ââSkandar, Prince of Ashkaraââ
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Q U O T E
"Their throats are open graves;
Their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips."
âRomans 3:13
T H E M E S
Trying To Save Her || Johan Söderqvist
At the Gates of Babylon || Antti Martikainen
â__I___A M___W H O___I___A M__â
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Name: Skandar Aruun Naganezhad Shahzad
Title/or Moniker: Prince of Ashkara, Prince-Ithnaan || the Second Prince, the Bloodborn, the NÄgazad || the Serpent Prince, the Young Viper, Skandar of the NÄga || Serpentkind
Gender: Male
Age: Fifty-Three
Species: Like all Ashkarazi, Skandar is of mixed origins, with human, Djinn, and NÄga blood among the countless others flowing through his veins.
Class/Occupation: Prince of Ashkara
Description: Skandar is a dusky youth of six feet and five inches. He's built lithe, with the whipcord hard body of a fighter; his strength clear in the broad stretch of his shoulders and firmness of his stance. Though he favors his father's colouring, his features more closely resemble his mother's; sporting a narrow nose and shadowed eyes, with an inborn sharpness to his gaze and ruin smouldering in his coal dark eyes.
Dark hair falls in undulating waves down his shoulders, the ebony locks usually tied at the nape, or tamed with a clasp at the back of his head. Scars decorate the otherwise smooth expanse of his sun-darkened skin, some long and thin, others raised and jagged, vicious lines cutting across his skin as a testament to his combat-honed expertise. Past thin lips sits a forked tongue, parted at half an inch, which affords a more snake-like air to Ashkara's famed Serpent Prince.
While he appears to be in his early twenties, Skandar is actually far olderânearly twice that, to be exact. Like most Ashkarazi, his mixed heritage means he ages at a slower rate than regular humans. Although not nearly immortal, he can be expected to live up to the hundreds.
â__W H A T___I S___H I D D E N___W I T H I N__â
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- Inhuman reflexes
- Powerful sense of smell
- Immune to most toxins (especially snake venom)
- Fairly resistant to heat/fire
- Extensive knowledge on poisons
- Well-versed in war tactics/combat
- Varied degrees of control over reptiles
Weaknesses:
- Easily succumbs to anger
- Susceptible to charms/musical forms of magic
- Sluggish in the cold
- Sensitive to changes in temperature
- Sweet Mehridizi summer wine
- Unusual/foreign weaponry (whips, maces, flails, etc.)
- Poisons
- The dry desert climate
- Sparring/hand-to-hand combat
- Spicy food
- Indulging in carnal activities
- The thrill of battle
Dislikes:
- The intricacies of foreign politics
- His half-siblings
- Deferring to others
- Restriction
- Arctic climates
- Diplomacy
- Those with no patience for intellectual pursuits
Quirks and Habits: Albeit unconsciously, Skandar has been known to flash his tongue when incensedâan act closely reminiscent of a serpent's hiss, and he takes to carrying around a snake or two, as well; coiled around an arm or a leg, sometimes even tangled around his hair. He doesn't blink very often, which can be quite unnerving to those who notice it, and he can also stay unmoving at a single position for extended periods of time.
â__H O W___I___C A M E___T O__B E__â
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History: He was born of blood. From the cold stone floor smeared with red gushing bright from his grandfather's corpse, the crimson staining his mother's mouth, her thighs, painting his father's cock in rhythms; to the blood of the wombâhim, thrust into being, scarlet and sticky and small, his face crumpled in a wail that drew vipers from their pitsâboth child and serpentkind rousing the still Kashmir air with the clamor of their cries.
Skandar, the voices hissed, the defender, he who would raise his mother's people from the ruins of his father's fist. And Skandar he was namedâson of Jahangir IV and Shahmara (daughter of the late NÄgakhan, former princess of the Serpentkind, now Sultana-Ithnaan of Ashkara by virtue of having borne a son)âPrince-Ithnaan of Ashkara.
âââ"My father killed the Serpent King, raped the old man's daughter, and put a prince in her belly. Then he made her his queen."
In whispers, they called him NÄgazad, the Serpent Prince. Never out loud, yet the moniker was there, stark amid furtive glances cast upon the vipers coiled around his limbs, his waist, sitting heavy upon his brow like a King's crown. Young though he was, even he knew that they were terrified of him. Here was a boy with vipers that could fell a man grown with a single strike wrapped around his body the way women adorned themselves with jewelry.
Everywhere he walked, snakes followed in his wake. Educated, eloquent in the language of politics, with warfare as his mother tongue and blood scorched by the heat of combat flowing through his veins. Should he desire to be Sultan, there shouldn't have been a problemâexcept for one. It's name? Akhil, Prince-Wahid, the first born, Crown Prince of Ashkara, and wielder of sunfire. He was Djinn; he had no reason to fear snakes.
The first time Skandar tried to kill him, he was twelve, barely a man yet brimmed with enough determination to spur him to assassinate his own half-brother. It was a pitiful attempt, Akhil laughing it off with a wave of heat burning Skandar's snakes to ashes at his feet. The second mirrored the first, as had the third, and the fourth, until the last of his vipers' cindered remains were swept away to the desert sand and the serpent deferredâalbeit grudginglyâto the sun.
So Skandar turned to the rest of his father's vast brood. His sisters he left untouched, but three other boys followed after himâtheir mothers made Queen just like his and Akhil's before himâtwo close to his own age, and an infant. If their ambitions turned out similar to his, then, he thought, they might attempt to dispose of him as well. It was then that he decided he did not want to be a mere stepping stone to any future throne-mongering and sought to kill the little princes before they could get it into their heads to try and do the same to him. The youngest, Skandar smothered in his own cot, making the infant's sudden death appear as an accident. However, after seeing his father unmoved at his newborn son's demise, Skandar merely stabbed the elder with his own dagger, and offed the younger in what was meant to be a simple sparring session.
The rest of the little princes that followed suffered similar fates, until Skandar grew tired and resorted to killing them in their mother's bellies to spare him another nine-month wait. The only other boy to evade his kiss was the son his father had with the princess of a neighbouring Kingdomâthe soon-to-be Prince-Thalatha spared as per his father's instructions and unwillingness to spark a war. Fortunately, Skandar found that he had nothing to be troubled about as the boyânamed Kiranâfelt as strongly about the Sultanate as a cat does a bucket of water.
Though he still harbours animosity over his eldest brother, Skandar has long since accepted his position as the secondborn; having grown out of his childhood ambitions, and settling comfortably into his role as Lord Commander of the Soltera-based Ashkarazi infantry.