ok buckle up boys
alchemist mc 2.0
- birth name; Baragsen ibn Bassam al-Irdjan (baragsen, son of bassam of the irdjan. baragsen meaning 'pride', irdjan being the tribe she originates from)
- chosen name; Izemrasen bint al-Aql (aql meaning intellect. she's not subtle and im not very smart)
backstory;
baragsen was born into the irdjan tribe, a nomadic people who revered the alchemical arts and saw silver as both a blessing and a curse. to the irdjan, silver was a neutral conduit, capable of catalyzing both creation and destruction. her father, a proud and ambitious leader, sought to uncover forbidden knowledge hidden by the gods, believing that such wisdom would secure his tribe's dominance. but his hubris led to a curse upon his bloodline, and he mysteriously disappeared, leaving his brother to assume leadership.
the true nature of the curse revealed itself only after the birth of baragsen, five months after her father’s vanishing. her arrival was marked by a horrific event; her touch could transmute any substance into silver, even her own mother, whose body turned into the precious metal and killed her before the eyes of the tribe's midwives.
unable to understand or control her powers, the tribe began to hide her away, treating her like a monster. her father’s legacy, now tainted by the curse and his arrogance, left the tribe in a state of confusion and fear. her abilities, a manifestation of the curse, made her a symbol of both the tribe’s broken traditions and the punishment for challenging the gods. baragsen grew up locked away, ignored and feared. though, her uncle, her father's brother, would secretly educate her in the sciences and arts when the tribe slept— believing his brother to have been right in his ambition, and hoping his daughter could one day accomplish what he failed to do.
years passed, and the tribe could no longer contain her, nor could they risk keeping her close. in their desperation to rid themselves of the dangerous anomaly she had become, they sought to exchange baragsen with an exiled mage whom they crossed paths with, a former member of the senobium, in the hopes that the mage might help her understand and control her powers. the mage, a figure who had long rejected the oppressive institutions of magic, saw potential in baragsen.
thus, the ex-mage took baragsen under her wing, not out of any maternal love or desire to help her, but as a subject for her own experiments— to explore her powers and perhaps use her to uncover further knowledge. desperate for acceptance and parental love, baragsen began to see the mage not just as a caretaker, but as someone who might share her desire for truth. they grew close as the ex-mage taught her to control her powers, and wield other forms of magic. for a while, she allowed herself to believe that she had found someone who understood her.
however, when she learned the truth after reading the ex-mage's notes— that she was little more than a test subject for the mage’s own ambitions— her faith was shattered. the person she had trusted had only seen her as a stepping stone in the grand scheme of things. the one person she thought would understand her plight within the suffocating hierarchy of the world only gave into the very same thing that expelled the both of them. so baragsen fled, vowing to never again be used by those who saw her as a means to an end.
she rejected her birth name, the shadow of her father's legacy, and the tribe that had cast her aside— and took on a new name: Izemrasen bint al-‘Aql, the daughter to none but the pursuit of raw, human reason— unclouded by dogma, by divinity. in her eyes, the gods and their influence were nothing but foolish distractions— and she no longer wished to follow in the footsteps of those who believed in blind faith, or illusions of grandeur. no, she wanted a world where humans need not cower under the gods, nor burn under the weight of something more. where humility and reason would be the utmost ideal of mankind. and she'll forge it with her own two hands, if she must, no matter how insignificant the change might prove.
