High Priestess Cetra
Type NPC Actor FranGoofy Name Liara Cetra (chosen) Birth name Forsaken to the Great Natu Tree Titles High Priestess of the Ecclesia Solari, Silvered Eye, Voice of the Trinity, the Listener Also known as Liara (Solar Scions identity), “Mother” (to Thirteen, in private) Creature type Humanoid Race Human (presumed) Places Astraloftum, St. Ode’bbej Cathedral Family Thirteen (adopted/surrogate son) Factions Ecclesia Solari (head), SABER (director), Solar Scions (former active member) Class / Profession High Priestess, former Solar Scion Predecessor Saint Ascon
“The Trinity grants answers to all who seek. The foolish do not see the answers laid out in front of them. The wise look, and look away.”
High Priestess Cetra
Liara Cetra, High Priestess of the Ecclesia Solari, is the spiritual and political head of the largest religion in the Skysea. She is the most powerful living mortal authority on Tamasora who is not a Titan or a giant, and she is, by deliberate design, one of the most invisible people in her own city.
She is two people, depending on who is looking. To the public she is the elusive, “blind” High Priestess of the Ecclesia Solari, a figure of ceremony and pronouncement, whose hands the faithful kiss but whose eyes they do not meet. To a smaller and far older world, she is Liara Cetra: rising Solar Scion, troublemaker, mentor to rookies, the woman who staked the Vampire Lord of Yahar’gul in his own throne room. Almost no one knows the two are the same person. The ones who do are, with very few exceptions, people she has personally chosen to know.
She has held the High Priesthood for twelve years. She inherited it from Saint Ascon, and she has spent every one of those twelve years uncovering, untangling, and quietly destroying the work he left behind. She is the most consequential reformer the Ecclesia has had in a century. She is also the most surveilled, the most threatened, and the most lonely.
Two Faces
The High Priestess. Robed in white and pale silver. Her face is unreadable because her eyes are not visible: they are sealed under a layer of consecrated silver from the Silvering, the rite she underwent at her elevation. She does not read scripture; scripture is read to her by lectors. She speaks slowly. She does not gesture. When she pronounces doctrine, she pronounces it the way someone reads the weather. The faithful describe her as terrifying and merciful in the same breath. Conservative cardinals describe her as the most difficult High Priestess to deal with in living memory.
Liara Cetra, Solar Scion. Sharper-tongued, more humorous, more bodily. She is allowed (by herself) to laugh, to argue, to take a long way home. As a Scion she favors lighter armor, a fast blade, and lighter teachings: she runs informal classes for new Scion recruits in the Hall of Scions, stealing time from her duties to do it. She is good with rookies, in the specific way that someone who has lost almost everyone close to her tends to be good with the young.
The two personas share one body, one voice, one mind. The public does not know that the woman who blesses the harvest from the steps of St. Ode’bbej Cathedral also corrects sword grip at the Hall of Scions, sometimes in the same afternoon. Maintaining the gap is exhausting and necessary. She has been told, more than once, by people she respects, that the gap will eventually kill her.
Powers & Senses
The Silvered Eyes
At her elevation, Liara’s eyes were sealed under consecrated silver in the rite called the Silvering. She has been, in the most literal sense, blind for twelve years. The silver covers the eyes completely; she cannot read books, recognize faces, or look upon the sun.
In exchange, she sees things mortals are not meant to see:
- Souls. Their colors, their depths, their fractures. She can tell, on first meeting, whether someone is missing a piece of themselves.
- Lies. Not always perfectly, but well enough to flinch when a parishioner she has known for years tells her something they have rehearsed.
- The residue of broken vows. Old marriage promises, old Sun-Sworns, old oaths sworn at altars and never kept. She walks through her own Cathedral and sees centuries of small breakages glittering in the floor.
She does not regret the rite. She does not, privately, miss her former sight, except for two specific things she will not name.
The Listening
Liara can hear, at will, any spoken conversation occurring in Astraloftum, and (when she concentrates) much of what is said across the Skysea. The Listening is constant; she cannot turn it off, only narrow it.
She does not remember most of it. No mortal mind, even a divinely lifted one, could. Each morning at sunrise, she rings a small silver bell on her writing desk, and chooses one conversation she heard the previous day to keep. Everything else passes out of her by the hour.
This is the only known way to circumvent her Listening: write on paper. Paper does not pass through her tide. Sealed letters, written orders, and silent gestures are her one blind spot. SABER’s protocols are built around this fact.
A persistent rumor among the cardinals says she keeps a second bell for conversations she has heard that she does not want to remember. The location and number of those bells (one? two? a thousand?) is a question Cetra has never answered. Nobody has asked her twice.
History
The Solar Scion Years
Before her elevation, Liara Cetra was a celebrated Solar Scion who rose quickly through the ranks of the Hall of Scions. She was famous for two things: a refusal to follow standing orders that conflicted with her conscience, and a gift for keeping junior Scions alive who, under any other mentor, would have died on their first mission.
Her most famous campaign was the Fall of Yahar’gul. Liara led the Solar Scion strike force, alongside Solari Cleric Anastasia and the Green Knights, that overran Count Preshons’ defenses, staked the vampire lord, burned his body to ash, and rescued his oppressed children, including a young dhampir named Silas Clemens. Liara was the one who handed Silas to Anastasia. The two women have not spoken about that night in many years, but they remember it the same way.
The Adoption of Thirteen
In the years between Yahar’gul and her elevation, Liara discovered a dormant crystallized Cometborn Egg within the Mirror Realm. She brought it home in secret. She raised the boy who emerged from it, away from the prying eyes of the Church, as her own son.
When his stigmata began to manifest violently, the Solari Inquisition seized him, branded him with the Twilight Brand through research originally conducted on Silas, and sent him on the mission that killed his entire squad. When he was brought before the High Inquisitor in chains, broken and weeping and sentenced to death, Liara walked in through the doors and put herself between the executioner’s blade and the boy.
“He is not a failure. He is a weapon. The Inquisition, no… YOU, High Inquisitor, YOU and your men created a Demon to fight Fomorians? Then let him fight. Let him bear the sin you etched into his skin.”
She knelt before him. She lifted his chin. “You will not die today, my child. But the boy you were is gone. You will sever yourself from the Light of the Public. You will be my shadow. You will be… Thirteen.”
This is, by every survivor’s account, the moment Cetra became Cetra. It is also the moment that decided her path to the High Priesthood. The Conclave promoted her within the year.
The Elevation
She was raised to High Priestess twelve years ago, following the (suspicious, sealed, never-publicly-explained) death of Saint Ascon. She was not the Conclave’s first choice. She was not the Conclave’s second choice. She was the choice the Trinity made directly, granting her the office over the heads of two senior Cardinals through a sign during the elevation rite that the Conclave has refused, to this day, to make public.
She took the Silvered Eyes that same day. She has not removed the silver since.
The Project: Undoing Ascon
The single defining political enterprise of Cetra’s reign is the methodical dismantling of Saint Ascon’s legacy. She has spent her twelve years auditing every operation he authorized, every doctrine he reformed, every cardinal he elevated, and every name he scratched from the Litany of Names.
What she has confirmed:
- The de-canonization of Saint Brasser the Ambrosius was a cover-up. Ascon was the architect.
- Several “Apostates” SABER hunted under Ascon’s orders were political rivals, not enemies of the faith. At least three were innocent. Two of those three are still missing, and she is still looking.
- Ascon’s body was never in the casket that the Crypt of High Priests displays as his. The corpse that lay in state did not bear the Sun-Crown Brand.
- He twice silently shortened the Litany of Names, which under Church law is an act of treason against the divine.
What she suspects but cannot yet prove:
- Ascon is not dead.
- He has been wearing other faces.
- One of those faces is currently inside the Ecclesia.
Her recent private orders include:
- A standing proscription forbidding any cleric from taking Ascon’s name as their Sun-Sworn (the only such proscription in Church history).
- A reinvestigation of the Ruby Incident, which Ascon sealed.
- A discreet line of questioning placed before Abbot Muho about what Muho saw in Ascon’s bedchamber the night the body was viewed . Muho has not yet answered.
This project is dangerous, slow, and politically suicidal if rushed. The Conservative wing of the Conclave (Ascon’s own elevated Cardinals) would crucify her if she moved too fast or revealed too much. She moves carefully. She trusts almost no one.
Relationships
Thirteen: Surrogate Son, Informant, the Knife at Her Own Throat
The most complicated relationship of her life. He is the boy she pulled from a Mirror Realm egg, raised in secret, lost to the Inquisition, won back as Thirteen, and now deploys as her single most valued operative. He calls her “the High Priestess” in public and “Mother” in private (the only person, alive, who is permitted to). He reports to her on the Soul Shepherds regularly.
It is widely (and quietly) believed that Cetra’s Sun-Sworn is Thirteen. She has neither confirmed nor denied. If true, the implication is enormous: her personal vow, the name she whispers to the rising sun, is the name of someone who is functionally already lost (Thirteen’s Light Severance severed him from the Public Light).
Abbot Muho: The One Who Remembers Her Name
Their relationship is older than her High Priesthood. He performed quiet pastoral counsel during her Scion years. After her elevation, she has leaned on him as her one trusted contemplative voice. He is, currently, the person she most wants to speak to about Ascon. He has been astral-projecting on a hunt for weeks. She is waiting.
Saint Ascon: Predecessor, Project, Possible Future Adversary
She did not know him well during his reign; he kept distance from the rising Scions. After his death, she has come to know him better than anyone has, by reading every document he ever signed. She does not hate him, which would be simpler. She grieves the office he wore, and grieves the version of the Church he could have built and instead poisoned.
She is afraid, when she lets herself be afraid, that he is still alive. She is more afraid that he is not, and that something else is using his absence.
Zariel Tenebris: Parallel Authority
Lord Commander Zariel and Cetra share Astraloftum’s two largest offices and almost no easy conversation. They cooperate professionally; they led the Battle of the Streets together during the Fomorian Invasion of Astraloftum without difficulty. They do not socialize. Cetra has, more than once, considered telling Zariel about the Vincent of Damocles file. She has, so far, decided that Virtus and the Soul Shepherds will get there first.
Luminaria: The Elder
Cetra is the Ecclesia’s official emissary to Luminaria, the ancient Solar Dragon who performs the rite that elevates Solari Rookies into Solar Scions. The arrangement between the Dragon and the Church is older than the High Priesthood itself, and is conducted in a language Cetra had to learn after her elevation. What Luminaria asks of her in exchange for the rite is not public. Cetra has hinted, exactly once, that “the Elder does not ask. She tells. And we listen.”
Soul Shepherds
She guided them through their Solar Scion trials and personally escorted them to the Luminaria Kingdom where they would later becomes Scions. She assigned them the mission to investigate the ailing Great Natu Tree. She approved their reformation. She knighted Bartholomew personally and made the historic proclamation that Kobolds shall no longer be deemed Fomorian. She watches them through Thirteen. She is, against her better judgment, beginning to like several of them. This is dangerous for the same reason it has always been dangerous: she is exhausted, and these are the first people in years who have made her hope.
Recent Actions
- Bartholomew’s Ascension. Knighted the first Kobold Solar Scion in Church history. Declared Kobolds non-Fomorian. Telepathically prepared Bartholomew before the petition: “Young Reginald, I have foreseen this day many Noctus ago. Choose your words carefully in these hallowed halls, for the Clergy will be hard to convince, and so will I…”
- The Fomorian Invasion of Astraloftum. Led the Battle of the Streets alongside Animus Tenebris and Lord Commander Zariel. Publicly rallied the survivors. Dubbed the Soul Shepherds as heroes of the day.
- The Ascon Reinvestigations. Currently weighing whether to break the seal on the Ruby Incident.
- The Sun-Sworn Proscription. Issued the private standing order forbidding any cleric from naming Saint Ascon at sunrise.