Houri of Antaram, The Worst Purity Priestess Ever
My birthday is the last day of March and to honor myself I am posting one of my own favorite OCs every day of March: The OC Jubilee.
Imagine not only being the princess of a broke country with a bleak future, but the second princess. Imagine if your mother were notorious the world over for being the sex worker who caught a prince on the line and made herself the queen. Imagine if that same mother had the nerve to tell you you're going to a convent to be a virgin priestess forever and ever and ever and ever.
Half of Houri is at peace with this, even if it's not quite what she wanted from life. Half of her is at war with her mother and with everyone and everything holding her back from her bright and obvious destiny as the true Queen of Birds. And Queen Deloram has been trying so hard not to just kill her, because it's her fault that Houri is an incandescent bonfire of unstable energy to begin with. Deloram knew well that no ordinary child (read: Katarosi) could turn the fate of the nation of Antaram around, and she mmmmiiiight have made some sort of terrible black bargain with the world's most wicked goddess who fulfills these sorts of wishes for funsies. It turns out that "ordinary" is actually a very desirable character trait for a monarch, and "rated top 10 most unhinged heirs" not so much.
Houri's outgoing good cheer and radiant confidence easily wins her friends and admirers, and when she's young, people find her chuuni interest in violence cute and funny rather than low key terrifying:
Katarosi glared at him. “Then let us pray that Houri–”
“Is right here!” the younger girl piped up, having seemingly come from nowhere with one bird on her head.
“Houri,” sighed Katarosi in exasperation.
“Gods, I love doing that,” said Houri with delight, rushing forward to catch Ismyrn and Luzcrezo. “Hello, new friends! I am Houri, the other princess of Antaram! Would you like to see our collection of horrific instruments of torture, unused for centuries – allegedly? They say that down in the dungeons, you can hear Sparkasuki’s suitors screaming her name for all eternity.”
The two young Republicans stared down at her. “... I like this one better,” decided Luzcrezo, to her immense satisfaction.
But it's not a joke. She's actually Like That. At least, the one who eventually comes to call herself Unveiled Houri (when not insisting on exclusive rights to "the real Houri") is like that. Veiled Houri, the one who voluntarily keeps her Flametender oaths, is a little more chill. As someone who is effectively asexual when it comes to physical interactions and plural in real life, I find the darkest, most horrifying twist in Houri's life not to be when Veiled Houri realizes that Unveiled Houri killed someone, but when Veiled Houri realizes that Unveiled Houri very deliberately threw away their bodily chastity to fuck up their Flametender oaths. This is my idea of a plurality worst-case nightmare scenario. The Houris are in much more direct conflict with each other than the other plural characters, actively sabotaging each other on purpose.
Veiled Houri respects her older sister Katarosi and has a profound and sincere friendship with Barsamin, who would do anything, anything to protect her, the only person in Ostmenye Castle who saw him as a new friend and not as some sort of political tool. Her other longstanding friend is Serriden, the only other unusually young Flametender when Houri begins training around age twelve. Unveiled Houri can't stand Serriden, thinking of her as pretentious, stuck-up, goody-two-shoes bla bla bla. Unveiled Houri is also passionately obsessed with Aramaz from first sight. The fact that, despite being absurdly, impossibly beautiful, it takes Unveiled Houri several years of unsubtle attempts to convince any boy to so much as kiss her is very funny to me. They keep turning out to be gay or ace or surprisingly wise for a straight boy.
The top illustration of this entry is Houri as I originally conceived her back in 2007 when I had the first ideas for the story: a woman in her 30s, powerful and self-assured. And the worst purity priestess ever.
Vibe music:
Wonder of the Wonder (La Mulana)
Queen Ambi's Palace
This orchestral arrangement of Wonder of the Wonder, which begins with beautiful, tranquil, gentle music before dropping the beat, is the absolute perfect music for what happens when Houri lets the veil fall from her head. Queen Ambi's Palace from Zelda is very much what Houri sounds like when she's not busy being terrifyingly willing to break a few absolute moral laws in the name of her glory.
