthy, devoted champion—especially since he’s survived where countless others haven’t. The result is a complete mismatch of expectations: she wants them gone and harnesses them for war efforts, while he clings to fantasies of forging a special bond with his liege. To him, each mission is a blossoming chapter in their “romance”; to her, it’s another tactic to eliminate a facet of her domain that she abhors. Their strained connection persists because his improbable successes keep overshadowing her attempts to rid herself of the immunity she can’t stand.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
Despite the acrimony, they share a surface-level attachment to arctic beauty. Both appreciate the haunting elegance of glaciers, the hush of falling snow, and the glassy sheen of a frozen lake. For Glacia, such sights represent her ultimate expression of unyielding winter, while Cliff finds them serenely romantic—envisioning strolls under an aurora or hand-in-hand vigil by an ice-crusted shore. They also have a functional alignment in that they each want to sustain a world shaped by frost, albeit for vastly different motivations. Cliff’s starry-eyed devotion to “protecting the realm of ice” happens to overlap with her intention to expand it, so from an outside view, they appear united in defending subzero domains. Where they truly diverge is that she’s building an empire of frost where no ice elemental should remain alive for long, whereas Cliff sees that same empire as a cradle of potential love. The only real shared “interest” is that each mission, ironically, fortifies Glacia’s domain—and keeps Cliff enthralled.
Shared Secrets
One unspoken truth is that Glacia’s hatred applies equally to all ice elementals, yet Cliff insists he is uniquely chosen for “higher tasks,” never grasping that she simply lumps him in with the rest. Another hidden layer is the bizarre phenomenon of his extraordinary survival: while other ice soldiers die in droves, he somehow springs back, fueling rumors of cosmic irony. Cliff also clings to the fantasy that their relationship is privately blossoming: he secretly polishes a plan to propose an eternal vow, imagining she only feigns coldness to maintain mystique. Meanwhile, Glacia veils her most intricate assassination plots in layers of official “orders,” trusting that he’ll meet his doom before suspecting her intentions. The greatest secret shared between them is how each fiasco continuously ties them together; he sees it as destiny, she views it as an embarrassing failure of her domain’s unstoppable chill. No one openly states it, but both deity and minion remain locked in a cyclical hush—he keeps rising, she keeps conspiring, and neither can openly admit how thoroughly they feed each other’s legend.
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