Arbiter of Knives
The Arbiter of Knives , sometimes simply "Knives", was a member of the Firmament, the species who were to the 10,000 Dawns as the Great Houses were to the Totality. She was the amoral daughter of their leader, the Arbiter of Eternity, and as her name implied, was an incredibly skilled knife-fighter.
Biography
The daughter of the even older Arbiter of Eternity, the Arbiter of Knives was incredibly old, and, like him, eventually became extremely bored with her unchanging existence.
One day, after the Arbiter of Eternity complained that he had exhausted every book that had ever been written in the 10,000 Dawns and lacked for entertainment, the Arbiter of Knives told him of the Book of Books, a supernatural, infinitely-long tome which had found its way to another universe alongside a cache of books from the 10,000 Dawns, which described the great space-time war of the other universe as fiction. Though leery of attracting the attention of their counterparts in that universe and starting an interdimensional war, the Arbiter of Eternity authorised the mission so long as the Arbiter of Knives understood that he would deny all knowledge of it in case anything went wrong.
The meeting was spied upon by operatives of the Great Assimilation and Dawn, both of whom followed the Arbiter of Knives to the Totality. Dawn were the ones to find out how to access the books (which were being held by the New York Public Library in the 21st century): they prevailed upon friends in low places to ensure that events surrounding a woman native to this universe, Rachel Edwards, would not be monitored for a few days. However, the Arbiter caught wind of this, as did the Assimilation spies and local aliens known as the Strid — all of whom then tried to abduct Rachel. Eventually, the Arbiter fought her way to the room were the books were held, easily taking out representatives of local powers such as people in silver jumpsuits, people in golden robes and people with masks who'd guilelessly shown up for the books with no knowledge of the interdimensional interlopers, and wanted to get their hands on the intel contained in the fictional books.
The Strid, however, were the ones to take hold of the Book of Books, and decided to auction it off between the three 10,000 Dawns factions now represented. The Arbiter offered the Strid their own planet in the Dawns, an offer matched and then outbid by the Assimilation, while Dawn refused to negotiate with the murderous aliens. In the end, however, Rachel managed to outwit the interdimensional visitors by threatening to kill herself, which would remove their protection and thus call down the wrath of the "Firmament-equivalents" upon them. Accepting she had been beaten, the Arbiter retreated aboard her Factory of Crystal. (PROSE: Rachel Survived)
Appearance
She wore a robe of a "cartoonishly intense" black colour, "flared gently at the boots like a bell". Every edge of it was trimmed with blue, and there was "a point at the crest of the hood like a wide beak". In a holographic show created by Archimedes Von Ahnerabe using characters modelled on famous actors known to Rachel Edwards, the Arbiter of Knives was "played" by Tracy Thoms. (PROSE: Rachel Survived)
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