The Intercessor

Alternate Titles: Nurse, Hostess, Midwife

This is a woman who is always looking out for others. She is attentive to the needs of those around her, often noticing what people require before they notice it themselves. Her home is always open to receive all who will come to it, regardless of their condition. She is often a nun or a nurse, working in a hospital or running a homeless shelter. She is devoted to those for whom she cares, and will go to whatever lengths are necessary to keep them from harm. She will walk for days through the snow, traipse on her knees across the city, or stand for hours beating on the magistrate's door in order to plead for those whom she loves.
She is patient, faithful and forgiving. In Romance plots she is often forced to wait truly stupendous lengths of time for her lover: she may be left home during war praying for his return, visit him for years in prison, or tend him through a fatal illness. Her love and compassion are unflagging: the Intercessor is probably the only character on the Green Square who never commits adultery.
Stories that star Intercessors tend to be relatively low key: she does not have the sort of spectacular virtues that keep a plot intense and action filled. Patience, faithfulness, long-suffering, and the like are difficult to portray as exciting, yet these virtues drive plots that are tender and beautiful. The Intercessor makes up for her lack of flashy talents with a combination of joy and quiet dignity that is profoundly compelling. When she is poorly written, she comes across as insipid and mewling; a sort of holy door-mat. When written well, it becomes clear that her quiet virtues are not demeaning or degraded, but rather the outward indication of a deep awareness and incedible inner strength.

Archetypal Events: Remain Faithful, Provide Hospitality, Plead For, Keep Secret

Common Intercessor Plots:

Waiting Forever: The Intercessor is in love, either with a Priest or an Avenger. For one reason or another, they must be apart: he is imprisoned, they have been ordered to opposite corners of the world, they are kept apart by law or social convention. She waits, faithfully, indefinitely to be finally united with her love.

Tend the Dying: The Intercessor is ministering to someone with a fatal illness, serious wounds, or a death sentence hanging over their head. She offers healing, either physical or spiritual, and comfort. If death is inevitable, she is present when they die, a midwife into the life to come.

Plead for the Innocent: Someone has been falsely accused or wrongfully persecuted. The Intercessor must summon all of her courage, and often travel through harsh conditions to gain the ear of the authority who can reverse the verdict.

Hospital: Not necessarily a modern, sickly green building full of beeping machines: the Intercessor's hospital may be a red cross tent, a converted Church, a leper colony, or a homeless shelter.
Supply of Balm: The Intercessor has medicines, morphine, oils, ointments, and her own soothing words to comfort those she cares for. Eventually, the efficacy of these comforts can run out and then she can only hope and wait.
Weapon: A
Cape: She wears a cape to protect herself from the elements during long journeys, but often uses it to clothe the naked and shelter the homeless. It becomes a blanket to spread over the sick, a disguise for the pursued, a shield against the devil, and a burial shroud for the dying.
Prize: C
Monument: A
Minor Symbols: Oil,

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