Traumir

Traumir is a master of the Archon in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"), responsible for the safety of its students. He is also the contact through whom The Hand gives the mage Castor his orders.¹²

Appearance

Traumir is in his thirties, with a thin moustache and more muscle than most mages. He is a warrior-mage, and carries a mace that serves him both as a weapon and as his arcane focus.¹²

The Hand's errand

A floating robe and lantern carried Castor, and later Leonard and Glanfall, to a place like an inn with no doors or windows, where Traumir, whom Castor knew from the school, received them. He told them that their master, not the Red master but one of the founders above him, had made a dark prophecy. The mage who had tried to kill the emperor in White City could be no ordinary living mage: one of the mages of the War of the Immortal Mages no longer lay in his grave, and neither imperial intelligence nor the chain-bearers could deal with him alone. He refused to say who the founder was, since anyone who knew could be caught or killed.³⁴⁵⁶

Traumir said that a group of students at the Archon held peaceful protests against the emperor's pressure, and that the master suspected these young people were being shaped, without knowing it, to the ideals of the hostile mage, though there was no proof. About two kilograms of Bloodstone had vanished from an imperial mine and been traced to South Razel, whose people a prophecy said would soon suffer a great calamity. He sent Castor to reach the stones before imperial intelligence, learn how they were being worked and bring them back. His master suspected the stones were being used to make sorcerers who would fight for the enemy. He also passed on the tale of an imperial officer in Akşelale who had fired cannon on the townsfolk after seeing soldiers' heads on poles, a sight later judged to have been an illusion.⁷⁸⁹¹⁰

He spoke of a great conspiracy that reached into noble families, mages and temple circles, and claimed that the Hand had no traitors because it took only gifted mages whose minds it knew. He asked Leonard to guard Castor and keep silent, promised that he would be made a knight if the whole affair were brought to an end, and wanted those whose guilt was certain to be killed rather than handed to justice.^11121314

The oaths

Traumir bound the oaths with red cloth and consumed diamonds as the price of the spell. Leonard swore never to reveal anything about the Hand, while Glanfall swore besides to work all his life for its interests and was given a ring; Traumir told them that ring-bearers were their own people but must never be exposed. He assured Leonard that his nephew Luke, whom he saw every day, was safe, and took gold for him. He also took back a black staff shaped like a skeletal finger, named Nox, that he had lent Castor, a weapon holding a spell stronger than any he could cast himself.^151617181920

Later, while Castor was in North Razer, his ring grew warm and Traumir's voice reached him in the woods. Reports said that those who came after the party had found no stones and believed the party had taken them all, which had turned some eyes towards them. The Hand could not collect the stones itself; a trusted courier with a ring, not a mage, would come the next night. A hooded man with two short swords duly came, showed his ring and made the chest vanish into another ring.^21222324

At the Archon

When unrest gripped the Archon, Traumir called together the temple paladins he could gather, whose own captain is a separate officer, and changed their patrols. He told Castor that all was under control and asked the older students to calm the frightened younger ones.²²⁵²⁶

That evening he entered the dining hall with a paladin and five witch hunters of the Holy Inquisition, among them their captain Vorik. When a hunter moved towards Castor, Traumir held him back with a hand; when Castor declared himself responsible and asked that the students go free, Traumir ordered the paladins to take him. It seems that he did so in order to keep Castor in his own custody rather than the hunters'.^27282930

Spoiler: QuestioningRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #10 · Say what you have read

The next day Traumir came with two paladins, had Castor's chains loosened and his hands cuffed before him, gave him water and ordered him taken for questioning by the hunter Rolas. Castor was led out of his first cell past the students, who stood by him, and the paladins handed him to two veiled witch hunters at the door of an old tower. Two days later Traumir and the paladins carried him, beaten and with broken bones and a missing finger, to the infirmary in the quiet of the night.³¹³²³³