Manfred

Manfred, known by the nickname Maskar, is a human mage and mercenary in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). He fled Archon at a young age and had some formal training there; he has been wanted in the Empire for the deaths of several people.¹²³⁴

The attack in Aquila

Manfred first met the band of adventurers as an enemy, in a street fight in Aquila alongside the shape-changing mimics and an archer on the rooftops. When he stretched out his hands and closed them, a great noise sounded and the paving stones burst apart. The Inran guide Fauna, in bear form, climbed up to him and bit his leg, and after the archer spoke to him in Undercommon, both withdrew.⁵⁶⁷⁸

Asking around afterwards, Sticks learned that the mage was no shape-changer but a fugitive from the Empire, and concluded that he was probably a hired fighter rather than the mimics' master.⁴⁹

The mercenary company

An elf of his company later said that the band had no formal leader, though Manfred, as its mage, took a larger share and had more say, and that it was he who had taken on the work. Manfred had already been in the New World when the elf arrived three years before. He kept his kin hidden; one of them, a ranked sailor with a cleft lip aboard the trading ship Blue Comb, helped bring in contraband from the mainland. After the company delivered the scholar Orson and were paid, they were attacked; the elf saw Manfred vanish by magic and did not know whether he had survived.^1021112

The sailor proved to be the ship's helmsman, a younger man who looked much like him. Inside a circle of truth he named Manfred his half-brother, born of the same mother but a different father, and said that he was alive and had come to him wounded. They were not close, he said, but he would not abandon him while he was hunted, for the sake of their late mother; he had left him at Uzun İskele, a fishing village well north of the city, and meant to send him to the mainland when he could. He thought his brother wrong to choose a violent mercenary's life when a mage could earn well at sea, though he admitted that they too carried unlawful cargo, and he asked that the kinship be kept quiet.^{13141516171819}

Found at Uzun İskele

The band found him in a hut at the fishing village, which kept him for pay; the workers took him for a shipwrecked sailor. He lay gravely wounded, breathing hoarsely, among clean and dirty bandages. Told that they had not come to kill him, he was glad of their help, and despite their old enmity they agreed to talk because they shared the same troubles.²⁰²¹²²

His wound had festered, with unusual dead flesh and a magical taint. Within him was a mark like the band's own, but woven far deeper, and it stirred in response to theirs. When Bruno reached out to heal him, darkness closed around Bruno's sight and fear made him draw back; Manfred said he felt the thing within him pulled towards Bruno. Fauna, who bore no mark, healed him without touching him; colour came back to him and he could walk with support, though not stand alone. See Mark of the Void.^232425262728

Asked why he chose his life, he spoke of money and pleasure and offered no tale of grievance. He refused the burden of saving the Empire and wished only to leave and set up in business near Neptune, where he was known for his crimes.²⁹³⁰

His account

Manfred offered what he knew in return for healing and an escort to Aquila, and the terms shifted as they bargained. He said that the plan to abduct Orson had been handed to them ready-made: he had not chosen Rozanna, who was to provide the tunnel, and someone in the palace was to hand over the target; the man who did so wore a guard's uniform but, from his manner, was no real guard, and had green eyes. The old man came of his own accord out of fear, so no sleep spell was needed. The company's other task had been to kill the band, at which they failed and lost men.^31323334

He delivered Orson at Fırtına Tepe to a man dressed in the Geroni style whose name he did not know. Expecting his pay to be cut for the unfinished work, he was instead well received and paid in full, and grew suspicious enough to ready a spell of invisibility. On the way back two mages and crossbowmen struck from a tall tree; some of his men died clutching their throats, perhaps from poisoned bolts. Knowing no spell that could carry the others, he made himself invisible and fled alone, and paid a carter to take him to the harbour.^35363738

In the city, he said, friends lured a man who had come looking for him to a cellar on the pretext of selling his hiding place, strangled him and took his belongings, among them orders in a tongue Manfred did not understand. From that man came a memory crystal, which Manfred first claimed to have thrown into the sea; he later admitted that he had left it with a friend at the Sarı Yol, a small tavern in the Tail Quarter, and asked that his part be kept secret.^3940414243

Spoiler: What he said of DeimosRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #24 · Say what you have read

Manfred claimed to have worked out not only why Orson was taken but how he would be used, and forecast that the Legion would reach Aquila within days with eighty or ninety ships. He said that Deimos, disguised as a native, had poisoned the governor himself and had stirred up war through contacts in the Empire in order to keep power. His fuller account is given in Plan to repeat the Desolation.⁴⁴⁴⁵

Parting

On the way back to Aquila, when constructs sent by Deimos ambushed the band, the young guide Rolf took Manfred out of the fight. Unable to bring him into the city unseen, Rolf left him in a hut at the Hunters' Shelter outside the northern wall, where the band found him half sitting, somewhat recovered and alive. He asked for word to be sent to his acquaintances and for his bag of spell components; a sailor named Korak brought the bag, and in a hut by the Explorer's Harbour Manfred took out a cloth-wrapped object and gave it to Finli. When he shook hands with Bruno, something within each seemed to pull at the other. Then he walked off towards the ships with Korak.^464748495051