Alexiphosa

T hough an accomplished vindicator of the Exodar, Alexiphosa doesn’t have a vindicator’s grim temperament; indeed, she’s a loud-living bon vivant. She loves dancing and food, and makes a point to stop by every tavern in every town she visits in order to sample to the local cuisine. Not enjoying life is the worst thing imaginable to her, and is a major motivation for taking up arms against the Scourge and others who would end life ... or make it intolerably drab.

As much as she loves eating, however, she will under no circumstances lift a finger to cook. That’s what squires are for. Opinionated, loud, and mercurial to an improbable degree — she might be violently furious with someone one day, then have a pleasant lunch with them the next. She lives entirely in the moment, and can seldom plan ahead further than a day. She had become accustomed to family in her youth, and misses having them now. Which may be why she’s latched onto some of her friends with such fierce tenacity. Where some would call her a control freak — she often tells people to change what they’re wearing to something else, for example — she would say that she’s caring, that she wants to tell people what’s right. And Alexiphosa knows what’s right. She must be as beautiful as possible at every moment; only dire emergencies are grounds for interrupting her grooming ritual. She enjoys dressing provocatively, and any man she’s involved with must gracefully accept the leers of other men. But the Light help the man she’s with who looks too long at another woman. Also, the man who can’t dance need not approach her. Still, for all her emphasis on looking and feeling as sexy as possible, she rarely talks about sex. She just does it. Alexiphosa is suspiciously comfortable around all manner of atrocity, which she attributes sometimes to the grisly total war between the draenei and orcs in older days, sometimes to coming from a family of butchers, but hints here and there have led those close to her to believe that she and her family are in fact Auchenai, and that she broke from them only after coming to Azeroth. She’s a close friend of ">Lómion, whom she had met while serving the Hand of Argus in Forest Song, and felt it her duty to take the austere night elf on tours of the good life. Regrettably, it was also Alexiphosa who encouraged Lómion’s ill-fated relationship with Yarralomë, which ended in murder-suicide and undeath. It continues to be a source of guilt even now, and might be one reason for her fierce protectiveness of Lómion since her release from the Lich King’s control. She’s also a friend of Lómion’s mother Isilyë, whom she met while fighting against Illidan Stormrage in the Black Temple. Their meeting was not a friendly one, however; Lómion was still presumed dead at the time, and Alexiphosa, who had by then read Gustaf Tetzel’s account of Isilyë and her relationship to Lómion, was accusatory and otherwise hostile throughout much of the campaign. Only in the moments before facing Illidan himself did Alexiphosa make her peace with Isilyë, an act as much about dealing with her own role in Lómion’s death as it was about absolving Isilyë of her incest, canibalism, and general despicability prior to her rehabilitation. Alexiphosa has what strikes some as a peculiar view of the Scourge’s war with Azeroth, which she believes to be more a civil war between the eredar and the draenei, into which other races have unfortunately been drawn. The Scourge’s presence in Azeroth, therefore, is entirely the fault of the draenei, and their responsibility to end. Background

W hen the light of the draenei seemed about to go out forever in the dark days of the orkish war on them on Draenor, Alexiphosa, like so many, had lost her entire family, and wandered the the warscape in a half-mad daze, fighting the orcs when and where she could using a mace she fashioned from the grisly remains of her father Arkhelekkos’ skull and spine, in which his soul was necromantically preserved and could still speak.

Over time, her despair, hero-worship of her father, and pining for the past pulled her into the quicksand of insanity, and she began seducing fellow draenei, only to cut their heads off at the moment of climax and swap them out with the head of her father, without which she was unable to finish her manic enjoyment. This inevitably led her to Auchindoun, the colossal draenei mausoleum, to join her slaughtered family ... where she found that someone had been resurrecting the fallen there into undeath.

Arkhelekkos’ still talking head persuaded the sinister, mostly undead Auchenai to accept them into their midst. There, in the grey silt of the Bone Wastes, Alexiphosa and Arkhelekkos fought to hasten the Auchenai’s vision of the Apocalypse, she while becoming a paladin vindicator and notorious necrophiliac among the risen in the crypt, and he while serving as a vindicator captain after his spirit was transferred to the body of one of Alexiphosa’s still living brothers, who was found wandering in the Bone Wastes.

But the Auchenai Apocalypse wasn’t coming soon enough, and it was decided that the Aldor’s continued struggle against the Burning Legion’s designs was keeping the the Apocalypse and the Auchenai in limbo. So a team of of living Auchenai, led by Arkhelekkos and including Alexiphosa, was selected to infiltrate Tempest Keep and destroy it from within. Alas for them, Kael’thas Sunstrider’s blood elves seized control of Tempest Keep before Arkhelekkos and his team could complete their mission, and The Exodar was sent hurtling toward Azeroth with Arkkelekkos and company on it.

The crash killed all in the Auchenai party but Arkhelekkos and Alexiphosa, and while it seemed to stiffen Arkhelekkos’ resolve to destroy what remained of the draenei, it also woke Alexiphosa from the thanatophilic dream state she had been in for so long.

Father and daughter started to clash on what to do now that the Auchenai Apocalypse had become irrelevant; their relationship eventually came to a grisly end when Arkhelekkos set out to blow up The Exodar and Alexiphosa bludgeoned him to death with the very mace that once constituted his skull.

Thus began Alexiphosa’s long career of championing the draenei in their war with, ultimately, the eredar and the eredar obsession with obliteration, for having experienced that first hand, she feels she has a deeper understanding than most of just how precious life and living are, and can’t imagine not fighting to defend them.

 The Sodality

T he moment Alexiphosa learned that the Ebon Blade death knights had been freed from the Lich King’s thrall, she immediately sought out her friend Lómion, now “Caranlos”, who had been murdered and drafted into the Lich King’s undead cavalry. The reunion was not a happy one; Caranlos at that point did not want anyone from her past life to see her, and the two actually came to blows. But Alexiphosa was persistent, and as part of her effort to reconnect Caranlos with the world, tracked down Caranlos’ mother/aunt Isilyë and introduced them to each other. That reunion was not initially auspicious, either, but the iron-willed Alexiphosa kept at it, and eventually the estranged night elves came to accept that they were in this circle of family and friends whether they wanted to be or not.

In the years that followed, others were admitted into what Alexiphosa began calling The Sodality: foul-tempered Halldis was inducted after she met Isilyë in Blackrock Mountains, where the two of them helped one another assassinate their respective targets; quick-tempered Ulvin, whose popular Wednesson Guide had already earned The Sodality’s admiration, joined after working with Isilyë in Uldum; soul-sick Kalika was admitted when she caught up with Ulvin in the Twilight Highlands — Ulvin warned against bringing an addict of fel magic into the fold, but Alexiphosa, ever confident that she can fix the broken, took her in anyway; and jovial Tengshe was introduced to Kalika by King Varian himself — he wanted Kalika to be his new Pandaren allies’ guide to the Scourge demons they would now be facing — and Tengshe, while wary of Kalika (whom he regarded as a “hungry ghost”), immediately hit it off with Alexiphosa, Isilyë, and Ulvin on account of his epicurism, fondness for meditation and nature, and exoticism. Gear