Miriam Greenfield
🌿 Miriam Greenfield
Affiliation: Verbena
Title(s): High Priestess of the Olbrich Chantry, Keeper of the Grove, Warden of Gaia’s Breath
Apparent Age: Mid-40s
Actual Age: Unknown (possibly born ~1880)
Essence: Dynamic
Spheres of Mastery: Life (5), Prime (4), Spirit (3)
Current Status (1985): Active – Leading the Cabal of the Spirit in defense of the Capitol Node
Associated Location: Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, WI
Cabals: Cabal of the Spirit, Circle of the Living Root (historical), Dreaming Echoes Alliance (informal)
🌱 Overview
Miriam Greenfield is the most powerful Verbena in Madison and one of the last surviving members of the Circle of the Living Root—a pan-traditionalist alliance that once maintained Gaia-aligned Nodes across North America.
Miriam is more than a priestess. She is a living ritual—a conduit through which Earth, Dream, and Magick breathe. She is deeply attuned to the Capitol Node and is one of the few who can still hear it speak in dreams, tremors, and flickering signs.
🧙 Role in Nameless Echoes
In 1985, Miriam acts as both a guardian and a prophet, standing between:
- The collapse of the Seal that binds the Nameless
- The desperation of Jay Dee and the Council
- The rising digital paradigm that threatens to overwrite nature’s rhythm
She believes the Capitol Node must not be “repaired,” but remembered correctly—as it once was, before the Dream fractured.
“You cannot patch a soul with code and geometry. It must be sung into wholeness, or mourned into rebirth.”
📜 Background
- 1880s: Born near Black Earth, WI, to a family of herbalists and German mystics. Awakened during a lightning storm while tending a dying tree.
- 1910s: Traveled with Circle of the Living Root, defending Prime Nodes during World War I's mass trauma surge.
- 1940s: One of few survivors of the Chicago Firestorm Node Collapse. Her hair turned silver-white from paradox backlash.
- 1969: Witnessed the First Reality Glitch at the Capitol Node. Has kept vigil ever since.
🌀 Known Abilities
- Life Mastery: Can regrow limbs, cure diseases, and awaken flora to fight or sing.
- Paradox Mitigation: Her presence tempers Paradox in nature-aligned rituals.
- Memory Rituals: Uses Dreaming and Spirit spheres to restore lost echoes.
- Verdant Command: Can speak directly to the Capitol Node through dream-plant symbiosis (requires Arcane + Life + Arete).
🌺 Personal Details
- Appearance: Wears woven robes of living moss and crimson thread. Her eyes glow faintly green when performing rituals.
- Voice: Calm, heavy with memory; sometimes echoes with forgotten voices.
- Familiar: A white raven named Sister Memory, who forgets past lives each time she flies too far from the Grove.
- Echo Trait: Characters who spend time near Miriam may receive Echo Tokens simply from shared memory resonance.
🗝️ Key Relationships
| Name | Relationship | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Jay Dee | Cautious Ally | Once lovers in a forgotten loop; now share mutual dread of Paradox |
| Lacy Z. Rivere | Ideological Rival | Fears Lacy’s digital insurgency will erase Gaia's last rhythm |
| Glory of the Morning | Trusted Friend | Works with him to maintain the Fae-Garou-Mage accord |
| Abel Washington | Philosophical Adversary | Warns he’s building “a ghost god made of forgetting” |
| The Nameless | Implacable Foe | Claims to have “felt its breath in the soil” since 1977 |
🌿 Legacy and Themes
Miriam represents:
- The Old World’s Dream – Pre-technocratic, Earth-aligned Magick
- Memory as Resistance – She does not adapt to change; she re-roots it
- The Fragility of Nature in the Digital Age
- Paradox as Symptom, not Punishment
She is one of the few who believes that the Nameless is not a god of destruction, but of erasure—and thus can only be opposed by living memory.