The story goes that the powerful de Lara family, once the most prominent figure in the Cortés - Daenshore’s endemic power structure of gangs and influential patrons - fell upon hard times. With a series of poor decisions made on the part of the family patriarch and rivals closing in, his eldest daughter Lucia committed herself to life in a nunnery to Lady Ness the Forgiving, spending her days whiling away on a simple wooden rosary, clicking one bead after the other into place. When the de Laras’ enemies came for them and set their manor aflame, Lucia knelt to Ness in her Temple five days’ ride away: and with every finely frescoed room that burned, with every marble statue that crumbled in the heat, a bead on her rosary transformed. The melting gold bullion behind the painting in the grand hall became the thread that bound it; the mottled blood of her family, the price of their ill-gotten wealth, splattered where her thumbs had pressed. When Lucia de Lara finally passed away in 311 AC, she willed her rosary - her only possession - to a Knight who she had heretofore never met, whispering on her dying breath: “Nothing lasts. Remind her.” This is a Knight Collectible, obtained as a gift from the rank-up process, for the Character Eleanaire of Jophael.
Appearance
Lucia’s Anguish is a curious, gently blood-stained rosary carved from bone-white pearls and pale gray wood, its thread formed from fine-wrought gold. The blood is stained in the vague shape of fingerprints where someone once circled the beads during a particularly long prayer, and try as one might, it is impossible to wash off. Though it is an expensive-looking and well-made thing, it does not look out of place on the simplest of outfits or paired with the most ragged of beggar’s robes, somehow always managing to feel like appropriate wear.
Permanent Mechanics
Lucia’s Anguish is a Unionist Artifact. As an artifact, there are several rules associated with Artifact Ownership, see Artifact Page. It also provides the following Specials:
Nothing Lasts: Repetitive prayer on the rosary has an intoxicating effect. If she regularly uses it, Eleanaire may choose to find all of a sudden that the most simple foods and the most decadent banquets taste the same: that scratchy, ill-fitting robes and courtly velvet are not so different after all, blinding her to the burdens of asceticism by dulling her need for luxury.
