Chief arcanist of Avlor Aten

The chief arcanist of Avlor Aten is a high official of the Geroni city of Avlor Aten in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), whose name the band did not learn with certainty. About a week after the gnome engineer Finli's companions had left him at Perses Castle, the chief arcanist came to see him, saying that the head consul Orpi had suggested in a letter that they talk, though without naming a subject. He cast a spell from a book so that the two could understand each other.¹²³

Work and views

His field is architecture: he said that his people build by enlarging stones and shifting them in three dimensions, and that towers of his own design stand in Avlor Aten. He described his office as technocratic rather than political. Among the first spells learned in his circle, he said, are those that carry objects and people and those that send messages.⁴⁵⁶

He asked Finli whether sharing technology with the Empire might help the peace. Finli answered that the Empire cared for technology mostly for war and would want to know of the automata, while most Geroni runes make daily life easier, and described the Coalition of Enlightenment as a body of researchers from the Empire who study local technologies, not only for war. The arcanist said that he had not been attacked on the night of the coup, and that although he had not thought peace possible, the other side's conduct had changed his mind.⁷⁸⁹¹⁰

He spoke of a man who had come to the excavation sites outside the city about three months earlier as a scholar and taken an interest in the wall paintings, and Finli thought that the painting the band had taken might once have been stolen from the Geroni.¹¹¹²

Rune-work with Finli

Finli had been able to record the materials, method and skills behind the runes that keep plants off the castle's walls, but not to copy them. As a sign of trust he showed the arcanist the plans of his self-cleaning shoes, and the two worked together on drawings of rune placement and self-cleaning walls; afterwards Finli could copy the rune, which keeps vines, rain and dirt from clinging to a surface. The friendship they formed was later recalled.^131415161718

The arcanist said that the book the band had carried out of the painting had been given to him to study, and that he had taken it from his office before fleeing. The Book of Names, too, was later said to be in his keeping. He promised to send Finli back to his friends, and asked for an object that had come from Aquila, a city he had never seen, to direct the journey.^19202122