A masked woman who walks into Farraj’s dreams under a sky of invented stars, trades knowledge about the sanctums — and handed him an orrery that was still in his hands when he woke.
What We Know (all S5)
The contact
- Appears in unusually clear dreams: a hilltop, a large tree, a bright starlit sky. Wears a mask. Greeted Farraj by name.
- Opened with “You have found the Sanctum of Sethariel” and a wish to make the party’s acquaintance “as one who knows of the sanctums.” Seeks a fair exchange of knowledge.
- The stars are nameless imaginary ones she created as an identifier — a signature, so Farraj knows it’s her. “Whenever he sees her, there will always be stars like this.”
- How she found them: she divined whether anyone had entered a sanctum, then divined the name, then used the name to establish dream contact. Farraj is the first time that divination has returned a yes.
- Her role is to gather information, by scholarship and by divination. She has never visited a sanctum herself. She cautions that her answers are only as good as her knowledge and may not be correct.
- On the Church: not worried about its reaction, because she serves the Maker.
- Chose the star theme because the Star Court is the court of knowledge — see The Faith of the Maker.
What she told them
- There are six, possibly seven sanctums — the doors to the prisons of the Six Voices.
- Sanctums predate the Empire, the Church, the Old Elven Empire — any known history.
- They sit at confluences of magic (Leylines). May be themed to their Voice, may not.
- Locations she knows: Dawn (near Halwa — the one the party just entered), Stars (the wastes south of Cardacci), and maybe Moon (somewhere south of Hazad, likely nearer the coast than the mountains).
- The broken purple crystal was a gateway from the physical to the spiritual.
- On the abbot’s words: the “chains” could be the bindings of Sethariel, Voice of the Dawn; encountering a fallen servant of the Maker can leave a mark on the soul; The Red Star may indicate the times when certain interactions with sanctums are possible.
- Asked about the star/leyline charts, she said she would see what she could do and to give her time. (The party is owed an answer.)
The gift
- On a later night she gave Farraj an orrery — about a foot across, made of an assortment of metals. He had it when he woke up.
What Uncle’s Men Make of Her (S6)
Ismad’s reading: the strangest thing that happened to the party, and also the most normal — “fairly standard agent-to-agent communications.” His first question was whether she showed any sign of knowing the party’s affiliation with Uncle. His judgement: she is part of some organization, and that quality of long-distance communication is very powerful.
His instruction to the party: play along. Avoid being recruited. Mildly try to recruit her (unlikely). Learn more. And be quiet about the sanctums, the Six Voices and the orrery with everyone else.
Uncle and Maajid’s suspicion: she may be from the Order of the Phoenix. No proof — a suspicion. Uncle remembers mention of the Phoenix using divination magic during the war, forty years ago. Worth researching discreetly with Lusia Balventia or her scholars.
Speculation
If she is Phoenix, everything she said stays true and every reason she said it changes. A Phoenix researcher would know the sanctums are real, would want to know who else has walked into one, and would have institutional reason to frame the doctrine as heresy she’s willing to share — that is how you build rapport with a mark. It also explains the mask, the invented sky, and why she has never visited a sanctum herself: she is a desk officer, not a field agent.
Against it: the Phoenix dissolved and executed an entire order for proximity to this material, and Estelle hands it out to strangers. And she is oddly incurious about the party’s employer.
Speculation
The orrery is now datable and it points west. Not magic, not evil, 10–20 years old, used, maintained, and likely made by Clan Grum of far western Morrschatten — a real workshop with real books, in a real place, at a real date. Ask her where she got it. If she says “an antiquity,” she is lying about something checkable, and that is the cheapest test the party will ever get of whether she tells the truth. See The Monastery of the Dawn and the Orrery.
Speculation
Note what Ismad didn’t say. He did not tell the party to break contact, report her to the Eastern Church, or stop taking her gifts. His model of her is a rival service, and the correct response to a rival service is a longer conversation.
Why She Matters
Every substantive thing the party knows about what a sanctum is came from her in a single conversation, after three sessions of scholars having nothing. She also just demonstrated that she can move a physical object from a dream into the waking world, and that she can find any of them by name.
Speculation
Three readings, none yet excluded:
- A scholar of a hidden tradition — genuinely a Maker-serving researcher outside Church control, of exactly the kind the party needs and the Order of the Phoenix burns.
- Something older. She teaches that six angels are imprisoned behind doors, and she wants to know who has been to the doors. A being inside one would want precisely this conversation, and would flatter the researcher’s vanity of “fair exchange.” Note she has never visited a sanctum herself.
- A third party in the race — the swordsman at Kraus’s Folly, the Order of the Owl’s remnant, or whoever tore open that wall 5–10 years ago, sourcing information from the one group dumb enough to walk in the front door.
Speculation
The orrery is the thing to worry about. The monastery’s jeweled orrery has been a loose end since S3, and now an orrery arrives from a dream, unprompted, from someone who wants to know what the party finds. Gift, instrument, or tracking device — and Farraj accepted it before anyone could weigh in.
Relationships
- Farraj ibn Ihab al-Rabi — her sole point of contact; she reached him by name.
Open Questions
- Who is she, where is her body, and who does she actually answer to? Phoenix is now the leading suspicion (S6), unproven.
- Where did she get the orrery? It is a ~10–20-year-old, well-maintained Clan Grum instrument, not a relic. Somebody commissioned it. (S6)
- Why is she masked in her own dream?
- What does she want in return — she has given a great deal and asked, so far, only for news of the sanctums.
- What is the orrery, and what does holding it do?
Appearances
- Session 5 — three dream visits on the voyage from Halwa: introduction, the long exchange, and the orrery.
- Session 6 — does not appear; the party debriefs Uncle’s Men about her and receives its orders on how to handle her.