Ion Arc of Return, Ring 2

Ion Arc of Return, Ring 2

One often hears the adage any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. On Floor 261,049 this saying is apposite the cultural divide that has plagued the land for ages. The hatred from these two sides across the floor remains older than written history of any civilization on location. These long standing divisions have led to the schism of two separate societies, one of industrialized superscience (Ion), where caped heroes and villains roam, the other steeped in an esoteric romanticism out in harmony with nature (Sundew). 

The architecture of the magical society is formed of massive, hollowed out trees reaching the size of the skyscraper counterparts of Ion, with vertical gardens, bridges, magically powered rail systems and towns built across massive lilypad platforms high in the air. It’s often theorized that this world was two separate arcs on a single floor that converted new within the Ring of Joining, but unlike the usual conceptual merging of realities merely the landmasses were imported into a singular unified continent in ancient times. Sundew has reached advances in magical technology outperforming Ion in medicine, flight systems, cuisine, and horticulture. 

Ion, while excelling in crude energy production and capitalistic practices, still finds many benefits both manufacturing and trading with its sociocultural rival. Sundew's magical imports, from textiles to food production and rare advanced medicines form enough of Ion's economy that to cease all exchange would be unfeasible and catastrophic. This symbiosis over 3 centuries has led to a meticulous interplay of cultural exchanges and back-and-forth imperialistic practices, where both groups often resent the wide reaching influence over the other.

Among the magical world's fiercest critics, the retired supervillain Ignor Nia was said to be Ion's fiercest polemicist. The son of a corrupt but brilliant, wealthy industrialist, the baroness Telosia, Dr. Nia continued her business of heavy manufacturing while attempting numerous diabolical schemes over the years. His plots often revolved around the weather and environment, it was said that on a jungle cruise ship thru Sundew he discovered an ancient rune that led him to believe a special weather pattern to be exceptionally 'unique', and the key to dominion over all magic. 

To this end he spent his aims for over a decade attempting to destroy the world with various weather-based experiments to resolve this prophetic mythos. In his 40's, he started to hide from public view, as well as the corporate vantage of his manufacturing industry. True to the rumours, Ignor raised a daughter. Adroita Nia, a young teenage girl, began to learn the ways of her father's techno-wizardry. Many speculated the low-lying villain intended to mold his daughter in the image of her grandmother, the baroness and make her his company's heir. In his tall tower, she'd often watch the rows of students heading into class within Ignorance Academy, the school built next to, and funded by Ignor Industries. 

Why he funded this school which expressed the truest admiration of magic, was anyone's guess, only that he did so a year after his jungle visit. Adroita, then a 17-year old girl, was welcome to any experiments, materials and 'toys' in Ignor's tower, with the exception of a locked room covered by curtains and chains. Tempted by curiosity, the younger Nia would unshackle this doorway and look inside to see a cherry-red woman surrounded by an electronic prison and machines. When Ignor discovered his redheaded, pony tailed daughter had broken her lone rule, he was furious. The girl was expelled from his home. As punishment and to get her out of his hair, Adroita Nia was enrolled in Ignorance Academy to reflect.

Ignorance is a magical school with a rich reputation and culture of teaching young students the art of Sundew's magic. The two main fields taught are glamour magic and Wiltology. The latter is the resurrection, communication and usage of controlling dead plants and magical spirits related to horticulture - Plant Necromancy, for this reason wooden wands were of great utility. The school's 6 magical tracks are based on popular fruits grown and sold on the market with their own natural properties.

1)Yurkmai. A fruit that has a tangy sensation and is similar to a blueberry, but a lime green shade. They're associated with longevity, high energy and persistence. Yurkon fruits are said to be good luck charms, and confirmed to be high in fructose.  The track is scholarly, and their mascot is a rabbit.

2)Fokal (also Fokuryu-ko, or Fokurakai). A small blue fruit with a large nut inside. It is said to make the tongue smart, and also makes the taste buds taste a variety of things. It's many nutrients correspond with the body's overall sense of wellbeing. The mascot is a parrot.

3)Gurkon. A sweet and delicious bumpy pink fruit which is high in vitamin C. It's said that they can make anything sweet and delicious taste good. Gurkon fruits have the power of a medicine to heal, the power to calm, and the power to treat diseases. It's mascot is a basilisk. It's said this track's wilt wands are so dry and flammable, they're perfect for the dark arts.

4)Gingekura. Purple jelly-like fruits that have a flavor very similar to the lime, grown in the rootsack of the Gengekura tree. A lime green hue also reminds us of springtime, youth and energy. They're most commonly associated with shamans, artists and archeologists. The mascot is a lemming.

5)Masare. An orange fruit with a leathery shell that makes one's head feel tight and makes the throat ache. It's extremely tangy and when fully ripe, spicy. A favorite in alcoholic beverages. These fruits are often burned for warmth, due to their sweet smell and shells acting as tough, reliable, firewood-like material. The mascot is a dragon.

6)Okiku. Similar to an apple, but smaller and whiter. They're most often associated with money and abundance. Ion demands them wholesale for their electrical properties for synthetic fuel and energy-production. Said to be the most prestigious track to get into. The mascot is a chimera.

Nia was selected for the 'purple' Gingekura track, among the lemming-class students. She would immediately face the adversity of rival students, malicious instructors, and the confused, paranoid gossip about Lord Volgornaught. However, in addition to her challenges and obstacles, Nia's scientific background showed her to be something of a genius at understanding the physics of glamour magic. Glamours were effectively a type of enchantment that altered perception and even physical shape within a set miasma. Anything these miasma clouded over temporarily changed its appearance to a set glamour; making people and environments look like they're from another culture, a separate era, made of digital graphics or fetishistic apparel, any alteration in perception. This scholarly skillset made her adept at grades tests and written academic work, but in the actual casting of glamours Nia was stricken to perform, finding her fact-centric mindset often struggling to feel out magical processes, she couldn’t find the right focus or state of mind to adapt to magical practice.

One day Nia was, from her lone seat overhearing the conversation from Harriet Brightwind and Sarah Caprici, two Okiku students of high standing. The legend of Lord Volgornaught was a once brilliant, yet bitter son of a headmistress turned against the school, purchasing guns and various weapons to shoot up the Academy. He tried to kill the headmistress and her staff and ordered his goons to cast a glamor of madness on the school, but was struck down before he could do so. As the rumour went, his spirit haunted the halls still looking to return and wreak havoc.

The end of the conversation was interrupted by Professor Shadow Wheeler, head teacher on the prophecy council, who in a hysterical rant screamed that the rumours, while untrue nonsense, were absolutely forbidden to discuss. She took out a paintbrush to the 2 girl's agony, slapping on paint from the crushed Mumb Fruit. After forcibly painting the young Caprici stark, chalk white and shoving the brush down her mouth, Caprici's terror turned into an idiotic laughing and series of mumbles, grunts and farts. Caprici's spine slumped over hunched and she began to drool, sucking on her own fingers. Nia observed the purpose of Mumb paste was to render troublesome students, feeble and mentally numb. She watched the Professor take her off to the 'Mumbward' where those with binded mental capacities were watched, kept, and occasionally repainted.

The girl kept her head down on that day going forth. Occasionally Nia would receive packages from her father next door- small gifts, enough gadgets to keep her entertained and novelty toys. The younger Nia became especially interested in the aesthetic function of glamours and their ability to alter perception- from filters involving simple colors, to detailed illustrative changes in shade, shape and form. She would attempt to pry further meaning from them in their application, but find the spells beyond her reach in actual use. Time would pass, the wall of ability rising up against and overtop her persistence. So frustrated with her lack of progress, one day Adroita would take a drastic step to see colors spew forth. She snuck into the disciplinary office and stole paint supplies, including buckets and brushes wholesale. 

Colours in Ignorance academy had great significance for the 6 tracks, as well as punishment itself- the whites, greys and monotone shades associated with both the staff who wore silvery-white uniforms and Mumbward patients. Nia took what she could to her lone dorm and began to paint objects, imagining them how she'd want them glamour'd. Not with magic, but with raw physical substances, believing that color held supernatural presence. When she ran out of her father's toys and furniture to paint, she started painting the walls. By 3 am, she'd started painting herself. Adroita soon ran out of supplies, and in an utter high from her artistic splendor, snuck back to get more. She found a rather large bucket of white, and took it back. In the halls, Professor Nilsworth followed her wet, painted footsteps back and caught her opening the lid in a fury. Terrified of Nilsworth's wrath, Nia grabbed a petrification raygun given from her father. Nilsworth angrily explained the significance of the paint and held it high. As she was turned to stone, the bucket fell and splashed on Nia.

 

She felt so cold. So very.. calm and numb. The student's overactive mind began to slow, but feel strangely focused. She sipped her fingers into the pasty paint and started to slurp it, it was at that point she realized the substance was Mumbpaste. But rather than feeling feeble or invalid, she felt as if her overactive mind could think straight for the first time. Equations, scientific facts and trivial calculations slurred into a mist of aesthetic reasoning, and she sensed her emotions like they'd been completely pale before, as pale as her white face, now brimming with the colours of the walls. That night Nia continued to paint herself, and when she was finished she painted the statue. Realizing her situation, Nia picked up her wand and focused on the dripping, stoned Nilsworth. She licked the Mumbpaste and huffed inwards, feeling a tranquil high. Then and only then, was she able to conjure a state of mind and cast a glamour proper, changing Nilsworth's appearance to all in her own bedroom.

The girl took a shower, hiding most of the paint and keeping a large Jar of Mumbpaste in her closet.  She used a glamour to hide what she'd done, practicing and shielding any evidence within the room. When the staff was called to order the next day, it took hours to connect the missing instructor with the strange, shiny pastel-pink life-sized figurine of the ballerina in the dorm gardens. Nilsworth's transfiguration could not be reversed, and whispers of the vaunted, dreadful return of Lord Volgornaught spurred fear across the staff and student body. Nia began to proactively listen, as legends spread. Volgornaught was said to have a hidden shrine where his soul could revive from beyond the library archives, where his corruption grew deeper and deeper the more he punished the school. The archives, she heard, told of a shadowy hellhound, a princely shadowdog that would one day allow him to devour the world in dark glittering clouds. Nia's grades improved with her glamours, and in secret she continued to paint obsessively inside her room. When the sadistic urge could not be resisted anymore, she would lure other students and teachers to prepared rooms in the Academy, use her father's technology to ensnare them and paint them aswell.

Nia Adroita was having the time of her life. She'd discovered her passion in making things beautiful, whether with paint or magic. The white magical drug the facility used to utterly pacify students allowed her to focus, and she felt both a calm, and a high from it she hadn't in years. She was even starting to make a few friends in Ignorance Academy. When she'd kidnap students/staff she'd be very stoic and meticulous, but once she'd finish transforming them into her works of art, she'd laugh maniacally- a trait she often wondered if she inherited from her villainous father, or perhaps grandmother Baroness Telosia. The best part of her schemes was that the legend of Volgornaught seemed to give an alibi that excused the disappearances.

That was until Harriet Brightwind stepped up one lunch period. A daughter of a poor family who owned a joke shop, Harriet showed off a scar across her shoulder, and with a fantastic usage of Wiltology to get everyone's attention declared her intention to band the students and fight Volgornaught. She, as confirmed by Professor Shadow Wheeler announced she was the “chosen one” who would stop the fiend's tricks. Nia could hardly keep herself from giggling, knowing full blown laughter would give herself away. Nonetheless, perhaps out of a mixture of pity and boredom, she joined Harriet's ratpack gang of 'Wizardry' defenders.

For a brief period, Nia attempted to acquaint herself with her classmates. She learned of Harriet's desire to return to the magical lands that her grandmother spoke of. She met Rodney Langley and his two twin sisters, three ginger siblings that wished to bring riches to their family. She even bonded and languished with the reclusive and mysterious Knimbli Aliyah, the spookiest witchling in the school. On a series of investigations, escapees and trials over the next two months she would form a brief camaraderie with them. Around the same time she began to receive strange dreams, dreams of a pink hound and a white fox seemed to keep her up many nights. She'd continue painting, and if on rare chance she could, rope another to be her newest art project- Nia was painting over more staff than students at this point, perhaps out of the changing social situation she found herself in and conscience obligations. Her exploits caused more disappearances, which would fuel the call for more sleuthing and adventuring from her classmates feeding a cycle of excitement and constant high. Yet she still couldn't ignore the strange dreams that seemed to call for her, like twinkling stars wishing upon a soul from the surface.

One day, Nia's reverie was broken at the start of a horrible incident. One night, the school was attacked, seemingly by a legion of the undead. Wraiths filled the halls and dragged staff and classmates alike along, everything fell into anarchy. The selfless courage of Harriet Brightwind was all that defended the school from utter defeat. Nia snuck off with Harriet's brand of wizardry defenders and had to run away into the surrounding countryside. Nia slept in a tent on the cold floor, covered in bruises, cuts and without a paintbrush to bring her even a narrow smile. They'd formulate a daring plan and under Harriet's leadership, targeted the Headmistress's lounge as the location of the culprit- Volgornaught himself, whom Harriet would defeat while the rest distracted his goons. This plan was enacted as a daring campaign that lasted 3 days, and brought Nia some of the worst scares and thrills of her life. Now more a fighter than a painter, the girl hadn't consumed or repainted any of the white substance she'd usually depended on for confidence, charisma, and basic magical ability. Riots, magical fights and tactical clashes were carried out continually by Harriet's group to retake the school, taking their stressful toll on her mind. Her dreams got more intense, and more so when she spent hours wrapping injuries from the wraith army. When the final raid was carried out, Nia was with Harriet when she enacted her duel of the dreaded Volgornaught.

A surprisingly anti-climactic battle ensued, and the would-be witch Harriet defeated the terrible dark ghoul, just as the prophecy council had foretold. The 3 ginger Langley students freed all the students and staff from the underground dungeon and soon took back the school. Headmistress Highsong made clear, no evidence of the incident would get out, and all would be forbidden to speak of the horrors they'd witnessed. The climactic adventure was over, although many students had permanently vanished. That night Nia went to bed not with a sense of victory, but confusion and exhaustion.

Without the threat of Volgornaught, she had no one to pin her actions on. The girl laid in bed thinking about it all, when a colorful circus of emotions and memories swirled in her dreams. The girl saw a white fox again, almost reaching out to her. When she heard it say her name, Nia woke up. Her supply of Mumbpaste was empty and she had a horrible hangover, along with a sense of PTSD from the last 3 horrifying battle-filled days.

She began to creep around again, eventually finding her way to the Headmistresses lounge where the dark lord was defeated mere hours ago. Looking for more paint, Nia ended up knocking over a large painting, and with her tired blurry eyes, seeing past a glamour that hid a secret passage. She followed it down in suspicion, and came across an office and a large dungeon.

In the office Nia discovered various files and photos- all documenting the campaigns and overtures of the ivory-skinned Volgornaught going back two decades. The detail that caught her eye was- each time, Volgornaught looked different, and there always seemed to be some similar overarching theme of another 'student' rising up and defeating them. She snuck her way into the dungeon to discover dozens of the missing students down in a dungeon, many in a pale, drooling babbling stupor pasted with Mumbpaint. The faint dust of glamour dust hung over them and she could sense they'd been enchanted. In the center, holding a monopoly on injuries and melted paint was Sarah Caprici, in Volgornaught's robes. Nia went down a flight of stairs, flipped her over and held her up in the light, before she could figure what was going on the Mumbed students attacked her like a feral mob in a starving frenzy. She escaped by pushing Caprici's body into them and locking the door to the stairs.

It was there she was approached from behind, and confronted Professor Shadow Wheeler and Headmistress High Song. The two watched over the ghoulified students in the lower dungeon chamber, revealing both Lord Volgornaught and the "chosen one" dynamic was entirely fictitious. Every 5 years the Headmistress had used the maxload of Mumb'd students, along with powerful glamours to curse her Mumbward track and turn them into a potent army to scare the school, lead by a brain drained but well controlled, scripted new Dark Lord, and Shadow Wheeler via the prophecy council sprouted forth a new chosen child to be the Academy's "Savior" and retake the school. This cycle would repeat twice a decade, for the last 50 years. This ridiculous farce served the purpose of getting rid of unruly students, especially those from the scientific world, training and polishing promising ones for the school's high marks, collecting a fortune in insurance from the property damage and finally maintaining the ideological divide between the scientific and magical communities. So long as a threat continually appeared and conditioned the students to both fear and depend upon magic, the Headmistress insisted it would keep them off the track of scientific endeavours, and on one of superstition.

Nia felt conflicted, mainly due to the fact her and her friends had been lied to. The Headmistress revealed another damning fact- Adroita was herself the first prime candidate to be the "Chosen child" that year, but the discovery of her kidnappings and actions had warded off the staff's consideration. That the daughter of a supervillain was kidnapping and petrifying students was unsurprising, but they couldn't explain why Mumbpaste gave her a focused, sharp head, figuring her brain had some unique anomalies. Her deeds were not outed due to the fact that her father funded much of the school by himself, in hopes of discovering a student that could read a tile rune he found in an ancient temple in the magical lands. The Headmistress had covered for her and her misdeeds, and demanded the same treatment they now discussed, expecting Nia to keep the true events of the Volgornaught saga under wraps. In exchange, Shadow Wheeler would make her the instructor's personal apprentice, if magic was truly her passion and being a witch moved her, and someday she too would host the farcical trials as a head staff member.

She accepted, but rather than an apprenticeship asked for all she ever wanted. A large sum of money, paint, glamour wands and dust, and her own art studio in the school to fulfill a dream she had. The two school instructors laughed hysterically, to her fuss, leaving them no choice. They wouldn't give her any favors, so she refused to keep quiet. They agreed they'd throw her into the dungeon pit and leave her with the Mumbsys. The girl used electrical bombs and a few 'toys' to hold them off, but was again cornered near the ledge. As the Head Mistress lurched towards her, Nia felt a headache swelling, the same vivid swirling colors from her dreams coming to life. From out of her head, white polka-dotted mist flashed the room and a foxy woman stepped out. The fox woman from her dreams. The Headmistress charged ahead, only for Ellie to step aside as she fell into the pit. Surrounded by the students she'd brainwashed, Nia yelled for them to give 'Hugs' and in their cut-throat affection, began to mob her and squeeze.

While her soft body was shoved and held to the end, Wheeler raised her wilt wand in anger. Ellie booped her nose. Shadow Wheel turned into a frog and ribbeted away.

Ellie sat down and observed Nia, pulling out balloons and trying to get her to smile. The two had a long conversation, of which Ellie has regarded as a casually private matter. Of the details known; along the convo at some point, Ellie asked about the white face paint that Adroita wears, Adroita responds it 'Helps her to think by not overthinking.' Many details of this transcript are sketchy but, the two look over the Mumbpit and, the Headmistress disposed of, Nia feels quaint. Ellie gets the idea to be right back, leaves and arrives again with new paint. With a lick of a brush, she enchants it.

Those in cloaked robes arrive. The other professors in league with the Headmistress arrived. Ellie told Adroita to run along and have fun, while she dealt with the mob of teachers, cracking her knuckles. Ms. Judith of the Decay Division lunged forward, only to be swallowed by the earth and made into a treestump. Ms. Yunity of Spirit Studies created many phantoms, however with a few whispers from Ellie they turned on her and entered Yunity's body, until she faded blue and became a dainty, dimwitted damsel who searched for her prince. Madam Millefolium's leaf-blade spells would be formidable to most, but with a sneaky clutch of the woman's body, Ellie stretched her like rubber and tied her up as a smiling balloon animal. Mistress Slimesod was given a new look, and slithered along looking for food to absorb. Countess Vermillion's dark magic was swallowed by Ellie with a burp, who proceeded to belch it back and leave the Countess as a squeaking, smiling waxxy copy of Ellie herself, immobile. Row Old, a wizened elder mage who'd pretended to be Harriet's mentor, attacked last with vicious magic, but was quickly given a new identity as a timid, geeky sweatershy student who Ellie declared a 'good girl'.

While Ellie took care of the other conspirators, Nia held her paint cans and brush, went down to the pit and started luring the Mumbed students one by one, paints bright and colorful designs over their cheeks, eyes, lips and even clothes. She painted them into giggling clowns, acrobatic, full of laughter and life. Soon she'd changed all of the ghoulish victims into practically a circus. Not stopping there, she painted the dreary dungeon walls full of decals and turns the sacred stones and temple walls the academy was built on to colorful excess. It's there she finds a manuscript in a chest within one chamber in the dungeon, and realizes after all these years the Headmistress knew the correct way to interpret the Rune her father coveted, she simply kept it hidden to secure funding year after year. The girl also learned Ignor nia owned the deed proper.

With the clownish students now running free to entertain the Academy, Ellie patted Nia and let her return to her school life, telling her to come find her if she was still wanting for that art studio. Nia asked how she knew that- but Ellie was gone.

The girl went back to her dorm and, regretting she lied, kidnapped and stole, spent the rest of her school year in warmth with her friends, which was about 3 weeks. She kept Harriet's secret and applauded her heroic deeds. It was on the last of days at the school that she found Harriet could read the manuscript from the chest afterall. On graduation, the new Headmistress, vice principal Wigsby declared her as a worthy witch, and she raised a paintbrush instead of a wand upon the scepter-blessing of her track's mascot, the Lemming of Light.

The following weekend, Nia went back home taking Harriet with her to visit.

While her father was occupied by Harriet's tales and recall, Nia pretended to go to the bathroom and snuck back into the red haired woman's electric prison. Freeing her immediately, she asked for her origin. The woman identified herself as Viralia, a supervillain. Before she explained herself, she took Harriet's wand from Nia and shoved it in the Industrial gravity-engine. As a young girl she was born in the magical lands, sheltered by an exotic cult deep in a temple. The "legend of a pink hound from another 'world' would arrive and devour all", leading the temple elders to give her two curses- one a seal that would be strong enough to harm the hound, another to infect and duplicate anyone she touched. At some point, Ignor Nia arrived looking to steal secrets for his manufacturing industry, and ended up falling in love with the strange redheaded tribal girl. The two escaped together and she became the "Viral Menista", an endlessly duplicating villain in his city. But as malicious lovers tend to do, the pair often fought in both marital relations and in convoluted schemes- going from friends, to lovers, to rivals, enemies and yet lovers still. At some point the two invested heavily in the academy that Ignor’s mother, the Baroness had founded and more or less took the reigns on keeping it afloat next to their industry HQ, in order to research her curse and its related prophecy, of which Nia told her the Headmistress knew of and kept for her own interests.

Viralia revealed Adroita Nia was, at her origin, a young infant clone of herself. Not a convert from anybody or a tube-grown clone, just one that Viralia spawned from her abilities which acquired independent life. While the freed Viralia started to multiply and scheme her revenge, Harriet read the rune on the upper floor with the manuscript. The tower began to shake, and the skies opened up. Hundreds of Viralia's duplicates swarmed up the building and caught Ignor, both catching him and flying out of the building in an endless army that would spread to every corner. The Gravity-Engine exploded, and viney threads spread from the smokestacks uptop polluting the sky. Rain in multicolored hues fell shortly after, covering every inch of Ion in a neverending mass of viney growths overtaking the city while Viralia's jumpsuited copies flew through the sky.

In the chaos, Nia took her paintbrush. She recalled something Ellie whispered pior and painted one of the doors until it lit up. The girl took Harriet's hand and prepared to go thru, looking at Viralia teasing and taunting Ignor one last time, red hairs starting to grow out and his starched labcoat starting to meld into a slick techno-bodysuit like Viralia's. The ceiling broke, with the rune still shining. A massive, glittering fluffy poodle crashed through, bringing a rainbow trail of enchanted chaos as it peaked through the building on the 80th floor. Thousands of Viralia's copies started to spread panic throughout the city, converting everyone in sight as both the buildings and citizens were 'turning a new leaf.' Adroita took one last look upon her world and sighed, heading out with Harriet.

This floor remains something of a hotpot of incidents to this day.

The details of what happened to Nia afterwards are spotty and a bit left to second-hand accounts. It's known that she traveled many floors over the next decade, painting everything she saw and gathering something of a reputation as an artistic maestro. Their run ins and friendship with Ellie was rekindled over many years, earning her respect as a painter, enough for the girl to lend her a droplet of intrinsic ability, aswell as an artifact to the girl. It's rumoured at some point Harriet caught wise to Nia's shady actions and her dubious 'heroism' back at their Academy days, but they still parted ways on rather admirable terms; Harriet willingly asked to be painted in one world, becoming a pristine, fair, silken Princess in another realm whose magic tears healed the worst of curses and injuries. So engrossed with the increasingly enchanted properties of her paint, that she too painted herself, giving herself multiple arms and rendering her body a slender, wispy and multi-colored dame with tight goggles, bandana, high-heeled boots and latex jumpsuit, taking many traits of inspiration from her mother. The fully grown Nia still paints in a private chamber within the tower that Ellie has designated for her, going by the alias "The Curator" and being the owner of a prestigious art gallery, tempting visitors with her gifts and offering great rewards if they can paint for her and add works of art to her collection.