[b]Mother Indira Al-Sayed, The First Summoner
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[img]https://i.imgur.com/Szss3VH.jpg[/img]


At thirty-four years old, Mother Indira Al-Sayed is the youngest instructor in the Red Seminary. Born with a prodigious gift for ether, Mother Indira was the first priest in the Varyan Empire to successfully subjugate a demon from the Black Glacier. She then chose to return to her training grounds to continue her research on demon summoning and to teach her method and science to a new generation of priests. Being the first "summoner" within the empire, Mother Indira is renowned throughout Varya as an incredibly powerful mage and scientist. As a former Omestrian slave, and due in part to her own charismatic nature, her rise is often cited as what led to the newer generations of Varyans adopting a more favorable view of Omestrians and becoming less enamored with the slave trade, thus she is seen as a sort of folk hero among both progressives and Omestrian slaves. She considers this ironic, and silently laughs at those who see her as a beacon of hope for enslaved Omestrians, as it was her own ability to enslave a "lesser race" of beings that has galvanized these younger Varyans to act.

For the past twelve years, Mother Indira has been the main instructor of Leviathan Warband, but runs her own separate training regimen for those in the Seminary with the highest recorded ether pools. This program, known as the Circle, is a highly intensive five-year long curriculum that aims to teach pupils with a highly potent and unique form of ether the skills needed to successfully subjugate and summon demons. She accepts very few students into this program, and from those who made the cut, the vast majority were cut at some point after being judged to "not have what it takes" by Mother Indira. In more than a decade, only two pupils out of dozens have shown the aptitude to complete their specialized training under her and graduate from the Circle-- those two young priests being Mother Tatiana of Warband Phoenix, who is now an ordained Inquisitor, and Father Dara of Warband Seraph, who one year prior disappeared from the Seminary and became an apostate shortly before Culmination.

Days after Warband Leviathan's culmination, she, along with most of the senior Seminary teaching staff, was called to the Elurian front.

[b]Mother Indira's relationships:
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[b]Mother Viveca and Father Oren:[/b] [@Scout] [@CollectorofMyst]
To Viveca and Oren, Mother Indira was a teacher, confidant, and mentor. She was often overly hard with the two young Omestrian priests, instilling harsher punishments and giving them tougher assignments. When questioned as to why they were being treated differently, Indira told them that as Omestrians, they would always be seen as inferior to other races, and would thus have to work twice as hard as others to prove their worth. Beyond that, she sought to train them to always "be mindful", for any hint of faithlessness, any sign of them "straying from the path" could spell disaster for them. For years, day in and day out, she taught them how to properly enshroud themselves as devout Varyan priests, how to properly mask any feelings of faithlessness and how to appear as devout followers of the Ravenous Lord.

When it came to their shared Omestrian culture, she didn't engage in teaching them anything about their people, instead leaving them to figure that part out themselves. The one creed that she instilled in them was the following mantra:

"Deep within you there is a flame. Never allow it to go out."


[b]Father Ilya:[/b] [@Draken]

Mother Indira had an especially strained relationship with the young Varyan priest. Perhaps it was her inexperience as an intructor at play, or her still-fresh childhood memories suffering at the hands of families like his, but she could not, no matter how much she tried, divorce her feelings as a former Omestrian slave from having to teach this son of a Varyan noble. She knew it wasn't her place to share her experiences with the boy, to tell him of how her hands were shattered by hammer and rod numerous times when she wasn't quick enough in doing a task, or how she had to watch her mother passed around to her lord's military friends like a whore-- no, her purpose was to teach this boy how to become an inquisitor. And that's what she did.

Ilya was often included in Viveca and Oren's "extracurricular activities", but for a different reason. She didn't do it as a way to make certain he was more adequately prepared to face a world that would look down on him, but for a more selfish reason-- she just didn't like him, and wanted the boy to suffer how she suffered. However, as the years passed, and Ilya showed himself to be an extraordinary pupil who continuously passed her tests and endured everything she threw at him, she suddenly found herself quietly respecting the boy and growing fond of him. After all, here was a boy who she made suffer the same physical punishments she did, and he faced them unflinchingly, without ever breaking. 

These days, Ilya and Mother Indira are something near to close friends. Though they are more than a decade apart in age, they often drink together and discuss politics. She often felt some measure of guilt over how she allowed her own feelings towards him to affect her as an instructor, and now believes that she could have gotten the same results from him with less harsher methods.

[b]Mother Tatiana[/b] [@OppositionJ] and [b]Father Dara[/b]

Tatiana and Dara were the only students who had completed five years of specialized summoner's training under Mother Indira and managed to not only journey to the Black Glacier to claim a demon for themselves, but return with their lives. As such, she treasured her "two little dragons" above all else, and treated them like a doting mother-- always pushing them to their limits, never accepting failure, and being so fiercely protective of them and their gift that she forbid the other instructors from marring her hard work. Because of this, Tatiana and Dara were rarely seen on Gregoroth's training yard. Instead, the two spent their years at the Tower, attempting to become the empire's second summoners.

In Tatiana, Mother Indira found a surrogate daughter and apprentice. She viewed the young Lanostran as a true student, someone whom she would continue to train for decades to come, and the one who would eventually rise as Indira's successor. She hoped that Tatiana would one day become an instructor herself, and carry on her legacy by passing her teachings down to newer generations. This plan to continue to train the young priestess hit a roadblock after Indira was called to the Elurian front. Like many inquisitors and scientists, Indira was deeply interested in the wild land of El, but planned to travel there years after the subjegation was complete to do her research. She had no desire to slog through a warzone after all, and instead planned to send Dara to fight in her stead. After Dara disappeared however, Indira had no choice but to assist in the Elurian invasion herself.

Unlike Tatiana, Father Dara, the quiet but supremely gifted Protector of Warband Seraph, was not seen as a successor or work in progress, for the boy didn't have the proper aptitude for such things. Instead, Dara would be the "results" the Varyan Church wanted from Indira's training regimen. A gift to the bishops, a powerful weapon for them to wield on the warfront while she focused on training Tatiana, the one she viewed as her true heir. Thus, when Dara suddenly disappeared days before his Culmination, it destroyed her well-laid plans. Even now, a year later, she longs to find him, for he is dangerous, not just to the empire, but to himself as well.