Creation

Phaedra Essex was created by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren in Black Cloak 1.

Origin

Phaedra Essex’s mother is Vasha Essex, a highborn Elf in the city of Kiros, the last city in the world. At one point in her marriage, Vasha falls out of love with her husband and has an affair with a Dracona, Phinneas II of Thane. Phinneas is the most powerful Dracona in the city but the Elves are in charge. It goes against Kiros’s beliefs to have interracial relationships, and in particular interracial children. This could lead to honor killings of all involved. So when Vasha becomes pregnant with Phinneas’s child, they break off the relationship and Vasha pretends her husband is the father. Phaedra grows to near adulthood without knowing about Phinneas. She has a brother, Hadrian, whose father is Vasha’s actual husband. The husband, the head of House Essex, dies at some point during Phaedra’s childhood.

Phaedra grows up in the royal castle. She becomes best friends with Freyal III of Sidra, the heir to the throne, son of the Elf Queen Taline. They carve their initials in an old, powerful tree using a Dracona Dagger, a rare and powerful magic weapon.

Phaedra has a pet Taka named Mister Starlight. Taka are cute furry cat-like creatures. They are magical and rare; at some point in the next few decades, they go publicly extinct.

She also has a close friend, Valorie. They play games like Snick, Snack, Snook.

Phaedra and Freyal have a blissful existence and become lovers, then get engaged to be married, as they were fated to do based on their family statuses. They get matching traditional arm tattoos.

When Phaedra tries on some wedding dresses with her mother, an assistant offers to help take one off to try another. Phaedra suddenly freaks out about taking off her top. Vasha realizes what is going on and shoos away the servants. She asks how long Phaedra has been growing Dracona-style wings; it has been a while but they are not large.

They realize they must break off the engagement because it would be a scandal for Freyal to marry a half-breed. Phaedra tells the queen, whom she has a good relationship, that she must end the engagement but doesn’t explain why. The Queen is shocked and angry and says the penalty must be exile. Phaedra accepts and goes out to live in the city, where she becomes a Black Cloak—a detective for the Kiros Police Department. She tells Freyal she is leaving, to his shock and dismay, but not why.

Major Story Arcs

The Taka Conspiracy

As an ex-royal, she is looked at with suspicion by the other Black Cloaks and only one, Theron II of Pax, agrees to be her partner. However, he is glad to work with her because he believes she is one of the best Black Cloaks—alongside himself.

Phaedra starts a romantic relationship with Nida Nakaii. She is a Dracona medical examiner with the police.

Black Cloaks are also looked at with suspicion by the general populace, who don’t always appreciate the law and order that they bring. Phaedra gets in a fistfight with one of her neighbors named Vaissac, just because he hates Black Cloaks. However, when several small Wraith creatures jump all over him, she shoos them away with her blaster pistol.

She is annoyed to see that the local coffee shop is selling automated Taka plushies, which she thinks are an abomination compared to the real ones.

She gets a call to go to a bar named the Salty Crow, which is in a slum in the Narrows. There, she meets Pax, who was one of the first on the scene to investigate a dead body. When Phaedra arrives, she IDs it as Freyal, her ex-fiancée.

Pax and Phaedra quickly figure out that the murder weapon was a Dracona Dagger, a rare magic dagger created by the Dracona people. They interrogate the bartender below the slum-like room where Freyal was found and discover that he was seeing an Elf, Dace, who lived there.

The bar has a Maid (mermaid) in a tank for display. She looks unhealthy and Phaedra calls a friend of hers, Sashenka, to see about getting her out.

Phaedra and Pax go to the Police headquarters and Captain Gooden asks if she should pull herself due to her connection to the case. He’s also concerned that it will be harder for her to get information from the castle since she’s exiled. However, she insists that the modern laws of Kiros will allow her access.

Soon after, they hear that two more bodies were found in the Lagoon. There, they find Dace’s body, who was bitten by a Maid named Yanha, who then died. From this, they surmise that Dace was poisoned and that poison transferred to Yanha. Phaedra’s girlfriend, Nida, is there, and helps with the study of the crime scene. They take a minute to bond and assuage Phaedra’s shock at Freyal’s death. Nida has no jealousy over Freyal but she is also concerned about how the royals may react to Phaedra if she goes back to the palace.

Pax and Phaedra canvass the people nearby to see if they saw anything. Phaedra talks with some local teens who hang out in the area: Romu, Iona, Jessup, and Tomig. They are excited to show off how tough they are to a Black Cloak but really they’re just young and scared. They don’t have any information to pass on.

Phaedra goes to tell the Queen about Freyal. She stands outside the gate, thinking about her life with Freyal as a child. Suddenly she is hit from behind, hurting her badly.

She wakes up in the Queen’s presence. Phaedra is sure her attacker was her brother Hadrian, who never got over the fact that she left and brought shame on the family.

Phaedra and the Queen talk about Freyal and their history. The Queen is tough but sad. She already knew about Freyal’s death but is surprised to hear about Dace and Yanha. She knows that Phaedra will do whatever it takes to find Freyal’s killer. A healer comes in: Valorie, Phaedra’s childhood friend. She has been in training with Master Ividor and Lysanthir, the Queen’s head magicians. Valorie and Phaedra are excited to see each other.

Valorie wants to remove Phaedra’s Cloak for the healing spell, but Phaedra freaks out at the suggestion, much as she did when she was trying on wedding dresses. Valorie is fine with that and casts the healing spell. Phaedra is not only healed but supercharged with health; Valorie is a talented spell-caster.

On the way out, Phaedra sees her mother, who seems shocked and happy and sad to see her, but Hadrian shuffles her out of the way before they can speak. The palace guards similarly rush Phaedra out of the castle, saying she doesn’t belong.

Pax waits nervously outside since he believes she may be in danger from the Elves; he orders a tank to come after she takes so long, so he is relieved she comes out OK.

Pax is angry about the royal’s patronizing and dangerous attitudes but does think the view from the top of the city is great. Phaedra agrees that the royals enforce a problematic division between the populace.

They return to the Police Department to interview people who say they know something about the murder. More Wraiths, the small critters who swarmed Vaissac earlier, run around the floor. There seem to be more of the annoying creatures all the time.

Suddenly, an unknown assailant leaps out of the crowd and stabs Phaedra with a Dracona Dagger, then kills himself.

She survives. Nida takes her to the morgue to hide her. They think she must have made it through a combination of Valorie’s spell and her Dracona heritage. They know this will make it increasingly hard to hide that she is part Dracona but Phaedra is still worried about whether revealing her split parentage would put her mother in danger. Nida also notices that Phaedra’s mini-wings are glowing.

She looks more at Freyal’s body and the new medical scan and sees that he has self-induced scarring on his wrists. She is pained that he may have tried to commit suicide before. However she also learns that the wounds are where the symbols for honor on his tattoos were, so it is also possible that he was trying to remove them.

She goes back to see Pax and they interview the people about Freyal. Most are dead ends but they finally chat with Romu and Iona, two of the kids that Phaedra talked with when they first found the two bodies in the Lagoon. They didn’t want to talk then but now admit they saw a cloaked figure drop off the bodies.

Phaedra goes home and gets a key that she had hidden in a jar of spices. She can sense that she is not alone. The Kiros Three, the most powerful humans in the city, are there, cloaked. They reveal themselves: Elea Veris, Galal III of Veris, and Aldric II of Solas. Galal is next in line for the throne should Taline be deposed, so Phaedra guesses that they are interested in the political ramifications of Freyal’s murder. They say they want to make sure no one suspects them of being involved and in fact they want to give her a tip.

Phaedra and Pax meet later at a noodle shop in the Trees to trade their newest information. It’s a place that she used to go to with Freyal when they were younger. The two detectives discuss why they both believe the role of a Black Cloak is important in keeping law and order in the community. Phaedra tells Pax about the Kiros Three and says they tried to blame the Dracona for the deaths, but she doesn’t believe them. She also says that she and Freyal used to have a secret box for notes in the Trees. Pax is intrigued but frustrated that Phaedra isn’t keeping him in the loop all the time. He also thinks that the lives of the rich are crazy but sometimes forgets that Phaedra came from that world.

They go to the secret location and Phaedra uses the keys she took from her home to open it up. Freyal left a cryptic message that implies that he considered suicide and that he wants Phaedra to investigate some secret that he had found out about. He didn’t want to tell her directly because he was worried it might make people go after her, but hoped that his death might get her on the trail of the discovery in a more confidential way.

They go to Pax’s house after he notices a cloaked figure following them. Pax has to fly her everywhere in the Trees because Phaedra doesn’t have wings. Phaedra talks with Pax’s wife Kei and his daughter Joya.

They next go to talk with Renna, a friend of Dace’s. She is a dancer at a strip club. She doesn’t have much to say other than that she has already been visited by people who seemed to be Dracona royals who wanted to intimidate her into not talking.

They decide to visit the Maids, since they are one group that can’t be intimidated into silence. Pax is extremely freaked out by the Maids but swims to meet them alongside Phaedra and their amphibious activist friend, Sashenka. Phaedra is also concerned but is determined that this is the only way.

The Maids, who are carnivorous and have a hallucinogenic song, surround them. Sashenka tries to persuade the Maids to be friendly. Their song makes the Black Cloaks bliss out like they’re on a drug trip. Pax eventually figures out how to minimize the effect and tells Phaedra.

The Maids warm up and implant their memories of their sister’s death into their minds. They now know the Queen’s magician, Lysanthir, was the figure that Iona and Romu saw dropping the bodies into the Lagoon.

Pax and Phaedra leave the Lagoon in good health and discuss the case further. They hear an announcement that the two of them are now wanted by the police. Clearly the Queen or her helpers have put pressure on the police.

They split up to avoid attention. Phaedra goes home and has a bout of adrenaline-filled sex with Nida after recounting her dangerous day. Phaedra tells Nida about how she was exiled. Nida is sad that Phaedra lost so much, but Phaedra says she concentrates on what she has found—that is, Nida.

Phaedra and Pax meet again. Phaedra takes Pax to the house of Phinneas II of Thane, her estranged and secret father. This is the first time they have met.

Phaedra wants him to help them resist the queen, and to tell them if he knows what she’s been up to. She also tells him the Kiros Three may be setting him up to take the fall for Freyal’s death, but he is not concerned about them. He also sets her straight on how powerful she is—he was not, for instance, powerful enough to get past Kiros’s problems with interracial children to get to know Phaedra as a child. He says he doesn’t know what Taline is doing but might know someone who does, and leaves to get him. Pax stares around the house and can’t believe the lives of rich people.

Devaki, Phinneas’s other child and her half-brother, is also there. He shows Phaedra a giant rare painting. When they unlock it with a secret password, it releases a set of powerful memories that Phinneas has about Phaedra. It shows how he has secretly been caring for and about her all this time.

Phinneas comes back with Ividor, the Queen’s top magician. Pax and Phaedra pull their guns on him but he opens his hands to show a Taka, cute fuzzy animals that are thought to be extinct. He says he found it under the Castle along with many mysterious workers. They all make a plan to investigate. They split up.

Pax and Phaedra head to the bowels of the royal castle. As usual, Pax is annoyed with the Elves who wear mech wings, which he sees as cultural appropriation from Fairies.

They break in and steal some clothes for disguises. However, after traveling down for some time they are ambushed by Phaedra’s brother, Hadrian. Pax gets the drop on him with his pistol and they tie him up and knock him out.

Continuing on, they find a giant room of locked-up Taka. They hear Lysanthir coming and hide. Then they see what the Queen and Lysanthir have been doing. They have a machine that horribly sucks all the magic out of the Taka.

Pax and Phaedra are shocked that anyone would do this to the defenseless, cute Taka. Lysanthir sneaks up on them and magically captures them. The Queen shows up. She explains what they’ve been doing: the city’s magic has dried up so they’ve been replacing it with the magic from the Taka. Freyal found out about it so she killed him—or at least intended to. While he was dying, he drank some poison to make sure his death was suspicious, and Dace drank some too. Lysanthir had followed the Queen and after they died he hid Dace’s body.

The Queen is furious with Lysanthir for interfering and they argue.

Meanwhile, Ividor, Phinneas, Devaki, and Valorie show up to help. They all fight.

Phaedra and Pax argue: she wants to destroy the machine but Pax is worried about the effect of having no magic on his home neighborhood.

Phaedra plows ahead with her plan despite Pax’s opposition. Her moth shows up and they bond briefly, with her mother using her own magic to help damage the machine. Taline kills Vasha, and Phaedra’s rage increases exponentially. They wrestle and become covered with spilled Taka blood. Pax pulls a gun on the Queen. Lysanthir knocks Phaedra off the cliff into the water below. Ividor is killed. Things look bad.

However, the Maids in the water cast a spell that physically transforms Phaedra into her full Dracona heritage. Her wings, which were previously just atavistic, grow to their full span and she flies out. She uses a gun she got from Devaki to destroy the machine.

Pax looks despairingly at her. He still would not have destroyed the machine because of the damage it will do to the people of the city. She says goodbye to him and they leave separately; she goes with Valorie.

The cavern collapses and Taka run everywhere. Fires and floods run through the city, just as the Queen predicted and Pax feared.

The Dragyern Conspiracy

Five years later, Phaedra has left the Black Cloaks and works as a private detective. Pax is still a Cloak and has a new partner, Beeane II of Alden. He is a Bellweather with low-level psychic powers. He normally communicates via a language that approximates emojis, which Pax can’t speak. Beeane thus uses a translator device to speak to Pax and others.

The city is doing well. Phinneas has become the Prime Minister. However, there are still issues with low levels of magic and the vulnerable parts of the city are still damaged.

Pax and Alden investigate a murder. The body looks like it was eaten, not killed with a weapon. This is only the most recent body like this—there have been three more. Pax decides he needs help and goes to consult Phaedra, whom he hasn’t seen since the fires.

Their meeting is awkward but cordial. They go back to her office and meet Valorie. Phaedra surprises Pax by knowing how to speak Bellweather, which she learned in addition to also speaking Maid. She points out that the Maids are much less trouble these days now that they live freely in the flooded section of town and are not treated like prisoners.

He shows her the crime files and she deduces that they are dealing with a serial killer, which is highly unusual or even unique in Kiros.

After some persuasion she agrees to help on the case. She wants to go to the crime scene, which is more involvement than Pax was planning on.

She says she has to go do something for a minute, and will meet him later. When she returns, she is bleeding. This is never explained.

They meet up at the scene, which is bloody and chaotic.

They hear a sound—a giant beast appears before them: a Dragyern, a dragon-like creature thought to be mythical or extinct.

Pax and Phaedra freeze, unsure of what to do, but Alden leads it away with a light. It slides away into a hole under the room, deep into the mountain. Based on its actions, they believe it was looking for something, indicating that it has sentience, unlike the standard beliefs about Dragyerns.

Pax goes to police headquarters and persuades Captain Gooden to let Phaedra officially work with them, given the multiple unusual aspects to the case.

Phaedra goes to the Kiros Museum of Natural History, where Nida now works. They happen to have an exhibition about Dragyern up, so Phaedra abashedly reveals herself to Nida and asks about them. Nida is furious that Phaedra ghosted her after the battle five years ago. Phaedra admits she has no good answer; she has been trying to come up with something to say for five years. However, once Nida hears what happened, she is willing to help, and points out that the father of Phaedra’s ramen guy, Jono, once fought a Dragyern long ago.

As she leaves, Phaedra says that what she lost 5 years ago was Nida—just as Nida is who she found after losing Freyal.

Pax and Phaedra talk with Jono over rumors that he may know something about Dragyern. This is Phaedra’s first time back to the Trees since the disaster and she is worried about how much damage they may have taken. Jono doesn’t know anything about Dragyern, but Pax’s younger kids kids show up and Phaedra meets them for the first time, realizing how much she’s missed from Pax’s life. Then she meets Joya, the one child she had met before, and discover that her wings were lost in the fire. The devastation of Kiros after the destruction of the Taka machine isn’t abstract for Pax, it’s personal. Amazingly, he never presses Phaedra on this impact.

They get a call about another death, which can only be accessed by swimming through Pax’s hated site, the Lagoon. Sashenka meets them there and helps them swim in. As they do, they are chased by another Dragyern. Pax and Alden swim ahead while Sash and Phaedra try to stop it.

They barely manage to slow it down. The detectives all climb into the home from the water but the Dragyern comes right after. They freak out about what to do when Valorie teleports in with a bunch of Taka and a stranger, who uses an unusual spell to knock out the Dragyern.

The stranger is named Dagmar. She passes out from the strain of the spell. Valorie doesn’t know much more about her. She explains that the Taka are there because she has discovered that they naturally give off a little magic on their own, which she can use to help cast spells. She says that the Queen could have used this automatic, voluntary magic radiation to help Kiros without totally draining them, but she was too greedy.

The victim of the murder was a journalist and activist named Ellyse Locke, who Phaedra, Sash, Pax, and others knew personally.

They go back to Valorie’s Magick Shoppe for safety. Pax does a Soulprint on Dagmar and discovers that she is the daughter of Aldric II of Solas, one of the Kiros Three who earlier tried to manipulate the aftereffects of Freyal’s murder.

Pax and Phaedra think about what they know about the current murder victims. They believe someone is trying to kill people in order to clean up after some other secret illegal activity.

They receive yet another report of an attack but this time the victim survived—the ex-Queen and Lysanthir. Pax, Alden, and Phaedra rush to investigate. Pax leaves a Black Cloak to protect Valorie, along with Phaedra’s half-brother Devaki. When they arrive at the Queen’s prison, they are caught in an explosion.

They survive and go inside. The Queen says she doesn’t know what’s going on but points out to them that Lysanthir’s body wasn’t found, unlike the other attacks. He has been kidnapped.

They go back to Valorie’s to protect their friends by taking them to Pax’s family. The kids are very excited to see all of Valorie’s Taka. They are also excited to help solve the crime. They are dedicated crime fans as children of a top Black Cloak. Phaedra secretly puts her old mech-wings in Joya’s room so she can use them to fly in the absence of her original natural wings.

This brings her some joy and sense of resolution over her decision 5 years ago, but then Iona, one of the teens who tipped her off about Lysanthir, shows up. She confronts Phaedra, saying that she feels guilty for helping her, and asks if she would do it over again. Phaedra says she doesn’t know.

Pax has Renna brought to his house as well, both to see if she knows anything and for her protection as a leader of the underground resistance. Pax and Phaedra once again talk about the decision to destroy the Taka machine. Phaedra says everything that came after is her fault and Pax agrees.

Dagmar finally wakes up and they ask what she knows, but her memory has been erased.

They all get together and go to Phinneas’s old house for even more secrecy and protection. The group now includes Pax’s family, Valorie, Devaki, Renna, Dagmar, and Iona. Phaedra is surprised it wasn’t destroyed; the others tell her that Phinneas has been using it to shelter others.

Valorie uses her magic to bring back some of Dagmar’s memory. She was kidnapped by Elea Veris, another of the Kiros Three. Dagmar and others with magical ability were themselves mind-controlled into mind-controlling the Dragyern to kill people. They get a clue that “Delphi” is important.

Renna knows that Delphi is located at her old strip club. They go there and find out that it is a machine for determining magic sensitivity while pretending to just be game about your love destiny.

Pax, Phaedra, and Alden go to Elea Veris’s estate. They see signs of Dragyern movement that lead to the Academy for Human Advancement, which Elea runs. They break in and hear Elea talking with Lysanthir. She got him to help with her research into developing a new form of synthetic magic to replace the magic from the Taka. That’s what she’s been trying to cover up with the Dragyern killings.

The Black Cloaks confront Elea, who releases the Dragyern against them. They fight.

Phaedra, who has been reflecting on her decision with the Taka machine, tries to focus on the idea that making the right decision at the right time is what matters. This time, at least the decisions seem easier.

They disrupt Elea’s control over the monsters, who then kill Elea for controlling them. Valorie and their other friends arrive and help. Apparently the Taka sense something familiar in the Dragyern and want to help them.

Lysanthir is captured. The synthetic magic is given to Phinneas, who uses it to help the city, in particular the parts that were damaged by the fires and floods from the Taka machine’s destruction.

Pax, Phaedra, and their family and friends hang out later in celebration in The Trees. Valorie and Devaki are paired up, as are Renna and Dagmar. Phaedra is back with Nida; they watch with joy as Joya flies with the mech wings. There is hope.

Powers and Abilities

Once Phaedra has her transformational evolution into her full Dracona form, she has wings and can fly. Unlike her mother and many other Elves, she seemingly has no magical abilities.