Zarna was born on the rim of a crater where a fallen spark has burned since the night of the Fading. The midwife took her, glanced at her face and went blind. Zarna's face is overexposed through and through: no features to make out, only an even white glow, and whoever looks at it longer than a breath loses their eyes. Her mother caught one glimpse of her daughter and saw nothing but a white blot for the rest of her life

Her father hammered her a hood out of the lead roof of an old substation, closed all round like a bell, with only a narrow slit for the eyes. Light does not pass through lead, only through the slit. Zarna has not taken it off since, and the children of the village called her Little Hood. She grew up a spark carrier: an ordinary person cannot go near a crater, an Isotope can, and every week Zarna climbed down to the bottom, gathered sparks into a lead box and carried them on her back to the Workbench masters. They paid little and looked away: people believe the exposure is catching

The exposure eats Isotopes from the inside, and by twenty Zarna knew she was burning out. So she decided to see, just once, a light brighter than her own. People said only the Lantern at the Lull had one, and she walked there across two lands. The Lanternkeeper Selma took the Lantern off its hook and set it on the platform in front of her. Zarna lifted her hood, for the first time in her life without fear, and the Lantern looked at her and did not go blind. She stood like that until morning, and by morning all her light had gone into the glass. Her hood still hangs at the Lull on the next hook over

She is quiet and speaks almost in a whisper, yet you can hear her from under the lead: the hood rings from inside. She jokes about her face before anyone else can: “Don't look, you'll go blind, and then I'll have to lead you around.” What she wants most of all is for someone to look her in the eyes. She shows her face only to Unarion, because ceramic does not go blind. Every time he measures her light, and every time he says the same thing: “Off the scale”

Abilities by rank

Trait

Chain Reaction

Damage from her abilities overexposes the enemy: Decay 8% for 4 s. An enemy that dies overexposed flares up, and the exposure passes to every enemy on the neighboring cells, so in a tight crowd one death drags the next ones after it

Awakening at level 100: her basic attacks overexpose too, so the exposure never leaves her target

Ability 1 · mana 100, starts with 30

Unveil

Zarna flips her hood back like a welder's mask, and the light of her face strikes in a line through the target to the edge of the board. Every enemy on the line takes magic damage, Blind 30% for 2 s and the exposure

Rank	From level	Magic damage
I	1	150
II	20	270
III	40	430
IV	60	640
V	80	890

Ability 2 · cooldown 10 s, opens at level 30

Crater

Zarna presses her palm to the ground, and the light runs under the floor as a crack to the densest group of enemies within 5 cells. There the ground opens into a crater three cells across for 4 s, and every second the enemies in it take magic damage and the exposure

Rank	From level	Magic damage per second
I	30	50
II	55	80
III	80	170

Stars make her stronger on top of the ranks: attributes ×1.4 at ★2 and ×1.9 at ★3, the damage of Unveil and Crater ×1.25 and ×1.6

Look

tall, thin and stooped from the box on her back, with all her weight up top: her silhouette is a candle under a snuffer

on her head a blind faceted cylinder of lead with a flat top and a square ring, dented and patched, with a narrow slit at eye level that lets out white light

under the hood her whole head glows an even white, like the bulb of a lamp, with no features: you see it only when she flips the hood back

a long lead apron like the ones old radiologists wore, on leather straps, over a faded coat the color of dusty lilac and a thick knitted collar

sleeves rolled up to the elbow with lead bands above it, and the skin of her forearms and hands is clear, with the bones glowing through it

a small lead spark box on her back with a glowing slit under the lid, grey wraps on her legs and boots with lead toe caps

How to play

Put her in the back row so that more enemies stand behind her target: her light goes all the way to the edge of the board, and the longer the queue of enemies, the more damage it does. Next to those who pull enemies together, Unarion with his Taunt and Marta with her winch, both Crater and Chain Reaction do their work

She is strongest against waves of many weak enemies: one death overexposes the neighbors, they die faster and overexpose the next ones. Against a lone boss she is weaker, since Decay on a boss is four times smaller. She is fragile, only 456 health, so assassins who dive into the back line and Silence before her first ability shut her down

Zarna