Arodea was born in 4606, the sixth child of the younger son of the Duke of Chelam. She had three cousins born that year; two of them were also named Arodea and one was named Aroden. There is a painting of all four of them and their glowing mothers and proud fathers, assembled in Westcrown for the coming of the Age of Glory.

Two of them were dead four days later. There's a reason you don't generally attempt to Teleport with a little child, but in the two-week-long-nighttime that enveloped Westcrown after Aroden failed to appear, it seemed like the least bad idea. His death, it transpired, had also shaken the fabric of magic. Or maybe it was just bad luck. The wizard was unscathed and the parents were mildly scalded and little Arodea and little Aroden were dead, which, well, you'd call a bad omen if the thing it foretold hadn't already happened. 

Carlota (she never again used her given name) herself survived, and was raised as her older siblings had been. Within the walls of her grandfather's castle it was possible to pretend she was being raised for the same world and life they'd been raised for. Her siblings left, one by one, to fight and find glory and restore order; she diligently studied so that she could follow them. 

Their house was destroyed and all of them with it long before the final confrontation between House Davian and the Thrunes.

Carlota outlived all her cousins and still perished at twenty-seven, a third-circle wizard, when one of her bodyguards (she never learned if he'd been Dominated or turned traitor) slit her throat. She made Axis. And it's not as if she'd spent the intervening decades yearning to return, but -

- she hadn't wanted Axis, see. She had been a follower of the Inheritor, the goddess of bravery and the triumph of Good (Carlota) over Evil (her enemies). She had been wise and kind and generous. She would have been Good, probably, born into a world whose nobility had anything at all to do besides raising arms against one another, or at minimum a world in which any one of her siblings had survived.

Pharasma doesn't refuse to hear such arguments, but She doesn't take them all that seriously. Carlota had taken her men into many battles, not against the Thrunes for the salvation of Cheliax but against other rival claimants because such were her orders. She sincerely believed them to be Evil, and many of them were, and every battle between them served the Thrunes. And when her father was dead she did not sue for peace with the men who'd ground her family into nonexistence, but instead set herself to their destruction at a price that she had no way of guessing.

No matter how generous your spirit or blazing your convictions it's hard to do enough Good in twenty-seven years to make up for that. 

Arodea was born in 4606, the sixth child of the younger son of the Duke of Chelam. She had three cousins born that year; two of them were also named Arodea and one was named Aroden. There is a painting of all four of them and their glowing mothers and proud fathers, assembled in Westcrown for the coming of the Age of Glory.

Two of them were dead four days later. There's a reason you don't generally attempt to Teleport with a little child, but in the two-week-long-nighttime that enveloped Westcrown after Aroden failed to appear, it seemed like the least bad idea. His death, it transpired, had also shaken the fabric of magic. Or maybe it was just bad luck. The wizard was unscathed and the parents were mildly scalded and little Arodea and little Aroden were dead, which, well, you'd call a bad omen if the thing it foretold hadn't already happened. 

Carlota (she never again used her given name) herself survived, and was raised as her older siblings had been. Within the walls of her grandfather's castle it was possible to pretend she was being raised for the same world and life they'd been raised for. Her siblings left, one by one, to fight and find glory and restore order; she diligently studied so that she could follow them. 

Their house was destroyed and all of them with it long before the final confrontation between House Davian and the Thrunes.

Carlota outlived all her cousins and still perished at twenty-seven, a third-circle wizard, when one of her bodyguards (she never learned if he'd been Dominated or turned traitor) slit her throat. She made Axis. And it's not as if she'd spent the intervening decades yearning to return, but -

- she hadn't wanted Axis, see. She had been a follower of the Inheritor, the goddess of bravery and the triumph of Good (Carlota) over Evil (her enemies). She had been wise and kind and generous. She would have been Good, probably, born into a world whose nobility had anything at all to do besides raising arms against one another, or at minimum a world in which any one of her siblings had survived.

Pharasma doesn't refuse to hear such arguments, but She doesn't take them all that seriously. Carlota had taken her men into many battles, not against the Thrunes for the salvation of Cheliax but against other rival claimants because such were her orders. She sincerely believed them to be Evil, and many of them were, and every battle between them served the Thrunes. And when her father was dead she did not sue for peace with the men who'd ground her family into nonexistence, but instead set herself to their destruction at a price that she had no way of guessing.

No matter how generous your spirit or blazing your convictions it's hard to do enough Good in twenty-seven years to make up for that. 

Arodea was born in 4606, the sixth child of the younger son of the Duke of Chelam. She had three cousins born that year; two of them were also named Arodea and one was named Aroden. There is a painting of all four of them and their glowing mothers and proud fathers, assembled in Westcrown for the coming of the Age of Glory.

Two of them were dead four days later. There's a reason you don't generally attempt to Teleport with a little child, but in the two-week-long-nighttime that enveloped Westcrown after Aroden failed to appear, it seemed like the least bad idea. His death, it transpired, had also shaken the fabric of magic. Or maybe it was just bad luck. The wizard was unscathed and the parents were mildly scalded and little Arodea and little Aroden were dead, which, well, you'd call a bad omen if the thing it foretold hadn't already happened. 

Carlota (she never again used her given name) herself survived, and was raised as her older siblings had been. Within the walls of her grandfather's castle it was possible to pretend she was being raised for the same world and life they'd been raised for. Her siblings left, one by one, to fight and find glory and restore order; she diligently studied so that she could follow them. 

Their house was destroyed and all of them with it long before the final confrontation between House Davian and the Thrunes.

Carlota outlived all her cousins and still perished at twenty-seven, a third-circle wizard, when one of her bodyguards (she never learned if he'd been Dominated or turned traitor) slit her throat. She made Axis. And it's not as if she'd spent the intervening decades yearning to return, but -

- she hadn't wanted Axis, see. She had been a follower of the Inheritor, the goddess of bravery and the triumph of Good (Carlota) over Evil (her enemies). She had been wise and kind and generous. She would have been Good, probably, born into a world whose nobility had anything at all to do besides raising arms against one another, or at minimum a world in which any one of her siblings had survived.

Pharasma doesn't refuse to hear such arguments, but She doesn't take them all that seriously. Carlota had taken her men into many battles, not against the Thrunes for the salvation of Cheliax but against other rival claimants because such were her orders. She sincerely believed them to be Evil, and many of them were, and every battle between them served the Thrunes. And when her father was dead she did not sue for peace with the men who'd ground her family into nonexistence, but instead set herself to their destruction at a price that she had no way of guessing.

No matter how generous your spirit or blazing your convictions it's hard to do enough Good in twenty-seven years to make up for that. 

Arodea was born in 4606, the sixth child of the younger son of the Duke of Chelam. She had three cousins born that year; two of them were also named Arodea and one was named Aroden. There is a painting of all four of them and their glowing mothers and proud fathers, assembled in Westcrown for the coming of the Age of Glory.

Two of them were dead four days later. There's a reason you don't generally attempt to Teleport with a little child, but in the two-week-long-nighttime that enveloped Westcrown after Aroden failed to appear, it seemed like the least bad idea. His death, it transpired, had also shaken the fabric of magic. Or maybe it was just bad luck. The wizard was unscathed and the parents were mildly scalded and little Arodea and little Aroden were dead, which, well, you'd call a bad omen if the thing it foretold hadn't already happened. 

Carlota (she never again used her given name) herself survived, and was raised as her older siblings had been. Within the walls of her grandfather's castle it was possible to pretend she was being raised for the same world and life they'd been raised for. Her siblings left, one by one, to fight and find glory and restore order; she diligently studied so that she could follow them. 

Their house was destroyed and all of them with it long before the final confrontation between House Davian and the Thrunes.

Carlota outlived all her cousins and still perished at twenty-seven, a third-circle wizard, when one of her bodyguards (she never learned if he'd been Dominated or turned traitor) slit her throat. She made Axis. And it's not as if she'd spent the intervening decades yearning to return, but -

- she hadn't wanted Axis, see. She had been a follower of the Inheritor, the goddess of bravery and the triumph of Good (Carlota) over Evil (her enemies). She had been wise and kind and generous. She would have been Good, probably, born into a world whose nobility had anything at all to do besides raising arms against one another, or at minimum a world in which any one of her siblings had survived.

Pharasma doesn't refuse to hear such arguments, but She doesn't take them all that seriously. Carlota had taken her men into many battles, not against the Thrunes for the salvation of Cheliax but against other rival claimants because such were her orders. She sincerely believed them to be Evil, and many of them were, and every battle between them served the Thrunes. And when her father was dead she did not sue for peace with the men who'd ground her family into nonexistence, but instead set herself to their destruction at a price that she had no way of guessing.

No matter how generous your spirit or blazing your convictions it's hard to do enough Good in twenty-seven years to make up for that.