Valentina Laurent

"A beautiful woman in her late twenties, Valentina has long, thick black hair with a striking ice blue streak down the front. She has glacier blue eyes, dark lashes, and full lips. She wears an expensive gown of blue velvet embellished with metallic embroidery, tiny crystals, and silver beads. She is of slightly above average height and is not native to Sorel." Valentina Laurent is a foreign noblewoman hailing from Lightshield, a distant country across the ocean. She arrived in Sorel a few years prior to the start of the campaign and has been engaged to Dane Ashpike for nearly six months. She is a charmingly outspoken advocate for magical education in Sorel.

6/4/21: Valentina has been confirmed as working with the Scholars for as long as she was present in Sorel, and possibly before then. She supplied them with money and food after Evan's disastrous Ruin card, leveraging her help both materially and socially to secure a leadership position. She has continually angled for a greater degree of magical acceptance across Sorel.

Contrary to a party theory, Valentina's engagement to Dane Ashpike was not a result of magical enchantment. They met on one of Dane's diplomatic visits to Lightshield and maintained a correspondence for several years before Dane announced his intention to marry her. After the revelations just before their wedding, however, Dane and Valentina are assumed to no longer be in contact.

Her current whereabouts are unknown, although it can be reasonably assumed she has returned to the Scholars.

PC Interaction
Valentina originally is from Lightshield, the home country of Luxanna Crownguard. She is a member of House Laurent, which has a historic rivalry with House Crownguard, and went through magical training alongside (and slightly in front of) Luxanna.

Laurent first observed the party at the Argentine Gala while in disguise. When the party was contracted to investigate the disappearances at House Ashpike by her fiancee, she was concerned for the staff's well-being. They next interacted after the battle with the mirror images, when Roaric and Laurent had a brief conversation.

Shortly after the Yearspring celebrations, the party received personal invitations to Laurent and Ashpike's wedding, in nearly three months.

While investigating the Scholar HQ, information pointed towards Laurent assuming a leadership role within the Scholars, using the alias 'the Queen' and changing her appearance. One defecting Scholar claimed she was styling herself as the next Queen of Arnor. Luxanna gathered evidence, including a communion with the Silver Flame, that seemed to back up her theory that Laurent was in fact using Luxanna's identity as the Queen.

After rescuing Maximilien Ashpike from the Ashpike beach house, the party had gathered enough evidence (and trusted testimony) to accuse Laurent of sedition and attempted murder. With the Duchess supporting the party, Valentina was forced into combat. She attempted to kill not only the party but the Duchess and the Hanton Council. Thwarted, she teleported away, and her current whereabouts are unknown. It is now strongly suspected that she or Evan were the one to order an attempted assassination on the party during their first visit to Hanton.

Several theories were confirmed by evidence found in Valentina's rooms and testimony from several characters. Valentina arranged to have the party imprisoned in the Bastion upon arrival to Manor Ashpike, using her unique brand of magic to create clones. She had been doing the same to Max Ashpike for several months, ever since he accused her of keeping secrets in the Ashpike beach house. After the party escaped the Bastion and Roaric nearly died, his soul attached itself to the nearest suitable vessel--his mirror image. Ava's story on Valentina was also confirmed.

Terrenergetic Theory
While investigating Laurent's rooms in the Glass Palace post-battle, the party came across her personal academic writings. Laurent seems to have been working on terrenergetic theory since she was in school, many years before she came to Sorel. The crux of her theory was this--some places, as in physical landmasses, are inherently more magical than others. This not only tends to foster a culture that supports magic, barring some catastrophic event, but physically allows for more powerful magic than in places like Lightshield. As in, your fireballs have a bigger boom here than anywhere else. The land itself is magically energetic here, not just enchanted by outside forces like people, creatures, or even gods. Magic on Sorel perhaps even predates the gods--and, as she begins to imply in the most recent drafts--that power can be drawn on by anyone with the will to look.

Valentina took it a step farther than commonly held magical belief, even in writing that would ostensibly be published. She did not name the continent specifically, keeping to vague generalizations and hypotheticals. She suggested that that much magical energy in one place, for that long, is a continuation to standard revenant theory--the idea that anything with a strong enough will and power can manifest itself some kind of form--that Sorel itself is a construct with thoughts, just on a massive, unprecedented scale.

Most damning, she supposes that constructs, as any wizard worth their salt knows, can be controlled.

Valentina's research also included a compilation of biographies of Queen Jordis, annotated maps quantifying terrenergy across several continents, several books on cultural and magical changes after the Year of Lights, and vague mentions of several 'trips to the Lake.'