Tretys

Tretys is a boss of Cocoro presiding over an area called Gimle. A dedicated patroness of the arts, Tretys funds a great deal of public statuary and other artworks, and is much more ready to grant passes to artists than to other potential visitors. Her tastes in art, however, run rather counter to the mainstream, and many of her favorite artists get elsewhere little or no respect. In any case, her aesthetic interests are no indication of a lack of a practical side; Tretys is a talented adminstrator and charismatic leader who is particularly adept at playing enemies off against each other.

Appearance

Even by the strange standards of Cocoro, Tretys's form is grotesque. She is generally human in form, but twisted and tumorous, her round head crooked, with one eye swollen shut and two flipped-up knobs of skin the closest thing she has to a nose. A few clumps of long, lank gray-green hair dangle from scattered spots, and her wide mouth, set diagonally across her face, nearly divides her head in half, containing a dozen mismatched, snaggled teeth and a fat, segmented, purple tongue. Sprouting from her right shoulder is a second head of sorts; although Tretys occasionally affects talking to her second head (which she calls by several different names, "Gertrude" being the most frequent), and holding one-sided conversations with it, it has no brain and doesn't actually possess any separate consciousness or personality. It does, however, possess a single large, staring eye (and no other facial features), which gives Tretys binocular vision despite the one closed eye on her main head.

Tretys's body is so knotty and contorted it's hard to make out exactly where or how her limbs join her hunched, lumpy torso. She has three full-sized arms, each bent and gnarled, as well as two undersize arms she uses mainly as a place to put more rings and bracelets. Whether her three ambulatory appendages are legs or tentacles is mostly a matter of definition, though they do have something resembling toes—one of them possessing a row of toes that runs all the way down its length. A number of extra spines, knobs, and other protrusions of no obvious purpose also stick out from her body at various positions.

Tretys's skin is mottled and uneven in color, from an unhealthy-looking pinkish-grey at her main head down to a bilious green at her lower torso. Most of her body is covered with warts and boils the latter of which frequently burst and ooze foul fluids, though this doesn't seem to convenience Tretys at all.

In contrast with her unsightly appearance, Tretys always dresses in the finest clothing, specifically tailored to fit her unique form. She wears thick, brightly colored makeup that turns her antic features into a confusing piece of abstract art.

Headquarters

Though she frequently travels all over her domain, the better to find new places in need of artistic enhancement in addition to keeping tabs on her subjects, Tretys makes her home in a large house in a neighborhood of Gimle called Rainbow Alley. Tretys's home, which she calls the Sourceny, is an elegant structure of several very different architectural styles with graceful transitions between them that somehow make them come together into a coherent whole. The building doubles as a museum, with wings dedicated to several different architectural styles. The entire building has unobtrusive but effective security, and anyone hoping to steal its treasures would have a very hard time of it—though Tretys's unusual preferences perhaps decrease the demand for the art there anyway. The security is especially tight on the part of the building that serves as Tretys's private quarters, however—not because she fears assassination (after all, she could easily have herself duplicated again), but simply as an assertion of her strength.

Tretys is known to have a number of duplicates—probably more than she's strictly legally entitled to. At any given time, most of her duplicates are out touring various museums and places of renowned beauty throughout the Dupliverse. The Giant's Forest on Adimon, the Fairy Cave on Kadis, and the ruins of Dessemere on Srad are among her favorite haunts. Still, she always keeps at least two duplicates in Gimle, and at least one in the Sourceny itself.

History

A native of Cocoro, Tretys—then called Sunori Gaan; "Tretys" was a name she chose for herself much later—was born in a rough neighborhood called Solaz, the dominion of a boss named Uncle Grim. Her mother had crossed some important people, and so Tretys had a hard time of it growing up, her family's many enemies taking any opportunity to try to make her life miserable. Her talent for manipulating her foes showed at an early age, however, and she escaped the worst of what would have been in store for her by setting her would-be tormenters at each other's throats instead.

One of Tretys's closest friends as a child was an old man named Hurligan, a half-senile island duplicate who didn't remember where his other duplicates were or even if they still existed, and accordingly didn't have clearance to make more duplicates. Hurligan's main obsession seemed to be the construction in a vacant lot of a huge edifice he called the "Cathedral", which he built out of whatever odds and ends he could get his hands on. Local ruffians invariably knocked down what he erected, but he took this as a challenge to make it better. To Tretys's young eyes, the Cathedral seemed a magical place. In retrospect, she now recognizes that however good Hurligan's addled intentions may have been, the other residents of Solaz may have had good reason to consider the Cathedral an eyesore. In any case, although she wasn't familiar with the term or the concept at the time, it was her first major exposure to outsider art, and her affection for Hurligan helped motivate her to champion similarly idiosyncratic artworks for the rest of her life. Likely she innately had eccentric tastes and might have had a tendency toward such behavior anyway, but it happened to be Hurligan's Cathedral that was the catalyst.

After Hurligan's death (an event that Tretys never did learn for sure whether or not it was accidental), Tretys came to realize that however good she had been until now at escaping her enemies, she was playing a losing game as long as she stayed in her current position. So she decided to cultivate some powerful friends, winning their favor by helping them neutralize their enemies as she had neutralized her own. By this means, she swiftly rose in influence and power, until finally she ended up the unquestioned boss of her own domain.

Tretys's distorted form is not the one she was born with—her mother didn't wish such monstrosity on her child. Rather, during a duplication early in her rise to power she intentionally took on this ghastly shape, later from time to time making a few adjustments or refinements. She is fully aware of how repulsive most other people find her appearance, and actually uses it as something of a test of character for those she meets; those who can speak to her face-to-face(s) without showing any signs of disgust or abhorrence go a long way toward earning her respect.

Personality

When meeting someone new whose character she wants to judge, or when dealing with someone she contemns, Tretys enjoys playing up her monstrousness, belching and twitching and affecting various other unpleasant physical habits and feigning an ignorance of proper norms of etiquette. In front of someone she respects or has reason to impress, however, Tretys can be quite cultured and eloquent, and is quick with wordplay and fine figures of speech. She is especially fond of elaborate metaphors, which she sees as something of an art form in and of themselves.

Despite the money she lavishes on artists, Tretys herself leads a fairly austere existence. Her private quarters are small and nearly bare even of furniture, with little more than a simple bed for her to sleep on, and while she may treat guests to lavish feasts, on her own she subsists on simple fare.

Relationships

Tretys has created a number of children, seeing this as another medium in which she can do art, and giving them all sorts of interesting forms. She doesn't keep them close, however, and usually doesn't even raise them herself, paying an underling to take care of the child or simply putting it up for adoption—or, most often, designing the child in such a way as to be self-sufficient from birth, and then leaving it to fend for itself. Oddly, Tretys feels much more of a maternal attachment to some of the artists she sponsors than to her own biological children, and worries greatly over their welfare.

Tretys has a number of assistants who help her with her administration of Gimle. Her most trusted underling is her private secretary, a little man named Dwarrow who often accompanies her on her rounds. Other important minions include her head of security, Grambus, and her lieutenant, Rhedmere.

Tretys's relationship with neighboring bosses is cordial but cool. She has no close friendships or alliances with the bosses of adjacent regions, but no serious rivalries either. The one possible exception is Zard, the boss of an area called Jecomo, who wants to expand his territory and sees Tretys as an easy mark. The fact that Tretys hasn't proven as easy to oust as he initially expected has only angered Zard and made him more determined to defeat her, but for the moment there seems to be little danger of his actually succeeding.