#also og ilana lore is she's based on the golden dreydl

[kohaive]

Please tell us about evil Ilana!

this got way longer than I intended oops

vital og ilana lore for context:

in the long ancient past there once existed a divine city known as the city of temples, wherein seven powerful spirits worshiped as gods lived. (they were referred to as divinities.) the oldest, jayang, was known as divinity luck and possessed power over fortune and the karmic cycle.

jayang however was Very Fucking Lazy and had an assistant that did about 90% of the work around the temple as well as making sure they were on time for important rites and festivals. as jayang's right hand, she was generally known as lady luck and possessed luck powers through jayang's blessing. this assistant was ilana.

although ilana devoted herself wholly to jayang, she respected the followers of other divinities and especially those in the city that did not follow any divinities at all. to ilana, every person in the city was worthy of divine protection, whether or not they followed any of the seven gods. she and jayang have several arguments about this, especially when one of jayang's other disciples is forced to change divinities for reasons too complicated to get into here.

after working with jayang for many years, the seventh god finally arrived: the rabbit of fate, kayin. according to kayin's tapestry of fate, they and jayang were destined to be lovers, and sure enough kayin soon had all of jayang's attention despite not giving them much in return. the fact that jayang was spending so much energy on kayin when kayin rarely gave them the time of day in return bothered ilana, especially when she did so much work for jayang and didn't get the same treatment

basically she was jealous lol

at some point, the city collapses in civil war, and the divinities start falling one by one while their disciples kill each other. kayin kills themselves in jayang's arms. ilana and jayang flee, but not before jayang sustains a mortal injury protecting ilana from an attacker. they escape to the unfinished corner, a place full of wild, untouched magic. with their final breath, jayang asks ilana to use their bones to seal the area so it can't be accessed in order to prevent another tragedy like the city of temples. they die, saying that they're going ahead to see kayin.

ilana realizes that using jayang's bones means their soul will be trapped and they will be unable to meet kayin in the afterlife per their wish. she decides to use herself as the seal instead, putting her divinity before herself. however, the seal doesn't kill her as she expects; instead, it keeps her alive and in stasis, sustaining itself using her divine-touched soul as the power source. the sheer magic from the unfinished corner is constantly pressing on the back of her mind, and over tens of thousands of years she slowly loses herself to her grief and resentment, becoming a spirit fueled by hatred: hatred towards kayin, hatred towards the city's destruction, and hatred towards herself.

jayang chooses to be reborn into the mortal realm to walk the earth and spend time with humans, who kayin was so fond of, in an effort to feel closer to them. they stumble across ilana's seal by chance, but they don't do anything because a) they don't realize she's alive and b) they want to maintain the seal on the unfinished corner, which they judge to be too powerful for humanity to know about.

now in the ORIGINAL lore, what happens next is: in modern day, a group of what amounts to professional problem-solvers investigate the memories of the past, and end up stumbling across ilana and her predicament thanks to a memory fragment of another ancient spirit that's been trying to help her but doesn't have the power to do so. they literally cut her away from the manifestation of resentment that she's been trapped in for tens of millennia and restore her sanity, though they can't free her from the seal just yet. she asks them to find a way to break the seal and free her so she can die, because she's so tired. and she wants to rest.

however, in the BAD ending, ilana's resentment and hatred overcomes her completely and she dissolves the seal herself, claims the whole of the unfinished corner's power for herself, hunts down the reborn jayang, kills them, and eats their heart to assume their powers. the result is s'vivana: jaded, finds humanity abhorrent, and resolves to use her ill-gained power to bring about their destruction. she saved the world, and nobody cared. she saved her god, and they didn't return the favor. she gave everything she had for the sake of everyone but herself, and her reward was a torturous, unending solitude she had no choice but to endure.

nobody saved her. so nobody deserves to be saved.