Vivian

If we had to describe Vivian with a single sound, it would be <Italic:gubble>.

The potion boiling in the cauldron goes <Italic:gubble-gubble>. The steam rising off the bath goes <Italic:gubble-gubble>. The toad's belly swells and goes <Italic:gubble-gubble> as it breathes out.

And there she sits in the middle of all that lazy <Italic:gubble-gubble>, gubbling away and blowing bubbles of her own.

As if tomorrow will never come.

Unlocks at: Awakener Level 1

Mythag University, Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science, @2 Branch

Report No.: AWU-M-1923-014

Classification: Internal Use Only; For Circulation Among Research Committee Members

Subject: Preliminary Study of the Anomalous Chemical Inertness of an Excavated Silver Core

Date of Report: November 4, @1

Sample Origin: Submitted for analysis by an excavation team working at a site in @2. Sample No. EX-B-7.

Abstract: This interim briefing is submitted to the Research Committee. It concerns inertness tests carried out by the Institute's Department of Chemical Analysis and Department of Metallurgy on a silver core recovered from the ruins of a burned palace, together with preliminary conclusions. It is offered for internal discussion and as a reference for the direction of further experiments.

...The sample was immersed in concentrated sulfuric acid (specific gravity 1.84) for forty-eight hours. It was then treated with a strong alkaline solution and fired in the Institute's newly installed electric furnace at temperatures exceeding one thousand degrees. The loss of mass, as measured by precision balance, came to less than one part in ten thousand... Spectroscopic examination produced spectral lines that matched none of the reference plates held by the Institute. The sample's vibrational frequency fell far below the range the instruments are calibrated to detect...

Most disquieting of all, the excavation team reports that every timber beam and pillar at the site burned to ash and charcoal, and much of the pottery shattered and vitrified in the heat. The silver core alone was recovered intact, its surface showing no trace whatsoever of corrosion or oxide scale... Dr. Kingston admitted during the meeting that the phenomenon lies beyond anything his twenty years of scholarship can explain. Microscopic examination by the Institute likewise found no damage to the crystal grains...

The Committee members received these results with mixed reactions. Dean Weize Bai ordered the sample sealed at once and additional staff assigned to verify the findings, so as to rule out instrument error or experimental oversight... However, three independent retests produced closely matching results. Colleagues throughout the Institute are astonished, and fear that current metallurgical theory may indeed have gaps...

Further experimental plans and detailed data are provided in Appendices II through V and are not reproduced in this briefing.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 3

Vivian's laboratory in Mythag has moved several times.

At first, Mythag built it "to the standards of a princess's palace," as an exact life-size replica of the home she had lived in during her former life.

However, that enormously expensive laboratory was flattened by a single potion explosion. The cause was that Vivian had been feeling lazy while mixing her ingredients and had asked the Seer to prepare the raw materials.

Clearly, it was too much to ask of a Seer who was, give or take, an amphibian, to tell apart "blood-red wood with a regular spiral grain" and "orange-red wood with a fine, hair-like grain," or "cyan potion with a flowing shimmer" and "jade potion with a scaly sheen," or "white combustible metal" and "silver mutable metal," especially when none of them were moving.

In any case, Vivian's laboratories got smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until they were so small that if she fell asleep slumped over the workbench, she might kick over a cauldron by accident.

Yes, that is exactly how the last lab accident happened.

But Vivian always quietly tidied up the disaster, then started on the day's potions as if nothing had happened.

After all, if you never cause other people any trouble, it's much easier to refuse the trouble they try to cause you. This is one of Vivian's guiding principles in life.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 5

February 22, A.D. @2. Vivian's tenth birthday. She had been born late in the Grand Duke's life, and the whole duchy had blessed her arrival. Every year on this day, the entire nation celebrated her birthday. She had long since grown used to the ritual.

This year's celebration was grander than ever. She stood at the top of the bell tower, showering joy and hope on all her subjects. The cannons fired, bursting into thousands of colorful streamers that drifted down with the winter snow.

That was how it should have gone.

But that day, amid the roaring crowds, Vivian saw an omen. The falling snow blanketed every street, and then the snow and the streamers melted into a sludge of black and red that oozed slowly through the castle, the manors, and every lane and alley.

She knew the red was the blood of knights. And the black...?

The black was plague.

Plague came to the remote duchy, and people said the cursed witch princess had brought the black misfortune with her.

So they would offer the wicked witch princess to the temple. Rumors said it was home to terrible beasts, man-eating monsters, and an evil Seer.

Yet Vivian went into the temple and failed to be eaten. Instead, the Seer gave her a potion, one that could be brewed only once in a lifetime.

The world feared her more than ever, and hated her more than ever.

Until enemy soldiers broke through the castle's defenses. Until the family and knights she had once loved and trusted fell before her in pools of their own blood.

Only then did that mysterious potion, coveted and feared by all the world, reveal its true power for the first time.

She was the last princess of the duchy, the Grand Duke's most beloved daughter, and a cursed orphan.

She was the Witch Princess. She was Vivian.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 7

Princess. Noble. Witch. Apothecary. Weirdo.

None of the roles she had been given or the labels stuck on her meant much to Vivian. If she had her way, everything would simply 'take its natural course.'

In other words: whatever.

But stories always take sudden turns, and somehow she had ended up at the center of the conflict.

When your opponent has backed you into a corner in a game, what do you do?

Some people fight to the bitter end. Some wave the white flag. Some scramble for every last point.

She chose to flip the board

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 9