the prime cantor has a vague, extremely lofty and esoteric goal that she's been pursuing for centuries, and it's the basis of like. pretty much Every Thing in the carillon and every decision the pc has made in her rulership of it. nobody really knows this, because she plays pretty much everything close to the chest, but besides [redacted, ancient event], she's had two major breakthroughs within the timeline that roz and co. live in, and they center around people that the prime cantor uses and discards when they can no longer be made to obey properly or she's tired of them.
anaïs (roz's mom) - veritable genius, highly conceptual researcher, high and abstract mathematics, heavy theory and calculation. useful to the prime cantor for gathering information, finding fundamental patterns, and building a strong understanding of basics that had been eluding her after centuries of stagnation. was ?killed? either accidentally or on purpose, and her death (and the circumstances/variables/effects thereof) was a keystone moment of understanding for the pc that had not had any equal for centuries. pc realizes a new direction she needs to take her country in, and starts pouring resources into r&d and general technology advancement to replace the dying magic systems (a consequence of choices and systems she made a long time ago, and on the whole intentional) - anaïs had been mistrustful of the pc and her intentions for her research for years, and much moreso after having roz; roz has a deeply veiled breadcrumb trail that she will one day follow to better understand her mother and the circumstances of her death, as well as her work, the potential consequences of it, and the responsibilities she's passing on to roz. anaïs was terrified of being unexpectedly taken away from her daughter by the prime cantor, and thus made concerted efforts to protect and hide information for roz, just in case. some of this has been destroyed by time or by roz's abusive grandmother, but anaïs was incredibly canny and a lot of her legacy still remains for her daughter to uncover.
stiffcollar - pc's despised secretary/bodyguard/bitch boy. he had no value to her and everything he did for her while in her service was basically pointless, because she ends up ritualistically sacrificing him to try to capture the same effects from when roz's mom died (?) - but it doesn't work, stiffcollar becomes... what he is now, and the cantor is tilted because she doesn't understand why he couldn't be useful for ONCE in his entire life. he is her tool in her system and she made him - hundreds of years ago, she made a society that would produce thousands of him, all useless and stupid and devoted to her - and it's unconscionable and deeply offensive to her that in half a millenia he's the first tool that she couldn't just dispose of after using (it's so unsettling to think of all the things - people - that may have slipped through the cracks in her flawless, ordered system -) - but even though he didn't die and even though she banished him from being anywhere near her because of that outrage that disguises a sliver of fear, him Not dying has given her new variables, new insight, and allowed her to start a whole new slew of living being rights violations in the three years since his un-death.
arkwright: latest 'recruit' (she didn't have a say in the matter), and in many ways intended to be a replacement for anaïs. aw is an engineer and an inventor whose main focus is flight, but her improvements to an archaic, thought-impossible design called a 'null engine' caught the prime cantor's eye. basically kidnapped and taken to serve as an advisor (???) / pet inventor for the pc, arkwright has begun to sense that this isn't just about an engine or a fat government commission and has started to be immensely careful and stall for time. she starts the narrative in this precarious position, making up materials requests (some genuine!) that take her to remote chords and get her out of the cantor's direct line of sight while she tries to get to the heart of something so much more massive and decayed than she was ever prepared for. she is Not as theoretical and calculation-exclusive as anaïs, and instead wants experiments, prototypes, and physical results, which is both good and bad. she's also less attuned to healthy magic (anaïs was much more closely aligned with non-carillon mathemagics after she had roz, bc reasons) and much More attuned to whatever it is that the prime cantor is affiliated with, due to her fucked up heart situation. again, both good and bad. probably mostly bad for her, in the long run.
