The Cutting Room Floor: Catherine
Disclaimer: I don’t work for Super Evil anymore. The Vainglory universe and its stories do not belong to me. None of this is canon. Consider it fanfic.
Catherine knocks at the door of my brain the most. She belongs to Stephan Sherman (Captain Neato). If you ever have five minutes with Stephan, ask about Catherine, and she’ll be your favorite Vainglory hero too. She is a tragic character, born to violence, whose every good deed is punished. Her story is way too vast to fit in the Vainglory setting. I hope she shows up, perhaps under an assumed name, in another game where we can get to know her better. Here is what she tells me:
Life in the Eventides was beautiful when Catherine was a child. The continent was filled with fairytale cities and lush farms ruled by minor royalty. Once a year, the Summer Queen of Lionne would travel through the cities and towns, meet with the governors, bless the crops, and assert peaceful dominance.
Catherine was born with power, with Halcyon literally shimmering in her veins, and so she was taken to Lionne as a small child and raised in their military system. She was so talented, though, that she was granted close access to the royal family. Louisa, who would one day be queen, and Julia, were like sisters to her. Louisa and Catherine were particularly close, and Julia was the often annoying younger sibling. Catherine was their personal shield and bodyguard, and so was granted a royal education.
In Catherine’s lore, I wrote that Louisa’s eyes had been removed at birth, in the way of storm mages. The Catherine in my head tells me that isn’t true, that Louisa’s eyes were removed in a ritual a little later in life, just before Julia was born. The Summer Queen received a suspicious package around that time that she kept secret. Her mood shifted drastically. She became serious and dark. On her tour of the Eventides that year, she wept often while blessing the crops.
She told Louisa that the time of the Summer Queens had passed. She had received word from a Gythian Explorer, Martim Walker, that Churn was encroaching upon the Eventides. Storms can only be defeated by storms, so Louisa’s eyes were removed, and the ravens became her sight, and she was given a secret burden far too heavy for a little girl to carry.
Catherine was her only friend, though she could never be a confidante. Even Julia never knew the extent of Louisa’s plans regarding the coming Churn storms.
Louisa’s first act as the Storm Queen was to remove minor royalty from the Eventides. (Malene’s family was one of these.) Those who would not relinquish all control were slaughtered. Increased taxes in all the kingdoms built her grand army. She recruited mages most of all, in particular those born with the gift. Taxes were lightened on the families who contributed such children. Her only personal experience with this policy was Catherine, her greatest ally; what could go wrong?
The people protested the adolescent tyrant, but nothing could be done. Even Julia’s rebellion was flattened. The Storm Queen’s sacrifice had made her a powerful mage. She moved her capital city from Lionne to the far more defensible Mont Lille, under which was hidden a Well of Power. Her army grew by the day, and she was surrounded by a small but elite fighting force: the Stormguard.
Catherine and Julia hatched a plot to save the Eventides from the Storm Queen. Catherine faked Julia’s death during a battle, and Julia made her way with the help of underground rebels to Gythia. She claims to have made friends in Gythia in “What Must Be Done,” so her love affair with Ardan must have complicated this diplomatic relationship. She joined his rebellion and helped the Technologists rise against Gythia in a civil war. She married him and had children while Catherine and Louisa’s secrets hung heavy between them every day.
Most Vainglory lorehounds are familiar with what came next, how the Storm Queen discovered Julia’s treason and sent the Stormguard after her children; how Catherine warned Julia but could not save her; how she disobeyed the queen’s orders and killed Julia, allowing Ardan to escape with the children; how she laid down her sword and vowed to only defend in the future; and how she broke that vow.
But while Vox and Celeste grew up in Taizen Gate, Catherine wandered the world, and we don’t know where. We know that she ended up fighting for another army far away. My memory is fuzzy but I believe this was in the Sleeping Land, in the war between two mage princes, which is mentioned in Varya’s lore (with a little non-canon tie-in with a Joule skin!). But what happened in the interim fascinates me. Julia had hoped Gythia would help Catherine, so I believe Catherine tried this tactic early on and failed somehow. I could write a book about that encounter alone! Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during teatime with Catherine and Grace.
But what Catherine most often tells me - and I have to extra-extra disclaimer this because it was immediately shot down as a canon plot point - is that she became pregnant at some point of this journey, and chose to give up all violence. She traveled up a mountain to a temple populated only with severe holy women. Her head was shaved, her weapons and shield were taken, and she spent her pregnancy meditating in desperate solitude. She gave birth to a girl and dedicated her to the temple, for we are all doomed to make the mistakes of our parents, even if we never know them.
In canon Vainglory lore, Catherine is awakened by the massacre of her camp in a snowy battlefield. Everyone is killed in silence except for her, and the Stormguard waits by the fire to kill her too. But the Catherine in my head tells me that the Stormguard came for her at this temple. I can see her eyes opening into silence and darkness. She wears only the linen shift and robes of the nuns. She is gaunt from their meager diet. Her weapons are locked away. Blood of the holy anoints the temple, but blood of the enemy desecrates it. She must choose between death and violence. It is the ultimate test of her newfound discipline.
Snow falls.
She finds her weapons and chooses violence.
For the purposes of Vainglory continuity, the canon lore worked well. The relationship between Catherine and Kestrel, and Kestrel and Daisy, came about because of this change, and I don’t regret it. Still, the story of Catherine desecrating the temple with blood is one that bothers me so much that I’ll probably have to develop it fully in the future, with another name, in some other universe. Maybe a comic?
My Catherine differs the most from Stephan’s because my Catherine is doomed to solitude forever. She was never truly loved and never will be. She is strong because she must be, to survive, but her heart is perpetually broken.
She is so insistent, forever tapping at my heart’s door. I haven’t worked on her lore in so long, but she bothers me all the time. I dream about her. She wants her story to be told somehow, yes, but most of all, she asks me: What happened to my daughter? Where is she?
