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Character profile
- Heritage
- Half-Naiad, half-High-Elf
- Inspected role
- Summoner; Elite
- Named father
- High-Elf King Finian
Current Status
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Unknown
Deceased
Introduction
Tsarina Signet is a level-60 elite summoner who first appears during the circus quest in Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. Half-naiad and half-High Elf, she carries living tattoos on her body and commands an army of paper creatures. Carl first learns of her from a circus advertisement defaced with the word “traitor.”[1]
Appearance and Personality
Signet is covered in living tattoos. Carl and Mongo feel a powerful attraction to her when they meet, and her white map dot initially suggests that she is friendly. Carl has no idea that she has already chosen him as a blood sacrifice.
Signet can be affectionate and persuasive, particularly when speaking about Grimaldi or the family she has lost. She is also willing to manipulate people to get what she wants. She draws Carl into her quest without telling him what she intends to do with his blood, then takes Donut hostage when he tries to leave.[2]
Signet wants to recover her family’s lands and sees herself as their rightful heir. Her account of the conflict differs from Areson’s, particularly over the naiad revolt. Despite her naiad ancestry, she suffers when submerged in water and needs magical protection to take part in the river assault.
Signet mourns the people who die fighting alongside her. After Nadine’s death, she allows Edgar to create a tattoo of Nadine and Clint from her memories. She is careful to tell Holger that the figures are likenesses of his loved ones, not their spirits brought back to life.[3]
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Attributes and Abilities
Signet can summon through blood once each night. The amount of blood determines what she can summon, and her chosen sacrifice must suffer an external injury for the spell to work. Carl unknowingly foils her plan by fighting inside Protective Shell, which keeps him from being wounded.
Signet’s paper army cannot get through the ancient magic protecting the circus’s big top. She is also personally barred from entering. Carl eventually helps her reconcile with Grimaldi, who lifts the banishment and lets her inside.[4]
Signet fights with a paper army as well as living allies recruited from the forest. The paper soldiers disappear during the trap at Fort Freedom, leaving the group to face the danger without them.
Her memorial tattoos are blood-and-ink elementals made from remains and her memories of the dead. Nadine’s tattoo includes Clint because Signet remembers how much he meant to her, even though his body was not recovered. Her three-headed Di-We tattoo depicts the progenitor whose death gave rise to Areson and his brothers.[5]
At the masquerade, Signet uses Carl’s knife to cut her own throat. Her blood and tattoo magic strike at Imogen and break the seal, but the sacrifice sends Signet to the Nothing. Some of her creations and gifts survive her disappearance.[6]
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History
Book 2
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
The circus’s traitor and the unspoken sacrifice
Carl first sees Signet in a defaced circus advertisement calling her a traitor. When they meet, he feels intensely attracted to her and agrees to help. She secretly chooses him as a blood sacrifice, but he escapes injury inside Protective Shell and prevents the summoning without knowing it.
Signet tells Carl that Grimaldi rescued her as a child and later became her lover. She asks Carl to return, then treats his departure as a broken promise. She captures the party and holds Donut hostage to force his cooperation. She also tells him about Heather’s sacrifice, though her account leaves questions about how she herself survived.[2]
An army cannot break the banishment
Her paper army cannot breach the ancient protection around the big top. After Carl kills Heather, Signet thanks him for freeing her from two centuries of suffering. Signet still cannot enter the tent herself.
Carl uses Wisp Armor to keep control of himself temporarily inside the parasite network. He gets Signet and Grimaldi talking, and they reconcile. Grimaldi removes her banishment, allowing her to enter the big top alone. Before she goes, she promises that Donut will be released at sunrise.[7]
Choose Book 2 or later above to read this part of the history.
Book 5
The Butcher’s Masquerade
A restoration campaign
Signet returns at level 60 with roughly seventy allies drawn from different forest peoples. She asks Carl to help them and shows him a wounded hunter when he hesitates. She explains that her mother was a naiad princess killed after the revolution, that her father Finian once ruled the region, and that Imogen is her half-sister.
Her new quest sends the group against Fort Freedom as part of a campaign to reclaim her family’s lands. She assures Carl that this is not another attempt to sacrifice him. When Samantha asks for her body back, Signet acknowledges their relationship and promises to help after both campaigns are finished. Carl doubts that she means it.[8]
Fort Freedom and the memorial
The group approaches Fort Freedom through the river while Samantha distracts the defenders. Signet uses a summoned protector to withstand the pain of being underwater. When the trap closes, her paper army vanishes. The recalled monster Claude kills Nadine and another ally before Carl’s group defeats it.
Signet survives the attack and tells Carl what happened inside Fort Freedom: the killings, the eating of the eggs and the defenders’ loss of control over Claude. The completed quest leads them toward Imogen and the High Elf stronghold. With Finian’s death confirmed and allies to mourn, Signet stops before beginning the next assault.
Edgar uses Nadine’s remains and Signet’s memories to make a new tattoo. The image includes Clint, and Holger gets to say goodbye to them both. Signet explains that these are living likenesses made from blood and ink. Nadine and Clint themselves are still dead.[5]
The assault becomes an invitation
Signet prepares to attack the High Elf stronghold and warns Carl about its defenses. He persuades her to wait, intending to use her assault as a distraction. She listens to his revised plan but challenges his belief that he can control how the story unfolds.
Apito unexpectedly teleports Signet into the crawler ballroom as an invited guest, disrupting the plan for her to attack from outside. Signet notices the judges’ strange auras. After Carl explains their connection to the production, she wonders whether a successful host might be rewarded with immortality.[9]
Choosing the sacrifice herself
Signet tells Carl that Edgar is dead. She also refuses to accept a memorial tattoo as a way of bringing Grimaldi back. After D’Nadia explains how the dungeon controls its people, Signet decides to make the Marauder sacrifice herself instead of letting Carl carry out his plan to attack Eva.
Signet cuts her throat with Carl’s knife and uses her blood and living tattoos to attack Imogen. She breaks the seal and is taken to the Nothing. Her remaining creations and gifts are all that Carl and the others have left of her.[6]
Choose Book 5 or later above to read this part of the history.
Relationships
Carl
Signet’s relationship with Carl begins with deception. She offers him affection and a quest while secretly planning to sacrifice him, then captures Donut to force him to help. Carl nevertheless brings her and Grimaldi together, allowing them to resolve the conflict that has kept her outside the big top.[4]
Grimaldi
Grimaldi rescued Signet when she was a child. According to Signet, they became lovers after she grew up, but Heather’s sacrifice and the events that followed drove them apart. Grimaldi banished Signet from the big top and only lifts the banishment after Carl helps them speak to each other again.[11]
Signet knows that a tattoo of Grimaldi would not bring him back. At the masquerade, she rejects the idea that preserving his likeness would be the same as restoring the person she loved.[12]
Her family and Imogen
Signet is the daughter of Finian and a naiad princess, and Imogen is her half-sister. Her mother’s murder and the loss of her family’s lands drive her campaign. Other characters give different accounts of the revolution, but Signet holds Imogen responsible for her own suffering and attacks her at the masquerade.[13]
Samantha
Her followers
Edgar, Areson and the other forest survivors join Signet’s campaign for reasons of their own. She pauses the fighting to mourn those lost at Fort Freedom and to preserve Nadine’s likeness. Edgar’s later death is another personal loss before the final confrontation at the masquerade.[15]
References
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, chapters 6. ↩
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, chapters 6–8. ↩1 ↩2
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 14, 25–29. ↩
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, chapters 6–11. ↩1 ↩2
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 25–29. ↩1 ↩2
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 73–75. ↩1 ↩2
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, chapters 9–11. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 13–17, 24–25. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 55, 63–68. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 13–15, 25–29, 63–75. ↩
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, chapters 7–11. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 73. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 14, 25–29, 74. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 25, 28–29. ↩
- The Butcher’s Masquerade, chapters 15, 25–29, 73. ↩