Euphrosyne Luciana Arcanus

*“Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.”*

-Euphrosyne Luciana Arcanus

## History

Born in Arendur during the reign of Emperor Tolumvire, Euphrosyne Luciana was born to a noble family originally from Alba Coralis. She escaped the destruction of Oranor due to the fact that her parents were wealthy landowners and thus lived on farmland away from the city. In time, famine struck and her family fell into poverty, and Luciana would join the mercenary company comprised of - among others - Flavius Luteus and Helga Answith. Though not the finest swordsman, she was a capable logician who knew the land well, and who could negotiate contracts, eventually becoming the company's quartermaster. When the city of Arendur was pushed back into the prime material plane, her family would be among the first to swear service to the new regime, earning her a great deal of caché with the Illuminated. When time came to found the Arendurian Army, there came a question of who to command it. Jotunheim in particular was pushing for a younger officer, a bold and forward thinker to lead the army of modernity. Besides, the presence of old hands like Doctor Curtin ensured that New Arendur has plenty of experienced leadership and mentors for the next generation. And so, only thirty-one years old, the quartermaster of a mercenary company from a poor but noble family, Euphrosyne Luciana became the first woman General of the Arendurian Army.

## Personality

Those who knew General Arcanus over the years would praise her for her grit. She won simply because she refused to back down where lesser souls might have simply bowed to pressure. An enduring symbol of Arendur's glory and final days, the last General of the Arendurian Army was belatedly appreciated by many who had once treated her with scorn.

## War of the Philosopher-Kings

In the preparatory phase before the War of the Philosopher-Kings, the instinctively apolitical Euphrosyne Luciana found herself contending with many competing forces. In particular, she had to balance the needs of the Arendurian Army with the elite Branch of the Sword and the notoriously independent Forester Town Rangers. Many higher-ups in the Illuminated sought to micromanage the war, or thought her out of her depth, an up-jumped noble girl suited only for moving money in ledgers. She was also accused of splitting her attention between her military duties and her family, having given birth to a daughter a year before the start of the war. A motion was raised in the Senate, to bring back the title of Warmaster and bestow it upon Doctor Curtin, but it failed only when the Doctor insisted that he would reject the title if it was offered to him. The Senate's inability to settle on another Warmaster doomed the bill, and Luciana remained in a tenuous command. Her first major test was the Battle of Forester's Town, where she cooperated with Doctor Curtin and Francis Forester to formulate a winning strategy. After the pyrrhic Arendurian victory, her role was demeaned, with many saying that she had been lucky, or attributing the outcome to the presence of Tolumvire, or to the more specialized forces. Nonetheless, she received a hero's welcome, and was bestowed with the cognomen Arcanus by Tan Blackhand, in the same ceremony where Flavius Luteus received the cognomen Scaevola. The rest of the war was largely spent engaged in petty power politics, in which she was nominally aligned with Jotunheim's faction, a bloc which dwindled into nothing when Tan Blackhand's supporters elevated him to Acting Grand Master of the Illuminated and Pontifex Maximus of New Arendur. Blackhand was suspicious of the army, having remembered their eagerness to seize power from the Illuminated during Tolumvire's exile. Never again would there be a military dictatorship in Arendur; the soldiers were to be subordinated to the mages, always.

## After the War

By now a seasoned veteran and hard-nosed politician, General Arcanus was the locus of much of the anti-mage and anti-Tan Blackhand sentiment in New Arendur. Though she publicly buried the hatchet with him and met with privately on several occasions, there was little love lost between them. Some whispered that she should launch a military coup; she refused. Arcanus was responsible for the defense of the city during the Siege of New Arendur, but her authority was undercut when Tan Blackhand appointed Arazon as the Warmaster of New Arendur. Though the Warmaster and the General got along tolerably on an interpersonal level, the decision led to resentment and confusion within the ranks. Arendur fell when Colonel Flavius Luteus Scaevola opened the gates to the Hexenjägers, which, when she heard who was responsible, sent General Arcanus into a contemplative shock. She could not fathom that one of her mercenary comrades would so grossly betray their country. Not long afterwards, she received Tan Blackhand's surrender order, and laid down her arms.

Arcanus was taken into custody and put on trial, but it was determined that she was neither a mage nor a war criminal. The narrative that she had been subordinated to Warmaster Arazon and to the Illuminated served well in her defense, and she was pardoned and forced into retirement. Still in her early forties, Arcanus found herself in limbo, as her parent's fortune and land had been re-purposed by the Reich, and she had no desire to serve in a regime led by a traitorous subordinate. At first, she served as a patron for veterans' organizations, but her role was curtained by the institution of the *damnatio memoriae.* She had been at the forefront of the campaign to retain the institution of the Senate, and became a pariah after her failure. The last free General of the Arendurian Army lived out the rest of her decades in listless loneliness, with her husband and children being the only sources of joy and company in her life.