The Matriarch's original name was Yin Sha. More precisely, she was Silver Veil Sequence Number Seventy-Three.
After the Ascendants abandoned their physical bodies, they also discarded the names they had borne in the age of flesh... There had originally been one hundred and twenty-seven members in the Yin Sha sequence, all of them women.
But in the end, only three remained... The Matriarch was one of them. Her other kin had perished in the war a thousand years ago.
Yin Sha did hate the Things from Beyond, but even as she hated that monster, she feared it.
Whenever Yin Sha recalled the Things from Beyond, images of her companions being devoured bite by bite by those hideous spawn surfaced in her mind.
What Yin Sha was unwilling to admit was that all the Ascendants who had survived were deserters!
She, too, had only survived because she had fled the battlefield.
"Are you still listening? Um... Matriarch?"
Joshua's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"Watcher, you may call me Yin Sha. I was thinking about something else just now."
Yin Sha admitted with slight embarrassment that she had not been listening.
"You weren't listening either? Uh... I can see none of you want to hear me ramble, so that concludes the explanation... What remains is an assessment."
Joshua felt that the Ascendants still had not understood what he was saying, and he did not want to waste any more time on it.
"An assessment?"
As soon as Yin Sha spoke, a bookcase appeared out of thin air beside Joshua. He pulled a book from it and tossed it to Yin Sha.
"I'm giving you twelve hours, until midnight tonight... Every one of you must complete any one of the buildings in it."
The book Joshua had thrown to Yin Sha was titled "Novice