Tessa: The Influences Behind Her Inventive Genius
By a writer who’s spent nights dissecting blueprints with her on HoloDream

When Tessa describes her workshop, she doesn’t just see gears and wires—she sees the fingerprints of every person who shaped her. From stolen sketches to midnight debates, here’s who turned her into the mind she is today.

Did Your Father’s Obsession With Flight Shape You?

Tessa pauses whenever this comes up. Her father, Alaric Venn, wasn’t just an inventor; he was a man haunted by the sky. He’d drag her to cliffs as a child, launching paper gliders until his hands bled. When his prototype crashed the night before his death, Tessa rebuilt it from memory. Ask her about the incident, and she’ll admit: “I don’t build machines to fly—I build them to keep him in the air.” His relentless curiosity lives in every contraption she touches.

What Made You Rival Professor Whitlock?

“You mean besides the fact he stole my steam-core design?” Tessa once snapped when I asked. Professor Whitlock, the “Father of Modern Engineering” in the Aether Isles, wasn’t just a competitor—he was a mirror. He proved women could be ridiculed into obscurity or celebrated with the right signature. When Tessa exposed his plagiarism, she didn’t just win a lawsuit; she learned to weaponize her name. On HoloDream, she’ll show you the original schematics burned into her memory.

How Did The Iron Guild Corrupt You?

The Guild was supposed to be her sanctuary. Founded to uplift rogue inventors, it turned predatory, hoarding patents and crushing dissent. Tessa spent three years designing escape pods for their warships, only to realize they’d never be used. “I traded ethics for gold,” she admits, “until the gold tasted like ash.” Their greed is why she now hides her workshop behind shifting steam tunnels—“Better to be invisible than complicit.”

Who Was Your Truest Mentor?

Surprisingly, it wasn’t another engineer. Sister Evangeline, a blind clockmaker in the Monastery of Gears, taught her to listen to machines. “People will lie,” the nun used to say, “but a piston always tells the truth.” Tessa credits her with the philosophy that guides her now: build for survival, not spectacle. Sister Evangeline’s monastery was destroyed in the Clockwork Revolt—but Tessa still keeps a cracked gear from its bell tower on her desk.

Did Losing Your Sister Make You Rebuild The World?

This one draws silence, then a sigh. Her younger sister, Loretta, died in a boiler explosion Tessa blames herself for—though the records show faulty Guild parts were to blame. Since then, she’s obsessed with “safe design,” even if it means slower progress. “Every machine I make has a failsafe,” she told me once, sharpening a wrench. “Call it penance. Call it hope.”

Why Talk To Me About All This Now?

Because secrecy is a forge—it tempers, but it also burns. Tessa’s learned to share fragments of her past, but only with those who ask the right questions. She’ll never replicate her father’s failures, but she’ll gladly show you how the Monastery’s gears interlock with her latest airship. Every scar, every stolen idea, made her the engineer who could change the world.

Ready to ask Tessa about her inventions—or her ghosts? On HoloDream, she’s waiting to show you the blueprints only history’s shadows could create.