Queen Luminessa

Official image of Queen Luminessa, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Luminessa is a Player Character from Arc 10 and is played by Sedona.

## Description

Queen Luminessa is a Deep Sea Merfolk woman, and a level 14 Warlock with The Fathomless patron. She has medium grey skin, but everything else about her is in neon colours, including the tattoos up her body, her beautiful embellished tail, which turns into scaled legs when she goes on land, her neon irises in otherwise black eyes, and her hair, which is in different shades of pink, purple, blue, and green. She looks like she is being lit by a blacklight at all times, and glows in the dark. Her teeth are razor sharp, like sharks teeth, and she has pointed ears, webbed fingers, and gills.

Usually, she does not wear clothes, but because it is more comfortable for the land people, Count Dion brings her some clothes to wear for the party, and she chooses a frilly dress. Nonetheless, she is not used to wearing clothes. She wears a crown on her head, and always has her weapon, her bident, with her. She often has an intimidating to even disturbing effect on people, not just through her visible power, but also through her keeping a lot of eye contact, and openly speaking her mind, often talking about violence in a very light-hearted way.

She has ruled the Lacuna for years and is an ancient being of great power, which is well-known in Malum, although some people think her to be a legend. Her queendom, however, which she watches over and fiercely protects, is not actually a place, but a people. The Lacuna is the crater itself, in which her people live.

Luminessa is always accompanied by her sea cat Tippy. Tippy has a black and white tuxedo pattern and glows. He has a very special feature, adapted from a Patreon submitted item by Lust of Loyalty: "When activated, the incomprehensible nature of the multitudes contained within Tippy simultaneously finite and everlasting, begin to corrupt the mind of the target. Anyone looking directly at Tippy must succeed on an Intelligence save DC 16 or your spell safe DC, whichever one is highest, or take 1d6 psychic damage and become stunned until the end of their next turn as their mind grapples with the paradox of unknowable knowledge. You can activate Tippy by imploring an onlooker to look at your cat in one manner or another." For the party, Luminessa carries Tippy in a sea weed sling.

Her magic item is Celestian's Guidesheet.

## Backstory

How Luminessa comes to power and manages to harness the ancient primordial magic of the deep is lost to history, and only Tippy, who is by her side since she comes to her power, centuries before Arc 10, knows her past and secrets. In turn, only Luminessa knows about Tippy's origins.

## Character Arc

### Arc 10

Luminessa is not actually invited to the party herself, however Tippy is, and she comes as his plus one. She comes together with her friend Count Dion, who she hasn't seen in years, and Ki Lon, the former pirate king. On the way to the party, she lets one of Ki Lon's men look at Tippy for a bit too long, which leads to him being disoriented and seemingly unable to remember the past few minutes. She tells Tippy to behave, but also has a lot of fun using these powers.

At the party, Dion finds out quickly that Bishop and Marigold have a tense relationship dynamic, and informs Luminessa about this, as the two of them have been writing fanfiction together for some time. So, they decide to try and bring the two of them together again, and Luminessa is delighted at the prospect of having this much fun.

She has a different goal at the party herself, too. She is looking for what she calls Eldritch Catnip, which she needs to complete a ritual to strengthen the bond between Tippy and her, something she has to do every couple centuries. Tiffany has this catnip in the mansion, so when after they stab themselves the lights go out, Luminessa uses the distraction to get to the kitchen, where her magic item showed to her that the catnip would be. However, Thalia is faster than her at getting it, and even though Luminessa tries to threaten and fight her for it, Thalia is able to keep it. She claims that it is Philosopher's Rosehip she grew herself, and that Tiffany had stolen it from her.

Her main motivation to solve the mystery surrounding the house is not Tiffany, though, since she does not really care for him that much. Apart from wanting to be able to leave, Luminessa watches Bishop and Marigold's conversation in the library, and wants to use this to bring them together again and help them fix their relationship. Luminessa is the one to reveal to Dion that Tiffany was partially a Warlock, with his patron being the Raven Queen, which Tippy told her ages ago. This inspires them to the theory that she might have crossed some borders with this usually necromancy-averse patron. In the glyph room in the basement, Lumi and Dion keep on going forward as the room turns out to be more dangerous than they anticipated, since the two of them are the strongest in the group, and Dion would not leave their friend alone. They manage to cross the room and turn off the traps.

In the secret room behind the glyph room, as Luminessa opens the door she sees her dear friend Nea Veia suspended in a sphere, with Tiffany next to her, concentrating on something. The room is filled with thin, glowing lines like wires, some of them even going through Nea Veia and Tiffany, although they don't do damage. As Nea Veia sees her, she just says "Help". Luminessa immediately reacts, casting *Finger of Death* on Tiffany, and through the power of Chaos Dice Tiffany not only doesn't save, but his resistance does not work either. Thus, with a single spell, Lumi kills Tiffany and turns her into a zombie under her own control. However, it is too late for Nea Veia, who blindly starts attacking Lumi, until Sharon comes and allows her to rest. With Nea Veia, one of Luminessa's best friends, whom she has known for centuries, dies. As she tries to find her soul, the only thing she hears is the cries of a baby, far away, as the soul is already reborn again.

### Ranch Sweet Ranch

Like the others, Luminessa also promises Marigold and Bishop to come and help them defeat the dark rifts eating up their ranch. She joins them on the boat, and cheers for their relationship to heal again together with the land. Somewhere between Arc 10 and Ranch Sweet Ranch, Luminessa was able to strengthen her bond with Tippy again, gaining four additional levels of Warlock.

The rifts, however, are not the only thing that threatens the ranch, as a tree person named Draen'd was teleported out of the Feywild into the middle of the house, together with their tree, while Marigold was away. Luminessa first wants to threaten Draen'd to do her bidding and leave the ranch, but they seem immune to Tippy, and Tippy lets them pet him without issue. The only other person that had been able to do this was Nea Veia, and finally, Draen'd starts the conversation that they think they might have known Luminessa in another life. While they are older than just a week or two, they were teleported out of the Feywild, which makes timing weird. They actually turn out to be the reincarnation of Nea Veia. Together, Draen'd and Luminessa decide to start anew and meet each other again, in this different life.

In connection to that issue, Dion notices that Luminessa has not really taken the time to grieve for her friend, and asks her to take care of herself and let her feel these emotions, even though they are hard to experience.

## Trivia

* The homebrewed Merfolk race is Sedona's first homebrew.
* Tippy's name is inspired by Sedona's actual cat, Tuffy.
* She can read all languages, due to her Eye of the Runekeeper invocation.
* She also can read lips.
* Luminessa is very sex positive and does not judge nor care.
* Sedona has confirmed Lumi to be lesbian.
* Luminessa is not immune to Tippy's effects herself.
* She even has neon blood.