Senator Matilda R. Brightside
Grand Magus of the Optimists
The Baker of the Bloc. The Smiling Queen of the Dying City.
In Wuh-Zhei, there is no throne. But if there were, Matilda R. Brightside would sit in it, with a warm cup of tea, a skeletal dog familiar in her lap, and a tray of fresh cookies on the sideboard that she made by hand.
Don’t let the grin fool you. She runs this city.
Background: From Plate Five to Power
Matilda was born on Plate Five, the second-lowest layer of Wuh-Zhei’s immense vertical plate sprawl. A halfling and a sorcerer, two strikes against anyone hoping to hold real power in a society of wizards.
And yet, she rose.
In Wuh-Zhei, magic is currency, clout, and bloodline. but even the elite know one thing: talent must be found. Each decade, the Fifth Plate holds a magical proving. Half festival, half bloodsport, known colloquially as the Lowlight Games. It’s the only sanctioned way a Plate Five citizen can rise.
One year, Matilda entered.
She won every category.
Not just victory, domination. Spellcasting, transmutation speed, necromantic fluency, conjuration stability, metamagic instinct. She broke scoring records that still haven’t been matched. One judge’s notes read:
“She doesn’t cast spells. She decides them.”
She was immediately offered admission into any Plate Two university.
She chose the Optimists.
Some say it was sentiment. her sister had died years earlier on the Fifth Plate from a preventable illness. Others say she was enamored by an old propaganda book she found in the gutter. Whatever the reason, she climbed. Studied. Smiled.
The Ascension to Lichdom
When she sought entrance to Plate One, it was not through petition or politics.
It was through performance.
The ritual she completed, publicly, proudly, with a hundred Observers present, was her lichdom ceremony. A state-licensed transformation that would extend her life and elevate her magic. She framed it not as hunger for power, but a public service.
“Someone must stay to care for the children,” she said.
“And I intend to stay.”
From that day forward, she has.
Political Reign
For the past eighty years, Matilda has held near-total control over the Senate through the Bloc, a coalition she quietly orchestrated between the Paragons, Optimists, and Gilded Gaze.
She backed Sutherland Dash as the new Paragon Senator, elevating him over the aging war-hero Orbash Grent, a half-orc general beloved by soldiers but increasingly seen as too blunt for politics. When pressed, Orbash himself couldn’t argue with Matilda’s smile when Dash succeeded where he never could: pushing back the Unraveling.
With Dash and Nero of the Gaze at her side, Matilda branded Dalton Marius a heretic, isolated Sintetra, and secured the votes to marginalize the Chronomancers and Transneuroclasts.
She tells herself this saved the city.
She might even be right.
Philosophy & Power
Matilda is a charisma caster in a room full of INT builds. She is not a scholar. She is not an engineer. She is a baker.
“The other Senators are chefs. Matilda? She’s a baker. She feels when the spell is done.”
Her magic is intuitive, terrifying, and extremely effective. She can’t explain how her spells work. But she doesn’t have to. Her bones creak, and her aides spring into action. That’s all the explanation Wuh-Zhei needs.
She truly believes the world can be saved—not as it is, but by escaping it. For decades, she’s led the Optimists in search of a conjured realm outside the unraveling. Her cabinet includes elite wizards working on that dream. But she? She’ll know it’s ready when it’s ready. That’s what gut magic is for.
Her Corruption
Matilda is not a tyrant. She listens. She smiles. She meets with rivals.
She is also deeply, systemically corrupt, not in the way that enriches herself, but in the way that preserves her power. She diverts funding from the Chronomancers (whom she considers wasteful), and overinvests in the Gilded Gaze (whom she trusts emotionally). That imbalance is part of why the end comes.
She would never call herself a villain. And maybe she isn’t. But she will always, always prioritize her Bloc, and her people, over objective truth.
Rivals
Her major political opponents:
- Dalton Marius the 100th — now a heretic. Dangerous. Right about the end, but still a heretic.
- Head Researcher Sintetra — terrifying intellect, possibly the smartest being alive. So inhuman it makes Matilda feel small.
- Former Lord Commander Orbash Grent — The iron-fisted general who could never turn victories into political power. Beloved, stubborn, honest. He stepped aside, but not out of love for the Bloc.
They were all problems. She solved them.
Secrets and Sorrows
There is a room in her estate no one enters.
At its center, on a stone pedestal, floats a holographic projection of a child’s dress, simple, handmade, and impossibly clean. The lace hem glows faintly with arcane memory. It turns slowly, endlessly.
It belonged to her older sister, who died of plague on Plate Five before Matilda could cast even a cantrip. Too soon to be saved. Too small to be raised.
The city may be her family now. But this dress is the one thing she could never conjure back.
So now? She protects everyone else.
Final Notes
- She truly believes she can create a way out.
- She truly loves the people of Wuh-Zhei.
- She is utterly responsible for the slow death of the city.
- And she will serve until the final spell, because who else would?
You don’t need to fight her.
You don’t need to love her.