First appearance: Coriander Society - Fate of the Faithful Part 2 (A Crossover) · watch it on YouTube
Circe, the self-proclaimed “Master of Magitek” and “the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon,” arrived in The Void as a hired villain and left it as a reluctant, wisecracking ally. Sent to hunt down Kenny on behalf of The Arbiter, she spent her first fight shrinking Asena to the size of a cat. She spent the rest of the crossover flirting with John Carmichael, robbing a bank, turning Lyrus into a bridge and plotting her escape from a boss she was truly afraid of. Few characters have switched sides with so much flair or so little shame.
Story
The Hunt for Kenny
Circe made her entrance by popping her head over the rooftops with a cheery “Hello, lovelies!” She had wild white-and-gray hair, dark skin and a pair of goggles, and she asked Lyrus and Asena whether they had seen “a little goblin around these parts.” When Lyrus demanded to know what gave her the authority, she answered in full:
“I am Circe, the master of Magitek, the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon, and the authority is thanks to my ray gun of amazing transformation, patent pending.”
Asena’s response was a weary “Oh no, an inventor.” Lyrus tried to bond over his own handmade gauntlets and boots. Circe allowed they “aren’t bad” and offered to discuss them over drinks, or right after she turned them both into chickens and took the gear. Asked why she wanted the goblin, she admitted she barely kept track: something about the “nefarious border of law and order, defiance of the Grandmaster.”
She was part of a kill team sent after Kenny, alongside Ganyu Sinmal, after Ralzamon’s psychic spying located the goblin. John’s illusion trick fell apart at once, because her “gorgeous goggles of all seeing” saw straight through it. “You are going to have to get up earlier in the morning to pull one over on Circe,” she told him. When the fighting started, John’s fireball rumbled through the whole district and blew up every ninja in sight, but it left Circe completely unsooted, thanks to her “baffling blouse of the elements.” She was still explaining that she was “completely immune” when his next shots hit her mid-sentence.
Then she struck back. Her ray gun fired a pink spiral at Asena, who caught it in silver astral light and shoved it back into Circe’s face. Circe shrugged it off and was more delighted than angry: “How did you do that? That shouldn’t be possible. You have to tell me about your technique.” Her next shot, the “stupendous size changing ray,” shrank Asena to the size of Slakura. Tiny Asena got her revenge by bouncing off Slakura onto Circe and landing a curse that could leave her losing whole turns doing nothing at all. It was dubbed “the curse of ADHD.”
Changing Sides
The second round of the fight went worse for Circe. John’s warning shots cracked one of her goggle lenses and smudged her elemental blouse. Then he put an arm around her waist and talked her down with the line “By the way, love your tech. You want to see mine?” She agreed that she would, and the two strolled off toward the roundhouse bar. Ralzamon, working through Ganyu Sinmal, then tried to fry Circe’s brain “for disloyalty,” and John threw his techno shield gauntlet over her just in time. He followed it with a rousing speech about teaming up to “screw over” the “master of jack crap.” Circe, visibly afraid, made her terms plain: “You keep this guy out of my head and protect me from the actual boss… Get me off world. We got a deal.”
The new partnership began with a heist. Circe froze the office door so John could kick it down, then melted the treasury grate in “sizzling spicy heat mode,” because “a little super villain bank robbery” was right up her alley. She also enlarged Asena, who had just been restored to normal size by enchanted spinach, so Asena ended up bumping her head on the ceiling. Asena was not won over: “I hate her.” Circe was unbothered: “Oh yeah, we’re gonna get along great.”
Back at base, she explained herself. In Beacon, “if you don’t have a whole gimmick… you don’t rank at all,” and joining the Arbiter had seemed like a way to accelerate her villainous career. “It turns out it’s kind of a for life thing.” She had been warned that a deserter would be hunted “across all possible realities” and torn apart “atom by atom,” and she had seen him erase an ogre named Chester across the multiverse for quitting. Lyrus offered her redemption in the Grandmaster’s service. She asked about money. Lyrus told her that escaping the Void would take very powerful magic, possibly a fight with the Arbiter himself, and she suggested they “workshop that one.”
She gave the party directions into The Tumult, west of Prexmarin, where the search for Kenny had centered. She joined the expedition by majority vote, rode a skinny life raft with John down a channel of ethereal titan blood, and shot some of the blood with her fire gun “just to see what happens.”
Into the Shadowlands
On the approach to Ralzamon’s keep in The Shadowlands, each hero saw a haunting vision. Circe gripped her ray gun at nothing, scanned with her goggles and relaxed: “The data and the evidence weren’t aligned, but now they are, so we’re fine.” She shrank the whole party to cat size, smirking as she aimed at Asena, then shrank herself too. She got stuck in the portcullis twice. Her goggles could see through the party’s invisibility, which suited her fine. When the group needed to cross a broken bridge, she fired her “bear expansion device” and made Lyrus huge enough to fill the gap, so everyone walked across “Mount Lyrus.” Later, Asena’s distance quill delivered a note reading “Make me big, please” directly onto Circe’s lenses, which left her briefly blind and annoyed.
When a dying Draconic Death Knight’s blast dropped Lyrus, Circe flew in and froze him solid in a block of ice, keeping him alive. Afterwards she wanted a full report on “the cryogenic freezing experience” and some tissue samples. Against a pair of giant mechas she phased one into the Ethereal with her “Dapper Density Altering Ray,” and crippled another when “not all of your molecules” made the trip. She shrank Lyrus to “transport size” to fly him out, prescribing “exposure therapy” for his fear of heights. She froze the fallen Vargas with “the old nothing personal kid” and turned a giant shadow monster into a chicken on her way through the portal. When the mission was done, she did exactly what she had promised to do: “I’m leaving immediately… As far away from the Arbiter as possible.” She left the Void alongside John and Asena.
Personality and Abilities
Circe treats villainy as performance art and a career path in equal measure. She announces herself with full title and practically spins in a circle while doing it. She talks in salesman alliteration about her own gear, and she admits she hasn’t yet decided which “school of villainy” to follow. Under the theatrics she is practical, mercenary and scientifically curious to the point of rudeness, and a little cowardly when the boss is truly dangerous. Offered a chance to serve the Grandmaster instead of the Arbiter, she shrugged: “Omniscient Entity A, Omnipotent Entity B, it is what it is.”
She describes her craft as combining “the artifice of mortals with the power of the ancients.” Her signature weapon is the Ray Gun of Amazing Transformation, which she said has about five modes; over the crossover it shrank and grew, froze, ran on “sizzling spicy heat,” shot fire, fired an etherealizing density ray, and, by the end, a “bodacious beastomorph ray” that makes chickens. Her jet boots let her fly, her blouse makes her immune to most elemental attacks, and her goggles see through illusion, invisibility and magical darkness.
Relationships
- John Carmichael: Talked her into defecting, saved her from Ralzamon, and flirted with her throughout; their partnership was described as a “first date,” with tech schematics saved for the third.
- Asena: Shrunk by Circe in their first fight and never quite forgave her (“I hate her”), though Circe insisted she’d grow on her.
- Lyrus: Resizing target and reluctant patient. Circe made him a bridge, froze him to save his life and flew him out of the keep.
- Kenny: Her original target, later a fellow member of the party.
- Ralzamon: Her “middle management” boss, who tried to fry her brain for disloyalty.
- The Arbiter: The employer she joined to boost her career and fled in genuine fear.
- Ganyu Sinmal: Her partner on the kill team sent after Kenny.
Memorable Quotes
- “I am Circe, the master of Magitek, the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon, and the authority is thanks to my ray gun of amazing transformation, patent pending.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 2)
- “You are going to have to get up earlier in the morning to pull one over on Circe.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 2)
- “You keep this guy out of my head and protect me from the actual boss… Get me off world. We got a deal.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 3)
- “I think that if you give me some time, I’ll grow on you.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 3)
- “The data and the evidence weren’t aligned, but now they are, so we’re fine.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 4)
- “How was the cryogenic freezing experience? I’ll get a full report from you later.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 5)