Sister Alasia Fiermonti — she runs the western church in Halwa, the expat community around it, and a fair amount of the neighbourhood. She was also Haroun’s love interest during his Halwa posting, which he has not mentioned to the party. (GM)
(Spelling: the GM writes Alasia; the session notes had “Alacia”.)
Who She Is (all GM)
- Came to Halwa with her husband, a priest, to manage the western church. He died a number of years ago, and she picked up the pieces and carried on running the church and serving the expat community.
- Mid-30s, ethnically Cardacci. No particularly strong Gift — a capable organizer and an effective leader, not a miracle-worker.
- Grudgingly respected by the community, in the face of the sexism of the local tribes.
- Her reading of “Duty Above, Honor Below” (the second of the Four Keys) involves a great deal more helping people in need than the Churches normally emphasize — pointedly, nothing non-doctrinal. She is not a heretic; she is an inconvenient literalist.
- The line between community leader and gang leader is, in her situation, a little fuzzy. She organizes order and services on a nominally religious basis.
- Everyone calls her by the religious title anyway — what her actual rank or position in the Western Church proper ever was is unclear.
- Still devout, but the pressures of survival have made her pragmatic about smuggling, and about the difference between the western and eastern churches.
Haroun (GM)
- She was his love interest when he was stationed here. The party does not know this. (Party-sensitive: Haroun’s to disclose.)
- Each knows the other is hiding a background, a secret, or an agenda — and both have chosen not to probe. That is the working basis of the relationship.
- For Haroun she is someone who plainly has the virtues he was raised to admire, expressed in ways he isn’t used to — part of what has been pulling him away from the conservatism he grew up in.
What We Know (sessions)
- Haroun tried twice to visit her; both attempts were ambushed, and at the church a guard fetched her and the new father, and Father Ignacio turned him away at the entrance. (S4) See The Halwa Ambushes.
- Haroun caught her in the street (S5) — he staked out the poor houses she frequents and approached her after she left one. Her warning, unprompted: “be careful around Father Ignacio.”
- She had been sheltering Madeline Foussard — the creature from Kraus’s Folly — in church property, and brought her back to her right mind. She then summoned Haroun to a church storehouse and introduced them. (S5)
- She introduced Madeline as an “old friend.” (GM) Madeline had been chained in a cellar for seven years and is a knight-confessor of an order the East expelled forty years ago. Note the word and ask about it.
- She is now the channel between Haroun and Madeline, by agreement. (S5)
- On Madeline: “I would like to believe that the Maker has the power to free Madeline from this terrible curse.” (S5)
- The expat community preferred her preaching to Ignacio’s — hers was Maker Protect!, his is Maker Smite! (S5)
Speculation
“Old friend” is doing a lot of work. Either Alasia knew Madeline before 1732 — which would mean a Cardacci priest’s widow in a Hazadi free city has prior ties to a Phoenix knight-confessor — or she was smoothing an introduction for a woman she needed Haroun to trust. Both are worth knowing, and it is the one claim in her account of herself the party can actually check, via Madeline.
Speculation
She has no strong Gift, which makes what she did to Madeline more interesting, not less. Restoring the mind of a transformed, blood-hungry inquisitor is not organizational competence. Either someone else did the work, or it cost her something she hasn’t explained.
Speculation
Pragmatic about smuggling, pragmatic about the schism, respected among a city run by criminal clans, quietly warning people about her own priest. None of that is sinister alone; all of it together is a woman running her own operation. The mutual agreement not to probe means Haroun has chosen not to find out what it is — a choice with a cost now that she is the party’s only channel to Madeline.
Relationships
- Haroun al-Affan — former love interest; now his channel to Madeline. Mutual non-interrogation pact. (GM)
- Madeline Foussard — sheltered and restored her; introduced her as an “old friend.”
- Father Ignacio — her new priest, whom she warns others about.
- Her husband (name unknown) — a priest; came to Halwa with her, died some years ago.