Fazon

Fazon is the human who leads the mercenary Followers of Zolan in the capital, White City, in the campaign Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael"). He receives visitors at the company's base beneath a butcher's shop: a sunken arena ringed with wire and laid out like an amphitheatre.¹

The company's trade

Fazon describes his followers as soldiers for hire. He says no spy has found its way among his men, that he does not trust the assassins of Kalel, and that his fighters may serve on different sides of a war. Relations with the local authorities are good, he says, and the company is called on when the city's own soldiers are not enough.^{2 3}

When Raphael came to hire men for a raid on Kalel, Fazon bargained over every rate. He let his three most experienced leaders join without charge and lowered the price of his fighters and mages, while treatment and burial of the fallen were to be paid separately. The final company was three leaders, twenty-five soldiers and two mages, with a third mage added when Picolo lent the money for one. Fazon refused to bring certain goliaths on a raid that had to stay quiet, warning that an open, noisy assault would draw the city's defenders.^{4 5 6}

Fazon went into the raid himself. Made invisible by a mage, he and Raphael advanced with a hand on each other's shoulder so as not to lose one another. In the sealed room they fought the Kalel master Naros, who struck from behind with short leaps through space, and Fazon was badly wounded. He chose to bind the wound himself and sent Raphael on to free the hostages. The dead and wounded of the company were paid for afterwards as agreed.^{7 8 9 10}

At the feast that opened Raphael's inn, the Night Wolf, Fazon settled part of the raid debt with him and agreed to provide three sober guards by the week and a war mage. He explained that his war mages had been sent to the fighting between the Empire and the rebels, and that only an illusionist was free; a hired mage arrived about a week later.^{11 12 13}

Taf and the call to Zolan

Fazon found Raphael a half-orc fighter named Taf for a dangerous job, but left the question of pay to be settled with Taf directly.¹⁴

Spoiler: Taf's fateGösterAçık ettiği: Raphael Efsanesi #4; Raphael Efsanesi #5 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

Raphael brought Taf's body back to the company and told Fazon that the wizard Falstad had killed him. He left his whole reward for Taf's daughter, and Fazon promised it would reach her.¹⁵

Fazon said he did not blame Raphael. Killing one's partner on a job is, he said, the gravest breach of the company's rules, and he laid his hand on the heavy rule book: his eyes darkened, the pages stirred and thunder sounded. It was the first time he had made this call in his fifteen years at the head of the local company. Zolan himself, he said, would speak with the dead warrior's spirit and learn how he died.^{16 17}

After Falstad's dark ritual the following night, Fazon told Raphael that Taf had in the end been brought back.¹⁸

The amulet and Zolan's anger

Fazon lent Raphael an amulet, one of only three he knew of, that keeps its wearer hidden from Zolan when the founder searches for someone to question. It works only when worn. Should Zolan wish to kill the wearer, Fazon warned, it would buy months, perhaps a year, and no certainty. He asked Raphael not to kill Falstad himself but to report where he was, since punishment belonged to Zolan.^{19 20}

When Raphael suggested tricking Falstad with a false amulet, Fazon refused: the wizard would see through it, and no one could control how fast Zolan would act. Instead he proposed that Raphael leave the real amulet with him and claim it had been taken by force. To make the story believable he struck Raphael in the mouth with a hammer handle and threw him into the arena, where the fighters beat him in front of the crowd.^{21 22}

The next morning about thirty followers cleared Raphael's inn and their mages drew a protective circle on the floor. Silence fell, the building shook, white light poured in, windows shattered and skin began to burn under a crushing pressure on the mind. When the circle was not enough, Fazon knocked Raphael down with his shield and covered him, and the light drew back from around them. Fazon believed the power had withdrawn so as not to harm him, took Raphael to his own quarters, put the amulet back on him, and concluded that the wizard was still alive.^{23 24 25}

The tomb and the knights

Fazon told Raphael that he must go to Zolan's tomb and make an offering. He had made the journey himself and said the offering might be an object, a task or a trial, though he knew only his own experience. He gave Raphael a map: in the middle of a forest lies a desert no one can explain, the tomb stands there, and every living thing in that place died on Victory Day in the great war of old. He also described a monastery of monks in a mountain pass to the north, near a place called Kurtin, whose custom is to shelter anyone who seeks refuge there.^{26 27 28}

When Raphael was ambushed outside the tomb, Fazon arrived with about four of his followers and joined the fight. The captured attackers proved to be Kalel assassins, and he took them back to the city to question them. On the way out of the forest the party was met by knights, and Fazon accepted a month's secret service from the knight who introduced himself as Derek Sunshield.^{29 30 31}

Refusing to cross the Empire

When Raphael later asked for men to waylay a delivery escorted by city guards close to White City, Fazon refused. The roads near the capital are full of soldiers, he said, and Marus's legion camp lies to the south. His company usually takes money from bad men to deal with other bad men; attacking imperial soldiers is another matter, and they clash with the Empire only rarely, when no other choice remains. As a warning he pointed to the Free Ports, which he said had been under siege for three months after four or five legionaries were killed there.^{32 33 34}

He would not take part in the attack, but he did agree to help bring the hidden item into the city, since his people were not searched at the gates; one of his own men would ride out for it, with Karas to show the way.^{35 36}