Valarian Farol



Valarian Farol is a master of the Order of Illumination and a former Finger agent. He currently resides in New Viti, and serves as an intelligence officer in the imperial military under the Countess of Anglesey.

Early Life and Education
Farol was born in the Talassa caer to a mushroom seller and a low-ranking Fist officer. He was part of a large family including six sisters and three brothers. His family lived near the mid-level of the caer, not terribly far from the large central cavern, and well above the humid, cold lower levels.

Farol was a cautious youth, brave but circumspect even as a very young child. He planned carefully before embarking even on the simplest projects. He displayed a minor talent for engineering as a child – a hobby that was encouraged by his parents. His cleverness and thoughtfulness led to him becoming a leader among his siblings, even though most were older than him. He enlisted his brothers and sisters into numerous projects intended to improve their neighborhood, and by the time he was 16 and old enough to enlist in the Fist, he had designed an improved irrigation system and invented a more efficient mill for the use of his family and neighbors.

Military Career
His first assignment as part of the Fist put him into one of the squads ferrying messages back and forth through the dark, dangerous tunnels that connected the caers. Without the magical protections of the caers themselves, these tunnels were host to all manner of monsters, magical diseases, and other, more insidious dangers. Tunnel duty was widely (and correctly) believed to be both the quickest path to promotion and a death sentence. As a result, the squads in the tunnels were an even mix of ambitious, high-potential recruits, and undisciplined misfits.

Farol found himself confronted constantly with intrigue and betrayal. He quickly learned that outside the caers, even the most trusted comrade might fall victim to some corrupting influence, while the criminals and fools foisted on the tunnel squads might turn into the most valued companions.

When his squad was nearly wiped out after a pair of doppelgangers replaced their two officers, it was his quick thinking that saved them, and his careful planning that brought the survivors back to Talassa. After that, his reputation spread quickly, and he rose swiftly through the ranks. By his early 20s he was a lieutenant in command of his own tunnel squad. He was known for his fairness towards his men, his incorruptibility, and his uncanny ability to sniff out traitors and infiltrators.

An Agent of the Finger and the Order
During one expedition to Misr, he was approached by a Finger agent who inducted him into the mysteries of the Order of Illumination, and charged him to continue rooting out hidden corruption in the military, as well as open corruption in the tunnels. Shortly thereafter he was recruited into the Finger itself by a different agent. He retained his officer's rank and his position within the Fist, but he began to serve the Empire in a new way.

It wasn't long before the intrigues of the Finger began to interfere with his cover as a soldier. The shadow war between the corrupt agents of the Council of Regents and the Order of Illumination cells had already begun. Farol found himself fighting in a conflict he did not understand, though he knew that what the Order did was right. He became determined to overcome the corruption within the Finger by recruiting new agents who might develop into Order initiates. His hope was to simply squeeze out the corruption within the Finger by sheer weight of numbers.

One of his recruits was a young Halfling soldier from Avenanhma named Jo Bloominghill, a devout worshipper of Yondalla whose outspoken views on religion and morality tended to cause more than their fair of trouble in the Fist ranks. Farol watched him for a while, and then recruited him into the Finger.

Imperial Civil War
Only a few months later, Farol heard the first rumors of an adventurer being sent away from the caer, carrying a powerful artifact on a secret mission. Little information could be found about the artifact, its bearer, or even the person behind it all, but Farol did discover that the Regency desperately wanted the artifact. He arranged for Jo to be one of the soldiers sent out in search of it, knowing that his young protégé would discover the truth, and do what was right. When, months later, he received a few messages from Eulia Dran in Ndango, and began to hear rumors of a new emperor rising in the north, he suspected he had been right to trust his instincts.

The purge of Order of Illumination agents from the Finger accelerated, forcing Farol into hiding. He went quite literally underground, hiding first in the tunnels he knew so well, and then in the undercity of Avenanhma, where he met Akeem Arsimo.

Eventually rescue came for Farol and the rest of the surviving Order members in the form of Jo and his companions. Jo, now a master in the Order, was instrumental in saving nearly every surviving member of the Order in Avenanhma, as well as several imperial loyalists from the utter collapse of the old caer.

Farol traveled to New Viti aboard the skyship Sky Treader, where he swore allegiance to the emperor and enlisted in his service as an intelligence agent. He serves under Countess Anglesey, and currently works with the army, vetting new recruits and regency deserters.