Xeres / Characters / Elpis Basajuan
Elpis Basajuan
An emperor who came back from death, and then chose to begin again.
Basic Information
Full Name
Elpis Basajuan
Nickname
The Dragon Emperor
Race (Grade)
Gold Dragon (?)
Class
Arcane Sovereign
Height
6'3" (in human visage)
Birthday
Sunspeak 20, 0
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Elpis Basajuan, The Dragon Emperor
Appearance
In his human visage, Elpis presents as a tall, imposing man standing at 6'3" with bronze skin that seems to glow with inner warmth. His features are chiseled and noble, the kind of face that commands attention without demanding it. Long, flowing black hair falls past his shoulders, often tied back with golden clasps during official functions but left free in more private moments. His brown eyes hold depths that speak of centuries of accumulated wisdom and carefully controlled emotion, seeming to weigh and measure everyone they fall upon. He favors elegant but practical clothing in deep blacks and rich burgundies, always accented with gold trim that complements his draconic nature. Even in his human form, there is something indefinably regal about his bearing, a presence that fills rooms and demands respect without a word being spoken.
Unique Characteristics
Despite the perfection of his visage magic, subtle hints of Elpis's true nature occasionally manifest. His bronze skin gives off a golden twinkle when struck by direct sunlight, as if tiny flecks of precious metal were embedded beneath the surface. His eyes, usually a warm brown, flash with reptilian pupils when his emotions run high, particularly during moments of anger or deep concern. He moves with a grace that seems almost unnatural for someone of his apparent age and station, the fluid movements of a predator disguised as a statesman. His voice carries a subtle resonance, as if each word echoes from depths greater than any human throat could possess. Those who know him well learn to read these subtle tells, understanding that the more controlled his appearance becomes, the more turbulent his true feelings.
Personality
Positive Traits
- Exceptionally wise from thirteen centuries of experience
- Deeply committed to protecting the innocent
- Methodical and strategic in long-term planning
- Patient beyond mortal comprehension
- Dedicated to preserving knowledge and learning
- Capable of seeing beyond immediate concerns
Challenging Traits
- Carries crushing weight of past failures
- Maintains emotional distance to protect himself
- Struggles to delegate important responsibilities
- Haunted by centuries of grief and loss
- Sometimes values order over individual freedom
- Difficulty balancing personal desires with duty
A thousand years is but a moment to a dragon, yet a single moment can change a thousand years.
I have lived long enough to see empires rise from nothing and crumble to dust. The question is never whether something will end, but whether it will matter that it existed.
History taught me that the greatest threats are never the ones you can see on the battlefield, but the ones that work in shadows while you're distracted by the obvious.
Likes
- Watching sunsets from mountain peaks
- Reading ancient texts and preserving knowledge
- Moments of order emerging from chaos
- Protecting those unable to protect themselves
- Collecting maps from different historical eras
Dislikes
- Chaos and senseless destruction
- Betrayal in any form
- Wasted potential and squandered opportunities
- Having to hide his true draconic nature
- Incomplete intelligence reports
Background & History
The First War and Legendary Love
Over a millennium ago, during what would later be called the First Chromatic War, Elpis Basajuan stood as one of the mightiest opponents to the Council's tyranny. In those days, he fought openly in his true form, a gold dragon whose very presence inspired hope in allies and terror in enemies. It was during this conflict that he met Arties, a drow noble whose courage and conviction matched his own. Their love became legendary among their allies, a symbol of unity between different peoples and proof that the bonds they forged could transcend racial boundaries. Their union produced a daughter, Eden, who represented everything they fought for: a future where different races could coexist in peace, where the strong protected the weak rather than exploiting them. For a time, it seemed their cause might actually prevail against the overwhelming might of the Chromatic Council.
Betrayal and the Long Search
The turning point came when Elpis left to seek additional allies for their cause, a journey that would take him to distant lands and consume precious months. During his absence, betrayal shattered their coalition from within. When he returned, wings beating frantically across familiar skies, he found only ruins and scattered survivors who could offer nothing but conflicting accounts of the disaster. The details were fragmented and contradictory, but the result was undeniable: everything he loved had seemingly been destroyed. For a hundred years, Elpis searched every corner of Xeres Prime with obsessive determination. He followed the faintest whispers of survivors, investigated every rumor no matter how unlikely, and refused to accept what the evidence increasingly suggested. But after a century of fruitless searching, even his draconic stubbornness had to acknowledge the truth: Arties, Eden, and all he held dear were gone, consumed by the very war he had left to support.
Three Centuries of Isolation
The grief that followed was profound enough to reshape mountains. Elpis retreated to the highest peaks of the Dragon's Eye Mountains, seeking solitude in places where no mortal could follow. For three hundred years, he dwelt in isolation, his sorrow manifesting as fierce storms that locals attributed to angry mountain spirits. During these long centuries, he filled the emptiness with study, diving deep into magical theory and draconic lore. He created vast libraries in hidden caverns, documenting everything he had learned and seen, as if by preserving knowledge he could somehow give meaning to his loss. The isolation transformed him, tempering his grief into something harder and more purposeful. He emerged from those mountains not healed, but changed, with a new understanding of both magic and himself. The dragon who descended from those peaks was no longer the passionate warrior who had ascended them, but something more calculated, more patient, and infinitely more dangerous to those who would threaten peace.
Building an Empire in Secret
After emerging from isolation, Elpis began a project that would consume the next seven centuries: the methodical construction of a power base that could prevent another catastrophic war. He traveled in various guises, using his mastery of visage magic to move undetected through human society. He established trading networks under different identities, founded schools of magic under assumed names, and carefully placed loyal individuals in positions of influence across Xeres Prime. He accumulated wealth not for its own sake but as a tool for building infrastructure and influence. He documented everything, learning from his past failures and ensuring that this time, his foundation would be too deep and too broadly distributed to be destroyed by a single betrayal. His methods were patient beyond mortal comprehension, playing a game measured in centuries while those around him thought in terms of years. By the time he began to reveal himself as a contender for leadership, the groundwork had already been laid so thoroughly that his rise seemed inevitable.
The Emperor and Shocking Reunion
Elpis's coronation as Emperor came not through conquest but through demonstrated necessity. When crises emerged, he was there with solutions. When threats manifested, he had already positioned defenses. His wisdom and power became so essential to the realm's stability that formalizing his leadership was simply acknowledging reality. As Emperor, he worked tirelessly to unify Xeres Prime, establishing systems of mutual defense, creating teleportation networks between major cities, and developing magical early warning systems. His reign was characterized by strength tempered with justice, and many considered it a golden age of peace and prosperity. Then came the discovery that shook him to his core: Arties lived. She had been preserved through cruel magic in a mining prison, enduring centuries of suffering while he believed her dead. Their reunion brought both joy and complexity, reopening wounds he thought had scarred over. The birth of their second daughter, Elodie, gave him hope he thought lost forever, but also reminded him of everything he had missed, all the centuries stolen by fate and cruelty.
The Final Siege and Assassination
By 1303, Elpis faced threats on multiple fronts. The Drow armies pushed up from below with increasing boldness. Undead hordes gathered in the shadows, their numbers swelling with each passing month. Most concerning, the Chromatic Council had re-emerged, their methods more insidious than the open warfare of the past. Elpis coordinated defenses across the entire realm, his centuries of preparation being tested against enemies who had learned from previous defeats. Then came Goldenleaf 1303, and with it the coordinated assassination attempt that targeted every leader of the Southern Coalition simultaneously. While other leaders faced single assassins, Elpis was deemed dangerous enough to warrant an entire squad of elite warriors. Additionally, a secondary team infiltrated the engine room of his special floatilla, the flying fortress from which he commanded. Despite his power and the strength of his guards, the two-pronged assault overwhelmed his defenses. The explosion that followed lit the sky with fiery orange and red visible for a hundred miles, marking the end of an emperor whose reign had promised so much. The ancient dragon who had survived a millennium of war fell not in glorious battle but to calculated treachery, history repeating the pattern he had spent centuries trying to prevent.
Reclaiming the Throne
Whatever happened in the aftermath of Goldenleaf 1303, Elpis Basajuan is back. He arrived at Arties' mansion without warning, alive and unmistakably himself, and made his intentions plain: he has returned to Xeres, and he wants his seat as Emperor back. The world believed him dead, the throne he built sits without its rightful occupant, and his enemies have had time to entrench themselves in his absence. None of that appears to concern him. If anything, the composed certainty with which he announced his return suggests this is not the beginning of a plan... it is the continuation of one.
The Draconic Creep
What Elpis never announced, to his court or to his enemies, was that he was already dying. Several years earlier he had contracted the Draconic Creep, a black, tar-like vine that latches onto a dragon's skin and slowly begins to eat away at their soul, tightening its grip as it goes. It also locks its host in place: a dragon carrying the Creep cannot transform at all, from visage to dragon or from dragon to visage. Elpis, who had spent more than a thousand years moving freely between his two shapes, found himself trapped in one of them. He fought it the way he fought everything, patiently, methodically, and for far longer than almost anyone else could have, carrying the pain for several years behind the same composed expression he showed the rest of the world.
What He Was Working Toward
Until the very end, Elpis was working toward the same handful of things that had driven him for centuries. Above all, he meant to make sure the betrayal that shattered the First Coalition could never happen again; his teleportation circles, magical early warning systems, and hidden agents were all built to stop exactly that kind of coordinated surprise attack, with redundancies built into the redundancies. He believed lasting peace only came through overwhelming strength, and he wanted the Southern Coalition to be so powerful that attacking it would be obvious suicide: a realm where the Drow could live beside humans without fear, and where his daughters could grow up in a world that valued unity over division. He wanted knowledge to outlive the fall of any single civilization, and he spent thirteen centuries founding schools, funding the copying of ancient texts, and hiding archives known only to his most trusted agents.
And, most privately of all, he wanted to be present for Elodie's childhood in a way he never got to be for Eden's, to give Arties the peaceful life she deserved after centuries of suffering, and one day to step down from it all and simply watch sunsets with his family.
And, most privately of all, he wanted to be present for Elodie's childhood in a way he never got to be for Eden's, to give Arties the peaceful life she deserved after centuries of suffering, and one day to step down from it all and simply watch sunsets with his family.
The Rite of Ascension
By the middle of 1306, the pain had become too much, and the Creep was close to ending his life. With Arties's help, Elpis went through the Rite of Ascension. The Rite restores the one who undertakes it to perfect health and opens a portal that they must walk through, a portal that leads to Nexora. What waits on the other side is a clean beginning in the fullest sense: the ascender's memory is wiped, and they start over, cultivating from the very beginning again. Whoever Elpis becomes on Nexora will not remember Xeres, his empire, or the family he left behind.
Before he stepped through, he handed Arties his will. It left his house, the villa he built in Goodberry, and his remaining fortune to his daughter Eden, along with a smaller box set aside for his other daughter, Elodie, to be given to her when she comes of age. Then the Dragon Emperor, whole and free of pain for the first time in years, walked through the portal and was gone.
Before he stepped through, he handed Arties his will. It left his house, the villa he built in Goodberry, and his remaining fortune to his daughter Eden, along with a smaller box set aside for his other daughter, Elodie, to be given to her when she comes of age. Then the Dragon Emperor, whole and free of pain for the first time in years, walked through the portal and was gone.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Former Emperor of Xeres Prime
Family
Other
Urf Durnan
Supreme General
Bubra Lowenbrull
General
Gregore Thocksan
General
ATTENTION!
Elpis Basajuan is no longer on Xeres. In 1306 he went through the Rite of Ascension and crossed to Nexora, where his memory was wiped and he began cultivating again from the very beginning. Whoever he is now, he does not remember being the Dragon Emperor, and anyone who goes looking for him should not expect to be recognized. What he built here did not go with him. His networks of agents, his hidden archives, his teleportation circles, and his contingencies remain scattered across Xeres Prime, some of them so deeply embedded that even he may not have remembered them all. Many of those systems are still running, and some of them may not know he is gone.