APPLICATION @ c&c
Jun. 25th, 2011 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Cris
AGE: 22
JOURNAL:
nerditude
IM: ffffudgesicles
E-MAIL: crizzotto@gmail.com
RETURNING: Nico di Angelo
thekingofghosts
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Xena
FANDOM: Xena: Warrior Princess (TV Show)
CHRONOLOGY: After the events of "Old Ares Had a Farm" in Season 6.
CLASS: Hero!
SUPERHERO NAME: Warrior Princess
ALTER EGO: Xena, TBD.
BACKGROUND:
The world of Xena: Warrior Princess is infinitely more fantastic than our own. Gods of all religions, monsters, myths and major historical figures from all across time converge, often in the form of terrible mid-90's CGI. By playing fast and loose with history, Xena is able to meet figures such as Julius Caesar, David and Goliath, Ulysses, Homer, Cleopatra, Helen and Paris, etc etc, all in one lifetime. The world's geography otherwise seems unchanged, by standards of around the time that BC and AD meet.
There are two theories concerning Xena's parentage, neither are explicitly confirmed in-series. The first is that she's the daughter of two mortals, Cyrene and Orestes. The other is that she's the daughter of Cyrene and Ares, the latter of whom had come to Cyrene's bed one night while her husband was away at war, disguised as him (as he had a tendency to do.) The second one seems slightly more likely considering Xena's fantastic abilities and a few snatches of dialog from Ares in the episode where the theory was originally presented, but there was no way they would ever confirm it because of the quasi-romantic (and later actually romantic) relationship between the God and possibly-daughter later on in the show. While those kind of incestuous shenanigans were fairly common in Greek myth, they are not so easy to get onto Network TV.
Either way, she grew up in a small village called Amphipolis in Thrace, in the tavern that Cyrene and Orestes owned. She has two brothers; one older, one younger (Toris and Lyceus respectively.) When she was only seven, Orestes (who was incredibly dedicated to his Gods) returned from the temple of Ares one night drunk and angry, swearing that Xena had to be killed (either because he was told by a priest that Ares required her as a sacrifice, or because Ares himself showed up to tell him that his daughter was the result of his wife's infidelity.) When Cyrene attempted to talk her husband down, he told her that he would kill her just the same if she got in the way, so she slew him with an axe to protect her daughter.
When Xena was in her late teens, early twenties, her village was attacked by Cortese's raiders. Xena rallied the villagers to fight back against her Mother's better judgment, and drove Cortese's men away. Her brother died in the battle, but the village was saved; shortly after, plagued by guilt over causing her baby brother's death, she began to take control of the surrounding towns and using them as buffer zones against later attacks. Amphipolis and its safety became the only thing that mattered to her anymore, even if her reputation was beginning to ostracize her from returning to that very place.
Once she had gathered enough forces, she began traveling and conquering instead fortifying and defending, with the ultimate goal of getting her revenge on Cortese. He evaded her, however, for over ten years.
After taking what she could of Thrace, she set out to the sea as a pirate raider, and after a period of success at it, her men captured the lone, defenseless Julius Caeser. Xena unwittingly fell head over heels for him. He betrayed her after she let him go with his head, boarding her ship, crucifying her crew, breaking both of her legs and stealing her amassed treasures so that he could finance his own wars without looking to the Senate for approval.
M'Lila (an escaped Gaelic slave that Xena had also captured around the same time, but turned into an ally when she saw her fighting prowess) was the only one to survive the attack because Xena covered for her by saying that she was already dead. M'Lila returned and pulled Xena down from her cross, dragging her to a healer and saving her life. While she recovered, M'Lila had only one question for her - she asked if she was angry with Caesar, if she wanted vengeance.
Xena floundered, unable to answer her. On some level, it seemed, she was still in love.
It was only when Caesar's soldiers came to kill her and M'Lila took a fatal arrow through the back meant for her that she shed the last vestiges of mercy and became the fearsome warlord that earned the name Warrior Princess, and Destroyer of Nations.
She returned to land, seething with rage, along the way meeting and partnering with another warlord named Borais. He fell in love with her and after some time running together he began changing, seeing that he needed to do good rather than the evil they were perpetrating together. By accident, they conceived a son, and knowing that her enemies would strike at any weakness she had displayed, Xena kept him a secret and left with him after Borais' untimely murder, giving him to the Centaurs to be raised as one of their own. They gave him the name Solan, and kept him safe for many years.
A decade after she began down the path of evil, Xena was met by Hercules, who defeated her and then helped her turn towards the path of righteousness. Blessed with luck, not long after that she found her salvation and soul-mate in a spunky small-town girl named Gabrielle, who met her on the road and tagged along without her consent. At first, anyway. She gradually became Xena's best friend, confidant, moral compass, and target of some ridiculous UST, including a few on-screen kisses. They wander together across the ancient globe for years, helping people, stopping evil and occasionally righting the wrongs of Xena's past.
One of those wrongs lead to the "creation" of Callisto, who was once a young girl that watched her mother and father burn to death when Xena's army sacked her village. She was so traumatized by the event that she rid her life of anything apart from taking revenge on Xena, and after training enough to match her with a sword, gathered an army to sack villages in Xena's name to draw her out. No matter how many times Xena put her away, she always got free. The second time she did so, she murdered Gabrielle's new husband; after that, when they fought, Xena left her to die sinking in quicksand.
Even that wasn't the end of Callisto; Ares stole her soul from Tartarus in another one of his bids to get to Xena by switching her place with Xena's, who was then trapped in Tartarus until she managed to talk Hades into letting her back out in Callisto's body. Again they fought, again Xena won, and Callisto's next escape from death was through a deal with Hera.... but more on that later.
Xena and Gabrielle traveled to the Telaquire Amazon tribe to establish peace between the warring tribe and nearby Centaur village, where after attempting to save the life of the tribe's princess, Gabrielle receives her Right of Caste (thereby becoming an Amazon Princess herself.) A peace that was undone later, by Velasca, who usurped the position as Queen by killing the previous one. Xena and Gabrielle came back just in time to stop a war from breaking out, and when Gabrielle claimed her position by Right of Caste before banishing her, she went mad and ate a piece of Ambrosia in order to become a God, and have her revenge.
Xena dies for the first time while visiting the ruins of Callisto's hometown. She is crushed by a hidden log trap, while rescuing a group of girls from slavers. She is revived after Gabrielle gives her a small piece of Ambrosia, from the plate that Valesca had used to become a God. (When given to the dead, Ambrosia only revives them rather than giving them Godhood.)
After that, Xena searches out Callisto, who had become an immortal after eating a Golden Apple when Hera freed her, therefore being the only opponent Xena could think of who would survive a fight with a God. When Callisto gets her hands on the other piece of Ambrosia, Xena leads them both into a trap and drops them both into a pit of lava where neither could die (on account of being Gods) but were unable to leave without help.
Xena left for Brittania after, to assist a former enemy in the fight against Julius Caesar and Rome. While there, Gabrielle gets impregnated by Dahak, the One Evil God and days later gives birth to his unholy baby, Hope. Hope grows rapidly, frees Callisto from the lava, and at her behest finds Xena's son.
She murders Solan, causing a rift between Xena and Gabrielle for the first time since they began to travel together. Xena uses a Hind's Blood Dagger - the only weapon capable of killing a God - to kill Callisto and Hope, before she and Gabrielle attempt to kill one another for the death of their respective children. Their love overcomes, though, and Gabrielle acknowledges that her "daughter" was evil, they continue traveling together along with Joxer.
She dies for the second time, crucified (again) by Caesar. She and Gabrielle ascend to Heaven, but Gabrielle is caught and dragged down into Hell by the demon of Callisto. Unable to imagine her soul-mate enduring an eternity of torture, despite her good and pure soul, Xena beseeches the Archangel Michael to let her right the wrong and purifies her soul in the fires of Heaven before throwing herself into the pits of Hell to retrieve Gabrielle.
While there she meets Callisto, who fights with her - Xena wins, of course - but at the end Callisto breaks down in hysterics, screaming that she will never forgive Xena for stealing her family away, and will hate her for eternity. Overcome with guilt, Xena trades herself for Callisto, condemning herself to Hell and sending Callisto to Paradise in her place, which finally allows them both to forgive one another. Long story short, Heaven and Hell go to war, with Gabrielle and Xena fighting opposite one another until they're restored to life both by Eli and Callisto, the latter imparting Xena with a gift.
A baby girl.
When she realizes that she's pregnant, Xena heads East to avoid being a target for her sudden, new weakness in her usual stomping grounds of Greece. Not that it helps much; she's Xena, and she could probably find danger in an empty room if she tried. She stops a war or two, discovers gunpowder and the Ancient ChineseSecret Magic before losing it and heading back to Greece anyway. I mean, why not.
However, problems are stirring for her there. Her child is the subject of a prophecy given to Zeus by the Fates. It says, "as it has been since time beyond remembering, you will continue to rule, supreme among supreme... until such time as a child is born, not begotten by man." Since the child was given to Xena by Callisto - a woman - Zeus fears it spells the end of the time of the Gods, and begins making attempts to have Xena's child killed.
Luckily for Xena, Hercules comes to her aid, appalled by his Father's determination to kill a pregnant woman and her unborn child. He killed Zeus while she was giving birth, in order to stop him from throwing a bolt of lightning at her.
After that, Xena and her child (named Eve) became the most hunted mortals by Olympus. She captured Death and incited her to cry, so she and Gabrielle could drink her tears and fool the Gods into believing that she, and her baby, had died. Ares, overcome with grief over what appeared to be the death of the mortal woman he had ended up falling in love with, took their bodies away and buried them, where they were encased in ice for 25 years.
During those 25 years, Eve grew up with Octavius in Rome, whom Xena had left her baby with while they were putting on a show and pretending to die for the Gods (having not intended to be gone for a quarter century.) In Rome, Eve had been renamed Livia, and under the tutelage of Ares (unaware of her true identity) became the Champion of Rome, a ruthless persecutor of enemies of the Roman religion. Hoping to find her daughter as soon as she wakes, Xena departs immediately for Rome, where she discovers that her daughter has become a slaughterer of peaceful people, the followers of the Religion of Eli (Xenaverse's approximation of Christianity). Xena shows her that Ares doesn't truly love her, but in the process Ares figures out that she is indeed the child of prophecy. Unable to get through to her with words, Xena is forced to best her daughter in Gladiatorial combat, and after the fight Livia breaks down, running away. Enraged by the loss of all things she thought were hers, she began slaughtering villages whole and crucifying whatever followers of Eli she found, carving a path for Xena to follow.
Seeing everything dark and evil that she had once been, Xena tries to stop her, but not before Joxer is killed. Despite being evaded after multiple fights, she manages to finally beat Livia down, but when the moment comes... she finds she can't kill her only daughter. In desperation, she prays to the God of Eli, begging him to save her daughter when she couldn't, and Livia's soul is bathed in his light. Xena then discovers that Eli's light and Eve's subsequent baptism have given her the ability to slay Gods, so long as her daughter is alive.
From there, to protect her daughter, herself, her friends and the followers of Eli from the wrath of the Gods, Xena wipes out the whole Greek Pantheon, sparing only Aphrodite and Ares for their roles in helping her. She comes home to Amphipolis with Gabrielle and Eve in tow, only to find her beloved hometown destroyed, and her mother dead.
It turns out to have been the work of Mephistopheles, who had designs on the Earth after the reign of the Olympians ended, but first he needs Xena and her daughter out of the way. Xena summons Mephistopheles into the world where she can slay him to protect Eve, but in doing so condemns herself to replacing him as Queen of Hell. In order to escape her fate, she tricks the Archangel Lucifer into committing the seven deadly sins, and sends him there in her place.
Then she goes to Denmark, hangs with the Valkyries for awhile, comes back and helps a newly-mortal Ares evade some of the warlords he'd screwed over before, and finally finds herself in a little room with a machine that calls itself Lachesis.
PERSONALITY:
Xena is a formidable woman. She's an incredibly talented field medic, a great singer, a philosopher, a strategist, a warrior, a tracker, a dancer and an accomplished traveler. In her own words, she "has many skills."Cooking is not one of them.
Constantly tormented by guilt over evils done in her past as a brutal warlord, Xena is emotionally reserved and prefers putting forth the strong but silent image to all but her closest friends and confidants. To those she does get close to, however, she is warm, playful and kind, if still slightly gruff. Her sense of humor is drier than all the deserts combined, and she may act like she doesn't suffer fools, but secretly she has a great big soft spot for bumbling incompetents, from way back in her warlord days.
Perhaps moreso than most heroes, having played both sides of the coin - good and evil - she has an incredibly realistic view of the world and its inhabitants. She is willing to take risks and gambles, even with people's lives, so it's certainly convenient that she's always either right, or lucky enough that they survive regardless. She may be reckless, but she's also true to her word, and any debt she incurs she pays back in full, without fail - regardless of her opinion on the person she owes it to. Any friend she makes, she would go through Hell and back for, and any enemy she finds she never lets go until they are stopped.
Despite her reformed ways, she will still kill in self-defense, or in the defense of others, though she takes no stolen life lightly. Still, she won't kill women or children - unless the women are warriors, as she is - and no unarmed man. Despite the typical Warrior Woman archetype, Xena she isn't afraid of or shamed by the idea of using her sexuality to get what she needs, and actually does so frequently. In times when she's not, she'd like to give the impression that her heart is untouchable, but she falls repeatedly for men who can match her in battle, so long as it's both with wits and with swords - Hercules, Borais, Julius Caesar and Ulysses, to name a few - bonus points for being the bad boy type. She's also an easy sell for women with kind hearts, especially when they're also the spunky, adventurous type, though she tends to "adopt" and mentor rather than make conquests of them.
She's highly practical, despite her tendency towards theatrics (she greatly enjoys making grand entrances), and she's hardly fearless, but she cannot stand to run away from the things that frighten her, preferring instead to face them and fight. One thing she doesn't prefer to do, however, is teach others to fight with her; at least not with weapons or their hands. Instead she likes to teach the defenseless to fight with traps, the terrain and their wits.
She has a dark side that is kept in check largely by the power of her love for Gabrielle. Repeatedly she has nearly fallen over the edge, only to be pulled back by her best friend - or, in those times when she hasn't been near - by the memory of her. Her nearly unmatched physical prowess, and strategic genius make her confident on the best of days, and cocksure on the worst. She is as prideful as she is irreverent, able to humble herself only when really slapped in the face with her own shortcomings, or forced to answer for her past misdeeds.
Despite her otherwise mostly calm demeanor outside the field of battle, when Xena gets way too frustrated she gets manic and animated, rather than angry, often with humorous consequences. While she may have an overwhelming tendency to mother hen children that's a mile and a half long, she's not very ladylike unless she's putting up a front.
She's highly competitive, with everyone and everything, especially friends. She delights in battle, often visibly lighting up while surrounded by vicious fighters, even if the situation doesn't look good for her. She also takes a certain amount of joy in being mysterious, and absolutely hates reusing old strategies, taking almost childish pride in thinking up original new ideas for beating insurmountable odds. She was born for the adventuring business, and though she may have tried to leave it behind her a few times, she always goes back.
POWER:
(Non-Canon Power) Anti-Modern Weaponry Bubble: The effects of modern weapons are rendered useless once they get within arm's length of her - bullets either dissolve or are somehow diverted before hitting her, grenades fizzle out ineffectually at her feet, and tear gas parts around her wherever she walks. Tech suits/cyborg bodies/what-have-you will still be fully functional as long as they stay strictly melee, but if they fire energy canons or missiles or whatever, the attack will malfunction like any other modern weapon. A side effect of this is that she also can't ever use a modern weapon without it failing in some kind of ridiculous way.
(Canon Power) Enhanced Strength/Agility/Durability: Her strength allows her to perform fantastic feats ofwire-work er, gravity defying flips, and her agility allows her to snatch speeding arrows out of the air. On multiple occasions on the show, she also survives much more physical punishment than any human should.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[The video starts up, showing... a toilet. IT'S EMPTY, thank the Gods.]
I've seen a lot of things, in my time. A lot of weird things. A lot of impressive things.
But this. Does everyone have this? This thing is amazing. [A hand shoots into the frame, the wrists clad brown and silver bracers. She manhandles the handle for a few seconds, before getting it to flush.] Now why didn't we think of this?
[Satisfied with the impressive display of modern plumbing, Xena finally turns the camera around to face her.] Your land is strange... but interesting, I'll give it that. What I just want to know is, what happened to all your stars?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Xena fluffed her animal fur bedroll, before splaying her limbs haphazardly across it and inhaling deeply. Gabrielle was beside her, telling her a romantic tale of some far-off prince, but Xena was only half-listening to the words. The other half was listening to the soothing cadence of her voice, and the sounds of the forest all around them. Animals, rustling leaves, and not another human for miles.
Her shoulders ached, and her eyes were halfway closed already, but she wasn't ready to fall asleep. There had been so many moments in her life since meeting Gabrielle that she wished she could freeze and preserve forever and this above all other things was one of them. She was sore and she was tired, but she was content. As much as she enjoyed sleeping under a roof those few days in the Lacoon Valley, sleeping under the stars would always be better. As much as she had developed a strange... fondness, almost, for the newly human God of War, Xena could love no man as much as she loved her soul-mate, her best friend, Gabrielle.
Her time on the farm with Ares had been... nice. Fun, even, despite everything. She had always missed her grandparent's house, the creaking boards and livestock stirring outside. The feeling of love, family, safety. Not that she hadn't gotten her chance to take down whole armies and crack some heads, but that was a minor detail. All work and no play would make her blade dull.
Not that it would get much of a chance, with the life she led, chasing always after her daughter and fighting against the inevitable resurfacing of her evil past. She couldn't see the day her weapons rusting ever coming, not in this lifetime - but perhaps in the next.
"So they had to meet in secret, under the guise of simple villagers, once every fortnight." Xena tipped her cheek onto her hand, watching Gabrielle's mouth move in time to her story. On a whim she reached over, and brushed a few golden strands of hair off of her best friend's forehead, surprising the bard enough to look over and laugh. "Xena, you're not listening to anything I say, are you?"
"Not a word." Maybe she didn't miss that feeling so much, after all.
NAME: Cris
AGE: 22
JOURNAL:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
IM: ffffudgesicles
E-MAIL: crizzotto@gmail.com
RETURNING: Nico di Angelo
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Xena
FANDOM: Xena: Warrior Princess (TV Show)
CHRONOLOGY: After the events of "Old Ares Had a Farm" in Season 6.
CLASS: Hero!
SUPERHERO NAME: Warrior Princess
ALTER EGO: Xena, TBD.
BACKGROUND:
The world of Xena: Warrior Princess is infinitely more fantastic than our own. Gods of all religions, monsters, myths and major historical figures from all across time converge, often in the form of terrible mid-90's CGI. By playing fast and loose with history, Xena is able to meet figures such as Julius Caesar, David and Goliath, Ulysses, Homer, Cleopatra, Helen and Paris, etc etc, all in one lifetime. The world's geography otherwise seems unchanged, by standards of around the time that BC and AD meet.
There are two theories concerning Xena's parentage, neither are explicitly confirmed in-series. The first is that she's the daughter of two mortals, Cyrene and Orestes. The other is that she's the daughter of Cyrene and Ares, the latter of whom had come to Cyrene's bed one night while her husband was away at war, disguised as him (as he had a tendency to do.) The second one seems slightly more likely considering Xena's fantastic abilities and a few snatches of dialog from Ares in the episode where the theory was originally presented, but there was no way they would ever confirm it because of the quasi-romantic (and later actually romantic) relationship between the God and possibly-daughter later on in the show. While those kind of incestuous shenanigans were fairly common in Greek myth, they are not so easy to get onto Network TV.
Either way, she grew up in a small village called Amphipolis in Thrace, in the tavern that Cyrene and Orestes owned. She has two brothers; one older, one younger (Toris and Lyceus respectively.) When she was only seven, Orestes (who was incredibly dedicated to his Gods) returned from the temple of Ares one night drunk and angry, swearing that Xena had to be killed (either because he was told by a priest that Ares required her as a sacrifice, or because Ares himself showed up to tell him that his daughter was the result of his wife's infidelity.) When Cyrene attempted to talk her husband down, he told her that he would kill her just the same if she got in the way, so she slew him with an axe to protect her daughter.
When Xena was in her late teens, early twenties, her village was attacked by Cortese's raiders. Xena rallied the villagers to fight back against her Mother's better judgment, and drove Cortese's men away. Her brother died in the battle, but the village was saved; shortly after, plagued by guilt over causing her baby brother's death, she began to take control of the surrounding towns and using them as buffer zones against later attacks. Amphipolis and its safety became the only thing that mattered to her anymore, even if her reputation was beginning to ostracize her from returning to that very place.
Once she had gathered enough forces, she began traveling and conquering instead fortifying and defending, with the ultimate goal of getting her revenge on Cortese. He evaded her, however, for over ten years.
After taking what she could of Thrace, she set out to the sea as a pirate raider, and after a period of success at it, her men captured the lone, defenseless Julius Caeser. Xena unwittingly fell head over heels for him. He betrayed her after she let him go with his head, boarding her ship, crucifying her crew, breaking both of her legs and stealing her amassed treasures so that he could finance his own wars without looking to the Senate for approval.
M'Lila (an escaped Gaelic slave that Xena had also captured around the same time, but turned into an ally when she saw her fighting prowess) was the only one to survive the attack because Xena covered for her by saying that she was already dead. M'Lila returned and pulled Xena down from her cross, dragging her to a healer and saving her life. While she recovered, M'Lila had only one question for her - she asked if she was angry with Caesar, if she wanted vengeance.
Xena floundered, unable to answer her. On some level, it seemed, she was still in love.
It was only when Caesar's soldiers came to kill her and M'Lila took a fatal arrow through the back meant for her that she shed the last vestiges of mercy and became the fearsome warlord that earned the name Warrior Princess, and Destroyer of Nations.
She returned to land, seething with rage, along the way meeting and partnering with another warlord named Borais. He fell in love with her and after some time running together he began changing, seeing that he needed to do good rather than the evil they were perpetrating together. By accident, they conceived a son, and knowing that her enemies would strike at any weakness she had displayed, Xena kept him a secret and left with him after Borais' untimely murder, giving him to the Centaurs to be raised as one of their own. They gave him the name Solan, and kept him safe for many years.
A decade after she began down the path of evil, Xena was met by Hercules, who defeated her and then helped her turn towards the path of righteousness. Blessed with luck, not long after that she found her salvation and soul-mate in a spunky small-town girl named Gabrielle, who met her on the road and tagged along without her consent. At first, anyway. She gradually became Xena's best friend, confidant, moral compass, and target of some ridiculous UST, including a few on-screen kisses. They wander together across the ancient globe for years, helping people, stopping evil and occasionally righting the wrongs of Xena's past.
One of those wrongs lead to the "creation" of Callisto, who was once a young girl that watched her mother and father burn to death when Xena's army sacked her village. She was so traumatized by the event that she rid her life of anything apart from taking revenge on Xena, and after training enough to match her with a sword, gathered an army to sack villages in Xena's name to draw her out. No matter how many times Xena put her away, she always got free. The second time she did so, she murdered Gabrielle's new husband; after that, when they fought, Xena left her to die sinking in quicksand.
Even that wasn't the end of Callisto; Ares stole her soul from Tartarus in another one of his bids to get to Xena by switching her place with Xena's, who was then trapped in Tartarus until she managed to talk Hades into letting her back out in Callisto's body. Again they fought, again Xena won, and Callisto's next escape from death was through a deal with Hera.... but more on that later.
Xena and Gabrielle traveled to the Telaquire Amazon tribe to establish peace between the warring tribe and nearby Centaur village, where after attempting to save the life of the tribe's princess, Gabrielle receives her Right of Caste (thereby becoming an Amazon Princess herself.) A peace that was undone later, by Velasca, who usurped the position as Queen by killing the previous one. Xena and Gabrielle came back just in time to stop a war from breaking out, and when Gabrielle claimed her position by Right of Caste before banishing her, she went mad and ate a piece of Ambrosia in order to become a God, and have her revenge.
Xena dies for the first time while visiting the ruins of Callisto's hometown. She is crushed by a hidden log trap, while rescuing a group of girls from slavers. She is revived after Gabrielle gives her a small piece of Ambrosia, from the plate that Valesca had used to become a God. (When given to the dead, Ambrosia only revives them rather than giving them Godhood.)
After that, Xena searches out Callisto, who had become an immortal after eating a Golden Apple when Hera freed her, therefore being the only opponent Xena could think of who would survive a fight with a God. When Callisto gets her hands on the other piece of Ambrosia, Xena leads them both into a trap and drops them both into a pit of lava where neither could die (on account of being Gods) but were unable to leave without help.
Xena left for Brittania after, to assist a former enemy in the fight against Julius Caesar and Rome. While there, Gabrielle gets impregnated by Dahak, the One Evil God and days later gives birth to his unholy baby, Hope. Hope grows rapidly, frees Callisto from the lava, and at her behest finds Xena's son.
She murders Solan, causing a rift between Xena and Gabrielle for the first time since they began to travel together. Xena uses a Hind's Blood Dagger - the only weapon capable of killing a God - to kill Callisto and Hope, before she and Gabrielle attempt to kill one another for the death of their respective children. Their love overcomes, though, and Gabrielle acknowledges that her "daughter" was evil, they continue traveling together along with Joxer.
She dies for the second time, crucified (again) by Caesar. She and Gabrielle ascend to Heaven, but Gabrielle is caught and dragged down into Hell by the demon of Callisto. Unable to imagine her soul-mate enduring an eternity of torture, despite her good and pure soul, Xena beseeches the Archangel Michael to let her right the wrong and purifies her soul in the fires of Heaven before throwing herself into the pits of Hell to retrieve Gabrielle.
While there she meets Callisto, who fights with her - Xena wins, of course - but at the end Callisto breaks down in hysterics, screaming that she will never forgive Xena for stealing her family away, and will hate her for eternity. Overcome with guilt, Xena trades herself for Callisto, condemning herself to Hell and sending Callisto to Paradise in her place, which finally allows them both to forgive one another. Long story short, Heaven and Hell go to war, with Gabrielle and Xena fighting opposite one another until they're restored to life both by Eli and Callisto, the latter imparting Xena with a gift.
A baby girl.
When she realizes that she's pregnant, Xena heads East to avoid being a target for her sudden, new weakness in her usual stomping grounds of Greece. Not that it helps much; she's Xena, and she could probably find danger in an empty room if she tried. She stops a war or two, discovers gunpowder and the Ancient Chinese
However, problems are stirring for her there. Her child is the subject of a prophecy given to Zeus by the Fates. It says, "as it has been since time beyond remembering, you will continue to rule, supreme among supreme... until such time as a child is born, not begotten by man." Since the child was given to Xena by Callisto - a woman - Zeus fears it spells the end of the time of the Gods, and begins making attempts to have Xena's child killed.
Luckily for Xena, Hercules comes to her aid, appalled by his Father's determination to kill a pregnant woman and her unborn child. He killed Zeus while she was giving birth, in order to stop him from throwing a bolt of lightning at her.
After that, Xena and her child (named Eve) became the most hunted mortals by Olympus. She captured Death and incited her to cry, so she and Gabrielle could drink her tears and fool the Gods into believing that she, and her baby, had died. Ares, overcome with grief over what appeared to be the death of the mortal woman he had ended up falling in love with, took their bodies away and buried them, where they were encased in ice for 25 years.
During those 25 years, Eve grew up with Octavius in Rome, whom Xena had left her baby with while they were putting on a show and pretending to die for the Gods (having not intended to be gone for a quarter century.) In Rome, Eve had been renamed Livia, and under the tutelage of Ares (unaware of her true identity) became the Champion of Rome, a ruthless persecutor of enemies of the Roman religion. Hoping to find her daughter as soon as she wakes, Xena departs immediately for Rome, where she discovers that her daughter has become a slaughterer of peaceful people, the followers of the Religion of Eli (Xenaverse's approximation of Christianity). Xena shows her that Ares doesn't truly love her, but in the process Ares figures out that she is indeed the child of prophecy. Unable to get through to her with words, Xena is forced to best her daughter in Gladiatorial combat, and after the fight Livia breaks down, running away. Enraged by the loss of all things she thought were hers, she began slaughtering villages whole and crucifying whatever followers of Eli she found, carving a path for Xena to follow.
Seeing everything dark and evil that she had once been, Xena tries to stop her, but not before Joxer is killed. Despite being evaded after multiple fights, she manages to finally beat Livia down, but when the moment comes... she finds she can't kill her only daughter. In desperation, she prays to the God of Eli, begging him to save her daughter when she couldn't, and Livia's soul is bathed in his light. Xena then discovers that Eli's light and Eve's subsequent baptism have given her the ability to slay Gods, so long as her daughter is alive.
From there, to protect her daughter, herself, her friends and the followers of Eli from the wrath of the Gods, Xena wipes out the whole Greek Pantheon, sparing only Aphrodite and Ares for their roles in helping her. She comes home to Amphipolis with Gabrielle and Eve in tow, only to find her beloved hometown destroyed, and her mother dead.
It turns out to have been the work of Mephistopheles, who had designs on the Earth after the reign of the Olympians ended, but first he needs Xena and her daughter out of the way. Xena summons Mephistopheles into the world where she can slay him to protect Eve, but in doing so condemns herself to replacing him as Queen of Hell. In order to escape her fate, she tricks the Archangel Lucifer into committing the seven deadly sins, and sends him there in her place.
Then she goes to Denmark, hangs with the Valkyries for awhile, comes back and helps a newly-mortal Ares evade some of the warlords he'd screwed over before, and finally finds herself in a little room with a machine that calls itself Lachesis.
PERSONALITY:
Xena is a formidable woman. She's an incredibly talented field medic, a great singer, a philosopher, a strategist, a warrior, a tracker, a dancer and an accomplished traveler. In her own words, she "has many skills."
Constantly tormented by guilt over evils done in her past as a brutal warlord, Xena is emotionally reserved and prefers putting forth the strong but silent image to all but her closest friends and confidants. To those she does get close to, however, she is warm, playful and kind, if still slightly gruff. Her sense of humor is drier than all the deserts combined, and she may act like she doesn't suffer fools, but secretly she has a great big soft spot for bumbling incompetents, from way back in her warlord days.
Perhaps moreso than most heroes, having played both sides of the coin - good and evil - she has an incredibly realistic view of the world and its inhabitants. She is willing to take risks and gambles, even with people's lives, so it's certainly convenient that she's always either right, or lucky enough that they survive regardless. She may be reckless, but she's also true to her word, and any debt she incurs she pays back in full, without fail - regardless of her opinion on the person she owes it to. Any friend she makes, she would go through Hell and back for, and any enemy she finds she never lets go until they are stopped.
Despite her reformed ways, she will still kill in self-defense, or in the defense of others, though she takes no stolen life lightly. Still, she won't kill women or children - unless the women are warriors, as she is - and no unarmed man. Despite the typical Warrior Woman archetype, Xena she isn't afraid of or shamed by the idea of using her sexuality to get what she needs, and actually does so frequently. In times when she's not, she'd like to give the impression that her heart is untouchable, but she falls repeatedly for men who can match her in battle, so long as it's both with wits and with swords - Hercules, Borais, Julius Caesar and Ulysses, to name a few - bonus points for being the bad boy type. She's also an easy sell for women with kind hearts, especially when they're also the spunky, adventurous type, though she tends to "adopt" and mentor rather than make conquests of them.
She's highly practical, despite her tendency towards theatrics (she greatly enjoys making grand entrances), and she's hardly fearless, but she cannot stand to run away from the things that frighten her, preferring instead to face them and fight. One thing she doesn't prefer to do, however, is teach others to fight with her; at least not with weapons or their hands. Instead she likes to teach the defenseless to fight with traps, the terrain and their wits.
She has a dark side that is kept in check largely by the power of her love for Gabrielle. Repeatedly she has nearly fallen over the edge, only to be pulled back by her best friend - or, in those times when she hasn't been near - by the memory of her. Her nearly unmatched physical prowess, and strategic genius make her confident on the best of days, and cocksure on the worst. She is as prideful as she is irreverent, able to humble herself only when really slapped in the face with her own shortcomings, or forced to answer for her past misdeeds.
Despite her otherwise mostly calm demeanor outside the field of battle, when Xena gets way too frustrated she gets manic and animated, rather than angry, often with humorous consequences. While she may have an overwhelming tendency to mother hen children that's a mile and a half long, she's not very ladylike unless she's putting up a front.
She's highly competitive, with everyone and everything, especially friends. She delights in battle, often visibly lighting up while surrounded by vicious fighters, even if the situation doesn't look good for her. She also takes a certain amount of joy in being mysterious, and absolutely hates reusing old strategies, taking almost childish pride in thinking up original new ideas for beating insurmountable odds. She was born for the adventuring business, and though she may have tried to leave it behind her a few times, she always goes back.
POWER:
(Non-Canon Power) Anti-Modern Weaponry Bubble: The effects of modern weapons are rendered useless once they get within arm's length of her - bullets either dissolve or are somehow diverted before hitting her, grenades fizzle out ineffectually at her feet, and tear gas parts around her wherever she walks. Tech suits/cyborg bodies/what-have-you will still be fully functional as long as they stay strictly melee, but if they fire energy canons or missiles or whatever, the attack will malfunction like any other modern weapon. A side effect of this is that she also can't ever use a modern weapon without it failing in some kind of ridiculous way.
(Canon Power) Enhanced Strength/Agility/Durability: Her strength allows her to perform fantastic feats of
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[The video starts up, showing... a toilet. IT'S EMPTY, thank the Gods.]
I've seen a lot of things, in my time. A lot of weird things. A lot of impressive things.
But this. Does everyone have this? This thing is amazing. [A hand shoots into the frame, the wrists clad brown and silver bracers. She manhandles the handle for a few seconds, before getting it to flush.] Now why didn't we think of this?
[Satisfied with the impressive display of modern plumbing, Xena finally turns the camera around to face her.] Your land is strange... but interesting, I'll give it that. What I just want to know is, what happened to all your stars?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Xena fluffed her animal fur bedroll, before splaying her limbs haphazardly across it and inhaling deeply. Gabrielle was beside her, telling her a romantic tale of some far-off prince, but Xena was only half-listening to the words. The other half was listening to the soothing cadence of her voice, and the sounds of the forest all around them. Animals, rustling leaves, and not another human for miles.
Her shoulders ached, and her eyes were halfway closed already, but she wasn't ready to fall asleep. There had been so many moments in her life since meeting Gabrielle that she wished she could freeze and preserve forever and this above all other things was one of them. She was sore and she was tired, but she was content. As much as she enjoyed sleeping under a roof those few days in the Lacoon Valley, sleeping under the stars would always be better. As much as she had developed a strange... fondness, almost, for the newly human God of War, Xena could love no man as much as she loved her soul-mate, her best friend, Gabrielle.
Her time on the farm with Ares had been... nice. Fun, even, despite everything. She had always missed her grandparent's house, the creaking boards and livestock stirring outside. The feeling of love, family, safety. Not that she hadn't gotten her chance to take down whole armies and crack some heads, but that was a minor detail. All work and no play would make her blade dull.
Not that it would get much of a chance, with the life she led, chasing always after her daughter and fighting against the inevitable resurfacing of her evil past. She couldn't see the day her weapons rusting ever coming, not in this lifetime - but perhaps in the next.
"So they had to meet in secret, under the guise of simple villagers, once every fortnight." Xena tipped her cheek onto her hand, watching Gabrielle's mouth move in time to her story. On a whim she reached over, and brushed a few golden strands of hair off of her best friend's forehead, surprising the bard enough to look over and laugh. "Xena, you're not listening to anything I say, are you?"
"Not a word." Maybe she didn't miss that feeling so much, after all.