Queen Sootsleeves

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Queen Sootsleeves is a powerful Lost bound by the Garret and freed by Avery and Verona.

Personality

Sootsleeves is a bad tactician and has never managed to win a war in the paths, her soldiers are weak and cowardly.<ref>“Sootsleeves never won a war in her crusade across the Dreaming.  Her soldiers are cowards and weaklings,” Avery murmured.  “And she’s not a good tactician.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

She loves her kingdom despite it's endemic poverty, constant hunger and rampant disease.<ref>“It is the reality for myself and my people that we must be the poorest kingdom.  We exist on the verge of starvation, we struggle, our sick are among the sickest, but my love for them is unbounded and their loyalty to me firm.” - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref> She is also proud of the Run Down-Kingdom Path.

Relationships

Avery and Verona released her and in return she agreed to do three tasks for them.<ref>“Then I’m with her, it seems,” Queen Sootsleeves said.  “Three, I’m to follow your laws and lend you assistance?”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

Her kingdom is essentially her so it's hard to tell where individual members end and she beings.

Appearance

She wears a crown made from silverware and a gown made from rags.<ref name=":0">The woman astride the horse looked like a queen, but the particulars were all shabby and improvised.  A crown of silverware, a complicated raiment and gown in what Verona presumed were bright colors- made of rags and trash.

She still held a torch.  She still carried a spear with a tattered banner attached to it.  For all that she was dressed in garbage and things, the look on her face was intense.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

Her subjects include rats, children and beggars. Many of them carry standards, torches and have soot stains on them.<ref>They came through the two doors into the room.  Mice and rats carrying flags.  Children in rags.  Men and women with heavy bandages, smelling of something herbal that did a bad job of covering up the smell of flesh that seemed to be rotting alive.  Many carried torches.  Most were smudged black, like they’d been playing in a pile of coal.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

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.”

“A torch,” Avery said.

“Fire in hand and breast.”

“A kingdom,” Avery said.

“Loyal to the last, despite my failings and lack of wealth.”

“And your steed.”

“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?”

“Of the window?- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

She owns a torch and steed as well as a spear with a banner attached to it.<ref name=":0" /> She later managed to turn her horse into a motor car.<ref>The Queen sat within a fancy old car.  Her subjects were still rats, but the children were now dressed in modern rags, at least.  Sootsleeves herself was meant to look dirty and shabby, but it really looked like hipster chic with a hipster car, scratched sunglasses included.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.5</ref>

She used to have her own 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, 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>“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.”

“You had a Path of your own?” Avery asked.

“You had a kingdom on Earth?” Verona asked.

“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.

...

“What happened if you couldn’t do an errand?” Avery asked.

“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.”

...

“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.”

...

“What boons?” Verona asked.

“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.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref> Attempting to escape the path without completeing 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.”

“For how long?”

Avery climbed over the side of the car, grabbing her bag.

“For as long as you reside there, whenever you return there.”

“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?”

“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. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>

At one point she had a kingdom on Earth in a patch of remote forest. Avery suggests that the Path was one that was easy to accidentally stumble on and that it was brought down to earth to avoid the dangerous it imposed. She also thought that things went wrong after she was brought down to earth and that's why she was bound.<ref>“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And then that went wrong enough they bound her?” Verona asked.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>

Has some ability to deal with incarnations such as Death and Starvation.

Chronology

After being released she left the abandoned building she was in via the window.

She warned Verona and Avery that Thea was kidnapping children.

References

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