Ashiya
41 years ago - Ashiya poisons her teacher, stealing her strength as she dies, becoming the new Sorceress Supreme of Skartaris.
18 years ago - Ashiya disguises herself as a young woman searching for her people's lost artifact so that Travis Morgan & Tara will recover the Mask of Life for her. She uses it to bring Deimos to a state of living undeath, intent on manipulating him and absorb his death energy so that she can ascend in power.
16 years ago - Ashiya steals the true Joshua Morgan when Deimos clones him to fight his father Travis Morgan, and gives him to a woodsman's family to raise in a ploy to deprive Deimos of a pawn.
9 years ago - Ashiya senses Jennifer Morgan's magical sensitivity as she is held prisoner by Deimos and begins to train her to become an apprentice, intent on using her against Travis Morgan, unaware that Jennifer is secretly beginning to master her own sorcery.
7 years ago - Ashiya attempts to absorb the death energy of Deimos to ascend in power, but she is stopped and destroyed by Jennifer Morgan, who claims the mantle of Sorceress Supreme, and Castle Deimos, for her own.
Ashiya is a pretty classic fantasy trope; the evil hag disguised as a beautiful sorceress who manipulates both the hero and villain for her own ends. We'd probably want to include her just for that reason, but her role in the world of Skartaris is a pretty huge one, as over time her hand in the story just got bigger and bigger. Of the characters we're including, she has by far the fewest appearances (only seven issues!) but in those few appearances she manages to have a huge, lasting impact in the larger story, so much so that several major plot beats that really define the overall tale of Skartaris simply can't happen without her.
Ashiya's StoryAshiya first appeared as a beautiful, scantily-clad maiden about to be sacrificed by cultists in issue #10. Morgan, of course, doesn't consider the day to have truly started until he saves a scantily-clad maiden from something, and after he rushes in to stop the cultists she presents him and his companions with a classic quest; to ascend the Tower of Fear and reclaim the Mask of Life, an artifact of her people. Once they succeed, give her the mask, and move on, however, it's revealed that Ashiya was in fact a twisted old crone disguised as a beautiful, scantily-clad maiden, and the Mask of Life was actually meant to bring the fallen Deimos back to life!
Later, when Deimos had Morgan's infant son Joshua as a hostage, Ashiya played a major role in the events that take place, secretly stealing the real child after Deimos secretly clones him and hiding him with a woodsman's family, effectively setting in motion perhaps the single longest running plotline in the entire story. Of course, as though those weren't enough, when Deimos again threatened the Morgan family by imprisoning his daughter Jennifer, Ashiya actually tries to trick her by posing as her mother to help her unlock the secrets of the lost Atlantean Technology, but Jennifer manages to outwit her, learning her magic and ultimately killing her, taking her place as the Sorceress Supreme of Skartaris. |
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