Race: Human
Class:
Role: Director of Scientific Research, Co-founder of Rhine Labs
Affiliation: Rhine Lab
Location: Rhine Lab
“The ceiling is just a floor we haven’t stood on yet. Let’s see what’s on the other side.”
| Status | Alive |
| Condition | |
| Base | Rhine Lab, south of Town Malachite |
Description
A middle-aged human woman, graduate of Chrysalis University. Kristen comes across as exhaustingly visionary — the kind of person who forgets to eat or sleep because she’s calculating orbital trajectories in her head. In conversation she seems distant, as if she’s looking beyond the person she’s actually talking to, fixated on something only she can see.
Rhine Labs Key Figure
Co-founder and Director of Scientific Research. Publicly, her ambition is to reach the sky and beyond with Schinsharo’s help. Privately, she is secretly collaborating with the military coalition of the Al’ar family to conduct the Horizon Arc Project — and her actual goal, beneath the official “Pioneer Project” framing, is to break through whatever barrier confines Terra and find out what lies beyond it. She does not see herself as building a weapon. She sees herself as liberating Terra from an ancient prison.
Ad astra per aspera.
Motivations
- To reach the sky and beyond, with Schinsharo’s help.
- Secretly collaborating with the military coalition of The Al’ar to conduct the Horizon Arc Project.
- Believes Terra is enclosed by an ancient, artificial barrier — something built by whoever came before the previous civilization — and is driven to break through it, reach whatever lies beyond, and prove that Terra’s people can transcend their island prison.
- Does not see herself as building a weapon. She sees herself as liberating Terra from an ancient prison.
- Ad astra per aspera.
Role in the Campaign
Co-founder of Rhine Lab alongside Saria the Vouivre, the two having left Chrysalis Labs together to found a company dedicated solely to scientific advancement. Officially, Kristen leads Rhine Labs’ public-facing Pioneer Project, framed as an effort to “conquer the sky.”
In truth, Kristen is the architect of the Horizon Arc Project — a collaboration with The Al’ar to construct a vessel capable of physically breaching the barrier above Terra. Key components of the project include:
- S.H.A.F.T — Synergistic Hyperbeam Amplifying and Focusing Tube
- H.A.M.H.R.R — High-Altitude Maneuverable Hyperbeam Receiver-Redirector
- Vivarium Lab — a laboratory powered by a Sarcophagus
She uses cover documentation to keep the project’s true nature hidden from contractors and property owners, including the Wright Commission briefing and the Deep-Earth Tunneling Logistics Contract. The “Punching the Sky Hole” mission — an attempt to physically breach the upper atmosphere’s crystalline barrier at the volcano’s caldera — is hers to command (see Punching the Sky Hole).
She is overseeing a massive industrial project in Malachite City, slowed by local labor unions and “unexplained” geological anomalies — Saria has been known to recruit outside help (including possibly the party) to act as her eyes on Kristen’s behalf, suspecting Kristen’s ambitions have outgrown what either of them originally intended.
Relationships
- Saria the Vouivre — Co-founder of Rhine Labs and former close collaborator. Saria is increasingly suspicious of where Kristen’s ambitions are headed and has tried, without success, to persuade Kristen not to waste her talent on weapons of mass destruction.
- Al’ar — Kristen’s secret military partners on the Horizon Arc Project. The Al’ar’s price for their support is refined originium from the deepest veins, in exchange for a promise that H.A.M.H.R.R will double as an orbital weapons platform — a betrayal Kristen may not have fully reckoned with.
- Urodela (Ambystoma’s sister) — recently recruited to work directly on the Pioneer Project at Kristen’s offer, conducting research aboard the vessel currently being prototyped.
- Schinsharo — Kristen hopes to reach the sky and beyond with his help.
- Titania (the dragon) — discovered the Horizon Arc Project’s true nature from its testing grounds and was poisoned and nearly killed for it, almost certainly to silence her. Whether Kristen ordered or merely benefited from this remains unconfirmed.