First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1
Kaja is a warlock and necromancer from Cor’thun. Death keeps letting her come back, and she is never shy about saying so. She fought beside Atalantos and Elusia in the war that ended The Shadow King’s reign, won Elusia’s heart, and became one of the first Knights of Chaos of the new age. Centuries later Elusia’s uncle, the Shadow King, raised her bones for Elusia’s birthday. She went on to give the Void one of its most elegant, brutal and heartbreaking Deathmatches.
Story
Skypiercer Part 1
Kaja first appeared in Skypiercer Part 1, raising skeletons in Cor’thun’s market square while siege fire rained on the white city. When the Cursed Juggernaut broke through the Eastern Gate, she took on her form of dread, a thing she described as “the void of space… a vacuum, and you shove it into a compressed space… something hungry and empty.” She hurled a gaping shadow skull at the brute and raised five fallen soldiers to fight for her. She chose “the ones that either look really hot or they’re like super strong looking,” and two of them were named Kevin and Enderdan.
The Juggernaut ripped a stone spear out of a wall and threw it at her. The wound festered with necrotic rot, and its charge left her bleeding thick, syrupy purple blood. One of her blasts went badly astray through the smoke and hit Atalantos square in the back. Once Elusia had finished the monster off by driving her short sword up into its butt from between its legs, Kaja sat on its corpse and sipped from a travel mug.
After the fight she revealed that she dies “all the time” and comes back, because she serves one of the “forces … at work beyond our comprehension.” To prove it, she had Elusia shoot her through the heart. Emperor Thornos praised her: “you have served Cor’thun well for many years. Even in death, you have fought for us.” He named her a General of the Champions of Honor alongside Atalantos and Elusia. At the feast that followed, Elusia sipped from Kaja’s goblet and pulled back, embarrassed. Kaja turned the cup and drank from the same spot. When Vythorn arrived with the news that Elusia’s father had been murdered by her uncle Agdrel, Kaja agreed to follow her into the Void.
Skypiercer Part 2
In Skypiercer Part 2, Kaja found that her farewells were easy, since her associates were mostly dead and her loose ends tied themselves. She said goodbye to the Cor’thun library and flawlessly stole two books: a steamy romance and a tome on the arcane arts. The trio’s last mission was against Plintos, the man they believed was behind a scheme to divert the city’s southern aqueduct. In his bare bedchamber they found his skeleton, with a golden dagger in its ribs. Kaja animated the bones, and they wrote two words: “My wife.”
Kaja then disguised herself as a half-decayed Plintos and stabbed the dagger into herself in front of his family. His eldest son, Throm, blurted out, “You died six years ago.” Once the plot was laid bare, Kaja killed Throm with his father’s dagger, and the servants cleaned up without asking questions.
In the Void, the party landed in The Shadowlands. Kaja’s blasts, shaped like silent crystalline knives, cut Atalantos free from shadow tendrils. Shadow creatures whispered into her mind and forced her to grab Elusia by the throat. She yanked her hand away, full of guilt, and later promised, “Don’t worry, I’ve got my eye on you.” When a Nightwalker rose from the chasm, draining life with its very presence, Kaja and Elusia ran hand in hand. Kaja’s resistance to death sheltered Elusia from its aura. “Don’t let go of my hand.” “I won’t.”
At the rebel camp of Atheranon, where Craven Eldonbridge had led them, the party received gifts smuggled out of The Dread Fortress. Kaja received Life Stealer, Agdrel’s own staff of twisted black wood. Elusia warned that “it is dangerous and it speaks things.” During the weeks of preparation, Kaja taught Atheranon’s mages and quietly grew a following around “the Great Dread,” explaining that “there is great duality in shadow and light.” She called it a long-term seed to protect the people and restore Elusia.
Skypiercer Part 3
On the eve of battle in Skypiercer Part 3 (finale), Elusia asked how her friends could face death so calmly. Kaja answered: “From blood comes life… It is not the end… It is simply a path.” Her “death club” of apprentices obtained a hard-to-refine rock for her, which artisans carved into an onyx heart veined with crackling blue. She left them with a warning: “You cannot cheat death… Don’t make me hunt you down, because I will.”
Inside the fortress, her bonfire exposed The Dragon Knights hiding in the shadows. Kaja knelt on the floor in her best silk dress to search for traps beside Elusia: “If I’m going to die here, I’m going to look good doing it.” Atalantos bear-hugged one knight out of the darkness so she could blast it, and Kaja arranged her kill to look like Elusia’s.
In the throne room, Kaja burst into skeletal dragon wings glowing with black light. “As a servant of death, death also serves me,” she declared, and later, “Kneel before my queen.” When Agdrel dragged Elusia down into the fire and stabbed her unconscious, Kaja brought her back in her death form. “It’s not your time,” she said, and she warded Elusia against death itself. Elusia called her “My angel.” Kaja replied, “Today, I belong to you.” After the Shadow King fell, the two finally kissed. Elusia then knighted Kaja and Atalantos as her Knights of Chaos: “My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.”
The Long Years
Kaja remained Elusia’s love after Skypiercer until she died a natural death. In time the Acolytes came to revere her and Atalantos as founding figures. Elusia later said they “set the standard of the Deathmatch in the very first one,” and that the people had worshiped at their tombs, praying for their return.
Shadows Reign
That prayer was answered in the worst way in S4E1 — Shadows Reign — Atalantos v Kaja. The Shadow King had returned and held Elusia in chains. For her “birthday,” he raised two sarcophagi at her feet and snapped Kaja’s and Atalantos’s bones back into shadow-wrapped flesh. Kaja took it in stride: “This is a type of headache that I’m quite used to. I was having such a great time on the other side.” Elusia sent them into The Shadow King’s old home with “My dear friends, my dear love, please fight well.”
Kaja treated the match as a dance. “They say that the more experienced dancer should lead,” she said, and her shadows became a gown of ghostly hands while her face melted into undeath. Atalantos made good on his promise to teach her with scars. His spear took off one of her ears, he threw her at a mimic door that chomped her, and he branded the symbol of Cor’thun into her. He also shoved her over a railing with his shield, and later slammed his shield into her skull and knocked her into a pool of blood. Kaja drank his life straight from his lips, sipped tea served by a goblin named Theodore, and powered one volley with “the power of Earl Grey.” “You look very good in red,” she told him. “And you look very good in dead,” he answered.
When Atalantos begged for a warrior’s death, Kaja raised the floating corpses as skeletons: “If it’s by the blade you want to die, then consider your wish granted.” Elusia asked what song the angel of death would sing. Kaja answered, “I will sing the song of Atalantos. Once my friend, now a new plaything for my mistress.” Her final blasts brought him down, smiling and proud.
Then Kaja turned on their captor. She gathered the flames devouring Atalantos’s body into the shape of the Sword of Cor’thun and launched it into the Shadow King’s chest, to leave a scar on him in Atalantos’s honor. He simply stepped out of it. Then he appeared behind her, twisted her head off and held up the skull. “Happy birthday!”
Afterward
In S4E2 — Under the Bottom — Richardo v Evah, the Shadow King used Kaja’s skull as a hand puppet to taunt Elusia: “Oh, hello, Elusia! It’s me, Kaja!”
Personality and Abilities
Kaja is all courtly poise wrapped around something cold and dead. She has no body heat and no blood in her face to blush with. Her blood runs purple and thick as syrup, and she has dagger-like fingernails. She favors high heels and silk dresses. Her bow “just evidences my time in court,” and she dances with the grace of someone who has seen many a ballroom. She is dry, flirtatious and unbothered by her own frequent deaths. She admits to having “had a few accidents in the past.”
Her powers are drawn from death. She can raise armies of the dead (“my army is portable”), explode a body into mist, and hurl blasts of shadow shaped as skulls, knives or fanged spears. She can drain life with a touch and take on her terrifying form of dread. She can also sprout skeletal wings that make her immune to fire and poison. She wielded Agdrel’s staff Life Stealer and carried an onyx stone heart as her focus.
Relationships
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Her fellow general, her queen and her love, whom she once brought back from death.
- Atalantos: Her longtime comrade-in-arms, and her opponent in the Shadow King’s birthday Deathmatch, where she gave him the warrior’s death he wanted.
- The Shadow King: The tyrant she helped overthrow, who later raised her, killed her again and kept her skull as a puppet.
- The Arbiter: As Vythorn, he brought her into the Void and led the trio into the Dread Fortress.
- Plintos: She raised his murdered skeleton to name his killer, then posed as his corpse to expose his family.
Memorable Quotes
- “From blood comes life… It is not the end… It is simply a path.” (Skypiercer Part 3)
- “If I’m going to die here, I’m going to look good doing it.” (Skypiercer Part 3)
- “As a servant of death, death also serves me.” (Skypiercer Part 3)
- “I was having such a great time on the other side.” (S4E1)
- “I will sing the song of Atalantos. Once my friend, now a new plaything for my mistress.” (S4E1)
- “I only have one ear. You have to speak up.” (S4E1)