Damara Megido


 * For the post-Scratch version of this character, see The Handmaid.

Damara Megido is one of the pre-Scratch trolls, the A1 session's equivalent to Aradia Megido, and the pre-Scratch iteration of Aradia's Ancestor, the Handmaid. She was the Witch of Time of the A1 session, but conflicts within the team provoked by Meenah Peixes ultimately embittered her and turned her against the entire team. She was responsible for initiating the Scratch on the Cardinal Movement, rebooting the session.

Biography
Before their Sgrub session, Damara was a member of the Lost Weeaboos, a guild of tree-dwelling troll otakus living in secrecy in the forest. It was here which she met Rufioh Nitram, and the two eventually entered a flushed relationship, one which ended bitterly for Damara when Rufioh ended up instead with Horuss Zahhak. Despite being deeply wounded by this, it wasn't until Sgrub that she performed an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the deep end.

Damara was the Time player of the A1 session, and so her planet in the Medium (which bears a strong resemblance to Aradia's Land of Quartz and Melody) housed the session's Scratch item, the Cardinal Movement. In her efforts to rile up the team, Meenah Peixes took to harassing Damara, particularly on the subject of her former relationship with Rufioh, which ultimately caused Damara to snap. Now feeling thoroughly vengeful, she paralyzed Rufioh from the neck down, causing Horuss to build Rufioh a robotic horse body to compensate; it is also implied by her that she may have killed Horuss at some point. Eventually, she engaged Meenah in a brutal duel, in which she ultimately won and killed Meenah in revenge, this being the cause for Meenah's God Tier ascension; it does not appear that Damara was also killed and ascended during this fight, or at least Damara herself would not say if she did.

From here, it is implied she began using her time powers to wreak havoc on the session, appearing at various points to sabotage everyone's efforts. The only time she cooperated with the team was when they needed to initiate the Scratch, which she performed gleefully. Before the Scratch could take effect, Damara was killed along with the rest of the team by Meenah's bomb, ensuring their survival as ghosts in the Furthest Ring.HS 6897

In Openbound Part 3HS 7298, Aranea Serket gives Meenah Peixes a biography of Damara's life and role in their session:


 * "The Witch of Time was not always the party's 8iggest trou8lemaker. [...] Once she was as meek as can 8e. Hailing from the eastern provinces, she migrated across the seas and settled near the forest concealing Rufioh's guild. The two of them 8ecame quite fond of each other, and shared many interests! He secretly 8egan seeing someone else, 8elieving she knew nothing. 8ut she always suspected his infidelity, and over time grew quite distraught. 8ut her sadness never quite turned to rage and malevolence. Not until you... involved yourself. [...] After we 8egan our game, you quickly determined that winning was going to 8e an uphill 8attle with our team. Everyone was so preoccupied with their interpersonal issues, and no one seemed in any shape to 8e fighting major 8attles. [...] So you did your 8est to rile up the crew any way you could. Appealing to peoples insecurities, 8uried hostilities, 8rewing rivalries... needling anyone you could into confrontation with others. Your theory was that increasing everyone's state of aggression would make them 8etter equipped to play the game. And you were sort of right a8out that! 8ut the Alternians would prove it. Not our group, sadly. The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped. She attacked him, paralyzing him from the neck down. You finally got the aggressive confrontation you were looking for. Unfortunately, you unleashed something even you weren't prepared for, and you had to deal with her yourself. After a long 8loody duel, she killed you. [...]


 * "Damara has 8een unhinged ever since. 8y increasing her violent tendencies, instead of 8eing an asset in the game, she 8ecame a loose canon, ar8itrarily showing up at key moments throughout the timeline to sa8otage us. So radical was her shift in personality, I've had a hard time 8elieving your incitement was solely to 8lame. It always seemed like other forces were in play, as if her acts, though apparently haphazard, were in keeping with some inscruta8le agenda. Of course it doesn't help that it's so hard to understand her even on a good day. Strangely, the only time she was eager to help us was when we were preparing to initiate the Scratch. And it's a good thing she was, since I'm not sure anyone else would have had the a8ility to do that kind of damage to the Cardinal Movement and release its energy. It was almost a little eerie how happily she complied with our plan. What did Rufioh say she said? Something a8out how we would all finally get what we deserved... Which at the time, I thought sounded chilling. 8ut there's really two ways of looking at it. One is how the Scratch re8ooted our world into a state of pure chaos, culminating in the annihilation of our universe. 8ut on the other hand, we all got the chance to live out our wildest fantasies as adults on Alternia! At least you and I sure did. And I wouldn't dou8t she feels the same way."



Damara bears a very strong resemblance to her post-Scratch self during her time imprisoned by - she wears similar if differently colored clothing, has the same bun hairstyle, and uses the same Strife Specibus (either Wand or Needlekind); this is acknowledged in-comic by Andrew Hussie, who remarks that he should never have freed her from 's care and that her teen delinquent behaviour is a product of being raised by "a four foot tall asshole in suspenders, who's kind of like a creepy puppet uncle", though this was very likely a joke.

At some point in the afterlife, Damara seems to have met Aradia in some capacity, as Aradia appears to be familiar enough with Damara's behaviour to express relief at Meenah not seeing any resemblance between the two. It appears that Terezi Pyrope is also aware of Damara and her destructive tendencies, as she saw the need to threaten Damara to protect Karkat's sleeping body from her.

Personality
Damara is aggressively, overtly, and almost crudely sexual, bringing up the prospect of sex or sexual acts at any opportunity, even with Meenah (whom she hates) and as a potential repayment for a favor to Rufioh; it is uncertain whether she actually means her remarks as an honest invitation, or if she is simply taking advantage of the language barrier to mess with others without response. Between her ribald remarks, however, lies much fatalism and frustration. It is implied that she has had no sexual relationships with any of the other trolls in the eternity since her dramatic breakup with Rufioh. According to Aranea, Damara's personality took a drastic shift after repeated bullying from Meenah about her ex-matesprit's betrayal, transforming from sad to angry and vengeful. She is shown to have no qualms about locking Rufioh's lusus in a chest, and it is implied that she used her time abilities to meddle with the team's timelines as revenge.

Trivia

 * Damara is named after the Damara, a breed of domestic sheep. The name was originally suggested by Beelzebibble for Aradia.
 * Damara's Japanese speech is deliberately shitty and intended to be clearly evident as such to those who speak the language; it was generated by writing her dialogue in English, then running it through Google Translate. As Hussie puts it, "So you aren't really authentic troll Japanese, you're fake troll Japanese."  During the game, a link is provided to a separate page providing a transcript of Damara's dialogue, intended to allow people to run it through Google Translate to see what she is saying.