Kester Thidos (KESS-ter THEE-dose)

Kester Thidos was a noted Bekiskapan general during The First Age in Eden. After completing her own nine years of mandatory military service, she took a mere two years off to bear and begin raising a child. But after those two years were done, Thidos re-enlisted to spare her daughter from the horrors of war. When she died during the Battle of Frankburg Bridge, Kester Thidos was just one day from completing her second tour of duty—just one day from returning to Nova Meskera and the loving embrace of the girl she’d sacrificed so much to protect.

Thidos’ book, The Art of Adaptive Warfare, remains required reading at military academies across Eden to this day. It was a favorite of Abraham the Honest, who quoted liberally from the text during the speech he gave to end the Nunyan Civil War.

Appearance & Personality

Kester Thidos was a powerfully built woman with a particularly well-defined upper body. Her muscular arms, broad shoulders, and strong, sculptured back were the envy of many of her fellow Bekiskapan. This is to say nothing of her shredded abs, nor the sturdy lower body she made for herself by never skipping leg day.

She kept her naturally black hair short—never longer than chin-length—and embellished it with streaks of magenta, her favorite color.

Personality-wise, she was a thoughtful but decisive leader. Though slow to anger, her unbridled fury was a force to be reckoned with—and never was she more prone to irritabiity than when her orders were disobeyed. Thidos saw herself as the mother of her young nation of Bekiskapan refugees, and saw it as her sacred duty to keep her countrymen safe. Because she was so careful and so considerate of differing opinions during her decision-making process, she considered disobedience—especially on the battlefield—the most grievous injury someone could inflict upon her.

At home and during times of peace, she was a restless soul. Though she loved her daughter and the members of the triad she left behind to re-enlist, Kester Thidos knew herself as a warrior—in a way that she never did as a citizen.

Biography

Early Life

Kester Thidos was born in the Empire of Meskera in the latter days of the Earth-665 iteration of reality. She grew up along the banks of what we in The Real World call the Vilnia River, on land that is held in our world by the Republic of Lithuania.

The most notable thing about her early life is that she grew up an only child and an orphan, two extremely rare occurrences in Bekiskapan society. All three of the women she called mother had struggled with infertility, including the one who gave birth to her. And then, when she was 10, The Calamity struck and her universe came to an end. But though Young Kester survived and found herself in the purgatorial paradise of Eden, her mothers did not.

Though many triads offered to take her in and add her to their own broods, Young Kester was determined to make it on her own. And that’s just what she did until she came of age.

By the time she was ready to begin her military service, she had read every book on warfare in the Edenian Athenæum and mastered every weapon available in the armory at the new Bekiskapan stronghold of Nova Meskera.

Adulthood

At age eighteen, Kester Thidos enlisted, formed her first triad, and went off to war. Together with their dwarven allies, Thidos’ generation of Bekiskapan helped to tame the untamed east of Eden and to establish The Democratic Republic of the Reek. And then, after nine years of fighting, Kester Thidos’ time in the service was done.

Or so she thought.

Though she was lucky enough to get pregnant on her first visit to The Barracks and lucky enough to give birth to a healthy baby girl, her luck lasted naught but two years. In the year 20 CE, history repeated itself in the worst way imaginable. Kester’s partners, both of them pregnant with their first children, were killed in an attack by the Monster Hordes on their home in Nova Meskera. Only Kester and her daughter survived.

Driven both by a thirst for vengeance and by a desire to spare her daughter from having to serve when she came of age, Kester Thidos re-enlisted and spent the next eight years, eleven months, and 30 days doing two things: fighting the Hordes wherever they did roam, and distilling her nearly forty years of knowledge and experience into the manuscript that would become The Art of Adaptive Warfare.

During the Battle of Frankburg Bridge, as a mind-controlled kíndallan monster strangled the last breaths from her body, the last thing on Kester Thidos’ mind was that her daughter would owe only one day of service to their country. She had done what she set out to do, and she could rest.

Little did she know that an accidental slight by her daughter’s foster parents would lead to an eventful life for young Aesling anyway. But that story, of halfling witches and spinning wheels and a 100 year sleep, is a story for another time.