Asha Catari, hero of the Defiants, is making her mark in Atlas Reactor!
We Telarans all know and love Asha, and her unique look will soon be available in our strategic, turn-based action game, Atlas Reactor. Asha’s fighting style closely matches that of the character Atlas Reactor Asana, and we are thrilled with the result of this collaboration! Atlas Reactor is free-to-play and may appeal to PvP fans of RIFT. Give it a try today! www.atlasreactor.com
Now if we can only get PuP into RIFT somehow…
THE STORY OF ASHA CATARI
For those who may yet be unfamiliar with Asha, we have some lore to share from our archives.
The Catari family has a long and illustrious history of producing the finest mages of Telara. At the peak of the ancient Eth Empire, the city-state of Catari was ruled by the family’s ancient ancestors.
Asha is the youngest Catari daughter. Her older sister, Auram Catari, was ever the shining star of Quicksilver College, and Asha struggled to distinguish herself, more often than not simply getting herself into trouble with her restlessness and rebelliousness.
Asha was as gifted as her sister, but, frustrated by the weight of expectations and slow pace of progress, rebelled against the curriculum of the college. She and Alsbeth the Discordant (then known as Alsbeth Rothmann) both experimented with dark warlock magic. Alsbeth turned Asha in, resulting in her expulsion from the College.
Angry but undaunted, Asha joined the Dragonslayer Covenant, an ancient order devoted to preserving the knowledge of the Blood Storm Wars and to prevent the return of Regulos. She became their most adept magical warrior, chasing down cult cells.
In the course of her efforts, she found proof that the Endless Court had made a deal with Aedraxis Mathos. She was then sent by Orphiel Farwind to warn the forces of Zareph Mathos.
She stayed on to fight with their forces as a part of a strike force sent to seek out the source of Aedraxis’s dark power. They failed to find it in time, and when the Shade was unleashed. Asha was among the many destroyed by its dark power.
But her story did not end with her death. Beyond the veil, Regulos drew her spirit from the Soulstream to stand before him. The Destroyer offered her his great power if she would become his general on Telara. She hotly refused, preferring death to evil servitude. Regulos resolved to destroy her, searing her spirit by igniting the very energy with which he had embroidered it as a taste of the power he offered her. She writhed and screamed in immeasurable pain, but before he could crush her utterly, her spirit was suddenly pulled away, leaving him howling in rage.
She awoke, gasping for breath, within a machine in Freemarch, shocked and confused, but alive. Orphiel Farwind, once her tutor in the Court of Mathos, stood beside her, looking at her with an expression of triumph. He explained that he had used the technology of the ancient Eth to return her to life, and that she was merely the first of the warriors he planned to return as what would become the Ascended.
Orphiel soon realized that Asha was not at all the same young woman whom he had known at the Court of Mathos. Physically, she had changed, covered in glyphs of power that flared up on her skin, but all Defiants could sense that she had changed in other ways as well, and many now found her presence strange and uncomfortable.
Asha continued to distinguish herself, leading the Defiants to many great victories against both the agents of The Blood Storm and their enemies in the Guardians. Now that the two factions have found common ground once more, her leadership has grown to lead the combined Telaran forces against planar threats.
Even among the Defiants, she is considered aloof and unapproachable, but widely revered. Few have her confidence, but none would dare question her ability to lead. She walks with planar energy in her gait, and an intense passion of purpose that stirs others to action.
Many Ascended have joined the battle since then, and lend their strength and skill to this common cause, the protection of Telara… but she will always be the first, the strange one, the marked soul.
