Girsten Sonnard

**Girsten Sonnard** is an anchorite who works for the Continental Congress as a legate. Girsten was formerly a prefect of the Arais Emodun until her resignation.

## Characteristics

* Lost her left arm and ArEm reattached a donor arm against her will. Despite being right-handed, the operation left her ambidextrous, as the sophistication of the wards on her neural paths was so great as to make it feel even more powerful.

## Background

### Magic

Trained in psionics, but does not work as a psychic investigator like Cireias. After psychically interviewing truly deranged minds, she could not stand being trapped in their twisted fantasies, haunted and broken and populated with deliberate and inescapable nightmares. What was worse were the criminally-insane magi, for whom magic ability impressed a disturbing megalomania in many diagnosed.

Girsten was an expert witness for psionics during Cireias', testifying against him. The charges were dropped, but she maintained that he used excessive force against Hum and said as much in court.

## Biography

### Early life

- Girsten is half-Vankish half-[Dutch]. Her mother was from Drayden and passed away from [typhoid]. Her father is in prison for murder.

• Girsten does not have a Vankish accent.

- Father was a criminal investigator

- Girsten was raped by a family friend in her teens. // Girsten was assaulted by a family friend when she was diagnosed with hypermana.

- "Monsters could be anyone."

- She still has nightmares about the assault

- Her father revenged her, brutally torturing and killing her rapist and then turning himself into the authorities for the premeditated murder

- He had an idea that Girsten might seek out revenge, so he took it upon himself to spare her the consequences of seeking retribution by doing it himself—and doing it dark, to leave no doubt of her suffering's satisfaction.

- The case was and remains a notorious scandal in Cremalia due to the violent nature of \_\_\_\_\_ Sonnard's crimes. Her father is infamous for the grisly nature of his vengeance, and Girsten carries his legacy with his name.

- Girsten is contradictorily horrified & empowered by her father's actions, and is intent on disassociating herself from his legacy of evil, and instead continue his campaign for righteousness.

>> Conflicted, as she simultaneously rejects & approves of her father's actions.

"He did it for me."

"I still wish I had been the one to do it. I still want to do it."

"He did it out of love, that crime of hate... For me, so I wouldn't have to do it."

### Adolescence

Girsten became involved in criminal investigation as a way to continue her father's "good" legacy, and to help other people from being similarly abused as she was.

## Involvement

### Jailbreak

The report of the jailbreak includes the prisoner manifestos of the *Deliverance*'s archives; names of prison-ship clients' blacked out by the national agents who arrived and confiscated the records of certain people they've had incarcerated with the company. Sloan was frustrated by this obstruction, and had Girsten go to the ship personally to view the records herself.

When investigating the prison ship, Sloan asks Girsten to look at the prisoner logs for "two names" (her legate and the Liashan schoolgirl)—left unspecified.

Girsten requests to visit the women's prison-ship, a separate barge from the men's, and reviews their roster. To her surprise, she finds another female inmate's name: \_\_\_\_.

## Relationships

### Father

Girsten and her imprisoned father remain very close. She visits him often in his jail, and they play board games and she reads him the news.

She aspires to make the world a safer place, safe from sick-hearted people like the person who attacked her.

## Trivia

* The gorget hides her neck wound. // The gorget hides a birth make on her neck. "The gorget is protection, it is safety."

## Notes

~ Eirika

~ Gwen

~ Gena

~ Genna