Fanon:Achaia Oropia

Achaia Oropia, born April 3, 1925, is the artistic member of the Beauty 4, and also an standing member of the Scholars' Alliance. Achaia was directly involved in the collapse of the Union of the Insane as one of the four sims that Christopher Steel was engaged with romantically alongside Hypatia. Achaia also stands as the remaining girlfriend to Christopher, Jamie having slapped him, Christopher slapping Hypatia, and Ayesha having died of drowning. Achaia also has a great arsenal of skills fitting a member of the Scholars' Allaince: Achaia mastered Sculpting, Cooking, and Writing, while having in addition 7 points each in Athletic skill, Handiness and Painting, 3 points in Fishing, 5 points in Charisma, 4 points in Martial Arts, 2 points in Nectar Making, and 1 point each in Bass and Gardening. Achaia is of blood type O.

Achaia also has seen the effect of a low household order: Demetria can no longer get a mobilized house and thus could host only 1 party, and Achaia herself is locked against her former mate Thessalonike, although it is not surprising since Achaia stuck with Christopher while Thessalonike cheated twice, while Achaia had good sense of humor while Thessalonike used to have no sense of humor. Achaia however is in good terms with most of the members of Union of the Insane, being an old friend to Hypatia and Kallisto. However, Achaia wasn't impressed by Demetrios, despite the fact that Demetrios is Hypatia's stepson.

The rise
Achaia, compared to the other members, looked rather plain (while Thessalonike may look shocking to some), and quite honestly, Achaia's development was rather uninteresting at the surface: Achaia's mastery of writing and cooking was utilized less and less as Achaia grew more autonomous, and more separated from Kallisto. At the beginning, Achaia was supposed to be paired up with Kallisto as introverts while Demetria was paired with Thessalonike as extroverts: however, Achaia was more of a free agent to say it in a way, since Kallisto was too independent of the Beauty 4 agenda initially set by Demetria as a whole. Achaia henceforth grew closer to the de facto leader Demetria, since Thessalonike had no sense of humor then, while Achaia has her great sense of humor. Achaia tagged along since Achaia saw a prospect of being near the spotlight for bachelors, Achaia's prospect being sheltered by a guy who would allow Achaia to sleep as much as she'd like to. Although Achaia might not have generated as nearly as much attention as she'd deserve, Achaia happened to grow in skills, to a point where Achaia is not inferior to the any of the other members. Despite her tendency to be sleepy and romantic, Achaia surprisingly has a record of military service: Achaia was once a Wingwoman, surprising as Achaia is the most unmilitary of the bunch: Demetria might have the Charisma, Kallisto Handiness, and Thessalonike physical stats, Achaia adapted by building up respectable skill with the wrench and exercising quite often.

Eventually, Achaia found her career path in writing, and beefed up by her love of books and romance, succeeded as a romance author, raking up plenty of money and having a respectable royalty to boot. Achaia is known for her numerous hits and bestseller romance novels, which were unfortunately lost to the second time warp, surviving only with the first edition copies held by the other members of the Beauty 4. Under Hypatia (Hypatia back then), Achaia put on wings and proceeded all the way to being a Prize-winning Author, helped by Hypatia's love of arts (which also led Achaia to further utilize Sculpting skills that she mastered before Hypatia's arrival)

Turbulent times
However, Achaia went through a downhill slope once Christopher Steel was introduced to the equation: problem was that Christopher was a great kisser: Achaia's romance would have been fine, if it weren't for the fact that Hypatia was also dragged in by Christopher's blasphemous kiss, alongside Jamie Jolina and Ayesha Ansari. Kallisto and Stratonike saw this as madness: Achaia and Hypatia's competition over one guy led to one of the first great feuds, this one between Hypatia and Demetria, and Kallisto and Stratonike decided not to stay but rather escape what they saw as decay by creating the Union of the Insane.

With Kallisto's departure came the immediate collapse of any structural order in the house: Thessalonike and Achaia would be disgusted by each other, as Thessalonike gained a reputation as a cheater, cheating on Leighton and another sim, while Achaia would stick with Christopher Steel despite the initial juggling, which came tumbling down starting with the elimination of Ayesha, who died of drowning. Later on, Jamie removed herself from the system, slapping Christopher hard and becoming very disgusted with Christopher (which eventually mellowed out with time), and Hypatia forcibly removed with the intervention of Gobias Koffi, who flirts with Hypatia and succeeded despite Hypatia's unflirtiness, leading Christopher to slap Hypatia hard and leading to the second great feud. Achaia was essentially dragged into the mess, since Hypatia then was a member of the Union of the Insane: Hypatia's roommates were too eager to exact harsh vengeance upon Christopher Steel, and that fortunately did not happen. With Achaia however, Achaia's tension with Thessalonike would continue, and Demetria was sitting there suffering through it all, and Achaia could but sympathize with Demetria.

Despite all the disintegration, Achaia found some happiness in Demetria's engagement to Abraham Finkel: which eventually developed into a full-scale marriage that even Hypatia (whose relationship with Demetria improved) congratulated. Thessalonike also had her share of joy, inviting her boyfriend Dave Ramsey to the house, and despite the lack of dynamics, Thessalonike had not cheated on Dave for quite some time, and Achaia could find some happiness there, despite her tension with Thessalonike.

Achaia decides then to ease Demetria's pain by moving with Christopher Steel, hoping that Demetria won't have to suffer to any more tension with Thessalonike. Demetria reluctantly agrees to the move. Achaia has heard the declaration and knew that Christopher Steel would be targeted by the Ecclesiarchal forces: in fact, Achaia believed this to be madness.

"This is madness: romance is not a terrible thing. We must expose the error among the Union of the Insane. We must go back to tell this to the Scholars' Alliance."

Achaia's Nascent Organization
Despite Kallisto's departure, Kallisto's reformation of what is now the Church of Alexandros left a bitter taste in Achaia's mouth, especially after Kallisto's public declaration and the denunciation of romance, sentencing it to utter destruction. Achaia so created a countermovement to react to the radical Church, and named it the Free Love Movement. Essentially, it has one goal: no barriers to love, and all members strive to ensure lovers overcome their barriers, whether it be a familial one, a monetary one, or an ideological one. It has gathered little interest, since Kallisto's departure pretty much eliminated any chance of the Church launching any sort of Inquisition to squelch romance.

Worse, there were detractors to the Free Love Movement: for example, Justine Keaton. Justine Keaton for one saw it as a pitiful excuse for Achaia who got herself stuck with the cheater of the town Christopher (although he himself got steady with Achaia). Agnes, who also had her own anti-Church movement, also commented that the movement was rather pointless. Some people, such as Blair Wainwright, declared some interest in the organization, and some flirty ones such as Pauline Wan showed nominal support of the new movement. Despite that, the organization made little progress, simply due to a lack of organization there.

However, the growing knowledge of Kallisto's experiments with the Swansons rallied some hopeless romantics to the cause, since they wanted the Swansons free from the chains of th Church as they saw it. This led to a sudden shift in popularity: Achaia would make great friends with many, and this was the catalyst that led to the ending of Christopher's stigma. With that, Achaia was able to raise funds and potentially use that to hamper the Church. However, Achaia had other plans: Achaia wanted to group up with Antigone and her branch at Appaloosa Plains, and so Achaia planned her move to the Appaloosa so she can express her support for Antigone's populist branch. But despite the alliance, Antigone's deviation was contained to Appaloosa Plains, and by no means did Antigone ever aggressively pushed for antagonization of Kallisto's Church, simply because Antigone grew more suspicious of the local population when news of a spy (which was outdated) of the Church happened to be embedded in Appaloosa Plains: Antigone was already in an inquisitorial mood, and started to inquire about the papparazzis, believing that one of them would be the spy.

While Antigone continued to prepare for a potential assassin, Antigone hoped to stay low until Kallisto's focus shifted to other matters. While Antigone was developing a labyrinth complex and some other security measures, Kallisto's focus conveniently shifted towards conquering worlds of alternate timelines. As Kallisto's focus shifted to that, less focus was given to counter Antigone and more on containing heresy. Antigone then recruited the Singleton family to serve as her counter-spy, with little success: after all, there was no spy to be caught, and Kallisto was soon found to be lacking in intelligence regarding Antigone, and no single instance of public romance was found as UAVs and papparazzis would have made such things public to the Church in matter of minutes. While Antigone contrary to her brave disposition started to turtle, Achaia wanted a more active stance: Achaia was all too eager to gaze on Christopher's eyes in the public, and that attracted Kallisto's ire, although due to Kallisto and Achaia's personal histories, Kallisto did not take Achaia as a serious threat, and maintained her policy of containment and subjugation of the alternate timeline world.

A lack of romantics in Hekatonschoinos (asides from the Swansons who are of the church) ensured that no technological secrets ever leaked out of the main chapter. However, Achaia was solicited by Jamie (whose relationships with Christopher became amiable), who by a stroke of luck offered to give out intelligence regarding the Church gleaned from Lysistrata (although not strictly of the church, since the Lysistrata wasn't aware of the Church then.): much to Achaia's horror, one of Lysistrata's accounts revealed Kallisto's implication in the cloning technology, as well as the creation of Kallistrata herself. Achaia as a former member of the Scholars' Union was well aware that Kallisto had the technologies of time travel: after all, Kallisto, Stratonike, and Hypatia were all skilled inventors. Achaia hoped that Kallisto would not come up with the idea of flooding neighborhoods with clones, and much less flooding neighborhoods of the past and the future, but Achaia knew Kallisto would hit where it was least expected, and urged Antigone to take up inventing: Achaia knew that to survive Kallisto's oncoming onslaught the romantics will need the manpower as well as the time traveling capabilities, especially since most of the romantics were more about love than having kids (and even so, the kids might not grow up quick enough to counter Kallisto's attacks), while she herself also dug in all ready to risk shocks, fire, and death in the name of "true love."

Hardships
However, Achaia would get on the hard times: first, Kallisto and Kallistrata deployed temporarily to Appaloosa Plains just to capture both her and Antigone, a task in which Kallisto and Kallistrata succeeded. Having been captured, they were immediately deported to the Church's capital world of Hekatonschoinos, detained by Church presence and its ownership of pretty much every facility. The separation from outside world had however weakened Church presence, many people having emigrated out to settle somewhere else. While being detained, Blair, who was one of the reliable allies back in Sunset Valley had defected to the Church when Eurydike and Hypatia came up with an successful idea to boost popularity of the Church by reviving Blair's father Boyd.

All seemed to be lost, until out of nowhere Thessalonike suddenly gained a Khornish streak and decided to help Antigone and Achaia escape Hekatonschoinos, Thessalonike's rationale was this: "Although you and I aren't really buddies, I myself will probably benefit from the downfall of the Church." Thessalonike helped Achaia out, infiltrating one of the two ports of Hekatonschoinos and allowing Achaia (and Antigone) to escape by ship. Of course, Achaia and Antigone had no place to go: most of their assets were seized by the Church, many friends having deserted them (Rodney also found the Church more appealing than the heresy), and without a safe haven free from the scrutiny of the Church. Achaia and Antigone decides to go to Bridgeport, hoping to befriend the local nobles there and build an opposition force powerful enough to repel Church incursions.

However, while they were going to Bridgeport via ship, a storm hit, and Achaia went missing, leaving Antigone to be swept away to Bridgeport unaccompanied.

Trivia

 * Achaia and Demetria qualifies the first part of being a core member according to the codex: Both have an aggregate skill level exceeding 70 (72 and 71 respectively), however, due to the secondary parameter of 60 in technical realms, neither Achaia nor Demetria qualify can be considered core members at the state should they join the Meris Sophiston.
 * Achaia is the only sim in the Beauty 4 to lack the Logic skill.
 * Achaia also is the only sim outside of the Union of the Insane to have the parameter to fulfill the Renaissance Sim lifetime wish. Demetria only needs 1 point on Fishing and Charisma to master the skills and hence fulfilling the parameter.
 * Achaia was a former member of the military.
 * Achaia (along with the rest of the Beauty 4) happened to appear in their old status at one point in the first time warp, and the copied Achaia died of fire, which was likely since Achaia was a heavy sleeper.
 * Despite her Hopeless Romantic trait, Achaia is with Kallisto to not be married nor engaged, although Kallisto has not engaged in romantic activity at all, since Kallisto deems it heresy.
 * The birthday April 3rd is a homage to Nurgle, whose sacred number is 7 (4 + 3). Achaia is for free love, and in a sense, against the constraints of political agendas, preferring social entropy in contrast to Kallisto's scheming and constant push for evolution. Achaia has Slaaneshi traits as well, since Achaia has the perfection drive as well as the pursuit of arts. (sqrt(4)*3)