To take a break from updating the Planeswalker's Guide to Solphos, I decided to write up a dossier for one of Solphos's main characters instead.


Philosopher Lumina Cordatis Revelaris

Race: Human
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Colors: Primary , splashing
Alignment: Neutral Good
Home Plane: Solphos
Likes: Social justice, blogging evangelism, classical literature, pancakes
Dislikes: Keeping secrets, corruption, and the dark

An explanation of Lumina's name - "Philosopher" is an occupational style, like "Professor." "Lumina" is her given name. "Cordatis" is a merit name she earned through service to society. "Revelaris" is her birth name and family name. It's considered unprofessional to use your birth name widely, so in formal society you would refer to her as "Philosopher Lumina."

Preamble

The Revelaris family is as close as you can get to nobility on Solphos. They have been an old and respected house all through the history of the Continent, and even after the Empire of Corindia fell, the power of the Revelaris family was enough to cement its position in the new world order: many scions of the bloodline would later go on to become luminaries in the alchemical arts. In fact, Lumina's brother Halus received the Turris Kardiapolis Sigil for his research into atmospheric conditioning. Lumina's early years were spent in the shadow of her family's history.

The truth is that Lumina was simply not a very good student. Pure alchemy, mechanics, natural philosophy, you name it: where her brother might have topped the class, she simply sank into the depths of mediocrity. Even in optics, her strongest subject, she struggled to construct even the most fundamental glyphs. Her magisters wrote her off as a lost cause, but allowed her to promote through the examinations each month due to her family name - and Lumina hated herself for it. To rely on birthright rather than individual advancement is a great taboo in Solphosian culture.

Lumina hated how others whispered among themselves and fell silent when she walked past. She hated the piercing look that her tutors gave her at the end of each month. Most of all, she felt as though she had done a great injustice to her family and to society. How could this system be fair? How could she live with herself? Worst of all - how many others had benefited from corruption and old money as she had? Was the pillar of education that Solphos revolved around rotten to the core?

So Lumina studied hard. She put her nose to the grindstone and forced herself to slog through months and months of cramming, staying long hours when the other alchemical disciples were socializing. She tried with all her being to redeem herself for the transgression that only she and her tutors knew about - and it worked. Her grades improved. She passed each examination with more and more confidence. Soon she was on her way to the graduation ceremony, and Lumina felt at last that her life had turned around.

But little did Lumina know the extent of the hornets' nest she had kicked. Her probing questions about the nature of the Institutes themselves, spurred by her disillusionment with the academic system, had reached ears in high places that disapproved of any disruption to the status quo - including the Questioning Philosopher at the time, Scepter Ariadnus Penitei. Philosopher Scepter knew that if Lumina were allowed to graduate and enter the academic elite, she would wield a great deal of influence. Enough influence to expound on her ideas about Solphosian society and endanger Philosopher Scepter's own career.

So Lumina Revelaris did not graduate.

Lumina was not informed about the news until she had already arrived at the Institute auditorium in her graduation robes. She refused to believe them. When she tried to step up to the podium, natron golems restrained her and pulled her kicking and screaming away from everything her life had been built upon... and Lumina's spark ignited.

Lumina awoke in a cathedral, surrounded by stained-glass light. That was when she knew she was in a different world: there were no cathedrals on Solphos, not any more.

As Lumina traveled the planes and learned more about the multiverse beyond Solphos, she learned her true calling: photomancy, the magic dealing with the manipulation of light. She took her alchemical training and combined it with the magic of countless worlds to create something greater than the sum of its parts. At the same time, as she learned about each new and different society, she became more and more resentful of the corruption that had become endemic in Solphos's academic culture. One day, she vowed, she would return and set the world right.

Fool's Gold

Lumina returned to a Solphos that had only deterioriated since she last saw it. More than ever before, Institutes engaged in petty rivalry, alchemists sabotaged each others' findings, and the Philosopher's Cabal imposed opaque crackdowns and censored research seemingly at random. The people of Solphos could no longer trust each other. Lumina was determined to change that.

The former student bided her time. Over a period of months, she gathered allies and accumulated a stockpile of damning evidence against the corruption endemic within the Institutes and the Philosopher's Cabal. Most shocking among them was proof that Philosopher Scepter had used mind control and underhanded manipulation in her rise to power. Lumina found it impossible to condone that. When the Golden Reckoning began, a cataclysmic event that threatened to destroy all of Solphos, she believed more than ever that the old guard had to be overthrown to stop the crisis.

So when the time was right, Lumina broke into the Turris Kardiapolis and confronted Philosopher Scepter.

The archmage, powerful as she was, was no match for Lumina's abilities as a planeswalker. Lumina defeated her in a magical duel and used her own networks to distribute the evidence of her crimes. And Lumina succeeded - there was a massive uproar that rippled across Solphos. The wayward Philosopher was banished to the Dark Lands for ever. With the mastermind deposed and the bureaucracy dissolved, Lumina was certain that the apocalypse facing Solphos could finally be stopped. But she was wrong.

Lumina realized too late that despite Philosopher Scepter's unforgivable sins, she had been the only one in Solphos powerful and influential enough to stop the philosopher's gold. Though Lumina began working with the remainder of the Philosopher's Cabal in searching for a solution, the damage had been done. They would not be able to find an answer in time. As much as Lumina hated to admit it, no matter how vast the evil she had defeated, she had been in the wrong. Her own actions might have doomed her home to destruction.

Fortunately for Lumina, Philosopher Scepter was a woman not so easily defeated. Scepter returned to the Turris Kardiapolis more determined than ever to eradicate the philosopher's gold from Solphos. And when they worked together, as much as Lumina hated the amoral pragmatism of her older counterpart, she could not deny that there was some good in her methods as well. Some of that paradigm shift was Scepter's doing - some of that was honest respect from one human being for another.

On her final mission to fight the philosopher's gold, Philosopher Scepter succeeded. But she never returned. In the aftermath of the apocalypse, Lumina felt it was her responsibility to take up Philosopher Scepter's mantle and give back to the civilization she had almost destroyed through her own blind idealism. She became Philosopher Lumina Cordatis Revelaris. She took upon herself the responsibility of rebuilding her home. And she started Solphos's first ever newspaper, the Libri Liberi, to ensure that ignorance would never be the ruin of society.

Not ever again.

For more details about the Golden Reckoning, see the Fool's Gold Diaries.

Description

Lumina Revelaris is a bright young woman with light skin, inquisitive golden eyes, and short blonde hair tied off to one side in a ponytail. Parts of her face and neck are tattooed with alchemical sigils - a traditional ritual that some Solphosian households perform to make their children more gifted in the alchemical arts. Lumina's tattoos are in blue ink and represent a glyph of correspondence, the spell that allows the exchange of information across great distances.

Lumina knows what it's like to be an outsider, and doesn't wish to repeat that experience. She tries her best to blend in on the different planes she visits. But her style of magic requires her to carry dozens of arcane lenses and prisms on her person, as well as protective sigiled robes and goggles to protect her from her own blinding flares... so she still sticks out like a beacon no matter where she goes.

In person, Lumina is charismatic and full of enthusiasm. She's very passionate about ideals she believes in, ranging from social justice to the best pancakes in Terra Munda, and it shows. But ever since her experiences during the Golden Reckoning, she's matured and developed more perspective about the world she lives in. The prospect of hiding her own identity as a planeswalker makes her deeply uncomfortable on a personal level, but she knows that for the greater good - at least, for the time being - the existence of planeswalkers must remain a well-guarded secret.

Abilities

Ever since her time at the Furopolis Institute, Lumina hasn't really improved as a generalist mage. Instead, she focuses on the one discipline that she truly excels in - photomancy, the magic of light. Whether it's blinding her enemies, dispelling darkness and illusions, or creating her own illusory servants out of holographic projection, Lumina has taken the manipulation of light to an art form.

While Lumina is primarily a white mage due to her disposition and field of study, Lumina understands the value of the whole spectrum of colors. After all, white light is not a single pure entity, but a conglomerate of a spectrum of different wavelengths. Lumina has no qualms about splashing different colors to seek the truth, banish falsehoods and vaporize evil wherever it may lurk.

If I were building a Duel Deck for Lumina, it would be a tempo deck focused on using Blinding Beams and Banishing Light to clear the way for Archons of Justice to attack. Prophetic Prisms would allow it to splash a variety of answer cards depending on the threat it was facing.

Lumina in Stories

Write Lumina like an idealistic college student or a UN social worker. She honestly thinks she can make the world better. She's nice to people who agree with her and indignant at people who don't.

Lumina is a difficult character to work with because she's very embedded in the affairs of her home plane. Rather than someone like Jace who is concerned about problems across the multiverse, Lumina prefers to stay in Solphos and fix the problems there. On top of that, she's my protagonist in the continuing Solphos storyline, and I'd like to have some say over where her journey takes her. That said, she does take breaks from time to time to explore new planes, and that's a good avenue for her to run into other parts of the M:EM.

The easiest way to get Lumina's attention is to do something so wrong, so unjust, that the white knight in her can't help but sit up and cry foul. She's zealous, almost impulsive, about chasing down things that don't square with her own moral code. Corruption and censorship are the two evils that Lumina hates with the most passion. So once you have her dead set on something, it's easy to take her struggle and turn it into a good story.


That's all! That's Lumina Revelaris, one of the most important characters to emerge from the Solphos storyline. She learned temperance from the events of the Golden Reckoning, and now she's taken up the responsibility of a Philosopher in her own right. Her story isn't finished yet - but what other interesting side stories might fit into her life? That's up for you all to decide.

Comments and criticism appreciated.

Interesting character. She reminds me of Aloise Hartley in some ways, but I sort of like that her story is so entwined with her home plane. We actually don't see that all much with planeswalkers (except Beryl and Kahr-ret-Taris, off the top of my head) so I like that a lot. I haven't had the chance to look over Solphos yet (sorry about that. Planes are sort of low on my priority list, but I'm hoping to get to it soon!) but I'm liking what I'm seeing with Lumina so far.

Not that I would suggest changing it by any means, but I would like to note that we have a number of 'walkers whose name starts with "L". Lia Xin, Larasa, Lourima and Lukas. Of course, we have even more "A"s, so...

Also, "blogging"?

Thanks! I'm sure that Lumina would get on well with Aloise if they ever met.


I actually came up with Lumina four years ago on the Wizards forums, and her name is pretty much set in stone in my mind. I was a little concerned by the similarity in pronunciation between Lumina and Lourima, but I don't think it's that big a deal. The Latin root makes her name very easy to differentiate.


Well, I have a character who started her own printing press specifically to inform people about current affairs and preach her own viewpoint on social issues. I call it like I see it.

Yeah, I really don't think it's a big deal, either. And believe me, I know the feeling. I have a character in War of the Wheel who is new to that story, but like yours, I came up with him years and years ago, and it's pretty set in my mind. His name is Sundar Elarion, whose last name sounds a lot like Tevish's character's first name, Illarion Vale. These things happens.


Fair enough!

And I'm sure Denner would love to take Daneera out for some Dinner.

If he only had the dinero.

Howdy, CKY!

I confess to being in a similar position to Raven, in that I haven't read up on Lumina's plane yet. (I usually don't have much to contribute to world-building efforts -- that is not where my talents, already limited as they are, tend to lie.) But I did read up on Lumina, and I'm very interested to see where she goes.

I share her devotion to pancakes, so I am predisposed to like her.


Here's another thing I'm predisposed to like. This may be a relic from my childhood aspirations of becoming a journalist, but the idea of a kind of newsie planeswalker just fills me with happiness. I love the thought of her investigating stories, cranking-out pamphlets, getting into scrapes with corrupt powers-that-be. I know she has more angles than that, but that's the one which gets me the most excited.

I just listened to the audiobook of Terry Pratchett's The Truth so I'm also in a mood for journalist characters in fantasy settings

Also, I really do need to re-read the Westmark Trilogy one of these days.

Nice character! I will vote yea on this one. There is a great back story and she seems like a well rounded idea.