Adashi

Adashi Cornaro was an Assoti priestess for the Twin Dragon faith. She was also the matron of the Gaian tribe.

Early Weeks
Just before the collapse of Rugo, an egg from the Devrim Assoti unexplainably ended up upon a trade wagon heading to the continent of Sparwood. This egg eventually fell out of the caravan in the continent of Nieden, and was undiscovered by the locals of the area.

Many days later, the egg would hatch into a young assoti. Lost and afraid, she travelled aimlessly across the land, scavenging what little food there was and taking refuge in whatever shelter she could find. Eventually, her travels would bring her to the small town of Iabet, a once abandoned town being repaired by a tribe known as "The Gaians". She was taken in by them, and eventually joined them, following their mission to protect the beauty of the Overworld.

Imprisonment in Chevkri
Assoti are often known for their limited understanding of modern society concepts such as possession and etiquette. This trait was retained upon the young assoti, who survived off of petty theft when times were rough. One day, during a Gaian mission in the continent of haven, she was arrested by the police force of Chevkri, a state in the Second Empire of Uldarash. It turned out that during her short stay in the continent, the assoti had broken many rules and had been sentenced to jail time.

Adoption
Partway through the assoti's sentence, a Montroigan man by the name of Thomas Cornaro pitied the young bug, and offered to adopt her while still in prison. She accepted, and from thereon out was recognised as a member of the Cornaro family, taking on the name of Adashi.

Release from prison
Following Adashi's adoption, her new family worked hard to have her sentence lessened, sending appeals to the courts and waging a legal battle. Eventually they succeeded, and Adashi was released on parole. After her release from prison, she would spend a short period of time with her new family, before returning to the Gaian Tribe. During this time, Adashi would become religious, becoming highly dedicated to The Sisters of Peace.

Return to Nieden
After bidding farewell to her family, Adashi Cornaro returned to the town of Iabet, helping the Gaians rebuild it once more. During this time, her dedication saw her highly liked by fellow members of the tribe, eventually leading to her becoming their de facto leader, an event that would lay the path for future tribal reforms and restructurings. This would lead to the hierarchical system present in the tribe today.

Converting to Twin Dragon
While working on Iabet, Adashi was approached by a visiting celestial elf from the Aurlûnor Velande. The visitor introduced herself as a priestess for the Twin Dragon faith, and provided an impromptu sermon for the assoti. Utterly swayed by her preaching, Adashi converted to Twin Dragon a mere 2 days after the lhûren, and began to establish the faith among the Gaian tribe.

Disagreement in Suderen
The positioning of Iabet resulted in the Gaians and eventually Iabet's new citizens being dragged unwillingly into geopolitical issues. Partway through the restoration of the town, the Fourth Empire of Escharia was vassalized by the Uraka Imperium following the Entente-Auroran war. Shortly after, the duchy of Suderen declared independence from Escharia, resulting in Iabet becoming a town in the new nation of Suderen. Adashi Cornaro and the Gaian tribe would clash many times with the Suderen government, the most significant of which was over Adashi's plans to build a temple to the Twin Dragon faith in Iabet. This choice conflicted with Suderen's monotheist religious outlook, which lead to heated debate between the Suderen leadership and the Gaians, spearheaded by Adashi herself.

The talks eventually resolved with a treaty signed allowing Iabet and the Gaian tribe to enjoy religious freedom, but the sides still retained differing ideals and various arguments would continue to occur until many months after Suderen merged with the Duchy of Escharia to form the True Empire of Escharia. During the events that transpired between Iabet and the rest of Suderen, Adashi Cornaro was infected by a spore blossom plant. The infection quickly overtook her body, releasing compatible pheromones that compelled her to cultivate and grow more spore blossoms in a parasitic relationship. The infection also resulted in small non-sporing blossoms of the same plant to grow over Adashi's exoskeleton, resulting in her signature appearance. Neither the flowers nor the infection itself appeared to have any significant affect on her wellbeing at the time, and instead served only to spark a newfound desire to grow more spore plants in the assoti.

Establishment of Adnan
Adashi Cornaro eventually shifted her focus from her work for the Gaian tribe to the history and future of her own species. She embarked on a trip to Eldham after her work at Iabet was completed, and learned about the cultures present there, even attaining a citizenship for the Valardom of Vulpinia (the nation would later merge with Notos and become known as The Vulperium, a name that remains to the present day). Taking a liking to the nation, she requested permission to create an independent town within the mountains east of their capital, and was granted her wish. She then began to construct the town of Adnan, which was intended to serve as her hive and as a safe space for other insectoid races such as the mothling and the aphiari.

Upon completing the hive, Adashi sought out a chemist with a very specific request. The aforementioned chemist was able to synthesize the pheromones that triggered an assoti's development into a queen, which allowed Adashi to become the first assoti queen since the fall of the Devrim Assoti Tribe. Along with significantly lengthening her quickly waning lifespan, her transformation allowed Adashi to lay eggs and raise children, a dream come true for the assoti. She would rear hundreds of young assoti in Adnan, caring for them and teaching them the ways of modern society.

Return to Rathnir
Adashi would eventually return to Rathnir to continue her work on the restoration of her species' history. She started by reclaiming the now destroyed city of Rugo and reuniting the remaining Devrim assoti, imploring them to re-establish the once-great assoti city. With restoration of the city well underway, rumor got out to the rest of Rathnir, and eventually assortments of assoti and sympathisers began to visit, slowly returning Rugo to its former glory. She would also visit Iabet every now and then, watching the small town expand.

One day, while Adashi was wandering around the continent of Syltor, she was ambushed by a bandit and stabbed many times, being left to die. Amazingly, she survived the encounter and returned to her work. However, when she visited Iabet the very next week, the citizens of the town realised something was wrong about the assoti. In reality, the infection had began to fully set into Adashi Cornaro, slowly decaying her musculature and replacing them with vines and plant life that had muscular function and connected directly to her nervous system, allowing her to retain all her capabilities for movement. Adashi herself never noticed the infection and was thus unbothered and unaware of its developement.

Death
While heading through the fields of a green pasture, Adashi was greeted by the view of what she considered to be an extraordinarily unsightly wall. A combination of her ideals to preserve nature and her natural Assoti instincts to tunnel resulted in her destroying the wall, an action that sealed her fate. The people of the city that was protected by the wall were furious at her actions, and sent both their guard and a large militia of hired mercenaries after her. She was caught just outside of Rugo and apprehended by the river of Adddemen.

The city itself had already garnered a distaste for Assoti, and decided to summarily execute Adashi. They dragged the assoti queen to the middle of the river, and forced her under. As horrified Rugo citizens looked on, unable to help, she was drowned within the river over the course of two hours, being plunged in headfirst over and over again. As death approached and the assoti's desperate struggles began to slow, her last thoughts were that of the cruel irony of this world: here she was, doomed to die by the very natural world that she had sought to preserve.

Two hours and twelve minutes after the start of the execution, the assoti went limp. Adashi Cornaro, Queen of the Assoti and Matron of the Gaians, was dead. Her body was left to decompose in the river, where the pheromones that would have triggered another assoti's transformation into a Queen were washed away forever. The body was never recovered, and her friends and family were never able to wish her a proper goodbye. So ended the tale of Adashi Cornaro.

The Flowering
Adashi's infection had caused extraordinary changes in her biology and behaviour, enough so to warrant a detailed explanation of the disease and its effects.

The following overview of the disease is rather specific and slightly graphic, and as such may not be suitable to all readers. Display Content

Contracting the disease
Adashi contracted the infection from exposure the the spores of the aptly named Spore Blossom plant. These spores lodged in the cracks of her exoskeleton and germinated, eventually growing across the assoti's body and flowering. For an unknown reason, the flowers that grew from the spores do not release spores of their own, meaning that Adashi is unable to transmit the disease to other creatures. It is unknown what other species are able to contract the Flowering, but an educated guess would hint at insectoid species being a likely host.

Symptoms and effects
After blooming, the blossoms of the parasite would then begin to release pheromones that triggered an unexplainable desire to cultivate spore blossoms in the host, resulting in what can be described as a small but constant nagging thought in the back of the host's mind encouraging them to grow more of the plant. In Adashi's case, she began to grow spore blossoms around the town of Iabet, and would check up on their growth at sporadic intervals.

At an undefined point in time far after the initial outbreak, the disease would begin to fully overcome its host. The plant would begin by sending appendages through cracks in the chitin exoskeleton. These appendages would secrete a potent localised painkiller alongside an acidic substance, slowly melting away at the muscles beneath while keeping the nervous system's pain receptors shut down, preventing the host from realising what was happening. after melting away a small amount of muscle, the plant would grow in a fibrous pattern that accurately simulated the now missing muscle tissue and functioned similarly. Eventually, this process would fully destroy the original muscles of the host, replacing it with fully functional plant growths that acted in the same fashion and were fully controllable by the intact host's brain and nervous system.

It is unknown why the plant does this, but Adashi's case saw the spread occur at some point after she was attacked by a bandit. As such, a possible explanation for this is that the plant is attempting to artificially revive its dying host. As such, it can be argued that Adashi Cornaro is undead, or at least no longer as alive as she was before the growth begun to spread.

Personality
Adashi Cornaro was highly dedicated to helping others. Her morals were almost entirely built on the ideas of selflessness, and she was a very headstrong individual. She was generally cheery and caring, but as with most assoti she had limited respect for boundaries and was easily upset when others (especially nobility and government individuals) inevitably disagree with her ideals. Adashi was also generally a pacifist, preferring to settle issues without bloodshed, though she often became rather hotheaded when annoyed or forced to talk with individuals she disliked.

Adashi also had a caring side, being a very motherly figure and often feeling obliged to help and give to those weaker than her. Upon maturing and learning more about her own species, she also began to desire being a mother, making plans to create a hive and breathe life back into stagnating assoti culture. Adashi was also highly charitable, a trait that often blended with her disregard for boundaries and sentimentality to cause some many problems, eventually leading to her demise. However, she always tried to have the best of intentions at heart.