Elf alchemist found in a smuggler’s chest, formerly bound to the Order of the Phoenix — now claiming to serve Gnaeus through his ring.
What We Know
- Found inside a chest at the smuggler drop-off when Gnaeus’s ring reacted to it. (S1)
- Appearance: dusky skin, straight dark hair, strange golden eyes. (S1)
- Was bound to service by the Order of the Phoenix; Knight-Confessor Adalberto was her first master, Gandolfini her second. (S1)
- Claims to serve Gnaeus now, because of his ring — highly heretical. (S1) See Ari and the Ring.
- Her oath, in her own words: “I swear to serve you faithfully in word and deed, mind, body and soul.” She stated it early on (~S1; lost from the early notes) and restated it verbatim in the S7 conversation. (Aaron)
- Abilities: alchemist; can heal and poison with her blood; her daily potions counter poison/disease and heal. (S1) Impervious to heat. (Aaron)
- A capable combatant — more so than Titus expected; Gnaeus had her fitted for armor and weapons. (S2)
- Sharp-eyed analyst: spotted that the document diagrams look like star charts overlaid on leyline confluences. (S3)
- Tasked with exploring the Isbi’liyyah elven community and producing alchemical reagent lists. (S2) Her report: the community fears the assassination rumors; elves attacked, a house burned; the rumors appeared very fast. (S3)
- The Ulpia Estate servants don’t love her presence. (S1)
- Given charge of Lindse, who has been absorbed into the party’s (nonexistent) servant retinue — Ari is the only one who speaks Reichspiel. (S5)
- She speaks all three western tongues — Cardacci, Langue de Terre, and Reichspiel — and has been teaching Gnaeus Cardacci, who is now passable but broken in it. (Aaron)
- Spotted the crystal shards on the floor of the octagon during the retreat, before Haroun confirmed them. (S5)
- She has the orrery. On the voyage home she took charge of investigating it and working out how to use it — the party recorded its initial settings first, and bought maintenance materials once ashore. (S6) See The Monastery of the Dawn and the Orrery.
- The Ulpia estate servants are now “extra upset” about her being there, and Gnaeus has quietly told the head servant to buy a small house to keep her in when the party is in the capital. (S6)
- The mob at the estate got angrier on seeing her. (S6) See The Riot at the Ulpia Estate.
- At the Citadel of Gazra, Visenne de Tarrand didn’t blink at an elf in a Hazadi noble’s retinue; Isabel d’Allais was surprised and perhaps put off. (S6)
- Increasingly the party’s utility player (S4): brewed seasickness tonics on the voyage, speaks Morschatti (interrogated Lindse), picks locks, identified the dungeon muttering as a prayer to the Maker, stabbed a thug in the market — and Captain Iram charged extra just to carry her.
- In Uryula, she and Gnaeus worked together to calm his house staff’s concerns about her — it at least partly worked. (S7)
- The private conversation (S7, Aaron’s addendum): sensing she wanted to talk, Gnaeus teleported into her room late one evening in Uryula. She seemed upset — or concerned — that he wasn’t sleeping with her. He answered that he finds her extremely attractive but held back by the morality of the control he has over her, by his house’s politics in the current climate, and by his intent to truly court Silvia. Her answer to the first concern: her feelings are still her own, and not subject to the control. She also restated her oath verbatim (above), and asked whether he found her morally repulsive — he assured her he didn’t care what she had done before they met (GM). See Ari and the Ring.
- Got a replacement sword in Uryula. (S8)
- Worked out what the orrery is for (S8): she thinks it can fill in the blanks in Master Bahadir’s equations, and after a few days with both had three potential lines on a map — the party is fairly sure the three points where they intersect another line are three possible Moon-site locations, but can’t tell which is right. (Aaron) Master Najlad’s notes on the rings then led her to intersecting, “less static” lines crossing the main ones — whose equations the party appears to be missing. See The Sanctum Investigation.
- At Castromar, Silvia asked Gnaeus about her; an uncomfortable conversation about elves followed. (S8)
- She understands the Black Speech. When five masked Corrupted challenged the party under the ruins at The Mirror Lake, nobody else understood them; Ari said they were speaking the Black Speech and asking for the “pilgrim’s sign.” (S9) The party had not known she understood it, and doesn’t know whether she speaks it (Aaron). How she learned it is still open.
- Used her magic against the cold on the descent to the octagon, rather than one of the robes. (S9)
- (And — as Gnaeus will eventually remember — she is impervious to heat, so her choice of night garb that evening had nothing to do with the weather. — Aaron)
Speculation
Speculation
- Blood-based healing and poisoning is uncomfortably close to the forbidden Blood sphere — see Magic and Casting Traditions. If the Eyes take an interest, this gets dangerous fast.
- Which alchemy is hers? The GM’s tech primer splits the field: ordinary alchemy is an ungifted craft; True Alchemy requires a Gift and its practitioners are almost universally Logos casters (GM). Healing and poisoning with her own blood is no ungifted craft — so either she is a True Alchemist (implying Logos training: by whom?), or her art is a third thing the primer doesn’t name. Nobody has asked her.
- The Black Speech (S9). Languages calls it “learned by those who study the enemy” — and her two masters were Phoenix Knight-Confessors, whose order exists to root out the Arts of the Corrupted. A bound translator is the innocent reading. It is also one more thing she knew and hadn’t mentioned.
- What was the Phoenix doing with a bound elf alchemist on a covert mission into Hazad? She was cargo alongside the sanctum documents — is she connected to the sanctums themselves?
- How much does Ari know that she hasn’t volunteered? Her loyalty is a function of a binding no one understands.
Speculation
The capital is now actively dangerous for her, in a way The Elf Scapegoating only threatened before. The estate’s own servants dislike her, a mob has seen her face, and she is the single most identifiable elf attached to a Great House in Isbi’liyyah. Gnaeus’s safe house is the right call and it is also a quiet admission that the party can no longer protect her by keeping her close. Compare Sadiq, who solved the same problem by wearing an Eagle tabard in public.