Ngel Sfet (Nih-gel Suh-fet)
Ngel Sfet (a.k.a. The Black Queen)
Level 34 Voidmage. She can create Void Ants, which are Soul-animated psionic constructs that she controls. Her spells are unaffected by antimagic fields and walls of force, but her Void Ants are stopped by circles of protection.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Healthy, but relatively fragile. As a Black Ant queen, physical labor and combat are not what she's built for; she has minions for that. She currently contains some 28,000 other souls as part of her personal Void.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
A young Black Ant queen from the Black Hive, the Void-focused civilization that predated Old Hallownest. Under her mother’s rule, the Black Hive was utterly controlled and orderly, facilitated by liberal use of mind control. It consumed gods and the dreams surrounding it to feed and maintain itself, and especially to feed the queen’s massive ego. Ngel Sfet loved her people and thought they would all be better served by greater freedom of thought, with many minds working towards a single purpose. Eventually, with the aid of the Masked Knight (later known as the Pale King), she led a revolution and overthrew her mother, but at the last moment she was betrayed by the Masked Knight and was killed as well, leaving him the space to build Hallownest.
In late May of 23 ARL, Knight and Rodger Silverton found Ngel Sfet’s corpse at the bottom of the Birthplace in the Abyss below Hallownest, where she was serving as the last major anchor for the dream. They retrieved her. After thorough investigation back in Renedge, the party chose to resurrect her and give her the chance she never had to prove that she could be a better queen than her mother. With Knight's blessing, she had her Void Ant minions set up a castle for her in a cavern beneath Darkhome.
Prior to the Second Battle of New Hallownest, she quietly set up Void amplifiers in caverns around the city as a way of widening her control radius, but it was discovered during the battle that these weren’t as secure as she’d thought, with the attackers using them to boost their own control and magic. The amplifiers were also disagreeable to Renedge itself. Ngel and the Darkhome residents took them down after the battle, and Ngel, Knight, and Ba’alzamon began working to try to design a safer version.
While looking for solutions for the amplifiers, Tir Atar (a.k.a. Steven King) partially suppressed Ngel’s control of her Void, and the Void attacked her. In those moments, she became very aware that the Void is full of partial, agonized spirits and concepts that hate everything, but particularly her for controlling and making them. This horrified her; control of the Void was her birthright and foundational to both her old society and her own magic, and she had no idea of its true effects.
In hopes of making peace with all those souls, Ngel entered an apprenticeship with Blythe. She could also use counseling. As of a few weeks after the Second Battle of New Hallownest, while she does have her castle to the southeast of New Hallownest below the Deeps, she’s been sticking to the city more and trying to integrate herself more with the population. She spent much of late August and early September of 23 ARL translating her skill as a Void Shaper into aptitude as a Voidmage via the book Voices of the Void, which Knight had retrieved as personal treasure from the dungeon planet of Cubit. She dearly hopes that her new abilities will be less harmful to her minions and the Void itself.
In late May of 23 ARL, Knight and Rodger Silverton found Ngel Sfet’s corpse at the bottom of the Birthplace in the Abyss below Hallownest, where she was serving as the last major anchor for the dream. They retrieved her. After thorough investigation back in Renedge, the party chose to resurrect her and give her the chance she never had to prove that she could be a better queen than her mother. With Knight's blessing, she had her Void Ant minions set up a castle for her in a cavern beneath Darkhome.
Prior to the Second Battle of New Hallownest, she quietly set up Void amplifiers in caverns around the city as a way of widening her control radius, but it was discovered during the battle that these weren’t as secure as she’d thought, with the attackers using them to boost their own control and magic. The amplifiers were also disagreeable to Renedge itself. Ngel and the Darkhome residents took them down after the battle, and Ngel, Knight, and Ba’alzamon began working to try to design a safer version.
While looking for solutions for the amplifiers, Tir Atar (a.k.a. Steven King) partially suppressed Ngel’s control of her Void, and the Void attacked her. In those moments, she became very aware that the Void is full of partial, agonized spirits and concepts that hate everything, but particularly her for controlling and making them. This horrified her; control of the Void was her birthright and foundational to both her old society and her own magic, and she had no idea of its true effects.
In hopes of making peace with all those souls, Ngel entered an apprenticeship with Blythe. She could also use counseling. As of a few weeks after the Second Battle of New Hallownest, while she does have her castle to the southeast of New Hallownest below the Deeps, she’s been sticking to the city more and trying to integrate herself more with the population. She spent much of late August and early September of 23 ARL translating her skill as a Void Shaper into aptitude as a Voidmage via the book Voices of the Void, which Knight had retrieved as personal treasure from the dungeon planet of Cubit. She dearly hopes that her new abilities will be less harmful to her minions and the Void itself.
Mental Trauma
In late July of 23 ARL, Ngel was viscerally exposed to the fact that her control and manipulation of the Void were causing terrible suffering to the partial souls and sapient concepts that she was unknowingly creating and commanding, and that the Void that she thought was her birthright absolutely hated her. This revelation horrified her, and she has spent much of her time since trying to make things right and find a new place for herself that doesn't rely on her old powers.
Intellectual Characteristics
She’s only a few years old, though with ant maturation speeds she’s effectively a teenager. She’s idealistic, kind of rebellious, a rabble-rouser as much as you can be in a completely controlled society. Had different thoughts and tried to encourage other people in the Black Hive to do the same.
As a Black Ant queen, Ngel is biologically optimized for for large-scale coordination and mental control. She has a natural dimensional stability score of roughly 6000, letting her contribute significantly to the maintenance of whatever dream world she may be in.
As a Black Ant queen, Ngel is biologically optimized for for large-scale coordination and mental control. She has a natural dimensional stability score of roughly 6000, letting her contribute significantly to the maintenance of whatever dream world she may be in.
Morality & Philosophy
Now in Renedge, Ngel is struggling to understand the idea of a civilization that doesn’t need to be remembered to exist (as the dream realms did), as well as the objections people have to mind control and slavery. It’s a major culture clash; from her perspective, why not make people unable to break the rules rather than punish them if they do? Well-placed mind control reduces both disorder and suffering. And why not put defeated enemies to productive use rather than destroying them if you have the option?
Overall, Ngel is mostly focused on the wellbeing of her own "hive" or in-group, with the rights and wellbeing of those outside barely being a consideration. That said, she does have Good tendencies, and now that she's free of the stifling conformity of the Black Hive, she finally has the opportunity to learn more about what that can mean. Depending on her interactions with the protagonists, she could end up as anything from an oppressive mind controlling queen to a valiant freedom fighter.
Overall, Ngel is mostly focused on the wellbeing of her own "hive" or in-group, with the rights and wellbeing of those outside barely being a consideration. That said, she does have Good tendencies, and now that she's free of the stifling conformity of the Black Hive, she finally has the opportunity to learn more about what that can mean. Depending on her interactions with the protagonists, she could end up as anything from an oppressive mind controlling queen to a valiant freedom fighter.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Friend and ally of Knight. Apprentice of Blythe Derguil. Former lover and revolution partner of the Pale King under his alias of the Masked Knight, but he betrayed and killed her just after they succeeded in overthrowing the Black Queen.
Family Ties
Daughter of the original Black Queen.
Alignment
Neutral, with Good tendencies
Current Status
Defending Darkhome
Current Location
Species
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Black Queen
Age
~3 years (as of resurrection)
Children
Current Residence
Black Hive and New Hallownest
Pronouns
She/Her
Gender
Female
Eyes
Black, unblinking
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Black carapace
Aligned Organization
Related Reports
- 2020/02/09: Return to Hallownest Report
- 2020/02/19: Questioning the Corpse Report
- 2020/02/23: Reviving Ngel and Searching For Soul Runes Report
- 2020/03/15: Battle at New Hallownest Report
- 2020/03/22: Studying Knight Report
- 2020/05/20: Void Status Report
- 2020/09/09: Direfall Dungeon Part 1 Report
- 2020/10/25: Second Battle of New Hallownest Report
- 2021/10/13: Hunting Ragross Part 1 Report
- 2022/11/30: Downtime Report
- 2023/03/07: Fungicide Part 3 Report
- 2024/03/06: Defending an Idol Group on Another World Report
- 2024/03/27: Defending Zyth Part 4 Report
- 2024/04/03: Defending Zyth Part 5 Report
- 2024/04/10: Defending Zyth Part 6 Report
- 2024/04/17: Defending Zyth Part 7 Report
- 2024/04/24: Defending Zyth Part 8 Report
- 2024/05/08: Defending Zyth Part 9 Report
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