NEW MOON OF EARTH, INVERTED. THE CROWNCAP MUSHROOM. You have suffered a great loss. There has been death, which you narrowly avoided. But you have not moved on yet. You are stuck. You must face darkness three times, for you are destined to..carry a . . . lantern? Some kind of very bright light, too bright to see what it is.

 — Faron the Seer, Servant of Skura

The only child of the Rudlocks, Effi is a wisp of a thing with pale skin and a pile of dark curls on her head. Her hair is constantly escaping attempts at coiffure, resulting in loose curls hanging around her face. She looks like a delicate glass animal, possibly a giraffe. Effi is dressed in greens and prefers floral patterns.

Slow to mature, Effi enjoyed playing games and telling stories well into her adolescence. She stopped liking her peers when they started to judge her on the way she dressed and her skinny frame and unruly hair, so she had few friends aside from Kada. His death following the return of the shadow hounds five years after the Symposium (where they were members of the White Gryphons) shook her. 

Effi’s parents are status-conscious nobility who were concerned by her lack of social graces, and constantly pressured her to mingle and socialize with other noble children, even wheedling invitations after the fact when she was not invited to a party. Their behaviour made her even more of a laughingstock among her peers, and Effi rebelled by rejecting their attempts to set her up with an appropriate suitor. Instead, she married notorious bachelor and explorer Arko Adi, a raconteur who is 10 years her senior. His worldliness attracted her: he speaks several languages, has traveled widely, and has many tales to tell of far off lands — some of them true. His family is wealthy, but Arko is not great with money and there’s often not quite enough left for the family after he’s done carousing.