Vivid Ink

Born as Vinty into slavery to a small household of scribes, the girl who would become Sumi-of-Bexaue secretly befriended the children of her owners and learned how to read and write on her own. In this way, she became free by Right of Clergy – an obscure and rarely relevant law of her homeland wherein a person who is literate cannot be held as a slave. Thereafter, she departed for the Verdant Solarium both for protection and to satisfy her thirst for further schooling.

As a student under Hieroglyph-of-Oasis' tutelage, she proved an insatiable reader and consumed more writing supplies than the next ten students combined. It was the written word that had freed her and uplifted her and opened the world for her to choose her path. Over the course of her studies, she was naturally exposed to her teacher's philosophies. The Sage assumed that her foremost pupil would soak it up as she had everything else. Instead she eventually became one of her most notable critics. Instead of an urge to lay out the universe beneath the shining light of an inviolable order, Vinty set about cataloguing Creation from the bottom up and advocated literacy and dignity to the lowest born.

After her 20th birthday, Vinty adopted the courtesy name Vivid Ink, left the Solarium and struck out on her own. Over the past year, she bought land in the intellectually open city-state of Bexaue, a populous hydraulic principality east of the Verdant Solarium and likewise far from Realm's influence. There and founded her own atelier from which she now works, pursuing the arts while continuing her studies.

Vivid Ink considers her foremost art to be the written word for its own sake but her prolific letter writing has gained her renown across the Southern Direction as a commentator in politics, philosophy and numerous other diverse fields. Little is immune to her criticism and she has quickly gained reputation for a cutting wit. In Bexaue however, she is best known as a painter and calligrapher. She also uses other pen and art names on the side for works she'd rather not be casually associated with.

Birth Name: Vinty
Courtesy Name: Vivid Ink – Her usual formal name and pen name as a scholar.
Art Name: Sumi-of-Bexaue – The usual attribution for her paintings and calligraphies.
Pen Name: Red Beats - The mysterious author of at least one lurid romance.

Traits

Caste: Eclipse
Limit Trigger: Book burnings.
Essence: ●

Personal: 3/13 (3e+10)

Peripheral: 33/33 (7e+26)

Health: 0/1/1/2/2/4/i

Willpower: 7/7 [4]
Join Battle: 5d + 3

Attack (Rapier): 9/+10L
Parry: 5
Evasion: 2
Resolve: 3
Guile: 4

Attributes

Physical

Strength: ●
Dexterity: ●●●●
Stamina: ●●

Social

Charisma: ●●●●
Manipulation: ●●
Appearance: ●●●

Mental

Perception: ●●
Intelligence: ●●●●
Wits: ●●●●●

Abilities [11]

Athletics: -
Awareness: -
Bureaucracy: ●
Craft - Artifice: -
Craft - Architecture: ●●●●
Craft - Painting: ●●●●●
Craft - Mechanics: ●●●●
Dodge: -
Integrity: ●
Investigation: -
Linguistics: ●●●●●
Lore – Solarium Scholar: ●●●●● (Geography, History, Politics)
Melee: ●● (Swords)
Occult: ●
Performance: ●
Presence: ●●●●●
Socialize: ●●●●●
War: -

Merits

Contacts (Intelligentsia): ●●●●●
A prolific letter writer, Vivid sits at the center of a massive network of literati. Her second floor writing room is stuffed with growing mounds of letters as she corresponds with a bewildering array of personages all across the region and beyond, linked across borders and over countless miles by the miracle of written language. In this way, she stays highly informed of goings on across the South.

Followers: ●●
A small halo of followers gathered around her atelier, composed of learners and admirers alike. Most are there for either painting or calligraphy for which Vivid is best known but at least a few are hopeful suitors. They are mostly middle class or upper middle class city dwellers and thus generally well educated by Creation standards and have either connections or trade skills.

Influence: ●●
Vivid Ink is already well known in the city-state of Bexaue, as a learned scholar and prominent artist. She is usually in demand for commentary on any number of subjects and it is said the the Prince of the city himself has commissioned a painting.

Languages: ●●●●
Dragontongue
Flametongue
High Realm
Old Realm
Riverspeak

Resources: ●●●

Retainer: ●●●●
Vivid Ink met Galewalks after she settled in Bexaue – quite soon after each of their exaltations. She is an Exigent of some description; it's not immediately clear (least of all to herself) who she was chosen by, but it may be a god who foresaw Vivid's work as indispensible and ultimately dangerous enough to warrant the young Solar a dedicated protector. Galewalks is beautiful and steadfast but simple and utterly without guile. As a bodyguard however, she is tireless, dedicated and watchful, with a streak of hand-wringing paranoia that serves her role well. She comes from a (normal and mortal) military family and prefers spear and shield in combat (though she does fine with a court sword and also knows kung fu) and she cooks, which is handy.

Intimacies

Principles

Defining
Words are everything. They open all doors and will bring all together.
Literacy is as important as sight and sound. Even the lowest slave should learn to read.

Major
In art, the beauty of Truth is superior to the Real; in philosophy, the reverse.
The Immaculate Faith is run by the hog and taught by the ostrich.
The scholar and the artist depend upon peace to conduct their work.
I have no time for love.

Minor
War is not "good for the economy".
Promises and forthright dealings are important.
The artist with no philosophy grows dull and soft.
The philosopher with no art grows brittle and chips easily.
Riverspeak, being the most widely understood language in human Creation, should eventually take its place beside Old Realm.
Higher understanding should be founded first on simple observations.
A society may be judged by how it treats its weakest.
Science and philosophy should be tested.

Ties (People)

Hieroglyph-of-Oasis
She is my respected teacher and among the greatest savants of Creation, even ifshe is a stuffy conservative. (Major)

Vashti
Whatever. (Minor)

Galewalks
My best friend and...maybe wouldn't make a bad model either... (Defining)

Princess Ruia
She is a wealthy and valuable patron with a good appreciation for artistic and civic works.

Followers
Protective (Major)

Ties (Places)

Bexaue
My protection and also my hometown. (Major)

Vivid Ink's Atelier
Protective (Major)

Verdant Solarium
Alma Mater (Major) The Oasis is a key strategic point and having it knocked over would also disrupt the region. (Minor)

Charms

Bureaucracy

Frugal Merchant Method (1m/Simple)
Determine exact quality of any good offered with cursory examination.

Craft

Craftsman Needs No Tools (4m or 6m/Simple/Mute)
Work without needing tools or workshop. Work at blazing speed (minutes or seconds) for Basic and Major projects. Costs 2m less if the Solar does use tools. Does not accelerate superior or legendary projects.

Linguistics

Sagacious Reading of Intent (4m, 1wp/Reflexive)
Invoked after reading a text but before any social influence is rolled or checked. Make a (Wits, Charisma, or Manipulation + Linguistics) read intentions action that is automatically successful. Instantly know if the writing indicates any of the author's Intimacies and what they are. Does not reveal hidden motives directly but can reveal the absence of any Intimacies.

Discerning Savant's Eye (1m, 1wp/Reflexive/Scene)
Make out damaged or erased text.

Perfect Recollection Technique (1m/Reflexive/Indefinite)
Commit 1 mote/work to perfectly remember it in the time it takes to read. Pay 1m to reference it. As long as the book is referenced at least weekly, it is perfectly memorized. Once maintained for a season, it becomes permanent and the commitment is released. Even if lapsed, the Solar need only pay 1m to revive it.

Swift Sage's Eye (1m/Reflexive/Mute/One text)
Read as fast as you can turn the pages – three pages per second.

Mind-Scribing Method (5m, 1wp/Simple/Mute)
Engage in an extended roll to produce long work even without any writing instruments and may explicitly use Linguistics Charms as if it were written normally. All progress is stored mentally without limit.

Heaven-Drawing Discipline (8m, 1wp/Supplemental/Mute)
Can be used with Mind-Scribing Technique to ignore Willpower cost. Compose great works and massive volumes at increased speed. UPGRADEABLE.

Whirling Brush Method (3m or 1m for repeat use/Reflexive/Mute)
Pen brief social influence or short communiques with incredible speed (seconds or near-instantly). Flawlessly copy a written work of any length as she reads or a rapid conversation between multiple parties. Can copy maps.

Flowing Elegant Hand (2m/Supplemental/Mute)
Double 9s for written Linguistics actions. UPGRADEABLE.

Letter-Within-A-Letter Technique (4m/Simple/Mute/Written-only)
Imbue a secret message in a document that appears to be something else. The Solar must be familiar with the recipient. Magic that can break the code costs one additional Willpower and must beat (Linguistics) or the highest difficulty of any magical encryption inscribed into the text.

Subtle Speech Method (3m/Simple/Mute)
Speak esoterically. Only intended recipients can understand the true meaning; everyone else just hears the surface message.

Twisted Words Technique (1m, 1wp/Simple/Psyche)
Mental action disguised as Mental Influence (Manipulation + Ability) that must target an Intimacy but has inverted effect. Persuasion causes action opposite to the Intimacy leveraged. Instill causes the an inverse Intimacy to form. Once successful, persuasion caused by this Charm cannot be resisted with Willpower until another character successfully dissuades. Target must then pay (Essence) Willpower. Instilled intimacies are completely indecipherable from regular intimacies.

Lore

Harmonious Academic Methodology (Permanent)
Add Solar's Essence in non-Charm autosux to any Lore roll involving a specialty. Add an additional Lore specialty at the end of each story.

Melee

Dipping Swallow Defense (2m/Reflexive)
Ignore all penalties to parry an attack and gain 1 initiative if successful. Cannot by itself remove penalties from a surprise attack.

Panoply

Crafting

Major Slot
Major Slot
Major Slot

Selected Works

Writing

Furnitures
One of Vinty's very earliest, this bizarrely specific work purports to document every single piece of furniture within the premises of the Verdant Solarium, recording material, make and all the carvings and vandalism left by generations of students. Its existence returned to light a year ago when a younger Solarium student, Brotep stumbled upon it while researching historic student culture of the Solarium. Since then, a number of other manuscripts have been discovered on similarly specific topics such as all the doorways, portals and archways in the Solarium as well as a barely started treatment on the distribution of marginalia on works found in the library across shelf height.

Vinty on Everything
Vinty's best known work among the student body, who have noted its beauty, strangeness and obsessive adherence to precision in turn. Its first four chapters, entitled Flame, River, Dragon, and (High) Realm are summarized descriptions of those languages's verse forms and calligraphic properties, written in those languages with painstakingly precise and eye-wateringly compact and perfectly justified script, that are each exactly one quire (24 pages) in length down to the letter, rune or character in the final space. This is followed by four large collections of calligraphic examples without a single actual word or sentence, being entirely concerned with isolated, precise renderings of letters or ideogram radicals or combination. It is practically the only work that treats Riverspeak as a valid medium for calligraphy.

Verdant Solarium Library Record (Vinty's Booklist)
Not the first work by that name or intent, Vinty's Booklist is perhaps the most complete and least useful ever, due to its novel method of catalogue, which would only be useful to someone intent on reading every single work in the academy’s sizeable collection or at least intent on reading through the entire list of entries just to browse for something to read. Each page is rendered in the nauseatingly small font characteristic of Vinty’s early years, bordered by margins largely filled out by the author herself. As a result, the final work is at best one part catalogue and at least three parts caustic mass book review.

Dream Between the Covers (by Red Beats)
A story of attraction between a former slave turned calligrapher and the handsome god or goddess of either a neglected library or neglected books (the later stories arguably go back and forth these points). The eponymous first tale runs to 620 lines of verse which are honestly quite good and is followed by a series of increasingly lurid romances until the manuscript stops abruptly. Present students believe that the work was censored, or else safely removed to avoid such, or that the "lost tales" remain to be found or that what exists is a copy of an illuminated original.

Southern Polities
A crisply written work listing and describing extant polities of the South along with brief histories of their interactions and a guide to references with more individual detail that can be found in the Verdant Solarium's collection (this last section often omitted when copied for libraries outside). Now frequently referenced.

Nine Million Eyes
The capstone work to Vivid Ink's academic years at the Verdant Solarium and the last known penned under her birth name Vinty. It comes in two chapters totaling four quires (96 pages), standing in stark contrast to Book Three, Sun of Cosmos in the Vision of the Absolute Eye, the subject of its critique. The first chapter, written in a succinct and condensed voice, examines the inevitable assumptions necessary to the great book's view of a universal order through a series of quick thought experiments. The second is a long, illustrative list of statements that, if ever proven or disproven, would leave that worldview with a lot of explaining to do.

Letters
Composed of copies of open letters crediting numerous authors corresponding with Vinty and then Vivid Ink with commentary by Vivid Ink herself. It paints an immensely detailed and anecdote-filled picture of Southern politics after the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress and has quickly become one of the foremost works on the subject.