Folly

**Folly** is a young Etherealist, who has been apprenticed to the renowned Ferus.

## About

### Abilities / Skills / Powers

* Made a cone-shaped spiderweb out of Ethersilk—used as a dream catcher.
* Folly understands Cat language.
* She can *see* future possibilities.
* Folly can see in the dark by her "fey illumination of her ether sight.
* She can detect the presence and strength of Etheric energy and she can harness it with the help of her Lumin crystals—she can then turn it into a powerful weapon.
* Folly can track a lumin Crystal from a distance.
* She can talk to and hear the AMS Predator.
* She can hear The Voice.

### Pendant

* Lumin crystals in a jar on a necklace around her neck.

### Lumin Crystals

Folly carries her crystals everywhere. She frequently talks to them. Sometimes she talks to other people by seeming to talk to them—as though she's unable to talk to people directly. She also seems to be exceedingly protective of them. Her crystals appear nearly dead, but she is able to unlock their power and do amazing feats with them.

Folly cannot function without possessing at least one lumin crystal on her person. The lumin crystals fill the holes in her and help keep her from "falling" and losing herself. The Lumin crystals act the same was as her master's collection.

### Appearance

Folly has an extremely odd appearance, often wearing bright clashing colors and mismatched articles of clothing. She also carries a jar on a chain around her neck of seemingly dead lumin crystals everywhere, and will sometimes pull around a wagon filled with them and other items—those items are Efferus Effrenus Ferus's collection of totems he needs to keep functioning.

#### Eyes and Hair

* Eyes: one pale apple green eye and one grey eye.
* Hair: is crimson and white and braided to look like a candy cane.
* She wears spectacles with one pink lens and one green lens.

#### Clothing

Folly's first outfit is an overly large grey shirt made of ethersilk that is patched in several places. Underneath she wears a green under gown with rustling skirts that fall to the floor. On her head she wears a too-large top hat that is bursting with folded pieces of paper. Around her neck she has a necklace with a glass vial full of nearly spent lumin crystals. On her feet are a pair of mismatched stockings. One is green and white polka dot and the other is orange and purple striped.

Folly's second outfit is a plain yellow dress of cotton. She accessorizes this with 12 brightly colored scarves tied along her arms, a long knitted scarf on her head, more scarves around her neck, one red stocking, one grey stocking with blue speckles, her necklace of lumin crystals, her spectacles and a pistoleer's gun belt filled with small mesh sacks of almost spent Lumin crystals.

### Personality / Behavior/ Character

She also acts in a very peculiar way. She very rarely speaks directly to other people, preferring to speak to the Lumin crystals *about* them. She also treats the crystals as living things. Grimm believes that she is as strange as any etherealist can be.

Eventually it is revealed that she uses the crystals as a a totem to interact with the world. Without them, she is unable to properly react to anything around her or to speak at all. This "madness" is the trade off for her ability to manipulate etheric energy.

### Folly's Room

Her ceiling was made of hardened clay and painted with a colorful and fanciful mural. It was nonsensical and looked as though it was painted by a child. It had airships, odd-looking plants, a sun, a moon much larger than the sun, and strange creatures. Her room was lit by jars full of tiny, almost dead lumin crystals.

### Other Details

* She has bad dreams—she catches one in a self-made dream-catcher-spider-web etheric cage with a crstal in it. Ferus says it is a message that Folly overheard, not a dream. The message is orders that Sycorax Cavendish had been receiving from The Voice.
* The two small red wagons filled with seemingly random objects that she pulls along behind her are Efferus Effrenus Ferus' collection of totems he needs to keep functioning. Folly hid a Lumin Crystal in amongst the items and used it locate the collection.
* Folly had spent endless hours of practices sessions with her Lumin crystals.
* She successfully tracked a future possibility for the first time when she saw the conclusion of Rowl finishing off the Silkweavers a few seconds before it actually ended.

## Spirearch's Mission

Addison called Gwen, Bridget, Rowl, and Benedict to his office, Grimm was already there. Ferus and **Folly** joined them. He gives them all a mission—each having their own task, but no one but Ferus knows the objective. That's so no one can divulge any secrets if captured. Benedict is to protect Ferus, Gwen is the "smoother"—smoothing the way through obstacles to Ferus' mission. Bridget and Rowl will serve as his liaisons to the local Cats. They all form a Team with Grimm and his crew serving as their transport and backup.

## Connections

* Efferus Effrenus Ferus
* Habble Morning
* Francis Grimm
* Lumin crystals
* Alexander Bayard
* Spirearch, Lord Albion
* Team: Bridget Tagwynn, Rowl, Gwen, Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster
* AMS Predator
* Habble Landing Shipyards, in Habble Landing
* Grady
* Temple of the Way
* Great Library of Spire Albion
* Brother Vincent
* Blackhorse Inn
* Ventilation Tunnels
* House Nine-Claws
* Clan Chief Naun
* Silkweavers
* Ethersilk
* Etheric energy
* Sycorax Cavendish and Sark
* Ciriaco
* Renaldo Espira
* The Voice
* Surface
* Mistshark

### *Aeronaut's Windlass*

Francis Grimm first meets Folly when he is recovering from a poisoned bite. Aurorans, dressed as Albion Guardsmen, axed their way into the home of Folly and Ferus intent on killing him. He handled them easily using his Crystal Cane, killing them when they refused to stop. He and Folly dressed and packed to travel—intent on seeing the Spirearch to ask him to give him the "Grimm Captain". She and Ferus go to the Spirearch's offices. The Spirearch puts a Team together—Bridget, Rowl, Gwen, Benedict, Captain Grimm and crew—to accompany Ferus and Folly to Habble Landing on a mission to stop the enemy—only Ferus knows the specifics. She arrives on the AMS Predator, meets Bridget and Rowl—she understands cat. Brother Vincent allows her to sit in the Great Library of Spire Albion. She later says that it has "frozen souls". Ferus praised her—writers leave bits of their souls behind in books—it takes a lot of books to sense it.

Folly and Bridget accompanied Rowl into the subterranean parts of Habble Landing, where they met the local cat tribe led by Clan Chief Naun to enlist their assistance in the war with Spire Aurora, but Naun refused, adding a threat. When Bridget tried to pursue it, afraid of failing Ferus and the Spirearch, Folly stopped her. She pointed out that the tribe was being watched, right now. The escort out led them to a tunnel where they are ambushed and attacked by six Silkweavers—Rowl and Bridget killed them. They are then attacked again by hundreds of Silkweavers. Folly,Bridget and Rowl run While Folly primes her Lumin crystals into a weapon that kills them all. Barely surviving, the decide to explore to gain information about the enemy knowing the Matriarch silkweaver is out. Folly uses her Lumin crystals to light up the ropes and what lies above the hole. They find the lair and a treasure of Ethersilk—an answer to a lot of questions about how the enemy is staying hidden and why the Nine-Claws are afraid. And, the implications or the threat to Spire Albion were enormous..

Returning to the Black Horse Inn, they were captured by Auroran Marines: Major Renaldo Espira and Diego Ciriaco (the latter being the same on that held Bridget hostage in Habble Morning.

While being held hostage with Bridget, Folly becomes aware of the mysterious force that was controlling Sycorax Cavendish. Though it attempts to use her as a puppet, she proves to be too resilient.

At the first book's end, Folly has a prophetic dream of disaster coming to the Spire.

## Quotes

* "Metal circles. They are a human madness. A human should deal with them." ... He's right. Money is a madness, a delusion-illusion. It's not made of metal. It's made of time. How much is one's time worth? If one can convince enough people that one' time is an invaluable resource, then one has lots and lots of money. That's why one can spend time—only one can never get a refund." — Folly
* "She seemed no more ridiculous to me than most humans" ... "At that, Folly looked up and beamed a smile at Rowl. "Oh. He doesn't know that that's the kindest thing anyone's said about me since the master called me a gnatcatcher." — Rowl and Folly

## Book References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 17
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 21
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 34
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 35, p. 330
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 35 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CS1ch35" defined multiple times with different content
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 63, p. Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "CS1ch63" defined multiple times with different content
7. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 54
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 8
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 20
10. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 52, p.
11. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 52, p. 464
12. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 20, p. 194
13. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 17, p. 174
14. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 46, p. 419
15. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 8
16. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 26–27
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 29
18. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 33
19. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 38
20. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 42
21. ↑ *Aeronaut's Windlass*, ch. 69, last page