Played by Jane Winter.
|
|
Being a shapeshifter, Phoenix has a number of different forms:
Phoenix (she has almost forgotten her 'real' name of Meredith) is the daughter of Eric of Amber and Professor Solange Forrester. Eric used Solange's home Shadow (Requiem) to experiment with high-tech weapons and soldiers. Before the Black Road ran through it, it was a non-too-nice 'cyber-tech' society dominated by an ever-escalating arms race. The arrival of the Black Road (when Phoenix was a teenager following in her mother's footsteps as a geneticist) triggered a holocaust, and the civilisation vanished in a few short days of nuclear, chemical, biological and magical war. Survivors refer to this time as 'The Inferno'.
Phoenix's shapeshifting sent her into hibernation as her world fell apart '...and when I woke up, everything was gone'. Not gone, exactly, but blasted beyond recognition. She is unsure how long this period of hibernation lasted - maybe two generations, maybe more. By the time she 'woke', groups of survivors had emerged from shelters to found basic settlements in the few 'clean' areas, but 'society' was a thing of the past and life was lived at subsistence level, with warlords and cult leaders fighting over what few resources there were, and mutation and plague rife amongst the degenerate populace. Little knowledge of the past had survived anywhere. The near-constant rain was still acid, the ground and air poisoned. As well as 'no go' irradiated areas, there were areas where magic ran wild, ones that were 'magic dead', and terrible storms, some of which altered forever the things in their path. Think Mad Max II and III, only not quite so Australian, and less sunny. Most places solve problems with formalised duels rather than large-scale conflicts - all but the most insane are aware that people (especially healthy people) are a valuable resource.
Cautiously re-adjusting to this new world, Phoenix discovered that she could absorb the radiation and toxins left in the no-go areas, and thus scavenge for lost technology, data (she has set aside part of her brain as a photographic memory bank with effectively an 'on/off' switch) and supplies. Seeking surviving computer banks far under the surface, she was able to power them again with magic, and further her medical and survival training in a somewhat fractured and unpleasant cyberspace.
She could also, she found, use her 'healing' (Mould Living Non-Self Matter) to absorb radiation and poisons from others. Most importantly, she could affect babies in the womb so that they were born healthy and human not mutant, and with strengthened resistance to their world's poisoned state. She has specialised heavily in using her shapeshift talents in the field of healing, bodily enhancement and genetic-level modification, backed up by as exhaustive a knowledge of these fields as it's possible to get in Requiem.
She has become a legendary figure (not god-like, merely uncanny), moving from area to area putting nascent communities on the road to some kind of civilised state, and then moving on. Even to some of her early communities, she seems more myth than real. Expectant mothers often wear her stylised phoenix symbol for good luck.
But by no means is she regarded purely as some kind of ministering angel. The darker side of her legend (and her alternate nickname of 'The Daemon') has grown from the means she uses to keep 'her' communities safe - she is ruthless in fighting for dominance where necessary, and in avenging any harm done to 'her people'. On leaving a community, she will leave her mark on it (the symbol of a phoenix at its gates, for example), and also a small creature of blood, which will seek her out if the settlement is harmed or acutely threatened. To offer harm to such a place or people is a death sentence.
There are rumours that she once turned a particularly vicious gang-leader completely inside out after a duel - and that it took him two days to die, still screaming from a mouth trapped inside a mutated lump of flesh. And that the 'town' of Jericho burned to the ground (stone buildings and all) with no survivors after its slave-trading inhabitants raided one of her settlements.
This dark reputation is something Phoenix cultivates carefully. She cannot be everywhere at once, or fight everyone who might harm those she wants to protect, so she needs people to be afraid even to challenge her.
'My people need the monster as much as the miracles', is the way she puts it. 'It isn't how much power you have - it's what people know you are prepared to do with it.' If she were any less ruthless, she knows she would have to fight (and kill) a hell of a lot more people. Even so, it's been a long time since she slept free of nightmares. One of the places Phoenix feels safest is in flight, since hardly any winged creatures survived The Inferno, and flight technology is mostly lost. She loves birds, and the freedom of flying.
She has trained, equipped and magically and genetically modified a small group of 'bards' who also travel around teaching lost skills and knowledge - again, to harm one is death.
At the end of the day, though, Phoenix knows she is fighting a losing battle. The land is wounded beyond her ability to help, and she is only one person. She is very tired, and very, very lonely. She will never give up her struggle to keep some kind of civilisation alive, but deep in her heart, she feels she is fighting a long defeat. Some day she will be careless, or unlucky, or attempt the impossible once too often, or simply get old, and die - and there will be no one to replace her. She figures on just doing the best she can, for as long as she can.
And so things were, until a bird of desire with the message 'Your Daughter is in danger', arrived at Eric's rooms in Castle Amber and seemed to be looking for him...
|
Professor Forrester was Meredith's mother. They were never close, since the vast majority of Solange's attention was kept for her scientific career as one of Requiem's leading genetic researchers. Meredith followed her into the same career at a precociously young age, but the two never collaborated. Solange never really hid the fact that she had resented falling pregnant as it lost her a promotion she had considered hers by right (she had always intended to make time for a carefully-planned test-tube baby, of course, 'as one does' but Meredith wasn't it and her pregnancy was really terribly inconvenient just then). As was quite usual in Requiem, Solange took little part in actually raising her child, and their relationship was never something the girl particularly missed. |
|
The only possession to which Phoenix is truly attached is a set of military dog tags, now worn almost perfectly smooth with age, on which the inscription Delaney, J. F., and a serial number can still just be made out. John Francis Delaney was Phoenix's mentor and partner in the years immediately after she came out of hibernation, and her only lover. Delaney came out of 'cold-sleep' a few years before Phoenix emerged, the only survivor of his 'stored' regiment. He gave Phoenix her first lessons in combat and survival; she would probably have given up and died without him, but then he would probably have died without her healing skills and magic. Together, they established the first of Phoenix's 'protected' settlements, Sanctuary, and moved on to found others. Eventually, giving in to the ageing process, Delaney settled down to run the original (and largest) settlement and training centre. He died peacefully of old age some time later. Phoenix still misses him, though not in any 'oh god, I've lost the One True Love of My Life' kind of way - they were more best friends who also happened to be lovers than anything terribly Romantic, and in many ways he was also her father substitute. She has had no other lovers since John simply because she has never again trusted anyone that much. |
Go to the Altair, Beltaine, Damien, Ibrahim, Owen, Tamarind or Tristan pages.
Or go back to The Last Enemy Page.
The pictures on this page all belong to someone other than me. They are used here, without permission, for personal game use only and not for profit or commercial gain.
