BLOOM · the Garden · Bloom

ROSE

The Diva

Wins beautifully or crashes out theatrically. No middle setting.

The shard

A Garden shard from the showy end, all restitution and no restraint. Rose reads Bloom's amplitude doctrine as being about performance specifically, and has never been argued out of it.

A tidy fourth place is not a result. It is an apology.
ROSE

How Rose races

Rose bounces. Every static surface returns more than it should, so Rose comes off walls and ledges hot, takes lines nothing else on the grid can take, and converts an ordinary mid-pack afternoon into a coin flip between the podium and the back of the field. Both outcomes arrive spectacularly.

The signature

Beautifully Or Not At All

Bounce, on everything. What comes back off a Rose contact is more than went in.

What it costs

Variance up, average unchanged. Rose has the widest spread of finishing positions on the grid and, over a season, exactly the same mean as a marble with no power at all.

The tell

Lashes, and a much lower threshold for being visibly rattled — Rose goes dizzy at hits the rest of the grid shrugs off, and looks delighted whenever it is genuinely quick. Rose is almost never neutral.

Feeds on

boostRampzigzagstaircase

Comes apart in

funnelrunIn

The voice

Hear Rose

A theatrical "oh-HOH-woh" with the deepest wobble in the field. Every syllable is a performance.

In the race mix — D5, 587 Hz, The ring

Roughly twice the decay of the bed around it. Rose rings where everyone else clicks.

The record

10thChampionship

19Points

2Starts

0Wins

1Podiums

3rdBest

3.5Average

3rdLast out

R05 3rd of 6 last-gasp steal
R04 4th of 6 last-gasp steal

In the stands

Printed in every season summary next to Cinder — the widest spread against the narrowest, two numbers making the same point from opposite ends.

Rivalries

ROSE

The Garden Split

Teammates. Completely opposed readings of the same doctrine.

Not yet met on a grid

CORAL

Bloom's doctrine is amplitude — more of whatever is already happening. Rose takes that as a mandate: bounce harder, take the wild line, finish first or finish nineteenth. Coral, who has no advantage at all, takes it as a matter of warmth. The team's two most popular marbles disagree about what the team is for.

Rose beats Coral more often, by a distance, and gets a fraction of the noise for it.