Briar

Illustrated by xa-xa-xa.

**Commander-Queen Briar** is a faerie planeswalker from Sih Voué who has yet to realize she can planeswalk, believing herself just lost somewhere on her home plane.

## Early life

Briar comes from Sih Voué, a plane with insect-like faeries split into a Bloom, Sun, Skull and Moon Court, that each reside in fae realms separate from the mortal realm. As a female faerie of the Bloom Court, Briar acted as a soldier, fighting against Moon Court faeries within the mortal realm in order to bring spring to the plane and Sun Court faeries to keep it spring as long as possible. As a lower ranking soldier, Briar would form a relationship with another faerie named Milii that they held onto as they advanced up the Bloom Court.

In the autumn of 66 PM, the Queen of the Bloom Court died, leaving one of the faeries of her hive to take her place. Of the few eligible faeries, Milii was chosen to take the throne and was given royal jelly to increase her size and give her access to the more powerful fae magic called Royal Decrees. With Milii's drastic change in station keeping her away from Briar, their relationship became strained and effectively ended. Briar, not wanting it to end there, tripled her efforts in her fighting, getting herself promoted up to a faerie Commander, who would receive regular audience with the Queen.

As spring returned, Briar did all she could to impress her Queen in hopes of rekindling what they had, while the Queen seemed intent on keeping to her new job instead. In 68 PM, Commander Briar fought so fiercely as to bring the earliest spring the plane had ever known. In celebration, the Queen offered what she saw as a high honor, the gift of royal jelly to become one of, unknown to Briar, many Bloom Court Queens that existed in various hives around the plane. Briar would be expected to begin her own hive somewhere else on the plane, somewhere where she would rarely ever see her Queen ever again.

Briar on the other hand could not accept this, breaking fae laws and calling the Queen by her old name and wishing things could return to what they were. Briar was chased from the Bloom Court, and on trying to enter the mortal realm, her spark ignited, sending her instead to The Arena.

## The Arena

Briar immediately regretted her decision and tried to go back to face her punishment, but found herself unable to reach the faerie realm from this new plane. Reluctantly, Briar would set up a makeshift hive near the EPIC base on the Arena and begin causing mischief across the Arena, taking special interest in toying with Lettie Wormwood but quickly having trouble due to Lettie's great knowledge of how to deal with faeries. The faeries would form a sort of accidental alliance with EPIC, receiving a gift of heat-producing vikrei flowers around their hive from the organization as the weather grew colder.

Briar and her faeries would clash with Dieule, but find themselves largely unable to stop the machine on their own. Many of the faeries became infected with Phyrexian oil following the fight, some of the faeries becoming Phyrexianized, some dying to the illness, and some being healed by EPIC as part of their efforts to create an inoculation for the disease. This rivalry would cause Briar to join the fight against Dieule and Troischa Sulberynn at Lettie's house. Here, Briar finally accepted her place as the Queen of her group of faeries, using a number of Royal Decrees and creating a faerie born of Phyrexian oil to attack Dieule and separate them from Troischa during the fight until the Child and Entelan military arrive to finish the fight.

Humbled by the far more dangerous people all around her, Briar retreated to her hive, remaining out of sight for several weeks as she tried to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, winter caught up to her first. As a final act for the year, Briar caused a ring of wolfsbane, a poisonous perennial flower, to grow around Lettie's house as a mixture of an apology and a warning. Briar then sealed off her hive, going into hibernation for the winter.

## Spells and Equipment

As a faerie, Briar is able to fly with ease. She is also able to produce faerie dust, which can be used to make things float, cause drowsiness, or considerable confusion to things it lands on, depending on the fae's intention. Briar is often carrying a large crossbow-like weapon that has a flower bulb at the front of it.

### Bloom Spells

As a faerie of the Bloom Court, Briar is able to manipulate the life of flowers, with a particular affinity for thorny and poisonous plants. This is used to quickly grow crossbow bolts, allowing the faeries to use a much larger weapon without worrying about carrying around ammunition for it as well. She is able to communicate to other faeries by speaking into flowers, and create miniature hives that resemble wasp nests that her and her faeries to cross between near-instantly across a plane.

### Royal Decrees

As a faerie Queen, Briar has access to the more powerful Royal Decrees. A Queen can normally only perform two or three of them in a single day, with three being enough to require several days of rest to recuperate. The Decrees Briar knows are detailed below.

### Petrify

The Petrify curse slowly causes its target to turn to stone.

*"I call on judgement from the throne,*

*To strike down forces yet unknown,*

*Let living flesh, cold steel, and bone,*

*Be step by step, turned back to stone!"*

### Explosive Growth

Explosive Growth pulls the life from nearby vegetation to cause a specific amount of life to grow to extreme sizes in a matter of seconds.

*"I call on judgement from the throne,*

*To strike down forces yet unknown,*
*Blooms around their life will loan,*
*From mere seeds, now be full grown!"*

### Faerie Spawn

This Decree allows a Queen to spawn a young but mature faerie. Most Queens only use this rarely to create a faerie of a particular talent immediately, but Briar uses exclusively this method to grow her hive.

This Decree has no incantation.