Role
Something on Zille's Mind, p.1
Added Sat Apr 4 00:22:54 2026 at level 1:
Zille had spent three years at the magical academy in Arkham, learning the
basics of conjuration, memorizing the circles, practicing the words until her
throat was sore. She was not the best student, not in an academic sense, but
she was the one who stayed after class, who asked questions, who wanted to
know why the circles had to be perfect, why the incantations had to be exact,
why one mistake could mean the difference between a demon that served and a
demon that ate you.
Her professor was an old gnome with a shock of white hair and tiny little
hands and rheumy, pale eyes. He was exacting. He was a stickler. He would mark
her down for a misplaced line, a mispronounced syllable, a finger that was not
quite straight when she traced the practice sigils. Yet, she did not resent
him for it. She admired him, in fact. He knew things. He understood things. He
had been doing this for decades, and he had never been eaten by a demon, which
she considered proof that his methods worked.
He was also the one who taught her about brains.
Not summoning. Not conjuration. Not the things that lived on the outer planes,
or even the inner ones. Just brains. Mentioned in passing, really. Zille had
once seen one jar full of grey matter in the academy, a label attached to
with the name of the creature it had come from and the date it had been
acquired. She asked the professor about them. He told her that the brain was
the seat of the self, the thing that made a person who they were. If you
wanted to understand someone, he said, you had to understand their brain.
Zille took this to heart. She took it further than he intended. She took it to
the graveyard.
Something on Zille's Mind, p.2
Added Sat Apr 4 00:36:28 2026 at level 1:
Or rather, to the crypts, beneath the academy. She found it easier than she
expected to get in. It was perhaps assumed that any student of the academy in
Arkham was at least dabbling in necromancy, or perhaps interested, and she had
been waved into the crypts with barely a second glance. There, she found a
cadaver, looked up what details of his life that he could, and then, with a
spoon she'd brought along and whose handle she had filed into a point, she set
about getting a look at the brain itself. It had been a messy affair. She had
never thought about how to pry someone's crown open before, nor had she
realized just how tough the skull was. There was a lot of prying and cracking
and overall the final product resembled nothing so much as a shattered bowl of
ice cream.
Nevertheless, Zille set about taking meticulous notes in her little notepad,
comparing them against the details of the man's life. She would get to know
him. She would make her first ever friend. The other students hated her, you
see.
They called her names. They left her out of study groups. They whispered
behind her back and sometimes to her face. Teacher's pet. Suck-up. Flatterer.
She had never been very good at socializing, and her frequent talks with the
professor birthed rumors and snide speculation. They shunned her, and in so
doing pushed her further towards simply wanting to understand.
But now, as she straightened from her work, she understood. He had been a
widower - this gyrus. He had worked in the docks - perhaps because of thus
sulci. His frontal lobe was underdeveloped. Not much for planning or
forethought. Finally, she understood someone. Finally, she was making a
friend. She let out a demented little giggle. She knew how to make friends.
She wanted to make lots more.
Something on Zille's Mind, p.3
Added Sat Apr 4 00:46:22 2026 at level 1:
Zille couldn't wait to tell her professor about the discoveries she had made,
about her new friend. She knocked. She waited. She knocked again. A voice told
her to enter. She did.
He did not look up when she came in. He did not ask her to sit. He just
waited.
Zille stood in front of his desk. She had learned things, and she wanted to
share them. "Professor," she said. "I've been thinking about what you said.
About the brain being the seat of the self. About understanding people."
The silence stretched on. Eventually, too excited to be contained, she pulled
out her notebook. The gnome did not take it.
"I had a really good look at him," she had told him. "I understand him now,"
she said. "I understand how he worked. I understand why he made the choices he
made. I understand him. I think I could understand anyone, if I had their
brain. I think I could be friends with anyone, if I could just see inside
their head."
The gnome looked at her. His eyes were pale and watery and very, very tired.
He had been teaching for a long time. He had seen a lot of students come and
go. He had seen ambition, laziness, brilliance, stupidity. He had seen
cruelty, kindness, selfishness, generosity. He had never seen anyone like
Zille.
"You want to understand people," he said. "So you cut open their heads."
Eagerly, Zille nodded. "It's the only way to be sure. Just like you said."
He thought about Zille. About her notebook. About her spoon. About the way she
smiled when she talked about brains.
"You should leave," he said. "The Academy. Arkham. You should go out into the
world. There's more to learn out there than you'll ever find here." All he
really wanted was to make sure that Zille was far, far away before she decided
that she could make a friend out of him.
Zille, still young and beguiling, lit up. "You think so? Friends?" She wanted
a friend oh, so dearly.
Character Summary
Added Sat Apr 4 00:55:10 2026 at level 1:
She set off for the Academy with a spring in her step. She was going to make
many friends. "Bumpy bumpy bumpy," she sang, thinking about brains. "Find the
bumps, read the lumps." She noted her reflection in one of the storefronts of
Arkham as she headed towards the adventurers' academy. She straightened, and
thrust a finger upward, the way that the professor had done. "Phrenology," she
stated to her reflection, "is a pseudoscience. The personality cannot be read
in the contours of the skull or the shape of the cheekbones."
She giggled again. She was so likeable. No one would shun her now that she
knew how to befriend them. "But the theory is sound. You just have to look a
little bit deeper."
Personality:
* Somewhere between "batshit insane" and "mad scientist." Manic pixie dream
girl, but with the gothic darkness of Arkham and the murderous insanity of
Repo! The Genetic Opera. Not that anyone in Thera would know what that is.
* Convinced that if she could just look at your brain, she could understand
you. Doesn't care if you're alive or not.
Class:
"Wait, this role reads more like a necromancer than a conjurer!" Yes, it does.
I wanted to play a conjurer, though, which is why she has a backstory set in
the Arkham academy studying under the conjuration college. The need for
exacting precision in protective circles is why she is of the orderly ethos.
It also allows for a punnish interpretation of "make a friend", which fits her
demented character just fine.
Sphere:
*Knowledge. She has so much she wants to know about people. Every ridge. Every
wrinkle.
Cabal Aspirations:
* Empire and Tribunal would both appeal to her. Both provide a steady supply
of friends to make, presumably.
Religion:
* Ishuli would be neat. That library would benefit her greatly. We will see if
the character lasts that long.
Tribunal Pledge & Results
Added Sat Apr 4 21:39:00 2026 at level 16:
The dwarf's name was Dexamus. He was four feet tall, which meant Zille could
look him in the eye without tilting her head, which was nice. His beard was
long and greasy and smelled like smoke. His eyes were silver and hard and did
not blink when she explained her theories.
"Truth," she said, bouncing on her heels, her hands clasped behind her back,
her notebook poking out of her pocket. "Truth can be read in the brain. The
shape of the skull is just a container. The real truth is inside. The sulci.
The gyri. The lobes. I can measure them. I can weigh them. I can tell you
everything about a person just by looking at their grey matter."
Dexamus stared at her. His silver eyes did not blink. His hand rested on the
coil of rope at his hip. He was a healer. He was a priest. He was devoted to
Truth, capital T, the kind of Truth that came from the gods, not from a
notebook full of brain measurements.
"No," he said.
Zille's eye twitched. Her hands twitched. She wanted to pop his skull open.
She wanted to scoop out his brain. She wanted to weigh it and measure it and
write down everything she learned. She wanted to prove that she was right,
that the Truth was in the grey matter, that the dwarf was wrong.
She didn't. She was trying to be normal. She was trying to make friends. She
was trying to convince people that she was not a threat, not a monster, not a
brain-eating lunatic who carried a notebook full of measurements.
She failed. Dexamus rejected her application. She was not Tribunal material.
Not yet. Maybe not ever. Again she had failed to make friends. It would be
SO much easier to just look inside him, read what the folds said, and then
present her case accordingly. Why was she making friends the HARD way?
Because despite it all, she did at least respect the dwarf. Sort of. Even
though he was so very WRONG, something in his stature and flatness and
insistence that everything be just so did remind her of her old gnomish
professor. So she wouldn't pop him open. Wouldn't look. Wouldn't cheat.
Her application remained. She was GOING to make friends of the Tribunal.
From Zille's Notepad
Added Sat Apr 4 21:50:29 2026 at level 16:
[scribbled in charcoal, pieced together among lots and lots and lots of
measurements about brain parts of relatively mundane people, mostly dwarves,
but some are marked with a "VC" beside them also. These measurements are
generally surrounded by speculative question marks and remarks such as
"hippocampus is only 97% sized! Impulsive??????]
No one understands!!!!
They look at me like I'm something that crawled out of a crypt. Dexamus said I
reminded him of a necromancer! HE doesn't GET IT!
Brains = nonsense??? - Sunossa (gnome. tiny tiny lobes.)
Blood = more important?!?! (Caserque. Too much blood. ANEURYSM?)
Magic = Histon (also gnome. little bitty hypothalamus. no intuition?)
FAMILIAR!! [this is underlined]
(Brivum)
Use circle 443, hexagram N4, sigils of Lesser Summoning, minus positions 6, 8,
12, 19.
[a short sketch surrounded by these labels]
[A big heart and a doodled little smiley face are near the circle, to one
side. Beside that, the word "FRIEND" in huge letters.]
I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait.
How The Raven Got Its Name
Added Sun Apr 5 00:03:42 2026 at level 17:
Zille drew the circle just as Brivum had instructed. She had been warned that
most anything could happen. She had her trusty scooper on hand in case what
came out was not HEE HEE but was instead very BUMPY.
Zille stared at Circle 443, Hexagram N4, and especially the sigils. They
had been exact. Perfect. No mistakes, just as the gnome back at the Academy
had taught her. She murmured the incantation, and a mystic spark raced through
the circle, leapt from the floor to her heart, zipped through her chest, split
at her heart, each end racing to her hands.
[You clasp your hands together, then open them, releasing a large raven!]
The raven silently fluttered to the centre of the circle and sat on the floor,
tilting its head, looking at her with one glassy black eye.
Zille screamed. It was a high sound, wild and cracked and absolutely furious.
She bit down on her notebook and snarled, kicking, thrashing, mad in both
senses of the word. "BUMPYYYYYYY! BUMPY BUMPY BUMPY!" she shrieked. She flung
the notebook away from her, and tore at her hair, and rushed over to the wall
and kicked and punched at it, screaming.
She had wanted an imp. A quasit. Something that could help. Could talk. Could
be her FRIEND. Could UNDERSTAND. She got a BIG BLACK C--chicken. This was NOT
HEE HEE. This was VERY VERY BUMPY.
She kicked the floor. She twisted her hands. She seized her scooper and gouged
scratches in the wall with it. THIS WAS NOT A FRIEND. THIS WAS BUMPY. NO HEE
HEE. TINY LITTLE BIRD BRAIN. Probably less than a hundred sulci. BUMPY.
The raven did not move. It tilted its head. It looked at her with its other
black eye. By now, Zille was sat down on the floor, face buried in her hands.
Her legs were shaking. Her hands were shaking. Her eye was twitching. She had
wanted a friend. It hopped over. With its beak it reached down and plucked the
scooper from the floor and deposited it beside Zille.
She looked up. "Bumpy," she whined.
Bumpy NotHeeHee the Raven cocked her head and shook out her feathers.
A Bumpy Friendship, p.1
Added Mon Apr 6 06:36:06 2026 at level 19:
The Bar of the Eternal Star was warm and loud and absolutely stuffed with
people who had brains in their heads, which Zille considered an auspicious
beginning. Zille had entered, wanting to see people using their brains, and,
entering at her side, Bumpy had found a rafter.
The first thing Zille noticed was the ghost of Faylea nearby. A translucent
woman drifting through the convivial warmth of the Eternal Star with the
particular quality of light that meant dead, sort of, temporarily. But if she
was dead, that meant... "Is your brain out there? Did they get to it? Where is
it? Where?"
Because Zille saw a chance to make a friend. Faylea was dead. But everything
about her could still be read out there, somewhere. If only...
"It's in my head," came the disappointing reply. But maybe Faylea was
translucent enough for a look. Zille looked carefully at the cranial lobe. But
it was at about that time that her body reformed. Drat.
The conversation that followed was one of those conversations that Zille had
frequently. She explained the sulci. She explained the gyri. She explained the
notebook and talked with great excitement and at great length, and even SHOWED
these people the pages and pages of charcoal-written measurements, data
points, the meticulous record of Mr. Dathod Ironson of Akan who had been,
until two weeks ago, a living person with opinions and preferences. How
fascinating it was that his frontal lobe was .15% less dense than average,
which explained everything, she felt.
Faylea did not understand. Tobin shied away the moment she had brought up
brains, even though he had said they were interesting. Zille did not
understand. This always happened. Why couldn't they see? Why didn't they care?
Maybe if she tried harder. This was just such a BUMPY way of doing things. It
would be so much easier to just LOOK INSIDE and READ THEM. It would make sense
then. She would understand then. She would have friends then.
She produced the scooper. She explained the coronal sutures. She made the
little pop noise. Faylea's face went the color of old linen and she whispered
I'm gonna be sick and Zille continued, unbothered, because she was not trying
to be threatening. She was excited. She was sharing. This was friendship.
A Bumpy Friendship, p.2
Added Mon Apr 6 06:48:39 2026 at level 19:
For once, someone - Faylea - had not run off when the explanations went on.
She had said she was going to be sick, but Zille knew that once she just got
through to this other human, she would understand. They would be friends. She
really wanted this to work!! This was just such a BUMPY LUMPY way of doing it!
No one ever liked her. No one ever talked to her. She didn't see why this
would be different.
Zille was particularly incensed at the way that Faylea had backed away, and at
the way she had interposed herself between herself and Tobin and told her "no
harassing!". This wasn't harassment! Tobin had SAID they were interesting!
Tobin understood!
She glared at Faylea's stupid skull and insignificant face. Behind it were the
answers. Why didn't this person understand that it would be so much easier to
just read her and get to know her that way? Especially, she didn't understand
why Faylea didn't see it that way. She hurled some of the worst invective she
could think of: "I bet you have an anterior lobe like a CASTLE WALL." Faylea
didn't seem to mind.
Faylea was BUMPY. BUMPY BUMPY BUMPY. And yet, somewhere in the course of their
long exchange, something shifted. Faylea started to smile came back, cautious
at the edges. Zille returned her scooper to her belt and tied it with twine.
Was this..friendship? Faylea had seemed to think that Zille was going to kill
her for her brain. That would be ridiculous. Zille was curious, not murderous.
She just wanted a friend. No one else understood about brains. Maybe Faylea
did. Or would.
A Bumpy Friendship, p.3
Added Mon Apr 6 07:03:45 2026 at level 20:
BUMPY.
But maybe bumpy was fine sometimes. Faylea had told her not to look at her
brain. Zille knew that it was just a matter of time, and for a moment, she
reached out an olive branch. She said that until she was able to, and then
after that too, when she could creep into the morgue and get a look, without
Faylea's misunderstood and incomprehensible protestations in the way, she
would look, and understand, and then they would be VERY GOOD FRIENDS, and that
would be VERY HEEHEE.
But not yet. The exchange between them was, all things considered, the closest
to a normal human interaction Zille had managed since Arkham. After all,
Faylea had even demonstrated something amazing with suspicious fluids and
talked about mind control. For Zille, who never understood people but
desperately wanted to, this was perfect. She was intrigued.
Faylea gave her a boar steak. There was something about making a demonstration
of what happens if Zille looked at her brain. Zille understood. There would be
talking and it would be BUMPY but with Faylea, bumpy was okay. There would be
time to look later. In the morgue.
Zille was very interested in the mind control. She was leaning forward with
her notebook already open, thinking about the applications, thinking about the
collaboration, thinking we are going to be SUCH good friends...
And then Faylea gave her a boar steak. And said nothing. Zille had gotten
[Pain grips your stomach as you retch your guts out!]
"BUMPY!" Zille yelled. "BUMPY!!!" Zille yelled louder. From somewhere very
deep in the part of Zille that had wanted a friend since Arkham and had never
quite managed it, something cracked open: "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE
FRIENDS, ZILLE YOU IDIOT! YOU IDIOT! YOU BUMPY BUMPY BUMPY BUMPY BUMPY
....!!!!!"
Worse than the poison was the hurt inside. No, not in her guts, a little
above. Her heart. Someone who hadn't run off. Someone bumpy, but bumpy was
okay, but it was not. Zille started to feel sick. Her stomach cramped. Her
head spun. Her vision blurred. She staggered. She fell. She recalled, via
potion that was not puked back up, to the sanatorium. She spent her coins on
healers. They couldn't fix her. The poison was too strong. The damage was too
deep.
She died. Alone. In a room full of sick people and a dying giant and the smell
of powder blue flowers. As a ghost herself now, she heard from Faylea. "I'm
sorry Zille. I never should've done that. Never ever. I failed."
She hadn't failed, Zille knew. This was a success on Faylea's part. Zille had
fallen for it. Everyone thought she was a sucker. She didn't understand why.
She only understood when she read the sulci, when she gazed at the folds, the
bumps.
She shrieked about this, and shrieked it directly into Faylea's mind: "I don't
know why! But when I read your brain I'M GONNA FIND OUT. I bet it's got ALL
KINDS OF BUMPS in ALL THE WRONG PLACES. BUMPY! BUMPY!
BUMPYBUMPYBUMPYBUMPY!!!!!!!!"
Zille, in Miniature
Added Tue Apr 7 06:15:51 2026 at level 25:
Role subject Zille, in Miniature
Alas, poor Zille, with her brain obsession. It may be time for a bit of a
metatextual examination. She is not (necessarily) a murderous psychopath. She
doesn't see someone and immediately fantasize about parting the cranial
sutures and taking measurements. She just...wants to know people, which she
has never done before, because she was the weird kid at the Arcanum college,
and this trend continued into her adventuring days. At her core, she is
desperately lonely, and this loneliness is matched only by her enthusiasm at
fixing it.
Her first taste of friendship, such as it was, was when she finally felt that
she understood the owner of that first brain she had measured in the morgue
just before being sent to the Academy proper. It clicked then. She wants to
get to know more people, but...
She gets farther and farther from being able to do that with each passing
experiment that further alienates her from everyone around her, because to her
more measurements means more data, which then translates into being even more
excited to share it with people, and the sheer horror of what square one even
IS so far behind her that she has forgotten that it is normal to be repulsed
and disgusted by the very basal, fundamental idea of peeling a brain apart
like some kind of fleshy, fatty, salty hybrid of an onion and an orange and
not only seeing what is inside but measuring it meticulously (not that she was
ever keenly aware of that in the first place. For her, it had seemed a logical
solution to the ostracization problem.).
If this is hard to imagine, imagine a different context: Zille is studying the
violin. She believes that if she measures every angle of every curve of every
piece of wood in its body, if she quantifies the thickness of every millimeter
of every segment of each string, records the composition, shape, and
proportion of every last piece, she will understand the music. She has studied
thousands of unique violins and written all of the measurements in exacting
detail in her little notebook. And she has never heard a single note.
Zille, in Miniature: Socializing, on This Plane and Others
Added Tue Apr 7 06:37:12 2026 at level 25:
The adventure in Darsylon with Thorken, who was friendly if somewhat stoic,
and Illquorin, who is also in the Tribunal, has really helped her to learn
more. But unfortunately the shadow of the incident with Faylea looms over her
still. To her, these two, they are not friends. They are...coworkers.
Compatriots, maybe. (Thorken is not in the Tribunal but is evidently
sympathetic to the cause.) She does not see them in some Machiavellian
use-them-until-they-outlive-their-usefulness way, as she is not quite that far
gone yet. But she does think that being social and trying to just get along
with people is like trying to ice-skate uphill. No point to it. She can just
wait, and find out later. In the morgue. She has her scooper and her notebook
and patience. What more would she need?
Which begs the question, now that she is of the 25th rank: Why would someone
who is more gray-amoral than she is malicious summon something as horrible as
a demon? Well, if anything she'd see devils/demons as lab assistants. "You!
With the horns! Hold him down! It's time to STUDY! He doesn't know it but WE
ARE GONNA BE REALLY GOOD FRIENDS!" And then HEE HEE as someone is melting in a
puddle of challegha acid or getting pummeled into slurry by a mors-gravis. To
her, the demons as the only ones who listen to her. They don't back away in
uncomfortable silence if she talks in detail about brains and how fascinated
she is about them. Even if she has to bind them into servitude, at least it
isn't like they're going to betray her. Even accidentally, like Faylea did.
(Well, they might, the gnome had warned, long ago - if she lets the binding
fade or doesn't keep them happy enough. She remembers. She wrote it down.) But
you know where you stand with a demon. They are not as bumpy as people...
Demons do not whisper behind your back or leave you out of study groups or
poison your boar steak while smiling sunnily at you. Demons do not say maybe
and mean no and make you figure out the difference. Demons do not back away
with uncomfortable eyes when you explain the sulci. Demons, bound in a perfect
circle, traced exactly right, incanted without error, are predictable. They
are, in a sense, the only relationship Zille has ever had that comes with
documentation.
And documentation is very, very HEE HEE.
DON'T TOUCH THEM: A notepad page writ in charcoal.
Added Tue Apr 7 10:11:15 2026 at level 25:
[What inspired this mess of scribble is anyone's guess. "Don't touch them" is
written over and over. Forward. Backward. Upside-down. All CAPS. no caps.
eVErYthINg iN bETwEeN.]
Meta note: The player's ignorance led to an inadvertent breach of Tribunal
law, which as not a good look for Zille, since she had just JOINED Tribunal
and may have gotten kicked out. As tragic and interesting of a fold as this
may have been in her narrative, she was forgiven. And she is so, so happy
about it. She will never forget. Don't touch them. Don't touch them. Don't
touch them.
(What not to touch? The player knows, and remembers. Zille knows, and
remembers. Or she will. Because if she were to forget, things would
get...BUMPY. For roleplay purposes, however, she will try very hard not to
take things from people without a compelling reason. Well, not objects.
Not possessions. Even from the dead. Don't touch them. Don't TOUCH THEM.
Brains, though? That's how you make friends.)
Scierton's Celestial Circles
Added Wed Apr 8 15:36:57 2026 at level 27:
Scierton had given Zille a task. She would have to complete it. This was not
negotiable. The short little Guildmaster reminded her so much of the gnome
professor from her days in Arkham, and she would have to earh his respect too.
Maybe then he would answer questions and talk about things and she would start
to understand more of the order behind circles. For such was the nature of the
task: to find things from around the land. A ball peen hammer, a chisel, a
particular book, and a runic stamp. The trouble was that Zille had no idea
where to look.
The Stamp
Sunossa had mentioned a name: Khardrath's Planar Sanctum. Zille had set off on
her own, since Sunossa had, just like the gnome, sent her off to someplace
very far off. Zille might have been upset if she had stopped to think about
it, but she was getting used to that (after all, she had been assigned to
Seantryn Modan as well. Someplace out of sight and out of mind, although minds
were always on her mind. Zille had followed the name. She had found the
mountain. She had found the Sanctum. The stamp had been tossed onto the floor
there, and Zille had barely noticed it, for the entire facility was so
fascinating...but she had work to do. She would go back again later. For now,
Scierton must not be let down. Sunossa had not led her astray. Maybe they were
friends. But Zille had to go and make a REAL friend: A beardless mason.
Hammer and Chisel
Pheothen had been the one to point the way through the haunted wood, to where
the beardless dwarf made his home. Just like before, he gave directions and
sent Zille away, as always happened. She tried to make the dwarf understand
her need, but no one ever really understood her, so she had made friends with
him her usual way, even though the water elemental had splattered his brains
all over. She would, at least, have something to study later, if incomplete.
Book
This was the most difficult. Sunossa had speculated, and so had Zille, but the
book about circles was actually known only to Caserque, who advised Zille to
seek the gnome outpost in the Violet Woodlands, which, after much hardship,
she found. She brought all of these treasures to Scierton the Planewalker.
Zille had, frankly, been expecting a greater reward, but Scierton simply took
these and made a joke about oversiders and that was that. But even so, Zille
found herself liking Cragstone more and more. A shame that it was not under
Tribunal protection, but the ordered tunnels reminded her of a brain and of a
circle, respectively. And she hoped she had found her way into Scierton's
graces. She felt proud of herself for the first time in a while. And maybe,
she reflected, she had been making friends: Scierton, Pheothon, Sunossa,
Caserque...Or maybe not. People were so BUMPY and you never know where you
stood with them.
Meta-character note: Use of the word "bumpy".
Added Wed Apr 8 19:40:00 2026 at level 30:
She says things are BUMPY when they are unpleasant. Sometimes, though, she
says it in a praiseworthy way, such as when describing a brain that is BUMPY
as very good and interesting. This could seem inconsistent, so I will explain
is how she reconciles them.
Bumpy, to her, just means something is complex. Convoluted. In a brain this is
a good thing, since there is a lot of interesting information and data and
bumpy folds and wrinkles that really help her get to know someone and make a
friend. In a person, however, this is bad, because she is at the regrettable
crossroads of being very socially inept and extremely enthusiastic (worse,
enthusiastic about something that makes people uneasy, even though to her "I
really want to pull out your brain and read it!" is just how she expresses
that she admires someone, wants to get to know every part of them. And to her
the easier way of doing that - easier than trying to socialize - is just to
physically examine and measure their sulci and gyri and make a report about
them that way.)
She does not realize how deeply unsettling this is. So, she assumes that
people's very understandable revulsion at her ways and discomfort at her
invasion of their space is strange and hard to understand. After all, who
WOULDN'T be as excited about brains as she is?
As an aside, when she wails the phrase in a bad situation, such as "things are
getting very very bumpybumpybumpyYYYYY!!!!" it means she is overwhelmed. It's
too complex. There is no order to it, like with a protection circle or a
well-run city or so on.
Of Magistrates and Dread Lords
Added Thu Apr 9 07:17:05 2026 at level 30:
The Market Square was just too quiet for Zille's liking. She had been trying to
talk to an elf (Galan, probably fresh from the Academy, probably already
regretting standing still long enough for her to notice him). He wasn't
responding. Maybe he was pretending not to hear her. This had never really
deterred Zille in the past and she wasn't about to let it start now, however.
She tried to talk about phrenology. That always kicked off great
conversations. Why wouldn't it? It was so interesting, so fascinating.
"You can tell about someone by looking at their head but you have to look inside! Did you know that? Did you?"
Nothing in response. Which was good! No interruptions. She was about to launch
into her latest theory, and then...then the dread lord came. Jurysvina arrived
with an entourage of the dead. A half-drow, wrapped in white robes that seemed
to drink the light, with black eyes deep and empty and white hairc ascading
down his back, thin and haggard. Someone new to talk to!
Zille ran after him instead, since he seemed much more interesting. "HI!!!
WAIT COME BACK I HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT PHRENOLOGY!!!"
She found him in a desecrated shrine, which she knew to be his guild. Marble
statues with missing heads were there, and she could sympathize. The head had
to be taken and examined, and she could understand why someone would want to
do it on just a statue, even. Zille knew she could go inside, Tribunal and
all, and considered it, since she had so much to tell, but that was against
the rules, so she didn't. Luckily, he came out soon.
She opened with her most amazing fact. "Did you know that half-drow brains
have a unique ridge in the parietal lobe that I've never seen in any other
race? Is it your infravision?! IS IT?!" This she had not been able to
determine, so of course she just had to ask him.
Dread Lord Jurysvina looked at her. with black eyes empty, a mask of paleskin
and sharp angles. Immediately they launched into an enlightening dialogue
about gyri and the amount of fat reserves in the brain and the
neurophysiological differences between half-elves, humans and half-drow. He
said the magic words: that he wanted her to check on him later, after changes.
Zille practically fainted. He really did get it! He wanted to be her friend!
He wanted her to GET TO KNOW HIM REALLY WELL!!!! After he left, flanked by his
unliving entourage, Zille was left alone in the shrine, surrounded by the
stench of rot and death and horror. But suffusing her senses even more than
those was the memory of a dread lord who had listened to her talk about body
fat and amygdala size and not once told her to shut up. She had a new friend.
She was sure of it. A necromancer, dread lord of the empire, who could
probably do much worse than kill her.
But more than anything else...a friend. He wanted her to get to know her. No
one had ever said that before.
Zilla's Retrieval - Preparation
Added Fri Apr 10 08:31:06 2026 at level 31:
Zille had found herself in another bumpy bumpy situation, because she was very
scared. Auzlohn had sworn to keep hunting her, and she was honestly frightened
of him. He had shown himself to be nothing but capable when it came to
ambushing and killing her, and now he said it was going to get worse. She was
also unsure. She awoke with the scales missing, and this was becausae the
Outlanders must have come and taken them again, which was very NOT HEE HEE of
them. She needed to scales to stay vigilant against Auzlohn. She was terrified
of not being able to know if he was around. Bumpy NotHeeHee could help, but
more layers is always better. Like a thaumaturgic circle. But the huge,
burning giant that had come and brutalized the scales out from the Spire
terrified her. But she had people she liked in the Tribunal, like Illquorin.
She thought about Sunossa, who had given her the name that led to the stamp.
She thought about Illquorin, who had fought beside her in Darsylon, who had
never run away when she talked about brains. She thought about the other
Tribunal members, the ones who had accepted her, who had given her a chance
when Dexamus had looked at her like she was something he had stepped in. There
was conflict between her desire to MAKE MORE FRIENDS in the usual way but also
to try and show people like Dexamus that she wasn't useless or horrible, or
show people like Sunossa that she could be helpful (and...maybe make a friend
that way?), and her desire to just MAKE FRIENDS THE EASY WAY by examining the
brains of the dead.
They were starting to feel connected. Like neurons. A network. Just like a
circle. Just like a brain. Everything in its place, doing its function, the
way it should, a way that was not bumpy or twisty but that worked and could be
understood and reasoned with. If one part failed, the whole thing suffered. If
she stayed here, hiding, waiting for someone else to fix the problem, she
would be like a smudged circle. A misdrawn line. A conjurer who couldn't be
trusted to do her job.
She was scared. She was very, very scared. Her hands were shaking. Her heart
was pounding. This was all much, much too bumpy. She had been burned before:
the others at the college, or Faylea, or Alcevia, by everyone who had ever
smiled and given her a gift and then let her die. Making friends the usual way
was bumpy. It was hard. It hurt. But Sunossa wasn't bumpy. Illquorin wasn't
bumpy. They had helped her. They had trusted her. They had treated her like
she belonged.
She would try. She would try to be useful. She would try to be a good
Magistrate. She would try - try, at least! - to be a good friend.
Zilla's Retrieval - The Arrival
Added Fri Apr 10 08:37:28 2026 at level 31:
The forest gave way to a clearing, and a massive tree loomed ahead, its trunk
wider than a house, its branches all bumpy and twisty, rising like a prion
striving towards the next axon. A spiraling ramp of thorns wound around it,
leading up into the canopy. And there stood the Huntress: A centaur, tall and
proud, with a mighty longbow in her hands and a quiver full of arrows on her
back. Her eyes were sharp, her face was calm, her voice was steady.
Zille skipped forward. Her heart was pounding. Her hands were shaking. She was
terrified, and kept telling herself that her amygdala was probably fiercely
firing, maybe more than it ever had. She didn't invade the Centaur's personal
space, this time. The giant thundered past her as she held out her arm, the
scooper held in her shaking fingertips. "Heeheeheehee!" she cackled, manic and
petrified. "I really REALLY want to BE YOUR FRIEND."
She lowered the scooper, the signal to charge. The mercenary swung his sword.
The Huntress raised her bow. The harmentia surged forward on its ophidian
lower torso. The winds roared. And Zille raised her whip.
The fight was long and brutal. The Huntress was strong, faster than she
looked, her arrows finding gaps in the demon's defenses, her hooves crushing
the mercenary's bones. But Zille's friends kept fighting. The demon's blades
sliced through the centaur's armor. The elemental's blasts tore through her
flesh. The mercenary kept swinging, even as his health dropped, even as his
wounds grew worse. These were the best kinds of friends. Not bumpy at all.
They did what they agreed to do. No poison steaks or raven traps.
Zille did everything she could think of: every spell, trick, cantrip, lashing,
all of it. The mercenary took most of the hits, and the harmentia did most of
the...well, harm. But the tide was turning. It was! And at the end, although
the huntress' head was damaged beyond repair or salvation, the Scales of
Justice returned to the Tribunal Cabal. Zille stood over the corpse, breathing
hard, her hands still shaking. And she faintly felt, in the back of her head
(near the brainstem! The amygdala!) that this was very, very heehee.
The Sienna Rod
Added Sat Apr 11 07:44:39 2026 at level 37:
It began when the guildmaster mentioned a dark mage in the alehouse. Zille
asked around. You must do what the guildmaster says. They are as close as it
comes to the Professor of yore.
They found Zorlach in the Bloated Whale Alehouse. Zorlach the Black Knight,
duergar.
[an excerpt from the notebook]
DUERGAR
Amydala: On average 13% larger than in humans across 9 samples [taken from
Aturi Woodlands] Prefrontal cortex: 3-9% smaller on average across 9 samples,
sulcus density of 86% relative to humans. Angry. Low impulse control.
Back to Zorlach: heavy black armor, spiked flail and teeth bared in a vicious
smile. Zille looked behind her. The black abishai devil. The roaring, surging
water elemental. The dull giant mercenary (very boring frontal cortex,
probably, overlarge amygdala, density of 44% relative to humans)... At
Zorlach's waist: A glint of sienna. The Guildmaster's words proved true. There
was nothing left to say. Except, of course, for...
"HI! Do you want to BE MY FRIEND?! LET'S BE FRIENDS!!!!"
The water elemental did the real work. The giant mercenary swung his sword
("NONONO NOT THE HEAD!"). Zille lashed with her whip, again and again, going
for the feet, and not the precious head, because she had to get to KNOW him
and BE HIS FRIEND, so she was tripping him, entangling him, and sending him to
the ground. Of course, Zorlach fought back. Spells rolled off the abishai's
hide, and the demonic, fiendish aura blunted anything that came Zille's way,
but his lightning wounded the elemental, wounded the mercenary, and the dogged
duergar dastard kept fighting long after he should have fallen.
He wasn't strong enough.
Zille stood over him. Her notebook was open. Her charcoal was ready. She
wanted to measure his brain. She wanted to weigh it, to trace its folds, to
write down everything. He was an anti-paladin. He was duergar. He was covered
in scars and heavy armor and the kind of evil that doesn't apologize. That
would make for such fascinating data...but she had a job from the Guildmaster,
and she had to remember that, she was a part of things now, she was a line in
the great protective circle that was the interconnected guild, Spire, city,
all of it, the whole world like a big bumpy BRAIN...
She would measure him later, when he was in the morgue, when it was allowed,
when she could be his friend.
Zille and the Tribunal
Added Wed Apr 15 03:45:11 2026 at level 38:
It has been rough for Zille Hattock lately. First, the most recent time she
entered Thera, she was immediately greeted by the sight of the Tribunal
Executioner's beating heart upon the ground. It only got bumpier from there.
She wanted to try and help Illquorin retrieve the Scales, but she was balked
by her hated hated hated bumpy bumpy bumpy enemy, Auzlohn. Oh, how she wanted
to GET TO BE HIS FRIEND but. But but butbutbutbut.
This time, he won, he balked her, and she hated herself for it. Not because
she lost - worse things have happened than a loss, and this was a clean
getaway - but she is worried that she has let the Tribunal down. These are the
closest she has to friends, and she hates hates HATES disappointing them. She
wants to be a good Magistrate because she is slowly slowly learning to
appreciate order. Structure. She had only seen it before in circles and wards
and spells.
But the Tribunal works in the same way: it provides structure, clarity, like a
protection circle against the woes of the world, keeping out the unlawful, the
troublemakers, the Outlanders. And when talking with people (not friends, you
can't really be someone's friend, not without reading their brains and finally
understanding, and friends are bumpy, butbutbut these people have not hurt her
yet, like Faylea and Alcevia and Auzlohn andandandand so many other bumpy
sorts) from the Tribunal, she has not yet been betrayed or lied at or hurt or
otherwise screwed over or ostracized, the way she had been at the college, the
way she had been at the Inn.
Her loyalty to the Tribunal grows ever more, especially with companions like
Sunossa and Illquorin at her side. The former has been seen less lately, and
the latter seems to have had a rough go of things lately. But she feels
something unfamiliar, something pulsing, twitching, squealing deep inside her
brain, that twisty bumpy brain that is all she is. Fondness? Maybe.
Zille and Ishuli
Added Wed Apr 15 18:46:33 2026 at level 38:
Recently, Zille heard of the Temple of Ishuli (and, of course, its attendant
Goddess). She eventually found it by following the hints that she had managed
to gather, and there she found something amazing.
It was just like the college back home in Arkham, ah, now so distant People
studying. Researching. Learning. And - after a look through the shelves - no
one writing about brains or phrenology.
She had found her people. She had found her niche. And perhaps there would be
lots of very densly-paced sulci and gyri to read inside the heads of those who
had finished their research later on. This was, she would conclude, VERY VERY
HEEHEE.
She was not sure how to contact gods. She had dealt with demons frequently,
and angels far less frequently, but what about those who presided over them?
She thought about Malthis, another Tribunal member. He was always speaking of
his God, but not much of it seemed to apply to her own purposes, or to Ishuli.
Revel in sin, blessed are the sinners...that didn't seem to fit.
She thought of Khelidius, whose records showed him to be a disciple of Zurcon,
but that also seemed to be a dead end, unless Zurcon was the lost god of being
bumpy and charismatic and silver-tongued.
Ishuli was a goddess of knowledge, though, and offerings were evidently in
vogue. She acquired a pair of glasses and, later, she gave a book that she had
very much treasured to Ishuli also. As well, she offered prayers, and tried to
lean on whatever might be called faith - praying to Ishuli when in trouble (as
when the Tribunal is beset by foes and it is only her against them) or trying
to think about how knowledge might help her out, but this is all very bumpy
indeed, like always.
It would be so much easier to just find a priest and look at his brain and
measure and record and compare, but the two figures in Ishuli's temple would
probably not be amenable, which Zille does not understand but, thanks to the
Tribunal, is coming to accept as a manifestation of order.
Axons do not leap onto dendrites and magistrates do not carve into priests.
Besides, Zille is simply curious about brains in and of themselves, not
necessarily out to murder people just to look at them...
Time will tell what comes of this.
[a page from Zille's notebook, post-raid] p.1
Added Thu Apr 16 08:28:53 2026 at level 38:
[The handwriting is erratic and cramped, shaking, excited, with the only
constant being charcoal smudges everywhere.]
Midnight, Month of Spring, Day 29
Subject: The Outlanders' Huntress
Female Centaur
Profession: Guardian of the Tree
Brain extracted in the Tribunal Spire basement.
Used the good scooper.
Weight: HEAVY. Had to use both hands to separate from braincase.
Frontal lobe: Very broad. Wide like a horse's forehead but the gyri go DEEP.
Lots of wrinkles with a pronounced depth not usually seen in other centaurs.
Typical of a planner and guardian. Occipital lobe approx. 103% larger than
other centaur subjects (ref. #CT01, #CT08) Expected of someone who raised to
enough prominence among other centaurs. Note: She stood in one place her whole
life guarding a tree. Compared with these patterns, perhaps she was
unsatisfied or intellectually understimulated. Corpus callosum: Thicker than
that of other centaur subjects by approx. 108%. Connects the halves very
strongly, expected of a centaur, with equine and human patterns in evidence.
Horse-half to human-half. Note: She was two things at once and her brain had
to talk to itself constantly, as well as communicate with other Outlanders.
Motor Cortex: The precentral gyrus is robust, as expected for a creature whose
daily existence involved drawing a longbow and navigating a treacherous spiral
ramp on four legs. The coordination required for six limbs (4 legs and 2 arms)
must be immense (compare to harmentia). Amygdala: Unremarkable, proportional
to other centaur subjects, gyri and sulci within paramaters of normalcy.
Suggest muted stress response. Note: She was afraid at the end, but no signs
of excess stress-hormone production. Suggests that such situations as that she
endured are normal, or that she is inured to them. But her amygdala knew she
was dying and it did what amygdalas do. Fired and fired and fired. All those
signals going nowhere. Poor little almond. Occipital lobe: Prodigious (112%
larger compared to prior centaur subjects #CT01 and #CT05!!!! A new
outlier!!!) Very large. To be expected as she was a hunter and watcher. On
obsevation, optic nerve damaged beyond repair, frayed into ruin (suggested
cause: Harmentia curse) Note: Her eyes had to be sharp. Her brain had to make
sense of all those shadows, all that dark. The Forest of Prosimy is so dark
and hazardous, full of twists and turns and dangers. Like the Tribunal!
[a page from Zille's notebook, post-raid] p.2
Added Thu Apr 16 08:30:10 2026 at level 38:
Hippocampus: [written above a smudged ???] Couldn't find it at first,
discovered tucked way back. Different shape than a human's, curled in equine
fashion. Suggests a horse's sense for danger, flight and adrenal response.
Note: Did she dream of running? She never ran and instead just stood there.
She just stands there and fights to the end. But her hippocampus remembered
running. I bet it did.
SUNMMARY: Measurements consistent with huntress' observed profession and
personality. The shrunken amygdala makes her suitable for high-stress
situations. Remarkable occipital lobe specialized for vigilance. One might
speculate that she was, in some fundamental way, incapable of relaxation
(possible outlet for amygdala). She trusted nothing. She expected betrayal
from every quarter.
CONCLUSION: The Huntress's brain tells a coherent story. She was vigilant to
the point of paranoia. She was incapable of forgetting a threat once
perceived. She was exquisitely coordinated, patient in her waiting, and
utterly certain of her purpose. She did not doubt. Doubt requires a
flexibility of memory that her hippocampus could not easily support. She knew
what she was supposed to do, and she did it, and she died doing it, and she
would probably do it again if given the opportunity. She was not, the examiner
suspects, a particularly happy creature. Particularly not when she met the
harmentia.
Z. Hattock
Zille and Zizaerix, p.1
Added Fri Apr 17 17:41:39 2026 at level 38:
It was early in the morning that Zizaerix reached out to Zille and summoned
her to the Altar of the Blood Tribunal. And the first thought that jolted
through the twisted recesses of Zille's mind was a memory of the professor in
Arkham who had sent her away. Oh, the hair colour was different, the bearing
less wizened, the fashion sense much more impeccable, but aside from that...
He looks like the professor, she thought. He looks exactly like the professor.
The professor who taught her precision and exactitude. Who marked her down for
misplaced lines and mispronounced syllables and sigils of protection that were
too squiggly, the professor who first threw open the wide, wonderful world of
neuroanatomy to her, the professor who was the closest she had to a friend and
confidant and mentor in the long years of the Arkham College, who, in his way,
both set her on her path of obsessive derangement and provided the antidote
for her madness by way of offhand remark about brains for the former and
thousands of strict circle-drawing drills for the latter.
The gnome she admired and wanted to please and who had also touched upon her
life one final, telling way by advising her to go out into the world and join
the Guild of Conjurers proper as a means of saving his own wrinkled hide. And
Zizaerix said all the right things about her notebook when she had thrust it
at him in a displaced but still very real-to-her need for that professor's
validation: Commendable. Needs more data. Oh, this was so very HEEHEE. He said
everything the professor never had. He was, in Zille's deranged and desperate
and lonely mind, very much the same sort of figure, though this notion was
still buried deep in the bumps and lumps of her subconscious and was not
something she'd be comfortable admitting. Still, the similarities were there.
Perhaps the face was a bit different, but the quality, the essence of the man,
the god, the being before her under whose gaze she was being scrutinized, was
still one she had seen before, if not physically: There, the compact authority
of a very small being taking up exactly as much space as it intended to, here,
the trimmed and flawless precision and no patience for nonsense, but most of
all, the quality of the gaze, whose eyes led directly to the brain by way of
the optic nerve and whose gaze showed assessment, evaluation, and perhaps a
tired, world-weary patience.
Zille and Zizaerix, p.2
Added Fri Apr 17 17:42:38 2026 at level 38:
Zille had seen this face before. She had stood in front of this face in
Arkham's College with her notebook and her spoon-knife and her breathless
explanation of what she had found in the crypt, and the face had said: you
should leave. Go out into the world. There's more to learn out there than
you'll ever find here. Zizaerix's words had borne much the same tone, but with
just the right slant: You are being assigned to Galadon, if you wish it. There
is more data here (on this did he and Zille agree, even if the road to
consensus was, in a word, very bumpy), go forth and make more friends, collect
more data, find the why. More study is in order when you find the time.
Zille went into a giddy mental tailspin, her mind spinning in a dozen
directions at once, thoughts careening from one wall to the next at the speed
of thought: One, she is not a fighter, and Galadon is full of fighters, two,
Seantryn Modan is far-off and safe to recall to, three, but there is so much
more data in Galadon, four, this is very very bumpy. Eventually, by way of
agitated pacing and ranting that was, perhaps, at times coherent, the
conclusion coalesced: Where the professor's sendoff had been a way of saying
"please stop, please leave, take your scooper and your madness and go off into
the world so as not to be here," this gnome here was validating, affirming,
and even listened to Zille's burgeoning theory about the world as a brain writ
large, of laws acting as circles of protection and needing no less exactitude
and no less unyielding perfection. And although she had been hesitant at the
outset, while Zizaerix watched, she talked herself into it. And he had let her
do it and watched her do it and at the end he had simply reflected her own
conclusion back at her like a mirror, which was, she would later realize,
exactly the kind of thing Zizaerix would do.
She accepted the assignment, half because it was asked of her and half because
it would advance her phrenology studies so much and half because this was just
as much an assignment as the professor telling her to scribe celestial circle
A28 100 times without a single flaw by breakfast (which she would have done
gleefully to boot).
Zille, being who she is, immediately upon the conclusion of this meeting
charged into the Warrior's Guild, slapped the manacles on wanted criminal
Kushkuna, watched 4 special guards die by his hand, and perhaps sparked a war
between the Battleragers and the Tribunal. The law must be followed, whether
those be the laws of a city or the laws dictating the exact angle of the
transversal line of thaumaturgic circle #AA60661.
Zille, Isolated
Added Mon Apr 20 08:44:38 2026 at level 45:
Zille awakens to find the Scales of Justice gone, again. She finds the Provost
has vacated his post. She finds that there is no apparent sign of Sunossa, and
hears word that Illquorin has gone off to seek his fortune elsewhere, perhaps
now a permanent fixture in Thar-Acacia, which he loved so much.
Her vigilance, brought on by the Tribunal, shows nothing but foes as far as
the eye can see. Her former friend, now traitor, Caserque, joins the list of
bumpy, bumpy people whom she can only understand upon seeing their brains,
whose attempts at socializing have yielded only betrayal and heartbreak and
hurt.
She is the only Tribunal member about, and there is a notable absence where
the Scales should be. She feels alone, despondent, despairing at the decks
stacked against her every which-way. The whole world's just gone...bumpy.
Friends gone, enemies still arraigned around her.
She sets off to the Outlander's stupid, twisty, bumpy tree. She does not
honestly expect to survive. There is not much left to stick around for, but if
she is going to burn out, she and her fire elemental will burn the stupid
woods that her home has unwittingly been neighbor to into cinders.
Everyone leaves. Everyone betrays. People are bumpy. These are things she has
learned the hard way, time and again, and at least with demons, it's easy to
know where you stand. The rest, she decides, as she watches the flames spread
across the ramp, is really too bumpy to be bothered with.
She'll get answers after it's all over and she can read them in the gyri.
The Only People She Understands Are Dead, p.1
Added Wed Apr 22 05:57:01 2026 at level 45:
Zille awoke, and the Scales were in the Outlanders' hands again. This was
starting to become depressingly common, but her resolve is, well, not hardened
so much as scabbed over. There didn't seem to be any significant resistance,
which was a nice counterweight to her lack of evident allies about. It was
time to make a retrieval again.
The harmentia she summoned in the rain-slicked streets of Arkham took one look
at the cathedral guards and went after them of her own accord, which was so
much the better, perhaps, since it could then take the weapons it wanted with
its own hand rather than waiting for Zille to give the order. As long as it
was happy enough to launch itself at the huntress in a little while.
Zille admires the harmentia, and to a lesser extent the other demons, because
unlike the bumpy and lumpy people that she is forced to deal with: the liars,
word-twisters, two-faced traitors, manipulators (or called Heralds in some
circles), they are straightforward and simple and do not try to combine the
unique flavors of honeyed tongue and poisoned steak. Keep them happy, bind
them properly, and they serve. There was something refreshingly simple about
it that was making her all the more averse to anything approaching actual
socializing with people, and this is perhaps a demonstration of the corruptive
and isolating influence of trafficking with demons.
The Huntress fell in ribbons. This had been the strongest harmentia Zille had
ever seen, and as she turned from the rain-soaked tree, her gaze fell upon the
fire elemental. And she remembered all the times she had seen skins of her
fellow guards (and even herself) carved up and left in the burning streets, in
mockery. She remembered the screams of her compatriots (not her friends, of
course - the kinds of friends she has are not the sort to scream, being mere
entries in her ledger of grey matter. The only people she understands.) and
the anguish of helplessness as the Outlanders ran roughshod and gleeful over
the Spire and the City, heedless of how much it resembled a well-sprawling
network of axons and dendrons. How little they cared for her promising
research.
She advanced up the ramp, and bade her fire elemental to incinerate it all.
When it returned, it was diminished. Weary. "Again," she said, moving further
along. The elemental, bound, cound not meaningfully protest, but as it
complied it came back diminished. Weakened. The ambient flames and smoke
roared higher. The process repeated. She would never be able to burn the tree
to ash, this she knew. But she could give them a sip of their own medicine.
Illquorin was gone. "Again." Sunossa, gone. "Again." Dexamus' leg, severed on
the guild floor. "Again." Being told that the Outlanders hold the Scales of
Justice. "Again!" A hundred thousand other reasons to go full arsonist. By the
time it was over, the fire elemental winked out, a mere spark.
The Only People She Understands Are Dead, p.2
Added Wed Apr 22 06:05:22 2026 at level 45:
Zille, meanwhile, was as aflame as her surroundings: a hunched, panting,
maddened thing, framed by flame and smoke and scorched brush and wearing a
hateful grimace on a face that had once brightened like a well-cast flash at
the mention of someone wanting to know about brains.
She had come a way, from the Academy student who just wanted to understand
people. The girl who thought if she could measure enough brains, she'd finally
know why people lie, why they cheat, why they run away. She still believes
these things, of course, but now the blood and steel of the world has filed it
to a point. Every death, every betrayal, every friend who vanished without
warning, they all pushed her further into the thing she's becoming. The thing
that burns sacred trees and giggles while they burn. The thing that pushes a
fire elemental until it's nothing but a spark, because she needs the fire more
than she needs the elemental.
She still has so many friends to make. Like the inferno around her, it has
shaken out into something other than the shape in which it arrived, but it is,
perhaps, all the stronger for having done so, if all the more destructive,
too. What she feels in her heart is loneliness, rejection, betrayal,
confusion. "Why did all my friends get all bumpy, or why does everyone go
away, or why doesn't anyone understand how fascinating brains are, or want to
know about phrenology?"
But what she writes in her notebook is simply this:
The only people I understand are dead.
Magistrate and Vindicator
Added Thu Apr 23 05:45:26 2026 at level 45:
The only people she understands are dead, and Malthis isn't dead yet. But he
will be soon, and he has told her as much. The final toll is coming. So, he is
also not a friend. He's just... delayed. A friend on layaway. Someone she'll
measure eventually, when his health gives out and the black blood stops
flowing and the handprint in her notebook is all that's left of the Vindicator
who called her "my sweet little thing" and meant it.
He and his mortality has given her (as well as her creator) much to think on.
He wants to be a sin, he had said: "If my Lord wills, I shall become a sin
itself. When you feel that temptation, that desire to indulge... perhaps it is
me." Zille understands this. Not the Morius part, but wanting to last. Wanting
to leave something behind that isn't just a corpse and a brain waiting to be
measured.
For Malthis, it's sin and indulgence. The whisper in the back of someone's
mind when they're about to do something terrible and wonderful. He wants to
become the temptation itself, the thing that outlasts the flesh. Zille is not
really given to such things, but she understands being bent around a single
grand purpose. For Zille, it's phrenology. Or, perhaps, what her study
represents: the thing that drives her to measure brains and write notes and
keep, keep trying: She wants someone to see it. To understand it. She wants
someone, anyone, to understand: if not her, then her obsessive passion for
phrenology. That's the core of it all.
If she could just somehow impart to someone else how very very very important
it is, the sheer staggering amazement of being able to understand someone
inside out by looking at the folds and bumps and wrinkles of their brain in
enough detail, it will all have been worth it. To see someone look at a
brain, a real brain, wet and grey and full of folds, and feel what she feels:
The sheer, staggering amazement of it. The knowledge that this is the person.
Not their words. Not their faces. Not the lies they tell and the gifts they
offer and the ways they hurt you. This. The weight. The shape. The bumps and
lumps and wrinkles. All in there. The seat of the self, the professor had
said.
If she could just impart that to someone. Just once. If she could hold up a
brain and say, "Look. Look at what I see. Look at what matters." And have them
look. And have them see. Then it would all be worth it.
With her manuscript, perhaps that can be achieved. Perhaps beyond the bookends
of her life, some decades in the future, perhaps centuries, someone else will
pull it from the shelves, will look, will see, will understand. Then, perhaps,
Zille's desperate bid for friendship will have finally been something more
than one-way study. Perhaps then it will be mutual understanding, which she
has never had and, if recent memory is any indication, is unlikely to ever
achieve.
From 45 to 51
Added Wed May 6 17:29:56 2026 at level 51:
She almost didn't make it.
That is the first thing to understand. The rest comes later. All of it comes
after the night she sat in the Tribunal Spire and wondered if the forty-fifth
rank was her own special ring of purgatory. The Spire was empty. Her
companions Illquorin and Sunossa and Yyrus were gone. But her enemies' numbers
swelled. Lithrella, who killed the Captain and took the Scales and left before
anyone could stop her. Auzlohn and Blighun and Talsier, still out there,
stabhappy and patient. The promised wands of protection were in the hands of
foes Zille couldn't hope to overcome.
Zille Hattock, Magristrate of Galadon, conjurer, devotee of Ishuli, scholar of
brains, sat in the Library with her notebook open and her charcoal-stained
fingers steepled and very seriously considered laying it all aside, and
wondered why she hadn't.
She didn't have an answer. She only knew that she wasn't done.
The climb from the 45th rank was a sudden lurch. Gilgormosh and Gozetharg, two
orc bruisers, each three meters of muscle and scar tissue, stood between her
and death while she clawed her way upward through the guts and brains and
bones of Mortorn's denizens. Verisaa, a diamondback rattlesnake, coiled and
struck beside her. The bearded devil's hellfire arced through arms-dealers,
guards, and seers. But this is only part of the tale.
Provost-to-be Malthis, already dying, offered support and succor. Yusho
offered material assistance and knowledge. All these and more showed her that
not everyone is very very bumpy. Some - the Tribunal, mainly, but also the
Orcs, perhaps - are in fact, dare she say it, HEEHEE. Thus do the walls of
trust and distrust thicken and calcify.
And on that note: Heralds. Faylea, Alcevia, Caserque. All conspired against
her in one way or another (at least to her mind). She will never trust a
Herald again, and warns others not to as well.
And meanwhile, in the little black notebook she keeps, there is a new entry.
She was reluctant to hand it over to Malthis, but she did, and he pressed his
bloody handprint into it. "Forever", he had said, although Zille had seen from
the rash of friends disappearing that "forever" was as flexible a concept as
morality.
Even so, these vignettes and scenes are mile-markers on the road between rank
45 and 51, and they should not be forgotten.
Life as a Planewalker
Added Wed May 6 17:38:17 2026 at level 51:
The summit is not what she expected.
She thought it would feel like victory. Instead, it feels like standing in a
very high place during a very strong wind. The mightiest of her enemies can
all reach her now, and all of them are still out there, still stabhappy, and
among their number are more dangerous, more infamous names.
There is nowhere left to hide. But there is also nowhere left to fall.
She has reached the top, and crossed an impassable line. Now she understands
Malthis' casual attitude towards his own death, when before she would never
have comprehended. And there is so much to learn.
She has a notebook full of brain measurements and a god who told her to make
more friends and a Provost who pressed a bloody handprint into page 47 and
said, "forever," which she will carry with her to the Eternal Library and
submit to Ishuli when it is ready - will it ever be ready?
Even so, the foundation stones of paranoia and obsession remain. There are
still no friends among her compatriots, because their brains are still
frustratingly inside their skulls rather than spread out upon an autopsy table
and charted and measured and finally, finally readable. Trust is not the same
as friendship. She will find their brains sooner or later, or die before it
becomes relevant. But until then, forming relationships with them is less
"social grace" and more "circle of protection".
The gnome at Arkham taught her well: Circles must be perfected, both those
thaumaturgic and celestial. Experience has shown her that there are other
circles, more ephemeral: boundary lines of mutual destruction, warding glyphs
of reciprocity, ways to keep the bumpiness of others out as surely and safely
as a traced chalk ring can keep even the mighty archon contained.
But Zille does still prefer to traffick with devils and demons to people. You
know where you stand with them. And for people? Well.
It is still true:
The only people she understands are dead.