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The (very) long story, that still is abbreviated:
Rikka was born in a plane of existence separated from the one in which Pyrathia exists. In her home plane, griffons had developed an advanced society, and developed a strong, peaceful realm based on the principle of the individual. However, at some point in the history of her home plane, it was invaded by an illithid collective seeking to enslave the griffons of the realm. By the time she was born, most of the griffon cities had been overrun, and the war had raged for centuries to the point where her home city was the last stronghold of griffonkind.
During her early years, Rikka was trained in physical combat and endurance as all her kind is, and schooled as well in the ways of rational thought and living, and philosophical analysis. Her father was one of the highest ranked generals of the griffon forces defending the city from the illithids and their captured griffon mind slaves, and through him she became exposed early to the horrors of the war that was being brought against the last of the griffons. She gained a warrior’s perspective from him, and never forgot it. Her mother was the head instructor of the school of reasoning, and taught last-year fledglings. From her she gained the philosopher’s perspective, and in fact leaned more in that direction personally.
On the day of her graduation, Rikka exercised her new right to leave the bounds of the city. While she was exploring her new freedom, she unwittingly flew into the path of a portal that opened to the plane of Pyrathia. She tumbled through the magical tunnel, and when it spit her out over the middle of the Zhang desert she was terrified and disoriented. Barely pulling herself out of her fall, she coasted over the mountains at breakneck speeds, desperately just trying to brake some of the speed out of her flight and descent, as well as aim for the signs of civilization she saw as she broke over the mountain range. Ultimately, she would all but fail absolutely, landing with a bone-breaking force, tumbling and sliding across the ground in a battered wreck of flesh and feathers. By some twist of fate, she came to rest at Seranyim’s feet in the proving grounds of Nerina, and the woman’s timely prayers pulled Rikka back from the brink of death.
Over the coming weeks of Rikka’s recovery, she studied hard with Seranyim and Sukra, applying her significant ability to learning the Zhensh language, and the rudiments of the place she now found herself in. She was, at first, too fascinated to feel any real fear or confusion. She had never before seen any races but those of griffon and illithid. In time, though, as she grew accustomed to her new surroundings, she began to realize that her memory of her plane of origin had been damaged. There were large gaps in it, that try as she might she could not fill. The general content was there, the training she’d focused so hard on, the war, the threat to her people, the fact that she’d had a family, but the details of her life were disjointed in her mind, seemingly unconnected by any chronology that she could order them by. She also realized that her benefactors had never heard of her home plane.
It was at that point that she made a determination that stuck with her for a great portion of her life: She would find a way to return home, and contribute to the freedom of her people from the illithid invaders. Learning that the mages of this plane can create magical portals from one place to another, she latched onto sorcery and began the study of magic.
She began to train with drive and purpose, starting in the proving grounds and eventually venturing into the city of Nerina, where she began to meet the people that would form her first friendships and enmities. She was pleased to find that she would not be the only griffon on Pyrathia, though dismayed to hear some of the myths that surrounded the race’s origins. Byrnid and Igvot were two of the first people she met, and she formed fast friendships with both.
Rikka grew in power, and explored Pyrathia sparingly when she was not seeing to her intended journey home. Requiring the act of productive work, she took up the mercantile trade. Over these years, her memories of home became more ordered, clearer in her mind, so that she began to have more understanding of her origins. While something she was pleased about, it also made her feel homesick, and alone no matter that she was surrounded by people both friendly and otherwise. She was intellectually alone, if not physically, in that she was the only one to be (as she saw it) philosophically consistent and rational. Even her brothers did not see eye to eye with her, and while she respected their right to difference, it didn’t make it any easier on her. In an effort to reconnect with the world she’d known in her youth, she began to codify her philosophy, reordering into specific statements and ideas that which, due to her mnemonic damage, she was following mostly by habit. This, ultimately, resulted in her book, Life, being written and published in Horace Jack’s bookshop in Craeftilin.
It was around this time that Rikka was to be introduced to Qul’kelxi, and the trouble there. She was initially hesitant to pass judgment, considering the somewhat conflicting stories given by Volator, Feral, and Sophus, but ultimately decided that the Sophus were in the moral right, and offered to help. Thus began a new, and overriding chapter of her life. She fell in love with Sophus society, seeing in it the rudiments of the world she’d left behind some twenty years before. The Volator invasion also struck chords in her, and she could never divorce the similarity between that and the illithid invasion of her home plane. After a number of years spent studying and growing close to the Sophus, as well as learning about the history of the island and griffon society there, she came to consider the island and the Sanctum as her home, and the Sophus her people. It was at this time that she faced the hard, and heart-breaking reality that she would likely never find her way back to her home plane, and that her family and origins had probably been wiped out by illithid enslaving.
Rikka continued in the merchant trade for a while longer, and while she never grew rich (and never intended to), she was comfortable with what she earned. It was always the need for productive work that drove her to it, in any case, not a desire for material riches. However, as she became more and more embroiled in the Sophus conflict and society, as she began to integrate into Sophus society, she let the merchant business fall away. She would still sell the use of her spells when it was called for, or sell and trade what she came across, but it was no longer a primary focus in her life. Instead, she began the work of teaching the gryflets within the Sanctum, which she came to appreciate and enjoy much more than being a merchant.
A great many small-scale conflicts rose and ebbed in the times leading up to this, during this, and after this. Rikka was almost constantly at odds with the leadership of Zhenshi, arguing forcefully against their pacifistic ideologies, even as she risked her life (and indeed died) defending the nation from attackers of all stripes. She was routinely in debate with priests and those of devout religious beliefs, arguing in favor of the value of the mortal. She was conducting the on-again-off-again war with the East, as the masters of the Volators. She routinely flew with the Hammer and Keepers both, less often with the Guardians. Through her kinship to Igvot, she sometimes helped repel attackers at the monastery, as well. And, of course, there were the personal vendetta attacks to deal with, from those who had fallen to her and received none of the kindness they, for reasons beyond her comprehension, expected from her.
There was one event in particular that stood out in the tide of conflict, that being the possession of Othet by Cyrano. Having been closely acquainted with the dwarven priest, if not necessarily close friends, when she was asked by a third party to speak to him and try to determine what problem he was experiencing she did so. They met, and debated, and she came to understand that the mind occupying Othet’s form was not in fact Othet, and that Othet was trying to reach out to her mentally even as she spoke physically with the possessing spirit. Ultimately, she decided she would have to weaken the possessing spirit in some way, to give Othet the chance to break free of his imprisonment. Using a charming spell, she set her will against the possessor’s, with Othet’s future in the balance. The first encounter ended with her nearly being killed by the priest, and his escape. Not content with her failure, however, she made another attempt when next the opportunity presented itself, and with the help of the bardess Dizri, nearly managed to break the hold on Othet’s mind. Ultimately, though, Othet ended by attacking her, and was killed in the resulting battle.
Around this time, the monastery was experiencing issues surrounding the blood orb, and strange events were occurring involving it. Rikka was involved in one event in particular, in which (apparently) Algorab took a personal interest in her, and sent hallucinations. After a few days of terror, in which many monks and friends of hers attempted to understand what was happening and calm her, Rikka was finally freed from the visions but they had left their mark on her, emotionally. Her courage and certainty had been shaken to a degree that it had never before reached. The only positive thing to come out of that event, for her, was the realization that the conflicts and squabbles of the main continent had distracted her from her avowed war on behalf of the Sophus. She retreated from mainland society then, on a sabbatical to reconnect with the Sophus, and to reaffirm her place in Sophus society.
During this period of immersion in Sophus society, she distinguished herself amongst the Sophus, and was named the Sword of The Sophus, a position that is at once a general in matters of war and a judge in matters of law. As an advisor to Qul’xon Talonthrust, she began to convince the leader of the Sophus that a war with the Empire’s proxies was a futile exercise, and that the conflict must be brought home to the Imperials in order to enact any real change. This would be a years-long debate amongst the Sophus. Ultimately, it was the need for fresh information that would send her back to Zhenshi, and the main continent of Pyrathia.
Rikka returned to find Zhenshi embroiled in a brutal war with the Empire, and Byrnid leading the Talons. She also found something that shocked her to the core, and initially caused a great many problems between her and Zhenshi: a hellion, Kirina, fighting as part of Zhenshi’s guard. Rikka was, at first, violently opposed to this idea and Kirina, and argued forcibly with Byrnid over the presence of one such in Zhenshi. But the more she was exposed to Kirina’s ways and ideology, the more she realized that it was a largely rational one, more rational than many she had encountered over the years of her life. Ultimately, the conflict between Kirina and Rikka cooled to mild antagonism, and as the two fought side-by-side against the frequent attacks from the Imperials, Rikka actually came to admire Kirina. The two had numerous conversations and debates, and though Kirina was wont to substitute an inflexible code of honor for the tenets of rational action, Rikka nonetheless found the woman to be more consistently rational than almost any individual she’d known.
Having, at one point during the years leading up to this, heard of an old tradition where knights, specifically paladins, were paired with griffon mounts, the two working for common goals and as close companions, Rikka was finding herself drawn to Kirina and considering such a pairing. No knight in her entire experience with such had stirred such thoughts in her, though she’d met many and known of the storied tradition for a long time. Finally, after much consideration, she approached the hellion, and the two of them entered into a bond of knight and mount. Kirina still often placed honor above reason, but in the months leading up to the Zhensh civil war, had been improving by Rikka’s estimation.
It was then that a heart-rending event occurred, and left Rikka devastated. Byrnid died suddenly, leaving not only a power vacuum in Zhenshi, but also a pit in Rikka’s heart that even to the end of her days would never heal. As one of the first people Rikka had come to know on Pyrathia, and what she would consider to be her closest companion, his unexpected death was almost unbearable to her, and it felt to her as if he’d taken a part of her with him to oblivion. Still, the politics of Zhenshi were not wont to give her the time she needed to grieve. The infighting amongst the Talons, in the middle of a war, was already starting, and in many ways Rikka was both pulled into the middle and placed herself there, in order to support her knight. Around this time Rikka was banished from the nation for the first time, only to be secretly pardoned and unbanished by Grventiinal, whose side she was supporting in the brewing conflict. This would also be the first and last time she agreed to even a temporary truce with certain Imperials without the condition of full and complete withdrawal of the Volators from Qul’kelxi.
The civil war itself was a morass of shifting allegiances and unexpected intrusions. At one point it was all but impossible to tell who was fighting on whose side and why, with almost every individual and faction aligned or in conflict by turns over the course of the situation. Finally, Corathir and his supporters bought the support of the Druids, and Rikka’s supported faction fell away in defeat. Personal differences between her and Corathir that had existed for years before this once more drove Rikka away from Zhenshi for a long stretch of time, in which she left the nation to its own devices in disgust. During this time, her knight, deciding herself dishonored, committed suicide. While something that Rikka knew was within her rights as a free individual, she nonetheless considered the act an irrational one, and it left a foul taste in her mouth to end the relationship. She vowed to herself never again to bond so with any knight, no matter what, seeing then that all of their preoccupation with codes of honor above rationality could never make such a pairing with her a lasting one.
For a time, Rikka returned to the Sophus, seeking the solace of her work there with and for them. She began working with Sophus architects and the elemental craftspeople in the Sanctum, in an effort to expand the Sanctum’s use as a more permanent residence for the Sophus griffons. The plans for an offensive against the East also were brewing here during this time, and she took advantage of her absence from Pyrathia to foster them as much as she could. Between the construction of the Sophus Courts, and the war councils of the Sophus, Rikka once again disappeared from the mainland for a long stretch of time and lost herself in the work and responsibility she had accepted.
On a brief return to the mainland from her work, Rikka joined in on a defense of the port town of Garazul, where a coordinated strike by Imperials and Adepts alike was being repelled by an assortment of allied forces. Corathir was still leader of the Talons and he and Rikka’s conflicts only exacerbated by time, and because Rikka refused to show quarter to the Imperials, she was once more banished from Zhenshi. This banishment was to last for most of the final two decades of her life. She continued from this point to make brief forays away from Qul’kelxi into the realms, to work as a sometime-enchantress, or to fight for a particular objective, but largely she focused on her work with the Sophus.
During this time she met Caelynn, who, after Corathir’s death, would finally lift the banishment from Zhenshi in order to secure Rikka’s aid in yet another war with the Empire. Rikka returned to Zhenshi and, as the nation was moving more towards what she considered a rational approach to governance and foreign policy, aided as she could. It was in the course of this time that she met Igvot’s daughter, who she mentored and took under her wing, so to speak.
Rikka came to respect Erian, and as she was aging and knew that the Sophus would be left without a Sword if she did not select an heir to the title and responsibility, she spoke to the young griffoness about taking over the role. Erian accepted, and Rikka stepped down to the advisory role of Clerk. This was not an entirely easy transition for her to make, having spent so many years with only the highest Sophus authority to answer to, but she applied herself as best she could and filled the role she had chosen more or less smoothly.
All throughout this time the war councils had been meeting, and finally the groundwork was laid for the Sophus offensive against the Empire itself. The stage was set, and only the final players were necessary. Leaving it until the last few days before the offensive began, Rikka set out to secure allies for the Sophus fight for freedom. Through many intense days of conversation and negotiation, she managed to array a vast force of allies for the Sophus, and a three-month long offensive began. It culminated with Rikka leading a strong wing of griffons, including Qul’xon Talonthrust himself and Erian, into Menegroth proper. Though it was ultimately not successful in securing the freedom of the Sophus, she consoled herself with the knowledge that it was only a single battle in the war, and that the Imperials now knew the Sophus would not be content with merely picking off their pawns ensconced on Qul’kelxi. It was during this time that the Imperials finally managed to banish her from the Empire, but she considered it fair trade for the scars of battle she had managed to leave on their capitol city as reminder of the cost of trying to conquer the island that did not belong to them.
This essentially ended her battles, and she spent the last of her days advising the Sword, and enjoying what remained of her mortal life. In the end of things, she died doing what she loved best. Achernar himself came to collect her spirit for the afterlife, in order to gloat over the fact that finally, after almost seventy years of “belligerence” and dismissal of the immortals’ role in mortal society, she was forced to admit the fact that she was indeed now unable to escape their grip. It did not entirely have the effect the god seemed to be looking for, however, as she knew still that it was not until her mortal life had ended that she was forced to accept that grip as she did not when alive.
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Guess what still means jack [REDACTED]?
But seriously, I actually expected you to let her die, and she was willing to accept that.