#eramiskel

Building the world anew takes resources, ok?

There's a whole lot of people who want more interesting, complex female characters that are messy, morally grey, not conventionally attractive or young, are queer, and have a hell of an attitude to match both their badassery and bullshittery that have somehow not yet heard of Eramis. I'm here to change that fact by suggesting her to literally any and every post that reminds me of her.

Your honor. My client pleads not guilty on all charges. Eramis is one of the few surviving leaders of the defunct house of devils criminal organisation, and throughout her tenure as a member she never took part in any violent crime against the city or the awoken monarchy. As the prosecution has already pointed out she and her subordinates have engaged in numerous counts of grand theft astro which are outside our jurisdiction and ultimately harmless. But my client is not a killer, she is not a warmonger. She never went near our city, she wasn't at six fronts, she wasn't at twilight gap. In a society of criminals and murderers she has opted for peace every time.

More recently, upon the disillusion of the major fallen houses and the formation of the vile house dusk, my client chose to form her own house, not out of vandals and pirates, but out of common working class eliksni. She sought to build a city for her people, a fortress to withstand the terrible might of darkness. A beautiful autocratic city, much like our own.

My client erected the most efficient safe haven  in all of Sol, better protected than even neomuna or the dreaming city. She did all this to rebuild eliksni civilization, not for herself, no offence but she is getting on in years, she will not see Riis truly reborn. No, she built all this for the next generation of good, honest eliksni, for her children. Is that a crime? Is wanting a better future for your people a crime? Granted, Europa is not the most idyllic local for a virgining civilization, but her real state opportunities were sparse. The city has an iron grip on most earthen territories. So they had to settle for one of the many blighted heaths. We have a little bit of background so let's go into her first serious charge.

"Conspiracy to commit genocide" Your honor, this accusation has less legs than a servitor. The only evidence prosecution provided is two statements. The first being a tale of a "dark future" from a woman claiming to be one "Elsie Bray", a claim which we cannot confirm as no citizen of our city has ever declared themselves on record to carry that name, and her only two references are famed deserter Ana Bray, who A: admits she did not know she had a sister. B: claims to be adopted, so no dna samples or neural maps can link them (samples and maps we do not have because E. Bray is an exo). And C: Ana Bray, again, known deserter, is accused by this "Elsie Bray" to be a traitor and a murderer in the same statement levied against my client. A statement in which she claims to be a time traveller from a different universe's golden age of humanity. She claims to have had a romantic relationship with warlock vanguard Ikora Rey. She accuses hidden agent Eris Morn of being a traitor. Claims the traveller was destroyed and the final shape came to fruition, although interestingly her description of events does not match the experiences of a single person in this city with the real final shape event. And most relevant, she claims my client declared war on the city and annihilated our guardian force.

Mind you, Riis reborn is a sovereign nation, a declaration of war is not a crime. But there was no declaration, and there was no war. There was only a series of assassination attempts on the leadership of Riis reborn, perpetrated by "Elsie Bray's" other reference. A nameless guardian operative registered only as VIP #2014.

A guardian lauded across the city as our greatest. The guardian that assassinated Crota, ended Oryx's war campaign on Sol, crippled the red legion and removed them from our city, and stopped the Witness from enacting it's final, final shape. All acts of immense importance to the continued survival of our city. So I then ask, why was the vanguard's single most important asset galavanting around Europa, smothering a civilization in the cradle? In their statement #2014 claims they were summoned to Europa by the Witness. Once there they were confronted by the military of house salvation for violating their air space, and rather than comply, the guardian in engaged them in combat. They then followed the source of a distress call from one Variks, the loyal, who was at the time subject of a manhunt for stealing proprietary military technology.

#2014 had a prior professional relationship with Variks, working together after the wolf rebellions to capture and execute runaway slaves of the awoken queen, who had, with the help of Variks, defeated the house of wolves to which he was pledged and betrayed, and indentured her eliksni servants by threat of death. Variks and the guardian would bring captured eliksni among other species to an eliksni prison station under the control of the awoken military, and force them to fight in gladiatorial combat for entertainment. The relationship turned sour however when, shocker, Variks, "the loyal" turned coat once more and betrayed the awoken to spring several associates from the prison, including my client, who was interred for a series of overblown grand theft astro charges.

#2014 stopped Variks' execution by murdering every soldier in the platoon that had captured him. The guardian then encountered "Elsie Bray" and two other guardians, hidden agent Eris Morn, and vanguard consultant Germaine, no last name given, in a confrontation with the salvation military, again over clear air space violations. When they had wiped out all eliksni forces Miss "Bray" regaled #2014 with stories of alternate timelines and terrible catastrophies befalling our city, all stemming from my client's use of stasis. Stasis being a power source with esoteric properties, derived from "the darkness". She said darkness corrupts the mind and makes you do horrible things, she claimed #2014 themselves fell to this corruption, and her own "sister" Ana Bray as well, she said they murdered millions. She said that to prevent the dark future where all life is rendered extinct (again, not what we experienced the final shape to be), Eramis had to be stopped.

#2014 admitted that they trusted Miss Bray completely, despite this being only their third ever encounter, and not speaking to her in six years. But to give them credit, they did their due diligence. They embarked on an investigation inside Riis to assess the objectives and capabilities of house salvation. After going on a rampage and killing dozens of eliksni on approach to the city #2014 stumbled onto a meeting hall. There my client had gathered newcomers to explain the ideology of house salvation. She demonstrated the power of stasis by destroying her prime servitor, a glorified navigator and food synthesiser in the shape of the traveller, to signify their independence of the great machine. Naturally they did not respond well to an intruder who had already murdered hundreds of eliksni that day alone, so a battle ensued. #2014 was incapable of overpowering higher ranked salvation officers with stasis tech and went back to "Elsie". Where she convinced them to use the corrupting powers of darkness to defeat the eliksni that were defending themselves.

Variks assisted #2014 in assassination attempts on the head of the salvation military, their spiritual leader, their head of exo science (making exos isn't a crime, humans invented them), their minister of technology, and the autocrat in charge, my client. Thankfully she survived, unbeknownst to the guardian.

But sadly, the leadership of Riis was the least of their casualties. During their operations on Europa, #2014 and Variks were contacted by Mithrax, self proclaimed "Kell of house light". Mithrax and the guardian had worked together before, repelling a minor b&e on the old abandoned north tower, to which my client had no demonstrable involvement. Mithrax asked for their assistance in evacuating a small contingent of eliksni who wanted to "escape" Riis. Calling my client "tyrannical", with the only example of remotely "tyrannical" behaviour being that all non military vessels were grounded, on account of the ongoing assault of the city by #2014. And so, the guardian disabled the anchors and the terrified eliksni fled, to the safety of house light, right? We'll circle back to Mithrax and his house.

Reports of the events made their way back to earth, and to the ears of the great commander Zavala. And he did not like what he heard. So the vanguard commander made the trip to Europa to confront #2014 personally. During their meeting Zavala berated the guardian for using stasis and... Not telling him about it. He paid no mind to the unilaterally unlawful actions his subordinates undertook, essentially starting a war with the only non hostile eliksni superpower via surprise attack. The vanguard commander chewed out #2014 for their terrible judgement and then just, left Europa to their judgement.

Now that all of her lieutenants were dead, my client was desperate, and she played her most dangerous card. A portal, built by the bray corporation half a kilometre below the moon's crust, a portal that would unleash the vex horde onto Europa and endanger the lives of millions of eliksni in an effort to deter #2014's assault. This is the primary event that ignorant people use to claim my client willingly sacrificed lives to protect her own carapace, and they're wrong!

After #2014 had violently dealt with the entire eliksni leadership they undertook a series of ops with Variks and the aforementioned Germaine, in which they ventured into a frenzied Riis reborn and tore it apart from the inside. You see, the city was too great for the vex to penetrate, a fact which Eramis knew. It was designed in large part by Praksis, the Technocrat, whomst our beloved guardian murdered in cold blood, and it was impenetrable by any incursion. Layered, insulated titanium alloy, separated into multiple walls surrounding the city proper, accessible only by specially positioned hatches around three meters wide. Hatches that were constantly monitored and reachable only by air or static transmat station. The city was impregnable to the vex hammer. But susceptible, to a guardian needle. During the course of their operations inside Riss reborn #2014 did everything in their power to destabilise the eliksni infrastructure. The vex couldn't penetrate the walls so the guardian set off explosives throughout the city to destroy barriers, with the explicit intent of allowing vex to flood in an murder eliksni at will. But all was not lost, they could fend off the attackers. And so the guardian set out to sabotage their factories, killing food supplies, and yes, weapons manufacturing. They journeyed deeper into the city and to destroy the salvation weapons stockpile, including tanks and brigs which were crucial to protecting the millions that remained in the city.

And so, burning through food and ether and ammo, people started to flee. Over the course of six or so months, one by one, every skiff left drydock. Riss reborn was the biggest attempt to rebuild some semblance of civilization since the whirlwind, and now it looks like it may be the last. A single guardian made the decision to decimate a civilisation on the assumption that they could and would use their newfound power to do the same to us, and they're the ones on trial? Does that seem right to you?

But where did the eliksni refugees flee? Why, to our good friend Mithrax and the reliable house light. But let me tell you some things you may not know about our trusty Kell. To start with, house light did not exist until house salvation fell to ruin. By the time Riis reborn stopped bleeding refugees, Mithrax still had no Ketch to his house's name, only an old broken down skiff. Mithrax barely had followers, because he had a reputation amongst the eliksni as a pirate, and a cold blooded killer, no one could trust the kind of man he was. So he recruited people the only way he could, through desperation. Mithrax, #2014, Variks, and Germaine all worked together to sow death and chaos in the society of Riis reborn, they destabilised their government, destroyed their infrastructure, crippled their industry, killed thousands by hand and tens of thousands by proxy, in operations all but sanctioned by the vanguard commander himself to tople a sovereign nation before it could compete with them. All on the basis of "Trust me bro, I'm a time traveller"

And then, they sequestered the survivors and funneled them into a more amicable, city-aligned "house" (if you could call it that), a house with no standing army, living entirely under the boot of the vanguard, and their figurehead Mithrax. I should mention that the consultant, Germaine, has ties to the "Shadows of Yor", a vanguard sanctioned sting operation to lure in less than desirable guardians and entrap them to look like traitors so they can be executed without trial, so he's no stranger to this sort of vanguard chicanery.

And let me assure you, the eliksni lived under that boot. For YEARS the entire eliksni population of the city survived in a bombed out district, sleeping in ruined buildings at the mercy of the elements, quartered off from anything remotely recognisable as civilization, forced to ration ether and grow food in glassed soil, with the few allowed to wander outside being attacked by human civilians, living in an eliksni ghetto in all but name.

Not a single anecdote from the salvation refugees comes close the horror stories they tell of their time in this city.

So what of her crimes? The crimes against humans? I say what crimes? Guardian fireteams have engaged in a three campaigns against my client since the fall of Riis reborn, one in reef space, where she was collecting pyramid doodads containing remnants of some dead nightmare god in order to resurrect him, a task in which I feel it important to mention she failed. The nightmare god did come back to life but only due to the mishandling of said relics by the vanguard and the carelessness of the traveller when firing that life restoring beam. The second campaign was on Europa, where our forces clashed over some old warmind midnight exigent tech in a bunker. The third was a conflict where each side tried to arrest control of a braytech orbital platform from which the midnight exigent array could be targeted an fired manually, her plan being not to hurt civilians, but only to destroy the traveller. And all of these events have a very simple explanation.

My client was coerced. Coerced by the witness to do all these things under threat of violence, not violence to her, but to her people. The remainder of house salvation still loyal to her would have been turned by the superior technology of the witness into mindless undead had she disobeyed. She was not a queen anymore, she did not have the whole board to play with, she was a pawn who could only move forward lest the other pawns suffer.

Everything she does is to protect her people, her family, her children. Upon the witness' death her first action was to return to Riis reborn to rescue the stragglers still surviving there. And now with the "Fikrul" menace, who wants to convert all eliksni into deformed undead, willing to hear no argument, accepting no bargains, she did the last thing she could. She turned herself in, in a desperate attempt to save those she could. My client has never acted with malice, only desperation, and the desire to save anything she can of the world they lost. Thank you, the defence rests.