A very old, frail healer in Wriem — “the block’s best healer,” according to Mikhail Asimi — whose herbalist shop fell into the city’s crevice moments after the party rescued her (e03 00:29, e03 00:53, e03 00:59). At Willy’s Wards she keeps a boy and his mother who have the Hollowing Plague asleep inside giant bell plants, hidden from the Queen’s Guard (e04 00:12, e04 00:13, e04 00:15).
Details
Mikhail calls her “little old Matilda” and says she saves an awful lot of people (e03 00:29, e03 00:29). Her herbalist shop, which teetered crookedly over the crevice, was overgrown with vines and plants; upstairs was a disheveled study of plants and potions, and in the cellar a greenhouse lit by magical lamps (e03 00:33, e03 00:33, e03 00:37, e03 00:39). Orrin took a large, ornate book bound in plant material from her desk and hid it from her (e03 00:39, e03 00:59).
She keeps a purple, biting plant she calls “my boy,” and wouldn’t leave without it. It bites anyone who walks up to it while it’s hungry; she feeds it a flower swarming with bees to calm it (e03 00:58, e03 00:58, e03 00:58, e03 00:58, e03 00:59). She can make the giant bell-shaped plants she grows turn translucent by putting her hands on them, and keeps people asleep inside them; she could keep someone there pretty indefinitely, and contain a couple of people for years, if not decades, and grow more bulbs if she had a lot of resources (e04 00:12, e04 00:12, e04 00:16, e04 00:17, e04 00:20, e04 00:20). She can’t heal the Hollowing Plague (e04 00:12). She isn’t scared of it, she says, being old and having lived a good life, and doesn’t like putting people down (e04 00:14, e04 00:19).
She is brusque: freed, she asks what took them so long, and when her shop collapses behind her she asks “are you dead?” and tells the party to quit fussing (e03 00:58, e03 00:59, e03 00:59).
Story so far
The Fissure Below Wriem (e01–e04)
Rescued by the party from her collapsing herbalist shop, Matilda went to Willy’s Wards (e03 00:58, e03 01:05), where she put the plague-bitten boy and his mother to sleep in bell plants and agreed to keep them contained rather than put them down (e04 00:12, e04 00:20). See e03 – Kaiju City Battle: First Responders, e04 – A Spot to Rest our Pot.
Relationships
- Rue — carried her biting plant out of the shop, and was bitten by it (e03 00:58, e03 00:59).
- Vargus — shielded her from the arcanery’s explosion (e03 01:01).
- Orrin — took her book (e03 00:59).
- Willy's Wards — where she went for safety (e03 01:05), and keeps the plague victims (e04 00:12).
- The Hollowing Plague — she keeps two of its victims asleep (e04 00:13).
Episode history
- e03 (00:29) — introduced; rescued from her collapsing herbalist shop.
- e04 (00:12) — keeps two plague victims asleep in her bell plants.