Asteria the Sage (Artist's Impression)

Reproduction of a painted portrait in private circulation, filed as an artefact and not as a likeness. The Archive holds the picture, the maker's note that came with it, and nothing further about either.

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Asteria the Sage. Painted from the sitter's own account; the sitter was not present. — the maker's note, undated.

What the picture is

The note describes the practice it belongs to: a portrait made for a member of a plural system who has no body of their own to sit for one. The system describes; the painter paints; and what results is an impression in the exact sense, a picture of a description. It is not evidence of anything. Nobody has seen its subject, the painter included, and the note says so.

The subject, on the note's own word, is a member of the system registered to Tissadelle Shepherd. The registration says only that the system has more members than the form has boxes for. It names Tobble. It does not name her.

What the note calls her

The note calls her Asteria the Sage. Asteria is the name the note gives her, and the Sage is an honorific of the Fellowship of Light. The record knows one other Asteria who bears it: Asteria Wessex, a retired Star Captain, who is called it by the chapter she leads. Shepherd's system has no standing in the Fellowship, so the honorific is not the member's to hold: the note borrows the Fellowship's word for her, and the Archive records the borrowing as the maker's. What joins two Asterias who are both called the Sage is on Shepherd's page, on the system's own authority, and is not repeated here; the picture is evidence of none of it.

What it does not say

An impression asserts nothing about its subject's face. The pale colouring, the blue hair and the embroidered cloak are the painter's answer to a description the Archive does not hold. The record's own account of the system's interior is on Shepherd's page, given on the system's authority; this picture adds nothing to it, and is not filed as if it did.