Rukhsana

BIOGRAPHY

Rukhsana was born on Awal 22 years before Book 1, to the royal family of the Haxamanian Empire in charge of most of the Planet Awal. She was the youngest of her family and a girl, so her parents for the most part paid her very little attention, intending to just marry her off to some noble when she came of age and get her out of their hair. For most of her early life, Rukhsana was kept in the palace, being taught things like cooking, manners, entertaining, and storytelling. While she liked these things, they weren't enough for her, and she would often sneak into the palace library to satisfy her curiosity about the world around her. She somehow figured out how to read and write on her own, learning things such as science, the history of Awal, the classics of both Awal and Aurea, and the life and teachings of Subhraj Anand. She once said to her parents as a child that she one day wanted to rule the Haxamanian Empire, but they laughed it off, both because Rukhsana was the youngest in the royal family and because they said it wasn't a woman's "place" to rule. Of her siblings, the only ones who paid her any attention were her brother Zarang and her sister Narenja, as Shapur was the designated heir and Rostam was away studying to become a priest. 

She was close with Narenja as a child, but by the time she was a teenager, Narenja had already been married to the Satrap (Governor) of Peshmerghestan at the far end of the empire, so she saw her less and less as time went on. Zarang stayed close with Rukhsana, even sneaking her out one night to teach her how to ride a horse, and at least entertaining the notion that Rukhsana could rule one day when she brought it up. However, soon after this, tragedy struck when her parents and Shapur were sailing to Peshmerghestan to both check on the province and visit Narenja, and their ship sank on the way there, killing all on board. Since the designated heir was killed, Zarang, being the oldest surviving member of the family, was crowned Shahanshah (King of Kings) of the Haxamanian Empire. Rostam, who had no actual desire to become a priest despite being sent to become one by his parents, saw his chance at the throne and started a civil war. 

Zarang was not good at leading troops in battle and was easily defeated by Rostam's forces, leading to his capture and subsequent execution (although the latter was against the orders of Rostam, who wanted to simply imprison him). When Rostam took control of the capital, Rukhsana, who he saw as a supporter of Zarang with ambitions of her own, was captured and sent to a prison called the Fortress of Oblivion in the faraway deserts of Gamalistan.

She was lonely at first in prison, but a couple months in she befriended Omar bin Abdul-Anand, a priest from Gamalistan who Rukhsana eventually learned was the head of the Zamanrahib, an ancient order of Gamali priests who watch over the entrance to the Sands of Time and prevent the wrong people from accessing them. Eventually, the two escaped the Fortress of Oblivion and appealed to the Satrap of Gamalistan for help. Rukhsana and Omar had previously reached a deal in which Omar and the Zamanrahib would support Rukhsana in rising up against her brother for the throne, and Rukhsana would return the Zamanrahib to the privileged status they had enjoyed a few centuries back. Since the Zamanrahib had strong influence in Gamalistan, the Satrap gave in and proclaimed Rukhsana Queen of Kings, directly challenging Rostam.

Both while in prison and in their travels after escaping, Omar bin Abdul-Anand mentored Rukhsana in Mind Magic, with which she had a high degree of natural talent for. By the time she had escaped from prison, she'd already mostly gotten her head around the basic abilities (telekinesis, slowing time around a chosen person or creature for a short duration - known as mind slow - , manipulating the weak minded through mind tricks, posture manipulation, short range teleportation, telepathy, and basic divination). In particular, she showed particular talent with mind slow, immobilizing five different prison guards at once immediately after teleporting herself and Omar out of their cells. Additionally, Rukhsana learned how to use her four rare innate abilities (psychometry - the ability to experience vivid visions of an object's past by touching it, immaterial storage - the ability to store any objects Rukhsana is capable of lifting in a pocket dimension accessible only to her and withdrawing them at will, mindwalking - the ability to enter another's mind and experience their thoughts or dreams with them, and phantasmagoria - the ability to create powerful hallucinations in others). She had always had signs of them as a child, but had no idea what they meant until she learned how to harness them via mind magic.

Meanwhile, Rostam was in the process of purging supporters of Zarang from the aristocracy, and this proved to be a very unpopular move with said aristocracy, leading to more and more provinces switching sides and declaring for Rukhsana. Crucial among these was Peshmerghestan, which provided Rukhsana with the best troops anywhere in the empire had to offer, as well as a chance to see her sister Narenja again. After rallying essentially all of the Haxamanian Empire's eastern Satrapies behind her, Rukhsana received messages from the Haxamanian Satrapies on the Planet Bharatam offering to pledge their allegiance to her should she visit. Together with much of her entourage, she journeyed there and was able to immediately get Bharatami Hyrcania, Tharistan, and Kutch on her side, receiving troops from there. However, North Rajphantstan opted to stay neutral, and New Bahr (a loyalist stronghold) threatened to arrest her and turn her in to Rostam if she so much as set foot there. Nevertheless, the other Haxamanian Satrapies on the planet: Madhyakhand, North Aryastan, South Aryastan, and Vindhyastan all joined her side after she journeyed there to convince them. 

As she was getting ready to leave Bharatam, however, she found the Haxamanian Satrapies on the planet being invaded by the Aryavartan Empire, the indigenous power on the planet and the Haxamanian Empire's second biggest overall rival after the Aurean Dominate. The Aryavartans did not get very far, however, as Rukhsana cleverly lured them into a trap and defeated them at the Battle of Gulpur, lulling them into a false sense of security with fake surrender terms and then surrounding and annihilating them with elite Peshmerga while their guard was down. The Aryavartans promptly retreated back to their territory and never became a problem for Rukhsana again. Additionally, Sashank I, the newly crowned Aryavartan Chakravarti (Emperor) reasoned that if Rukhsana had what it took to beat him in battle this easily, she would be more than capable of beating Rostam, so he sought to get on her good side before she took power, sending her a small contingent of troops and war elephants as a gesture of good faith.  Not long after the meeting they arranged, Rukhsana returned to Awal to face Rostam, by this point having put together an army complete with infantry, cavalry, camels, and even war elephants. 

On her way through the Hyrcanian Mountains, Rukhsana attempted to march through the lands of the various West Hyrcanian tribes, citing her royal family's descent from the Shahanzai Tribe centered around the small city of Mingora as proof they would welcome her as a liberator. However, she was given a hostile reception by the many West Hyrcanian tribes, who teamed up to harry her army relentlessly as it moved through the mountains. At first she tried various tactics to fend them off, but as she lost more and more soldiers, it became clear that Rukhsana would have to either come to some sort of agreement with these tribes or her army would mutiny. She sent out peace offerings to every tribe, and only heard back from one: the Shahanzai. The Shahanzai's response was that in exchange for Rukhsana leaving West Hyrcania, disbanding her army, recognizing Rostam as the rightful Shahanshah, swearing off politics for the rest of her life, and marrying one of their tribal leaders, they would spare her life. Enraged by the grave insult, her army changed its mind and agreed to keep marching through the mountains to Mingora. 

Despite losing many soldiers along the way to Shahanzai raids, Rukhsana was able to block all the gates and bridges into the city and begin a siege. However, as the days dragged on, her army was having problems feeding itself due to Shahanzai raiders ambushing foraging parties and the resistant local populace refusing to hand over food, sometimes even at spearpoint. Eventually, an offer from Akhtar Akhund, leader of the Students of Anand (the radical and incredibly misogynistic and homophobic Anandist priesthood that had been influencing the Shahanshahs for generations and the de facto leader of both the Shahanzai Tribe and West Hyrcanian tribes in general) was sent to Rukhsana, in which the two would duel 1v1. If Rukhsana won, the Shahanzais would stand down. If he won, Rukhsana would have to not only accept the original offer but also become his slave. Disgusted by the offer, but confident in her magical abilities and her army too short on food to continue the siege much longer, Rukhsana talked it over with Omar bin Abdul-Anand. While Omar bin Abdul-Anand knew of Akhtar Akhund's magical abilities, he underestimated his power, and gave Rukhsana the go-ahead to the duel. Rukhsana sent a messenger into Mingora to let Akhtar know of her acceptance. 

That night, Rukhsana had a dream of the Simurgh flying somewhere around the Hyrcanian Mountains. The Simurgh was a magical bird with the body of a peahen and the head of a wolf, and together with the Spirit of the Eldest Myrrh, the Simurgh was the spirit that embodied the essence of Awal, having a long history with Awal's royal family that Rukhsana had read about in her time sneaking books in the palace library.  Long ago, the creature had given a single feather to Rostam I (Rukhsana's brother's namesake), who would go on to become the first Shahanshah of the Haxamanian Empire. The feather was passed down through millennia, attached to the pommel of the Shamshir-e-Shahan, the sword of the Haxamanian royal family, symbolizing their connection to the Planet Awal. During the Haxamanian Empire's peak years, the Simurgh was written to have even lived in the palace and served as a steed for the Shahanshahs, but as time went on and they grew corrupt and their power waned, the influence of the Simrugh waned. The creature flew off into the Hyrcanian Mountains never to be seen again, and the feathers on the sword began to wilt. By Rukhsana's youth, they were little more than a hair-like wisp, and with Rostam's instigation of a civil war, the last feather had dried out completely and fell off the sword. 

The next morning, the two met in front of the city's gates on a bridge and the duel began. Rukhsana appeared to have an upper hand at first due to Akhtar underestimating her and letting his guard down on a few occasions, but once Akhtar got serious, she lost her footing to his relentless Storm Magic attacks and was eventually beaten to within an inch of her life. When Rukhsana was about to be captured and enslaved by Akhtar, Omar stepped in and rescued her, and her army, encamped on the opposite side of the bridge, was forced to form up rapidly to prepare to cover a retreat. Shahanzai archers along the wall bombarded them, and a Shahanzai force charged out of the city walls to attack the rearguard. Rukhsana's force was able to retreat, but suffered heavy casualties in what was known as the Day of Lost Eyes.

Despite feeling crushed and terrified of Shahanzai retribution from her defeat, Rukhsana refused to disband her army or acknowledge Rostam as Shahanshah. Despite having barely half the force she started with, she chose to continue the campaign, although with a new approach: chipping away at the West Hyrcanians by pulling away the smaller, poorer tribes before going for the stronger, more powerful ones like the Shahanzai rather than the previous strategy of decapitating them by pulling away the strongest tribe. With what was left of her army, Rukhsana marched northeast towards Parwan, the home of the Kohzai Tribe, citing a "feeling in her gut". Forced to march through the territory of the Shahanzai-allied Lodizais to get there, Rukhsana's forces were constantly harried by small bands of Lodizai warriors, and were chased out of the Lodizai city of Zaymazid after attempting to rest and resupply there. They had more luck in their brief march through the lands of the neutral Surkhzais, finally being able to recuperate in the small city of Kunduz and even picking up a small number of Surkhzai volunteers. Forced to avoid most of the mountain passes to Kohzai territory due to them being in Lodizai land, Rukhsana used a perilous route through Salang Valley, a gap in the Hyrcanian Mountains over 9,000 feet above sea level in most places and over 12,000 in its highest spot, Zindagi Pass, named for taking the lives of many travelers that cross it. Many in Rukhsana's force died of frostbite, hypothermia, or complications of prolonged altitude sickness in the snowy valley, but Rukhsana persevered and survived to emerge in Kohzai land on the other side.

After arriving in the lands of the more peaceful Kohzais, Rukhsana was informed by their Khan that the Simurgh indeed still existed, and that if it saw that she forged a new Shamshir-e-Shahan, it may deem her worthy of ruling the Haxamanian Empire, and if not, it would simply eat her. After helping her gather a few ingredients (one of which required her to venture into the nest of a roc bird that very nearly killed her), the Kohzais helped Rukhsana forge a new Shamshir-e-Shahan, and led her to the peak of Kohe Shakhawr, the highest mountain on the entire planet, to meet the Simurgh. As the spirit studied her, Rukhsana's nerves got the better of her, and she accidentally dropped the sword into a deep ravine. Just when Rukhsana thought the Simurgh had judged her as unworthy and was about to eat her, the beast dove into the ravine, fished the sword out with its talons, and presented it to Rukhsana, with a new batch of feathers attached to the pommel. This won Rukhsana the allegiance of the Kohzais, the first of the many West Hyrcanian tribes she'd need the support of. Additionally, the Simurgh itself joined her on her quest, often shrinking down to the size of a puppy to ride on her shoulder. Upon seeing the Simurgh, the Kohzai Khan, Bakhtawara Kohzai, threw her support behind Rukhsana.

With the added support of the Kohzais, Rukhsana led her force southwest through the Hyrcanian Mountains to Mingora, issuing another challenge to Akhtar Akhund. He accepted, although this time, he demanded to be allowed to use his army from the beginning, as Rukhsana's force had gotten involved last time to save her life. Rukhsana agreed provided that her and her force would be provided with safe passage through Lodizai land to reach him, which Akhtar Akhund agreed to. The march back towards Mingora was far less arduous than the trip to the Kohzai lands as a result, with Rukhsana's force taking a peaceful route through Nuristan Pass and along the warm and rainy Sabz Coast. 

Upon returning to Mingora, Rukhsana once again found it fortified and imposing, but upon closer inspection realized it had been left empty. Its streets were devoid of civilians and its gates were wide open. Seizing this strange opportunity, Rukhsana's army rushed into the city to occupy it, only to find Akhtar Akhund's army streaming out of its hiding places in the nearby wooded hills to surround the city, trapping her army in it. Rukhsana also quickly discovered that Mingora had been intentionally stripped by Akhtar Akhund of all stored food, and they did not have long before starvation would set in. Additionally, Rukhsana knew that she could not duel Akhtar Akhund in the city or its immediate surroundings again, as the three rivers that converge at Mingora bolster his Storm Magic. 

While many in her army began seriously questioning her leadership for falling for such an obvious trap, Rukhsana met privately with Omar bin Abdul-Anand, Bakhtawara Kohzai, and Shahzar Ashkani, the leader of her army's band of Surkhzai volunteers to discuss strategy. A traditional sortie in any direction was ruled out due to the steep terrain and bridges forming bottlenecks at every possible exit from the city. Instead, they devised a genius strategy to take a small group out of the city at night via rafts on the Shir River, disembark downstream of Akhtar Akhund's force, and ambush him. Simultaneously, the rest of Rukhsana's army would launch sorties from all of the city's gates, tying up the rest of the besiegers. 

However, when this plan was put into motion, Akhtar Akhund had foreseen this and positioned himself outside the eastern side of the city, while leaving his distinctive gold leaf-plated tent on the southern side, causing Rukhsana's force to erroneously land there. Despite this, the force Rukhsana led out of the city on rafts was entirely cavalry, allowing them to roll up the force they encountered while it was tied up defending against the sortie and continue east to a bridge further up the Shir River that Akhtar Akhund did not think was necessary to guard. From here, Rukhsana's force crashed into Akhtar Akhund's rear. As Akhtar Akhund's force disintegrated between Rukhsana and the sortie, Rukhsana began to duel him atop the hill he was encamped on, a considerable distance from the Shir River or any of its tributary streams, giving Rukhsana an advantage she did not enjoy during her first fight with him. While Akhtar Akhund could still use air-based Storm attacks and his weapons, removing water from the equation greatly hampered his abilities, allowing Rukhsana to painstakingly gain the upper hand. However, Akhtar Akhund knocked her off her balance when she least expected it with a gust of air and tried to attack the Simurgh, greatly angering the beast. The Simurgh then grew to its full size, picked Akhtar Akhund up in its talons, flew hundreds of feet into the air, and dropped him to his death in the Shir River as the sun rose.

Seeing the Simurgh for the first time in millennia, let alone seeing it brazenly kill the leader of the Students of Anand, stunned all on the battlefield. Most of the Students of Anand present immediately renounced their ways and defected to Rukhsana, while the rest simply abandoned the field in disgrace. The remaining Shahanzai leadership immediately threw their support behind her and even declared her their new rightful leader. Within days, messages of support came from most of the remaining West Hyrcanian tribes, and their troops began swelling her ranks soon after that as Mingora became Rukhsana's temporary capital. 

However, no sooner than this, she received word that the Aurean Dominate, the Haxamanian Empire's age-old rival, had taken advantage of the Rostam-Rukhsana split to invade, landing in the Satrapy of Van to the southeast. By pillaging the fertile farmland of the area, they forced Rostam's hand, and he was forced to march down from the Hyrcanian Mountains to face them on open ground, where he was surrounded and utterly annihilated by their superior cavalry at the Battle of Zanbil. Before the fighting even began in earnest, Rostam was slain by Gavicus XXIX, the Aurean Dominus (head of state), in the duels between commanders that usually took place prior to battle. Realizing that the path to Tasfahn lay open for the Aureans, who were already moving there quickly before the winter snow arrived and trapped them, she began marching her force over the Hyrcanian Mountains as quickly as possible to beat them there. The mountain road from Mingora to Tasfahn crossed the high, cold, and desolate Central Hyrcanian Plateau  that separated the Haxamanian Empire's western Satrapies from the east, resulting in her and her army having to spend weeks at a time at altitudes over 13,000 feet and in freezing conditions. Almost everyone in her army besides the West Hyrcanians developed altitude sickness very rapidly, so even more time had to be set aside for her troops to acclimate. Frostbite and hypothermia were hard on her army, and the Bharatamis and Gamalis in her force, unused to the cold, threatened to mutiny or desert on multiple occasions. Additionally, the Surkhzais who dominated the Central Hyrcanian Plateau, were one of the last West Hyrcanian tribes to remain "neutral" and refused to let her pass. 

Knowing the Aureans already significantly outnumbered her and that she was losing troops every day to desertion and hypothermia, Rukhsana could not afford to waste any more soldiers subduing the Surkhzais, so she met their Khan, Darwesh, in his yurt to negotiate a solution. Rukhsana claims she merely told him that Rostam was dead, which he was not previously informed of, and he agreed to let her through and join her side, but many of Rukhsana's detractors claim she slept with him.  Regardless, her army was able to stop for a few crucial days to rest and resupply in the Surkhzais' tribal capital of Surkhdar, Surkhzai warriors flocked to her army, and they were on their way to Tasfahn. While resting in Surkhdar, Rukhsana sent word to the northern branch of the Shahanzais, who lived in the mountain valleys surrounding Tasfahn, informing them that the Aureans would soon be passing through their territory and that they should do everything in their power to thin out their numbers and prevent them from reaching the city. For the next several weeks, they bought Rukhsana crucial time, ambushing the Aureans at random intervals and blocking key passes through the mountains, forcing the Aureans to choose between constantly rerouting themselves or committing troops to chase them off. As a result, a march through the Hyrcanian Mountains that should've only taken the Aureans a week and a half at most to complete ended up taking them almost two months. Even then, they did not reach the city, as Rukhsana had beaten them there by a few days,  even having time to stop to rest and resupply briefly in the Shahanzai town of Parkhar between Tasfahn and Surkhdar. 

Upon arriving in Tasfahn, Rukhsana knew the Aureans both still significantly outnumbered her and would arrive in only a few days, so she knew the battle would almost certainly take place somewhere in the Anahita Valley, just downstream of the city. She met with both Omar bin Abdul-Anand and several local Shahanzais who knew the terrain well, and they agreed upon a section of the valley at the end of a narrow ravine where the Anahita River was far deeper than it appeared in some spots and shallower in others. The ravine contained the road to the south that the Aureans would be traveling up to arrive, meaning it would be the only direction they could retreat through, and its very narrow width made it impossible for the entire army to move through it quickly. The deceptive river depth, meanwhile, would allow for sudden river crossings and flanking maneuvers from Rukhsana that the Aureans had no way of anticipating.

As expected, the Aureans arrived a few days later. It was early November, and the first snow flurries of the year had begun to arrive. As a result, even if the Aureans won, they knew that they would have to winter in Tasfahn before they could leave the area safely. Despite the Aureans outnumbering Rukhsana more than two-to-one when the battle began, the fight was a brutal slugfest for three days with no clear winner. Only on the fourth day was Rukhsana able to win with a decisive flanking maneuver and clever use of her elephants. The rout of the Aureans was complete, however, and Rukhsana even managed to capture Gavicus XXIX alive and make him her prisoner while almost 50,000 Aureans were cut down as they panicked and tried to retreat through the ravine. Only around half the Aureans who arrived at the battlefield on the first day were able to escape, and many more were trapped in the Hyrcanian Mountains by the incoming winter snow during their retreat and either died or were captured by the Shahanzais. Of the 150,000 or so Aureans who set out from their homeland to attack the weakened and divided Haxamanian Empire, only around 25,000 returned.

Later that day, Rukhsana returned triumphantly to Tasfahn with her army and was crowned the Haxamanian Empire's first Shahanbanbishn, or Queen of Kings, as all of the remaining Satrapies of the empire pledged allegiance to her, ending the civil war. After this, she returned to Mingora to pay respects to the hometown of the Shahanzai Tribe one last time, taking Gavicus XXIX with her in chains. By the time they arrived, it was already the next spring. While in Mingora, Rukhsana and Gavicus negotiated the terms of the latter's release, which eventually developed into the Treaty of Mingora. At first, this treaty called Gavicus to cede all Aurean territory on the Planet Awal to the Haxamanian Empire in exchange for peace, but Gavicus refused, insisting that Tifinagh was necessary to feed his people and that he would rather die than give it up. Impressed by his resolve, Rukhsana relented and amended the treaty, allowing the Aurean Dominate to keep Tifinagh as their sole remaining territory on the Planet Awal. Gavicus was then let out of his chains and sent stumbling back to Tifinagh and then Aurea.

Upon taking charge of the empire, Rukhsana immediately began dismantling the oppressive institutions of the Students of Anand. The "morality police" that the group had previously used to browbeat the populace into living every aspect of their lives by the strictest interpretation of Yasnic Anandism were abolished. In an unprecedented move, almost the entire upper half of the Yasnic Anandist Priesthood, dominated by the Students of Anand's brand of the faith,  was defrocked and replaced by Zamanrahibists. Omar bin Abdul-Anand was made the Dastur, or high priest, of the Empire. While Rukhsana remained popular, this raised quite a bit of controversy, as while most of the Empire wanted to move away from the Students of Anand's oppressive and fundamentalist ways, they had hoped Rukhsana would be more of a moderate on religious issues rather than simply replacing the Students of Anand with the radical social permissiveness of Zamanrahibism. Reception to Rukhsana's religious reforms were therefore very mixed across the Empire. The Gamalis, most of whom were already Zamanrahibists, loved Rukhsana's changes, for example, but the West Hyrcanians, a deeply conservative people who had formed the Students of Anand's power base, chafed at the new changes. Some changes, like the lifting of the death penalty for homosexuality and ending of bans on girls' education, were almost universally celebrated. Others, however, were more controversial, such as the Zamanrahabist beliefs surrounding free love. While only hardliners, West Hyrcanians, and the very old took much issue with loosening dress codes or legalizing premarital sex, the decriminalization of adultery and promotion of communally raising one's children prompted public outcry. Very few besides the Gamalis liked religious and Governmental figures openly promoting polyamory. Nevertheless, Rukhsana was able to easily score some points for herself in the Empire's Satrapies on Bharatam, as most of those living there were Aryavartan Anandists instead of Yasnic Anandists, meaning they saw Chakravarti Sashank I as their head of faith instead of Rukhsana. By choosing to leave them to their business instead of persecuting them like the Students of Anand did, she was able to maintain her popularity there.

Rukhsana simultaneously took a tougher stance on Ishga colonial encroachment while giving them much more access to Haxamanian trade than her father did. Ishgas were forbidden from further purchasing land in East Gamalistan, which violated the treaty her father had signed with Ishga King Robert VI. While the new Ishga King, Michael I, was much less imperialistic than his father, he nonetheless could not let this slide politically and demanded that either she rescind this or all Haxamanian ports be opened to Ishga trade in exchange. Rukhsana agreed to the latter, although this had been part of her plan all along and she used easier trade with the Ishgas to get her hands on some of the Ishgas' advanced technology that had allowed them to colonize large chunks of the galaxy in the first place. Using the money made from this trade, Rukhsana hired Ishga contractors to build rail lines connecting the Empire's disparate Satrapies, knowing the Aureans had done the same a couple decades prior and remembering how much the difficult terrain had slowed her movements through West Hyrcania. While the entire Empire benefitted from this, West Hyrcania was the main focus, both since it contained the capital and because its extremely rugged mountains made movement on its roads slow and dangerous and thus land transportation across the Empire had been prohibitively expensive for centuries.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

22 years old at the beginning of the series, Rukhsana is rather short, standing only at five feet and two inches tall, which leads to her opponents repeatedly underestimating her in battle to their detriment. In their first encounter, Akhtar Akhund let his guard down multiple times because of Rukhsana's small size, which allowed her to get a few good hits in early on despite him being strong enough to utterly dominate her at that point. She has been noted to have something of a "curvy" build, which gets her a lot of...male attention. When walking behind her while visiting the Golden Palace in Tasfahn, Weasel described the experience as "mesmerizing". Her hair is long, black, and straight with choppy bangs in the front, her skin is a dark shade of sienna, and her eyes are forest green. She is noted to have full lips, long eyelashes, somewhat bushy eyebrows, and a prominent, hooked nose. Around the palace, she is usually seen in a fairly revealing (to the point where it earns her plenty of criticism from many of the Empire's religious figures) blue, gold, or pink silk dress and/or robes. In battle, however, she wears a full suit of armor, consisting of a mail hauberk, a padded glove covering each hand and forearm with a layer of chainmail between the layers of cloth, a pleated skirt with red, golden, and purple sections under the hauberk, padded cloth leggings and boots below the skirt with a similar chainmail-between-cloth design as the gloves, and a steel helmet .The helmet is tall and thimble-shaped, with the top culminating in a large purple linen ball, tied together by a red sash at the helmet's tip. This ball holds all of Rukhsana's hair inside of it, preventing it from getting in the way during combat. At the bottom of the helmet is a steel mask covering her entire face, save for two small eyeholes and a hole for her mouth. The mask is made to smoothly fit the contours of the face. As her primary weapon, she generally either carries her sagaris-style battleaxe or her khanda-style sword into battle alongside a large, circular iron shield , featuring the Winged Anand painted on a red background. As her powers allow her to store any item she is physically capable of carrying in a pocket dimension, she can often switch between these weapons at a moment's notice, even if one or more is not on her physical person. In single combat, she generally prefers to dual wield her sagaris in one hand and her khanda in the other rather than using her shield.