Aypol Morks

Aypol Morks is a mage of the Archon in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") who goes about disguised as a humble conjurer. In South Razel he helped Castor and Leonard find the stolen Bloodstone beneath the town.¹²

The conjurer

In a merchant's memories of South Razel, Aypol was a showman in red and purple with a hat, travelling in a donkey cart that bore the words "not a real mage". He entertained children with sleight of hand, pulling coppers from behind their ears and making candles that threw sparks, and Castor could not see through the tricks.³⁴

During the strongest of the town's tremors he bared his left forearm, touched the simple runes drawn there and cast a spell, his eyes glowing white. Castor tried to stop it and failed. It was a divination cast in response to the quake, not the cause of it.⁵⁶⁷⁸

Background

Taken aside, the man introduced himself as Aypol Morks, a name Castor knew to belong to a noble family. He denied being an unlicensed mage and showed the Archon tattoo he had hidden, a concealment that needs costly, forbidden materials and breaks the Archon's rules; he said he dressed as a conjurer so as not to draw attention. He wore no ring.¹⁹¹⁰

Aypol is in his early forties. His family are lesser nobles of the Akşelale province with dairies and a great deal of money, their rank bought rather than that of electors; his elder brother runs the family business. Having not grown up with his family, he wants to show his father and brothers that he has earned his own money and pays his own taxes, and he has taken up alchemy for that reason. When he heard Castor's family name, Onerio, he moved a Fireball wand from his pocket to a less easy place inside his robe.^11121314

He left the Archon about seven years before. He wrote his thesis on the faster production of identification spheres, and in his practical examination he had to make ice evaporate in a cold room without letting it melt, which he managed with chemical mixtures; his beard and hair were singed and he scraped through with a modest mark. He was not trained in war magic at the time but made up for it later.^1516171819

The descent

Aypol offered to find the stones with divination in return for a small share for his research. They agreed on a tenth of what was found, but no more than two hundred grams. He said the stones shone in the ethereal and lay gathered in a box rather than in an ore bed, beneath the town square, and that the easiest way in was through the soft earth of the cemetery; he did not know the cause of the quakes and would not say whether the stones were meant for an attack on White City. He would not go below, but raised a hand of earth to help dig, hid the entrance with an illusion and guided Castor and Leonard through a telepathic bond, warning that dangers might be hidden from him.^{20212223242526}

When they came back up with the chest, he helped them climb out and made the whole group invisible as two cohorts of legionaries closed in on the town. Leonard grew suspicious because Aypol knew of a fight with a fire elemental that they had not told him about, though Castor knew that a diviner could sense such a thing.²⁷²⁸²⁹

The hidden employer

On the road to the town Castor and Leonard had been ambushed by bandits paid to kill them. From the leader's memories they learned of their employer: a mage who came down to the bandits' camp in the shape of a bird two nights before and took human form, his face, voice and size hidden by a Cloak of Shadows. He forced the bandits to take the work by killing one who resisted, paid half in advance with a promise of the same again, asked for their ears as proof of their deaths, and left by teleporting; a thin smile suggested that merely delaying them would also serve. Another captive said he had seen a strangely glowing stone in the mage's ring. Who this mage was remained unknown.^30313233

Left sleeping

Unsure what Aypol would do once he saw the stones, Leonard cut away his belt and the pocket holding his wand, and Castor put him to sleep with a spell strengthened by a bloodstone. Reading his mind, Castor found that his story was true: he wanted the stones for his own alchemy, had no tie to any group and no intention of killing them, and had never killed anything in his life. Castor judged him naive, and Leonard argued that he should live.^34353637

They laid him by a tree under a blanket, with his focus, his wand and fifty grams of worked stone, and a note explaining why they had overpowered him; the note claimed they had found only a kilogram and a half. Castor came back to leave a bag beside him as well. As a diviner, Aypol could find them through the note if he wished. His waking was not seen.^38394041