Phosphora

*"This place seemed too comfortable, that's all."*

- **Phosphora**

The girl known only as Phosphora acts more on calculated impulse than careful logic, and often with little regard for the feelings of others. Only about nineteen or so, a terrible fate rests upon her path, and she seeks to be the very first to avert it.

## Profile

### Biography

Phosphora arrived in Etera, near penniless and armed with only her wits, magic, and daisho. From there, she headed straight to "Kazorith" (as she insists on calling it), to find her father. Unfortunately, it turned out that her father was dead, slain in the battle against the Horsemen and given a grave befitting a hero. From there, she wandered about Etera until she found the Velvet Garden. Irritated and adrift, she broke into it the night before opening, grafitting the walls and stealing the food until the proprietress herself interrupted her. Whatever they spoke of, Phosphora was allowed to leave, and soon came under the woman's patronage and is currently living and practicing her artwork in Meita.

## Relationships

### Matron

It would be a mistake to say that Phosphora is particularly attached to Matron as a person. Matron has, however, offered her patronage, food, and a room all of her own. It is enough to earn the girl's loyalty for the time being...

## Adventuring

### Fey Craftsmanship

"Green."

The hesitation is so short it can be measured in eyeblinks, but it's still there as she grabs the paint bottle requested and holds it out to the Fey artist. If he notices, he doesn't take note as he takes a slow, masterful stroke. First try. It's been a while since that happened. Phosphora doesn't tug her eyes away, hardly making time to blink. Instead, she studies everything from how he holds it, to how he swirls the paint in water, to the little twitches and flicks he makes as he paints yet another masterpiece beyond her.

So far beyond her.

"Red."

She isn't given much time to contemplate. She places the bottle of blue back upon the rack with the others, and holds out the bottle of red paint. He clicks his tongue without a look. "The *other* red, girl."

For a second, her thoughts go to her Katana, laying so delicately on the workbench. She could provide all the red he could ever want. One swing for his oh so vulnerable neck, and... She buries the thought with a deep breath, and grabs another bottle simply labelled "Red" and holds it out in offering. She receives no thanks, of course. He simply dips his brush in it, and gets back to work.

It's a few minutes of studying later when he makes his next request.

"Blue."

Her hand isn't even halfway to it when he snaps, sharply. "Not *THAT* blue. Or that one." She grits her teeth, before finally moving to another of the eight varieties of blue. "It will do." He states, and she holds it out. Her mind drifts to the Old Man. Even when she assisted in his works, he was far kinder than this odious, ridiculous Faerie painter. For a a second, her mind flits to how they used to paint all day, her ever so determined to paint something better than him. Hours spent practicing the craft in an attempt to paint just one work better.

*Fat lot of good it did me.*

"Purple."

At that one, she balks. There's at least twelve different Purple's here. Which one could he possibly mean? For a second, she's close to asking.

*But that would be letting him win, wouldn't it?*

She reaches for one, and he clicks his tongue, and she grits her teeth. "Not that one."

Is there a way she's supposed to know? Her gaze drifts to the composition, as she has a thousand times before. For a second she studies the colors. The overall work. She'd use a muddy, dark purple here to accentuate shadows... But she's already tried what color she'd use. It works about one in five times. There must be something else, but...

And finally, her mind drifts to something else. Colors, shading, abstraction... Mood? She goes to the expression one of the myriad faces is making. Is it meant to be funny? A bit creepy perhaps? Or... She racks her brain, looking at every bit of the coming together composition...

*...Jovial?*

Her hand slowly goes to one of the purples on the rack, a brighter shade, and she holds it out. And without looking, he nods, and dips his painting in, making a few quick strokes.

"Now, Yellow." She looks to the painting once again, studying it, before producing the proper paint.

She gets all the rest of the colors right on her first try.

Lured in by the chance to show her artistic prowess, Phosphora soon found her talent lacking compared to those her chosen Feyarch enlisted and gathered to perform in his name. Thus, she was relegated to the position of an assistant. After days of being harassed by phantasmal bees, dealing with the oddities of the Faerie realms, and coming to grips with her own inexperience have taken their toll upon her, but she's nothing if not eager to ply the new techniques she's learned once she's back home at Meita.

/-/-/-/

### Meita Conflict

The day starts in a mess, a tiny pocket of anarchy in the well ordered Velvet Garden.

Bottles of booze scattered off in one corner (some broken), various splotches of paint here and there (mostly upon whatever designs she's left on the walls), and some of the finest clothes in Meita, silken and laced and furred, are tossed haphazardly across the floor with all the care of a tornado. There are a few paint sets her and there, some even before easels showing half painted masterpieces and at the center of this? The bed... Such as it is. All the sheets and blankets have been yanked free, from the fitted sheet to the comforter, and a pile of pillows are stacked forming a crude second bed. Upon that lies the cocoon. Made of what's been so cruelly snatched away from the bed is a wrapped bundle of sheets and blankets, that begins to wriggle at around noon time. A pale, slender arm parts it before pulling back at the harsh rays of the sun. It falls still for a minute longer, before slowly coming apart, Phosphora emerges, dressed in fine silk pajamas (soon to be on the floor) and with a stuffed bear between her arms (soon to be on the bed).

Another day in Meita.

A pair of baths with a rice wine purification ceremony in between later, she's dressed in some fine white furs she found in her closet. She picked out a black dress beneath the coat, and a fur hat upon her head. Completing the ensemble are a pair of dark stained glasses and leather boots, and with herself properly decent she strides out of the Velvet Garden. Not a look to anyone, not a word to anyone, her gaze only set forward with her carefully woven bag at at her side. First, chores.

Checking her wards is practically a formality by this point: Not on the roofs, nor on the walls, nor on the ground has a single of them been tripped. The most exciting part is when she nearly steals some food from the market on reflex along the way, only avoiding it because the man running the stall decided she'd earned a free few kebabs. With chores sorted and breakfast seen to, her favorite part comes next. She doesn't let it show, but a twinge of excitement sparks as she heads towards the central square of the town, mud already staining the bottom of her coat as she approaches. A crowd has gathered, abuzz with whispers and excitement as she approaches, and they part to let her pass and view the months obsession.

Stretching across a wall is the mural, that tells the story (dramatized as it is) of Meita's defense.

The center piece is Matron herself of course, arms spread wide and benevolence and holding a fine cloth with the words "Naked truth is better than well clothed lies" embroidered it. Certainly, the motto makes Phosphora want to gag, but she begrudgingly decided to include it to help fit things together. Around her feet her Daughters rest, reaching out to the gathered populace of Meita. Until recently, she had kept them ambiguous and vague, but since the crowd started gathering she's started to detail them, add vividness in color (though it all grows darker the further away from Matron it goes). The ones closest reach out to Matron for warmth and protection from the coming darkness. Those further outside, however, are the militia: Armed and facing outwards to protect Meita from what lies behind the walls. The mass is mostly humans and dwarves, of course... But not only just. Outside of other assorted humanoids, more monstrous faces lie amidst the crowd, flesh warped and changed to a more ideal form (in their eyes, anyway)... but never grotesque.

At least, not in the mural.

The Ice Walls come next, and she is thankful Matron added them before she started on the part. The thought of repainting them alone chills her far more than this winter could. Just outside of them lies the threat. Hordes of undead, gathered mercenaries, flesh eating badgers, and a perverse, twisted caricature of Ixorad plotting Meita's destruction... None could fault the girls flair for the dramatic.

It's far from done. Not even halfway. The sky is entirely absent, and there are conspicuous parts missing where she plans to add buildings and backgrounds. There are days of work ahead, but already it's brought something new: Public works of art are nothing new, Phosphora is always ready to graffiti something out of a slight real or imagined. But normally, scorn and loathing is the result. But since she set out upon this venture to relieve herself of the tedium of wartime, something new and utterly alien has found its way to her: Adoration.

The people love the mural as it comes along, and as such, they love her. Free food, whispers about her beauty and talent, her oddities celebrated instead of looked side-eye at... It's the strangest thing that Phosphora has ever enjoyed. And she seeks to enjoy it for just a bit longer.

The raise of her dark tinted glasses to examine the work is more performative than anything else, before she frees her paintbrush and paints from her bag and gets started on taking a page out of Matron's book and beginning work upon the sky. She works with little in the way of system: She hops from place to place, sometimes pausing to step back and stand immobile as she examines it for minutes at a time. Other times, she'll pirouette in place absentmindedly, contemplating what to work on next, before suddenly skipping to a far corner and beginning to paint at a positively frantic pace. Sometimes she leaves and comes back with something to stand on: There's a small pile of crates nearby that grows day after day the more she works on it.

She paces herself, of course: She takes a break here and there. While she's kept bottles of water on hand for mixing paint and for drinking (and woefully has gotten them mixed up more than once), her supply of snacks is mostly sugar coated and baked, so a quick stop by the market to restock on those and get a bit more sweet food is just the thing to keep her energy up. The crowd will await her, though they grow and fluctuate throughout the day. It's only after it's fallen to single digits, long after the sun has gone down, does she finish up.

She cleans her brushes, and coated in paint, grease, and some charcoal upon her hands, she returns home to the Garden. Once more she says nothing to anyone along the way, or even bothers to regard anyone as she heads inside. Somebody took the time to clean her room in her absence, so the coat falls to the ground without any company to join it for a bit before the rest follows. She takes one last bath to close out the day the day, then she flops onto her freshly made bed with a new set of Pajamas. The bear is pulled close once more, and her eyes close to view the mural once more, both what it is and what it will be.

And thus, Phosphora winnows down her remaining time, lost in the throes of adoration...