J. Arnu Waldenstromm

> *Thunderous applause echoed through the dark theater, then quietened slowly as the crowd was hushed expectantly. Flickering candles and gas lamps were dimmed until the audience sat in darkness. Above the stage, golden and blue banners faded into the gloom, decrying the ‘HALCYON 1572 WORLD’S FAIR!’.  The red silken curtains were parted by a lone woman with short grey hair in a long black-and-red coat, aviator goggles around her neck. She was followed out by a grinning man in a shirt and suspenders, with a perfectly-askew flat cap. In his hands, the man cradled a large glass bauble. Breaking through the hushed mutterings, the woman clapped her gloved hands. At once, the bulb the man held was lit with a brilliant, perfect light, without flicker or flame. Golden light softly fell throughout the hall as the applause broke out once again. The scientist smiled at the crowd, whose eyes all shone with wonder. As she scanned the hall, she paused for a moment on two figures sat in the third row. A woman in a black leather jacket with tousled raven hair, cradling a red-and-white striped paper bag, smiled back eagerly. Stuffing her face with popcorn, she nudged the woman to her left. There she sat with ashen skin, yet with hair that flowed with the light of an evening star. Both nodded understanding and joined the applause, as the scientist smiled at the adoring crowd. In her droll Turmic drawl, she announced to those present.*
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> *‘Soon, ladies and gentlemen, our fair city will shine with the light of a thousand stars.’*
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> - Professor Waldenstromm presents electricity at the **Halcyon 1572 World's Fair**.
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### Known For

Developing chemical weapons in Datria, leading research on chemistry, creating electricity

### Associated With

WRWL and the Violet Catastrophe; Vörgåsen

**Professor Jekaterina Arnú Waldenstromm** was an inventor from Turmish. She was responsible for inventing a chemical that, when released by an adventuring party, caused a catastrophe that killed a quarter of one of the largest cities in the world - she went into self-imposed exile after this. In the 1550-1570s, she almost single-handedly invented Electricity, which is what she was most famous for. Her name was immortalised as the mother of the worldwide electrical revolution that made cities like Halcyon so technologically marvellous.

## Information

Waldenstromm was born in Turmish to a Tibealan father and Fallonese mother.

She studied in Datria and became a professor of *experimental chemistry & environmental energetics.* She attained a professor's degree in 1483, at the age of only nineteen. She worked under the control of Duke Quintus Pessimus alongside Patricia Krekil and Archibald Tovey in the 1480s in the labs of the University of the East Danderillon, the same place she attained her degree.

Her leading research directly caused the invention of the highly potent neurotoxin WRWL. Its unpected release led to the Violet Catastrophe where a huge fraction of the Datrian population died. Therefore, in shame, she and her assistant Malloy, fled to Bracken in self-imposed exile, where they lived for some thirty years. When she started to get noticed by locals after performing lightbulb experiments on the north hillsides, her and Malloy then moved to Vörgåsen, where in the 1550s onward, they began to work on the idea of clean power, discovering **electricity** and powering the tiny town. She harnessed small, stable portals to a mirror world (the plane of lightning) and- crucially- was able to capture the electricity in Serite crystals, and copper tubes and wires.

However their peace did not last long. Sometime in the 1560s, Henri Angier came to her and asked her to build him a machine capable of teleporting the user rapidly to help him with a magic trick. She did so with his private funding, but the machine turned out to have dangerous ramifications, producing exponential amounts of lightning power by opening an unstable portal to the Plane of Lightning.

## Events of Shock and Awe

She and Malloy were approached by Tracy DeMasque, Asha de Varley, Vaurok Shortass and Victor Campbell in 1567, after Henri Angier's murder. They learnt what the device did. Johnovver MacKenzie's thugs then found her and Malloy's lab and burnt it to the ground, causing Waldenstromm and Malloy to flee. However, in Kalyr, Asha caught up with them and offered them safety and assurance under the Vortic Mercatorium. This they accepted, and soon met with Berthielot Átir, Isalda DuPont Leroux and Valeria Grimes in Sant-Mart. There, Waldenstromm began working on clean safe power for several years, debuting it at the 1572 World's Fair in Halcyon.

Her electricity took the world by storm. Waldenstrom's name lived eternal as the inventor of electricity.