Kryton Novelli is a fixture of the Venturian Academy of Veiled Arts — a faculty mage in his middle years, brilliant and increasingly unsteady, with a standing tab and a worse habit at The Undertow. He used to be a Wizard. The spells are gone now, along with most of what he'd learned and most of what he'd pieced together, taken straight out of his head. What he has instead is a Warlock's pact he won at a gambling table, a patron he can't name, and the stubborn belief that he's clever enough to wriggle out of the deal before it costs him.
Concept
A mid-career VAVA faculty member — gifted, erratic, and in too deep at The Undertow. A former Wizard who is now a Warlock.
The Disappearance
His close friend Maruk, a Fog Warden, vanished the same night a scarred stranger appeared at the fog line. Kryton asked questions at VAVA and got nothing back, so he investigated on his own — obsessively — and began to find patterns: Fog Wardens going missing, and signs that memory itself was being tampered with across the city.
What It Cost Him
For his trouble, someone took his memories — including the wizard's craft he'd spent a career building — through The Undertow. His magic and most of his findings went with them. He had all but given up when, gambling at those same tables, he won someone else's memory: a vision of a tome and a ritual. He performed it, bound himself to an unknown patron, and got his power back through the pact. He's certain the arrangement is temporary — that there's a loophole, if he's sharp enough to find it.
Ties
- Noname — He was close to her missing fiancé, Maruk, and feels the guilt of it.
- Maruk Grommarg — The friend whose disappearance set everything in motion.
- The Undertow — Where his memories were taken, and where he won the ritual that made him a Warlock.
- Venturian Academy of Veiled Arts — His employer, and the first place his questions went unanswered.