“With hands of iron and heart of fire, I stand unbroken, a warrior, a mother, a storm. Cross me, and face the tempest.”
Lozen, formally Princess Lozen Banunu Arahunaa, is a warrior-princess of the Gemegishkirihallat Tribe of the Eoperaxi Nomads, who for roughly five years ruled her people from the Plains of Eoperax. A Human barbarian whose strength was magically enhanced beyond ordinary limits, she is best known for a pact with the infernal Zariel that rendered her hands impervious to harm, for the offensive she subsequently led against Tatharia Capitolina, and for the catastrophe that followed: the loss of her homeland to Avernus. She bears the titles the Unbroken Hand, Defender of the Plains, Heroine of Gemegishkirihallat, and the Plains Princess. At the time of record she is blinded and, following an escape from Tatharian captivity, travels aboard the Starpetal in the company of the Grung ranger Pondskipper.
Physical description
Lozen stands six feet tall and weighs roughly 183 pounds, with a heavily muscled build developed through constant training and battle. Her strength is not wholly natural: it was augmented first by her tribe’s matriarchs and later by her infernal pact. Her hands carry an unnatural hardness, the most visible mark of that pact, and her body bears numerous battle scars. She has deep brown eyes, described as intense and expressive, and thick ebony hair that falls to her mid-back, usually worn in braids threaded with tribal tokens and talismans. Her skin is tanned and weathered. Since her final imprisonment she has been blinded, her eyes taken from her by her captors.
Her habitual dress is practical and martial: a reinforced hide loincloth patterned with tribal designs, hardened leather-and-metal bracers marked with symbols of her victories, and durable reinforced boots suited to nomadic life. As a leader she sometimes wears an embroidered mantle denoting her authority. She carries a leather-wrapped blade etched with personal runes, and wears a sacred amulet given to her by the tribe’s matriarchs, along with feathers, stones, and beads worked into her hair as spiritual talismans.
History
Rise and the pact with Zariel
Lozen was born in 1492 PE into the Gemegishkirihallat Tribe, a people long sworn against the Tatharian Empire. Raised under the tribe’s matriarchs, she trained rigorously from childhood and became a renowned warrior; the matriarchs magically enhanced her strength by invoking The Everflow, the tribe’s deity of wisdom, life, and light.
When the expanding Tatharian Empire moved against her homeland, Lozen led the defense. Wounded and near defeat, she called out for aid, and Zariel, the infernal founder of the Avernus Security Company, answered. The pact made her hands impervious to harm, and with that power she drove off the Tatharian forces. She then led her tribe for five years, a period remembered as a golden age of unity, cultural revival, and martial success.
War on Tatharia Capitolina and capture
Emboldened by her victories, Lozen launched an offensive against Tatharia Capitolina, her impervious hands tearing through stone and steel and causing widespread destruction. She was defeated only by the combined effort of a company of heroes and the Tatharian Military, who restrained her hands and captured her. She was confined in a hanging metal cube suspended over a great depth, reachable only by a remotely operated drawbridge.
Her pact then came due. By Zariel’s terms, her homeland was drawn down into Avernus and replaced by an immense pit, destroying the land she had bargained to protect and displacing her people. What had been her greatest victory became the ruin of everything she fought for.
Blinding, escape, and the turn toward atonement
Lozen was later held in the Tatharian Empire’s most secure dungeon, bound and blinded, her eyes taken from her. There she met Pondskipper, a small but resourceful Grung who shattered the lock of her cell with a lightning-charged arrow. The two formed a symbiotic partnership: Pondskipper served as Lozen’s eyes while Lozen provided the strength and mobility the smaller Grung lacked. Though her hands remained bound by arcane manacles, the pair navigated the dungeon’s guards and traps, reached their companions, and escaped.
In the aftermath, Lozen pledged her strength to Pondskipper’s party, seeing in them a route back to her people. Pondskipper in turn offered the prospect of healing through her mentor, the mage Samael, reputedly able to regenerate lost limbs and, potentially, restore Lozen’s sight. Cut off from her homeland and confronting the consequences of her pact, Lozen came to regard her bargain with Zariel as a betrayal of her tribe’s principles, and turned toward a longer effort to atone and to reconcile with The Everflow.
Personality
Lozen is direct, forceful, and disinclined to social nicety. Her presence is commanding to the point of intimidation, and her confidence, earned in battle, has at times tipped into overconfidence, most consequentially in the assault on Tatharia Capitolina. She takes evident pride in her abilities, but that pride is tempered by a strong sense of duty toward her people, and further humbled by the losses that followed her pact. Her manner reflects her upbringing: her speech carries tribal idioms and martial metaphor, her gestures are strong and unguarded, and her sense of etiquette, though rooted in honor and respect for elders, reads as rough by more courtly standards. Isolation has left her more introspective and withdrawn than she was in her years of rule.
Beliefs
Lozen was raised in her tribe’s devotion to The Everflow, and her early strength was understood as a gift of that deity. Her pact with Zariel broke with those beliefs, and she has since described it as a spiritual rupture. During her imprisonment she reinterpreted her life through the Everflow’s themes of transformation and self-discovery, and her stated aim became reconnection with the deity’s principles and atonement rather than the pursuit of power. The Everflow’s symbol, a drop of water encased in a golden disc, holds particular meaning for her.
Reign and legacy
Lozen’s rule over the Gemegishkirihallat Tribe lasted roughly five years and is remembered as a period of triumph followed by tragedy. She unified and inspired her people, won a series of celebrated victories against the Tatharian Empire (including the Battle of the Sacred Pass, in which she led an outnumbered force to victory), and led both the spiritual and martial life of the tribe. Her reign ended with the assault on Tatharia Capitolina, her capture, and the loss of the homeland to Avernus. Among her people her name endures as a symbol of both defiance and cautionary excess.
Family
Lozen is mother to five recognized children of her own blood and guardian to two more by choice. Her elder sons, Batu-Sin and Enlil-Bataar Banunu Arahunaa, and her elder daughters, Nammu-Oyun and Ningal-Altan, are grown, and each holds a station in the leadership of the Gemegishkirihallat, the tribe’s equivalent of courtly office. Her youngest, a daughter named Saran, is still a child, learning the bow and the wrestling-ring under the matriarchs. To these she added an adopted daughter, Geshtinanna, a mage, and a fostered nephew, Khorchi-Nabu, a shrewd tactician; both have earned honor among the Eoperaxi in their own right rather than through their bond to her.
The Eoperaxi Nomads do not prize marriage, but they prize bloodline, and the shape of Lozen’s family reflects that order of values. Some of her children were born of the alliances such bloodlines are used to seal, a few were born of love, and she has always treated desire as incidental to her purpose rather than central to it, holding little sexual attraction and regarding the matter with a plain, practical eye. Whatever the circumstances of their birth, she carries a deep and protective love for all of them, and a quiet grief for those she has been parted from.
She rarely speaks of such things, holding the subject improper to air in the open. In unguarded moments she has confessed to a few of her children she regrets never coming to know well, the price, she says, of hard choices made across a hard life. She knows each of them; blind now, she might not recognize every face, but none among them is a stranger to her.
Succession and governance
With Lozen held far from the Plains of Eoperax, the matriarchal line rests with her younger sister, Enheduanna, who is close in age to Lozen’s own elder children and stands as the tribe’s figurehead. The practical work of rule falls to an aged first cousin, Ishme-Dagan, a capable and well-meaning advisor who steers the Gemegishkirihallat’s affairs out of necessity rather than any formal title. Enheduanna leans on his counsel heavily, perhaps more than is wise, though he has proven a true ally to his people and to her.
None of Lozen’s kin were drawn down with the homeland when it fell to Avernus. Some now speak of descending into the pit regardless, foremost among them Geshtinanna and Khorchi-Nabu, not to reclaim the lost land but to avenge the fallen: the tribe’s dead, taken when it was dragged below.
Relationships
Pondskipper (Grung ranger). Lozen’s closest bond and the companion who freed her. After their escape from the Tatharian dungeon the two became devoted friends, a relationship each of them rates as important. It is complicated by a difference in feeling: Lozen experiences deep emotional love without physical attraction, while Pondskipper has developed a romantic and physical attraction toward Lozen that cannot be reciprocated in kind. Both continue to travel together, with Pondskipper acting as Lozen’s eyes.
Samael (mage). Pondskipper’s mentor, a spellcaster reputedly able to regenerate lost limbs. Lozen and Pondskipper have agreed to seek him out, both to heal Pondskipper and, potentially, to restore Lozen’s sight.
Character data
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | Princess Lozen Banunu Arahunaa |
| Titles | The Unbroken Hand; Defender of the Plains; Heroine of Gemegishkirihallat; The Plains Princess |
| Species | Human |
| Ethnicity | Starpetal |