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For the past 78 years, Sapphire has loyally served the interests of the Bronze Faction in the South, overseeing the safety of the caravan routes that make the region one of the wealthiest and most developed in the Threshold and safeguarding the transport of Grain from the Lap to various destinations and depots controlled by the Realm. All of this, and more, tucked in between the more day-to-day functions that she's performed for the Bureau of Destiny since her Exaltation at the age of 21.
Originally born in the Lap, Sapphire was not born under the watchful gaze of the Penitent but was instead one of the dirty unwashed masses that lived in the lean-tos and haphazard constructions that the poor and unwanted had constructed up against and under the massive stone arse of the marvelous statue that served as the centerpoint of all existence in the Lap. The ugly look, horrid smell, and terrible reputation of those dwelling in the Slum of those dwelling 'Out the Bottom' had given the people that Sapphire grew up amongst a rather unflattering nickname. "Shitters." The fact that the sewage outflow for much of the Lap's population was located nearby might also have played a role in the nickname (and the general smell of Outbottom).
Her mother had been a working girl that attended to the more carnal needs of the Legionnaires whose ramshackle accommodations were located not that far from the slum itself. One of those so stationed, who availed himself of Sapphire's mothers company on at least one occasion, could be accounted as Sapphire's father: though she was never privy to exactly which Legionnaire it might have been. She doubted, indeed, that her mother even knew.
Mother was 9 when she died, and for two years she lived in periphery: gutters, the sewers, even an old drained cistern that she turned into a little home until she was almost caught by a itinerant Monk. Outbottom's unattended children seldom came to good fate, and Sapphire in particular had no one to trust and no one to look out for her. She survived, instead, on her wits and quick reflexes while dodging anyone who seemed too interested in the dirty, foul-smelling child lurking just at the edge of the crowd.
Not long after her 11th year, while enjoying a pork-bun that she'd stolen from a Vendor, Sapphire was approached by the emissaries of Heaven. They wore pristine robes, were garbed in riches, and said that she had been watched over all her life and it was time for her to come to her true Kingdom.
She, of course, expected of them some crime or perversion and ran from them: it was not enough.
Though she struggled, and bit at wrists and otherwise tried to make good her freedom, at last the youth discovered that the ones who had approached her,-- the ones who would be her brethren,-- had spoken to her the truth and that she was Chosen of destiny and bearer of a special honor that she would one day bear as she had in many previous lives.
She exalted on her 21st year while helping to track the movements of a rogue god, and was soon after given full employment (and all concordant benefits) within the ranks of the Most Excellent Designers of Destiny and Sidereal Conjunctions: the Bureau of Destiny, for short, where she was signed to the division of the Golden Barque and given her first assignment. An assignment in the Lap.
In many ways, after 10 years, Sapphire's homecoming to both Creation and to her old home was a bit of a mixed blessing and only her iron-shod duty to the ones who had rescued her from her pitiful existence kept her from succumbing to despair. Even today, Sapphire is far more comfortable in Heaven, but she's since created for herself a number of comfortable identities across the Southern Threshold.
Most notable and important of these, of course, being that of 'Shining Orchid,'-- the distant and often unseen Widow of a once-beloved Laplander. Residing in a beautiful mansion carved into the upper levels of the city, in one of the most prosperous districts, Shining Orchid is perhaps one of the richest women in all the City and one of its most beloved across all spectrum's of society. She is perhaps most known for her care for the cities poor,-- even bankrolling one of the cities finest Orphanages, which turns away no young child born in the Lap (even in Outbottom), managed in close coordination with the Immaculate Order and attached to the local Temple of He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass.
And, of Star Sapphire herself?
There are none who remain to remember her, of course, nor her humble origins. Of that, at least, the young Sidereal has been quite careful. Much, of course, has been wiped away by the Arcane Fate but even that was not thorough enough for Sapphire's licking. Most traces of her past have been wiped from the City, even those who had no way of knowing why they died. Her brethren who know of such things also know to keep their mouths wisely shut, and those who are not so blessed as to be employees of the Bureau of Destiny and who delve too deeply into Sapphire's past? Enough to actually learn something of where she came from?
Well, those: those tend to meet very unkind fates indeed.
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