Viviana Eidenhart, the Oxygen Queen of Karna

Viviana Ophelia Eidenhart is the chair of the board of Tibet Innovations and the actual sovereign of Karna, known as the Oxygen Queen of the Federation. She inherited a loss-making colony at 24, read the dinerite reports her predecessor never opened and built a kilometre-high tower above the mud storms. The game's site labels her boss name Vivien.

This profile is spoiler-free. It covers her dossier and describes no encounter.

Who is Viviana Eidenhart?

• Full name. Viviana Ophelia Eidenhart.
• Title. Chair of the Board of Tibet Innovations and the actual sovereign of Karna.
• Nickname. The Oxygen Queen of the Federation.
• Age. In her sixties, and looks thirty.
• Home. A kilometre-high tower on Karna.
• Distance travelled. She has never once left the Beta Virgo system.

How did she come to rule Karna?

Her rise is a short chain of events, and the first link is that nobody else wanted the job:

1. Karna passed down the Eidenhart family tree as an inheritance.
2. Nobody else in the family wanted a loss-making colony on the edge.
3. Viviana inherited it at 24.
4. She read the dinerite reports her predecessor never opened.
5. In ten years, processing of the ore grew thousands of times over.

The lore likes this kind of detail: an unopened stack of reports turns out to be worth a planet. The family politics behind the story are covered in the Eidenhart dynasty and the Tallums. The company she chairs is the subject of Tibet Innovations: the corporation that owns Karna.

Why is she called the Oxygen Queen?

The nickname is not unpacked in the dossier material used here, so any explanation is a reading. A fair one is that the title follows the facts of her rule. Her fortune comes from decarbox, the compound that binds carbon out of carbon dioxide and methane and makes terraforming possible. Her own rooms sit in clean air above the storms.

Either way, the title reaches beyond Karna: she is the Oxygen Queen of the whole Federation, not just of one planet.

What is the tower?

Karna has constant mud storms and a hot, oily rain of melted decarbox. Viviana built a kilometre-high tower so that her rooms sit above the weather. The tower is fitted with the best rejuvenation technology available, which is why a woman in her sixties looks thirty.

It is also a statement. Most people on the planet deal with the storms at ground level and wear filter masks outdoors. She lives above all of it, in clean air.

The contrast between the tower and the ground is stark:

	Ground level on Karna	Viviana's tower
Weather	Constant mud storms and hot, oily rain	Above the storms
Air	Filter masks required outdoors	Clean air

What is the body horror in her dossier?

Viviana's dossier contains one of the most unsettling details in the lore. The sequence:

• The clean air of the tower let dinerite accumulate in her body slowly enough for her to adapt.
• In her student days she had hormone-reactive plant tattoos.
• Those tattoos were chemically deactivated, leaving empty cavities in her skin.
• Dinerite later filled the cavities.
• Blackthorn and holly now surface through her skin in waves.
• Her hair has gone completely black, although genetically it should be copper-blonde.

The result is a woman who looks thirty and carries a garden under her skin. The horror is told in the same dry tone as the rest of the lore, as a list of facts about a body.

What does her defining line mean?

The line that defines her is that she is not cruel toward people. The question is who she considers people.

That is the lore's central idea about Karna in a single sentence. Miners travel as cargo. Contraband colonists are shipped without medical protocol. Viviana does not need to be cruel to them, because they were never on her list. The lore frames her ambitions as beauty, youth and material supremacy rather than power, which is an unusual list for the head of a corporation.

What does her story say about bodies and wealth?

Viviana and Alister Duncan reach the same place by opposite roads. Duncan trusted augmentation until a virus fed on the seams of his implants. Viviana trusted rejuvenation technology and clean air, and the mineral that made her rich ended up growing through her skin.

Both are examples of the lore's recurring idea that the thing that gives you power can also consume you. In Viviana's case it happens slowly, and with a polite, almost decorative result.

Who is connected to Viviana?

A few relationships frame her position:

• Alister Duncan. His ambition impressed her.
• The Tallums. Tibet's co-founders, and the hereditary enemies of the Eidenharts.
• Other Eidenharts. Relatives who want Karna for themselves.
• Her predecessor. The person who left the dinerite reports unread.

What are the key facts at a glance?

Fact	Detail
Title	Chair of the Board of Tibet Innovations
Nickname	The Oxygen Queen of the Federation
How she got Karna	Inherited it at 24
What she did on taking over	Read the dinerite reports
Where she lives	A kilometre-high tower above the mud storms
What the tower gives her	The best rejuvenation technology
What the ore did to her	Blackthorn and holly surface through her skin

Where should you read next?

For the people around her, Dixotomia characters: who's who on Karna introduces the main cast.

Dixotomia is a single-player VR sci-fi horror shooter, and Viviana is one of the reasons Karna feels like a company town with a queen. The game is on Steam, with a free demo for a first look.