Editing Queen Sootsleeves (section)

==Abilities==
She was born owning a torch, steed, and kingdom, and cannot be separated from them.<ref>I’m the poorest Queen of all, but I was given three things when I was born.”<br><br>“A torch,” Avery said.<br><br>“Fire in hand and breast.”<br><br>“A kingdom,” Avery said.<br><br>“Loyal to the last, despite my failings and lack of wealth.”<br><br>“And your steed.”<br><br>“Unfaltering.”  The woman stroked the steering wheel, then stomped on the gas.  She peeled out in the contained room, turned the wheel hard, and turned the car around.  To face the window.  “Would you be so kind as to remove the lines in the way?”<br><br>“Of the window? - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/11/13 Excerpt] from [[Playing a Part 15.5]]</ref> This claim allows her to match people like the [[Turtle Queen]] and her pervasiveness.<ref>The woman in the car didn’t have a frame.  But there was a decorated background behind her and it extended through most of the lot.  The other woman’s frame was irregular in shape, moving.<br>[...]<br>Inside that irregular frame were images.  There were more than four, and they mutated, each flickering between symbols.  Over her head was one, translating from turtle shell to pearl to ring with a jewel to snake eating its tail to snake wrapped around a staff to harpoon impaling a fish, rotating a hundred and eighty degrees to become a pole with a flag attached to sign-<br><br>It snapped over to the frame of the rust-stained plastic sign above the diner, overlapping, then slowly rewound backwards, dragging the sign’s symbolism with it.<br><br>It was like a brute force password attack, just trying letter combinations until it found something right.<br>[...]<br>A pigeon landed on the edge of the car door.  Elizabeth watched as the irregular golden frame around the black woman in the green dress snapped out, seizing the bird, like a frog’s tongue catching an errant fly.<br><br>The woman in the car put a hand out, cupping it around the pigeon.  The frame lost its grip, pulling back.<br><br>The woman stepped away from the car, walking over- to the door.<br>[...]<br>He answered, “I couldn’t say for sure about the ‘big’ one.  It sounds like a demiurge.  An Other with her own pocket domain, usually divine, almost always powerful.  Except this one has no defined borders.  But if she has that kind of structure around her, it’d keep the frame in a position to want to give the full picture.”<br><br>“Yeah.  Feels right.  I wonder how well she could bring that domain from the abstract into reality.  What it takes, what it might look like.  All I saw was a pigeon, and an old castle, faint on the canvas.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/02/19 Excerpt] from [[Gone and Done It 17.x]]</ref>

She owns a torch and steed as well as a spear with a banner attached to it,<ref name=":0" /> upon being unbound she translated her horse into a car for the modern day.<ref name=hip/>

She used to have her own [[The Paths|Path]] named The Run-Down Kingdom, participants would have to traverse a maze of streets, performing errands for people every two minutes, if your failed an errand you would be beaten by her subjects, the severity of the beating increased with the number of errands failed. Upon reaching Sootsleeves the [[Finder]] would have to win a game of riddles. If you lost you would risk losing either your material possessions, social status or health. If you won your boon would either be a bunch of apples but half your food would spoil ever afterwards, a crying baby that never grows up, or fifteen wounds, afflictions or scars. After being endured the scars would eventually become as hard as armor, the curses would become regenerative wards and then ailments would become resistances.<ref name=rdk>“This was true when we had our own dream, it was true when we founded a kingdom on this Earth, in a patch of remote forest.”<br><br>“You had a Path of your own?” Avery asked.<br><br>“You had a kingdom on Earth?” Verona asked.<br><br>“The Dream was The Run-Down Kingdom,” Sootsleeves replied.  “I would meet those who made it through and down the maze of streets with a favor or errand asked of them every time the bells tolled, and the bells would toll roughly every two minutes.<br><br>...<br><br>“What happened if you couldn’t do an errand?” Avery asked.<br><br>“Often unavoidable.  The offended party would be waiting at the end to beat you with a stick, broomhandle, or branch.  If it was only a handful it would be a light battering, if it was ten or more it could be actual violence.  Past twenty, they might use torches and set you alight, or put the weapons through you.”<br><br>...<br><br>“If they reached me then I would try them with a game of bidding for pieces of riddles.  Boons to those visitors who triumphed, losers would find their material things, health, and status at risk of being forfeit, and they would have to choose two of the three to lose before I returned them to where they came from.”<br><br>...<br><br>“What boons?” Verona asked.<br><br>“The first is enough apples to fill one’s stomach, in exchange for half your food being ruined thereafter.  The second a squalling babe that’ll be bound to you as your own.  The third is an assortment of fifteen wounds, afflictions, or lesser curses.  The wounds become great scars harder than any armor, the ailments resistances to what you endured, the curses become regenerating wards.  But they must each be healed, endured for long enough, or dispelled, first, respectively.”- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/11/20 Excerpt] from [[Playing a Part 15.7]]</ref> Attempting to escape the path without completing it would get the individual harassed by rats or orphans until you return.<ref>Queen Sootsleeves went on, “The path ''must'' be walked.  The exit is through.  Any other route invites a bane, a tide of my soldiers and spies following you to confound you in whatever world you decide to move to.”<br><br>“For how long?”<br><br>Avery climbed over the side of the car, grabbing her bag.<br><br>“For as long as you reside there, whenever you return there.”<br><br>“So if you came to Earth?  Rats harassing you for as long as you’re on Earth?  And if you leave and come back, they’ll come back?”<br><br>“Not only my smallest followers.  It might be the orphans to steal and move your things, or the sickly, to cough on you and spatter you with mucus. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/11/20 Excerpt] from [[Playing a Part 15.7]]</ref>

At one point she had a kingdom on Earth in a patch of remote forest.<ref name=rdk/> Avery suggests that the Path was one that was easy to accidentally stumble on and that it was brought down to earth to remove the dangers it imposed from the wider network. She also thought that things went wrong after she was brought down to earth and that's why she was bound.<ref name=Bdte>“I think it might’ve been a path that was easy to stumble into,” Avery said.  “Like, enter a door with a rat nearby while on a Path and it could take you to the Run-Down Kingdom.”<br><br>“I think that’s a case where you can say yeah, maybe there’s merit to binding, just to stop a lot of people from being screwed over.”<br><br>“Yeah, except I think they tried other things first.  She was brought down to Earth, that’s a whole thing where Path practitioners can try to bring a path or a key component of a path down to earth to try to create an effect, or remove it from the network of the Paths.  So if they find a path that’s easy to stumble onto where every option is bad, or things aren’t doable, they move it out of the network.  The situation she described sounds like a good case for that.”<br><br>“And then ''that'' went wrong enough they bound her?” Verona asked.- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/11/20 Excerpt] from [[Playing a Part 15.7]]</ref>

Has some ability to deal with [[incarnation]]s such as Death and Starvation.

She was able to bring Avery onto [[Falling Oak Avenue]].<ref>Avery hung up.  “Thanks for putting up with that.  I’ve got to get onto the Paths, and then I’ll signal him.  He’s coming.”<br><br>“Want a ride?” Sootsleeves asked.<br><br>“To…”<br><br>“To the Paths.”<br><br>“That would help a lot.”<br><br>Sootsleeves gave the passenger seat a pat.- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/03/06 Excerpt] from [[Gone and Done It 17.10]]</ref>