A tall, thickset man. Long leather coat. Broad-brimmed hat. Lower face obscured by a scarf. He carries an old leather pack and a walking stick.

He is the person who gave Elderne Karos the ring. He told Elderne it would grant him an army. He knew what it would actually do. He gave it anyway.

By the climax of Book One, he appears from the shadows at Talerin Rock to heal Caston Cleargh’s corrupted Thartan wound — a wound that should have been irreversible.

What he wants, in the end, is a single thing: to find the missing Queen. Everything he has set in motion — the Thartan breach, the destabilisation of Mordikhaan’s politics, the deaths — serves this larger purpose.

“I find names come and go, depending on where you are. I am a friend to many, and mostly they just know me as the Benefactor.”