| “ | "Oh my goodness! You're— you're here! Devotion, you're back! You're back and you brought friends!" | ” |
—Hand of Guidance
The Hand of Guidance was a citizen of Hominine who became a founding member and the leader of the Benevolent Parish in Founder's Wake, as well as its Ballaster of Preservation. She also helped raise Devo, and taught him magic when he was a child.
Appearance[]
The Hand of Guidance is described as "neither prim nor proper, with very little ritual to her style." When Amber, Devo, and Zoox first meet up with her in Episode 7, she is wearing mom jeans, a large sweater, and a chunky necklace; her hair is up in a frizzy bun, and she has big, round glasses with "just a lot of character." When they are called before her and the other Ballasters in Episode 22, she is wearing what Griffin describes as Supreme Court Justice robes.
History[]
Prologue[]
The Hand of Guidance was originally a citizen of Hominine and a member of the Church of Benevolence, who left it behind to become a leader of the Benevolent Parish in Founder's Wake. She first appears in The Adventure Zone: Ethersea—Prologue V: "The Weight of History," at a community meeting where she represents the Parish and voices concern over the souls who would become Brinarr.
"Um, though we of the parish and the Ordos Spiritus disagree on many, many things, we agree on this: there needs to be certain rules and restrictions in place of which spirits are contained within the Brinarr. Because the soul is sacred, and we cannot play god with who remains dead and who is resurrected." - Hand of Guidance
Twenty-five years later, she is living in Founder's Wake, both guiding the Parish and working as the settlement's Ballaster of Preservation.
The Infinite Clam[]
Amber, Devo, and Zoox first meet up with the Hand of Guidance in Episode 7 in order to accept a job from the Parish; Guidance had requested a group of contractors to locate Benefactor Orlean (who had been missing for some time.) She is thrilled to see Devo again, although Devo does not reciprocate these feelings. Despite palpable tension between them, the crew signs the contract, and after some negotiation the Hand of Guidance has four vapor suits installed in the Coriolis ship.
Upon completing their mission, Devo and the others return to Guidance for debriefing and payment. She chastises Devo for causing a small scene in front of several other members of the parish, then encourages him to try and look past his resentment towards the church and remember the "good days during his time at the cloister."
Cambria's Call[]
Guidance is one of the Ballasters at the Coriolis crew's hearing. Much like the other Ballasters, Griffin describes her as looking genuinely worried for Founder's Wake.
In Episode 25, Devo recalls his first magic lesson, wherein Guidance taught him to create light within an object using his voice. Though she was initially kind to him—smiling and rustling his hair—she quickly lost patience when he was unable to immediately cast the spell. She shut off all of the lights in the room and refused to turn them back on despite young Devo's fear, insisting that he use his magic to turn them on himself. When he did so, she grinned from ear to ear.
The Menagerie[]
After being briefed on their latest mission, Devo seeks out Guidance in her office, where she and Brother Seldom are busy decoding the wisp[1] that he and the Coriolis crew found on an abandoned Hominine ship in the previous arc. Devo demands that he tell her what she's hiding from him and the rest of the city; Guidance blows up at him, furious at his accusations, and demands he leave.
"I'm conspiring against the city that I left my life behind for? Are you kidding me?" - Hand of Guidance
In Episode 36, the Hand of Guidance is found dead in her office.