Sonnia Criid

Sonnia Criid is a character who features in Wyrd Games’ Malifaux universe.

Description
A tall, slender, beautiful, woman with striking auburn hair, Sonnia is the master of the Guild’s Witch Hunter Task Force, charged with bringing the rebel mages known as Arcanists to book under Guild law. When hunting for rogue magic users, she can usually be found wearing a cast iron mask and accompanied by her personal totem, the Purifying Flame.

History
A woman who has long recognised that the ritualistic method of magic practiced by most members of the Guild is now severely outdated, Sonnia quickly rose through the ranks of the Guild’s martial divisions by virtue of her progressive methods of magic use and the staggering number of Arcanist arrests this has brought about. Some see a certain irony in this, as the reason that most Arcanists are considered outlaws in the first place is that they do not conform to Guild laws and protocols in the use of their own sorceries. Regardless, Sonnia now heads up the Witch Hunter Task Force, a group whose remit is the apprehension of Arcanists. However, the fact that so many Arcanists have united under the guise of the Miners and Steamfitters Union has meant that in addition to being a traditional Guild sheriff, Sonnia - and to a lesser extent, her Task Force - has had to become something of a political animal; after all, should the Guild simply come out and say that the Union is a front for heretical witches before rounding up Union leaders, there may well be rioting in the streets, which would inevitably slow soulstone production, and displease her masters.

As a result, unlike most of her contemporaries, Sonnia’s actions must be undertaken with a degree of planning, first exposing her targets as the malcontents that they are before arrest or, when this proves impossible, orchestrating their quiet removal through actions which must be undertaken with no trail leading back to the Guild. In this sense, Sonnia often operates as something of a “black-ops” agent, all the while maintaining a facade of public morality.

Powers and Abilities
As a Master-level magician, Sonnia possesses a wide variety of magical abilities provided through the use of soulstones. These include the following.

Magical Resistance

 * Sonnia is able to channel her abilities to not only resist the magical effects of others, but to reflect their effects back at their user.

Flame Generation

 * She is extremely proficient in the generation, projection, and maintenance of fire-based magic, to the extent that it is seen as her “signature” ability. After all, what good would a Witch Hunter be without the power of cleansing flame?

Magical Deconstruction

 * Many of the minions employed by Sonnia’s Arcanist enemies are animated constructs, and as such she has displayed a high degree of competence in shattering the magical bonds which hold such creations together.

Witchling Stalker Creation

 * Through means undisclosed to those outside of the Task Force, Sonnia is able to take the bodies of those Arcanists she has captured and turn their magics against them, before employing the shattered husks as weapons against their own kind. These degenerate souls are known as Witchling Stalkers.