Mela
The Village's Burning Red Fury
Mela is one of the four adventurers who intend on purging The Calamitous Zone of it's evil and slaying Yharim, The Jungle Tyrant. Though unlike the other three, at the start of her journey Mela is far from virtuous. Motivated entirely by her Rage and later her Guilt and Valor, she'll stop at nothing until the Devourer of Gods is slain.
In the rare cases I'm in an RP or am directly quoting her, her text color is #D70040, or Carmine.
Appearance & Age
Mela "leaves" her village at the age of 16, and she falls in battle at 17.
Mela's physical appearance is pretty varied, she stands at about 5'10" or 177. cm, has white skin, and has bright red hair. She wears contacts to make her eyes look red, though she'll later take them out to reveal her real eye color of gray. She wears a purple tunic, oversized beige pants, and brown boots, all to conceal her armor, which changes throughout her journey. After [REDACTED: MISSING ENTRY "JESS"], she begins to wear a purple cloak in battle or when exploring. Another interesting part about Mela's physical appearance is that she has a Wulfrum prosthetic where her left leg was, due to losing it to an Eidolon Wyrm in the Abyss.
Soulflame
Mela's Soulflame color changes throughout the story. She begins with a bright red Soulflame color of Rage (fusion of Anger and Anger) which she keeps until [REDACTED: MISSING ENTRY "JESS"], this changes her Soulflame color to a mix of Rage, the swamp green color of Guilt (can only be created without Fusion) and the bright teal color of Valor (Fusion of Courage and Resolve, Courage is a fusion of Resolve and Fear), later after [REDACTED: MISSING ENTRY "JESS"] she loses the Rage, and has a Soulflame mix of Guilt and Valor. In her final moments during the battle with the Devourer of Gods, her soul gathers Anger, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Resolve to create the cyan color of Will, which is her final Soulflame color.
Mela's Soulflame Weapon is a modified Excelsus, the blade being a deep red color instead of cosmic purple. It also had different function, rather than shooting multiple blades it instead grants Mela limited teleportation and devastatingly powerful slices, enough to bring down the Devourer of Gods on her own.
Mela's Soulkey Item is a large sword she named "Villager's Lament", to coincide with [REDACTED: MISSING ENTRIES "JESS", "PERSIS", AND "STEPHANIE"]. The sword is burnt orange in color, is a couple inches shorter than Mela being 167 cm or 5"6 in length, and being around 31 cm, or 1 foot wide. It takes an rectangular shape, with both ends of the sword being extremely sharp, but gets duller farther down on the blade. The Villagers Lament has the unique property of occasionally leaving behind glowing orange afterimages to confuse Mela's enemies, and also function as traps due to said afterimages still being as sharp as the blade.
Personality
Mela was known for being incredibly irritable and downright violent at times, even to her own allies. Being incredibly rude and sarcastic, she intentionally tried to annoy and anger almost everyone she met, if she wasn't already threatening them with violence for even the smallest of things. However, after [REDACTED: MISSING ENTRY "JESS"] she mellows out, being significantly more calm and reasonable. She retains her sarcasm and quick witted nature, but she rarely threatens to harm people other than her enemies due to her rediscovered resolve to protect those weaker than her and those closest to her.
Backstory
Mela was born into a family of talented blacksmiths in an unknown village somewhere inside of The Calamitous Zone. When she was growing up her family taught her their trade, and as the years passed by she grew to be exceptionally talented at forging things out of metal. Most of all though, she was especially fascinated by swords. Mela wished to protect her village, as very few individuals were, she wanted to be the beacon of hope if any monster or worse were to stumble into their village, so she took special interest in forging weapons. Mela would train day after day, practicing how to use a sword, how to fight with one, techniques that could give her the upper hand if any danger where to arrive at their village, etc. She eventually became quite a proficient swordswoman, able to best her villages top guards, but even she knew that wasn't much of an achievement. Unfortunately for her, something else was watching her every move. The Devourer of Gods has the innate ability to detect the Shine levels of beings, and even with how far away it was from her, it could sense her potential Radiance. The Devourer wished to feast on her essence, but at the moment she was still only a Shinelvl, so the Devourer hatched a plan. By taking advantage of Mela's curiosity and will to protect others, it would drive her to leave her home and slay beasts, demons, anything that could help her grow stronger so she could unlock her Will.
Mela was exploring the surrounding forest, trying to test her skills on low tier threats like Slimes, when she heard cries for help coming from far away. Mela, with the will to protect those in danger, immediately started sprinting to the direction of the yells. After running through the forest, Mela eventually found herself at the mouth of a cave. She stopped, waiting to hear the cries again to ascertain their direction, and then her heart sank when she heard it echoing from the cave. Despite everything telling her not to go in there, she couldn't let this person stay in peril, so she used some of the gel she collected and some nearby fallen sticks to make a torch, and then ventured into the cave. To Mela's surprise, the cave was not very deep, and she reached a dead end only about 10 minutes into exploring. She ventured forward, hoping to find the source of the noise somewhere in the dark room, when she stepped on something. She looked down to see a small, purple haired plushie. She picked the toy up, wondering if it belonged to the voice she heard earlier. Almost instantly after picking it up, the plushie stabbed Mela in the stomach with a nearby pointed rock. Mela was bewildered, and frozen in shock. Before she could even assess what was happening the plushie summoned a large purple worm, one of the Devourer's Cosmic Guardians, though Mela didn't know this yet. The Guardian flied around for a bit, then flew into the wound the plushie just inflicted, sending Mela to the ground unconscious.
Mela eventually woke up, still on the floor of the dark cave, with her torch still burning beside her. She stood up and grabbed the torch, and started searching the cave for the plushie. Mela still couldn't believe what had just happened, and wanted to find this seemingly alive plush. She spent at least 5 minutes searching the cave for the small toy but she found nothing, along with no trace of the strange worm that appeared before her. Just then Mela remembered the worm flying into her wound, and went to look at it to make sure the wound was okay. To her surprise and shock, she didn't find any wound where the plush stabbed her. Mela stood there for a couple seconds, and came to the conclusion that she must've tripped and hit her head on a rock somewhere, and had dreamt the whole scenario. She couldn't find any evidence of this happening either, like a head injury, but it was the only logical conclusion she could come to. She also couldn't find the person who was crying for help earlier, or what could've caused such distress in the first place. After one more check around the cave, Mela finally departed back to her village. She was shocked to find that very little time had passed, and she was only out in the wilderness for an hour. The rest of her day went by without incident, though Mela still couldn't shake that "dream" off of her. When it was finally nighttime, and she was getting ready to go to sleep, she heard a voice. She looked around, confused on who was talking to her. It wasn't her parents, both of them were asleep in the other room, in fact most of the village except for the night watchmen were asleep at this point. The voice continued to talk to Mela, until she finally realized the voice wasn't coming from anywhere in her room, or outside of it. It was coming from inside of her head. The Devourer of Gods had successfully entered her mind.
For months and months the Devourer had talked to Mela at night. It was mental torture for her, as she could never get any sleep with the Devourer constantly whispering to her. The Devourer would talk about all kinds of things, he'd try to talk about glory and titles if Mela could defeat gargantuan creatures, or massive amounts of wealth for slaying beasts that people placed bounties on. Mela tried to block out the noise, but you can't cover your ears if the noise is inside of your own head. This torment every night would have noticeable effects on Mela's life. She was becoming messier and more accident-prone when making weapons, she was losing concentration when she wanted to train, she was even losing to basic Slimes. Mela had had enough, and she wanted this parasite in her head gone. But it never left. No matter what she tried it never went away. Eventually, after almost a year of sleeplessness and mental strain, the Devourer finally broke Mela. Her Valor was extinguished, and replaced with Rage. Miners from the village came back with a metal none of them had ever seen before, and no one in the village could forge anything out of it. But Mela would. Oh Mela definitely would. She stole the metal from her family's storage room and got to work. She also took a massive rectangular mold, meant to be a plate of metal rather than a blade. After hours of intense labor she had finally done it. She had forged her own sword. She still didn't have a name for it yet, but that didn't matter. All that mattered to Mela was if it could cut well. And it could. It was the best sword she had ever made. The weight of it was the only drawback, but Mela barely even noticed the weight of her sword as she swung it at the target dummy. This was more than enough for the Devourer, so it started encouraging her to leave the village.
What the Devourer of Gods didn't realize was that his plan worked too well. Mela left her house, and while she was leaving she was stopped by her father. He was asking why she suddenly wanted to head out, as Mela would tell him whenever she left on an expedition. Mela, not wishing to be stopped, made an irreversible decision at that moment. He was the first to feel how sharp Mela's blade was. One slice was enough to separate his torso from his legs. One of the watchmen saw this and immediately went to apprehend Mela. Slice. The watchman was cut diagonally. Watching the upper half of his body slide off, Mela turned back into the village. She was stopped by another two watchmen, and one slice was enough to take both out. If the village was going to stop her from leaving, there mustn't be any village left to stop her. Mela was merciless. She would go house by house, break down the door, and slice. She'd light the house on fire afterwards, then move on to the next. Sometimes she would light the house on fire first, so she could slice the villagers as they ran out of their burning home. Eventually she gave up on the door to door approach, and just started lighting every building she saw on fire. Anyone who decide to flee into the streets was swiftly sliced into halves. Everyone fled into the streets. As the village burned behind her, and the Devourer of Gods viewed his creation with both pride and contempt, Mela finally walked out of the village, beginning her journey.
Closing
Well... that was certainly quite the tone shift from everything else I've wrote. I do hope you liked reading that though, as Mela (along with the rest of the Calamity characters) are some of my most well thought out OC's and are some of my favorites. This darker tone will be kept up with all of Terraria: Calamity, so get comfy. Thanks for reading, and I'll see ya later!
