Beltran Grayeras

Deceased

Background

The Grayeras family holds Haudh-Gwenn in a tight grip. Traxian sits as High Councilor and is the face of the council; Alyphe also serves as a Councilor. The family doesn’t own the only bank in town, but their wealth rivals it. Beltran was their son, and to them, he was a man of dignity and influence.

His father is Peren and his mother is human, so Beltran was half of each, as his sister is. Every account that describes him at all describes a human man in his early thirties.

His first appearance was at the auction camp. Unknown to the party, he was the well-dressed lordling who did not stay to fight. Later, it was Ashtara Walnut, taken from that same camp, who supplied the name. This was a massive discovery: he was the money above the Ten Lashes from the beginning, and the ring that had been selling people out of the river towns was being paid for out of the council’s own house.

With his fun side project destroyed, he decided to stop working through other people and get more directly involved. He took control of the guard at Haudh-Gwenn. He jailed the old guardsmen, shook down the docks and merchants, and raised a mercenary army for a city that didn’t know it was paying for one. He used his influence to have the bank close the party’s accounts as “defunct.” Shortly after, he was promoted to hold two offices at once: “Emir,” the city’s military leader, and “Captain of the Guard.” With something near a hundred soldiers, his army was the largest standing force in Idir.

It was said, “To move on Beltran is to move on the city.” That was all too true… until Aldo started spreading dozens of rumors to undermine his authority. No single rumor did much damage, but the swarm took its toll over time.

Personality

Beltran preferred a story to a killing, and he was good at stories. When the western fire-gnolls burned villages and the Valiant Few put them down, he did not deny what had happened. Instead, he published the claim that the Few had bred the gnolls themselves so they would have something to be heroes about. Enough of Haudh-Gwenn believed him that, after everything, the party’s name is still worth less there than anywhere else in Idir.

He kept a rotating stable of men with grievances and let them act for him until they were spent. Whent was the last of them. Beneath those men were four lieutenants he actually trusted, along with Boras, who kept the books.

What he did after a betrayal was the clearest example of the man he was. He had Rainan Marr tortured to death for the plot to steal his sword. Two days after Johanka Materai’s gala, he had seven people dragged into the town-hall square and strapped into reclining chairs, with rat-boxes fixed over their bellies. They were burned in front of a crowd.

The seven were not named in the account. Two were recognized, and both were only guards. It was spectacle rather than efficiency. The clerk who had actually handled the false audit, Davi Solt, was not among them. A day later, he was still sitting in his own house in the wealthy district.

Relationships

His father’s seat carried a double vote on the council, which was the arithmetic that made the family unassailable there. His mother was doting and overly affectionate toward her son, protecting him from the truth and giving him a wide berth to become his own man. However, according to the testimony of Rainan’s body, she was part of the conspiracy against him meant to strip him of his beloved sword. Lastly, he had a sister, Naevora, whom he loved dearly and kept hidden from public ridicule. Everyone else was nothing but an asset to him, even his childhood ‘friends.‘

The City He Made

He marched east with the one hundred and twenty soldiers he had trained over the winter and took Ostrad by bloodshed, for its food. His army did not come home whole. It took losses fighting Orsugo’s gnolls out there, and it carried a sickness back with it. In Haudh-Gwenn, he carved the city into neighborhoods controlled by his guard or by gangs that answered to him. Eventually, he stopped calling himself ‘Captain’ and began calling himself ‘Lord’ Grayeras. Nobody able to correct him did.

He carried the Wraithblade Khopesh, a relic of Clan Zarkhûn taken from Wraithblade Keep and delivered to him by the mercenary Oshuun Karral. It was cursed, and the curse had a habit of seeping out of the blade. His own guardsmen and lieutenants developed sunken, dark-ringed eyes and sudden animalistic fits of rage. Whether Beltran knew what it was doing to them, or knew and had already priced the cost, was never discovered.

He wore an amulet that turned aside anything thrown or shot at him, which spoiled Aldo’s bolt. Aldo’s reading was that Beltran could only be taken in melee. Moreover, having once been stopped dead in the street by nothing more than the man’s stare, he knew to do what he could to avoid eye contact. Aldo was always good at reading people…

The End of It

He was killed in the street outside the Color Stay while it burned. The trap that took him was built out of the two things he could not leave alone: his ego and his mother.

Voler Bria set fire to his own inn to draw a Krelene festival into the road. He then sent a lesser simulacrum of Whent to carry Beltran the news that his mother had plotted against him and brought Alyphe there on a false pretext. Beltran, an idiot but not a fool, saw the seam in the messenger’s face and came early, his blade drawn and already bloodied, wanting a private word with her. What exactly passed between them was never discovered.

Outside, Mikhail had turned three hundred strangers into an audience. He sang Mama’s Boy, a song about the lord’s incompetence, his slave ring, and his mother. The Valiant Few dropped their disguises on the chorus, enticing the audience further. Believing it to be a rehearsed show, the crowd “played along” by holding Beltran’s guards out of the square… leaving him alone with the three of them.

What followed took only a few brief moments.

It was won before it started, in the two decisions nobody watching could see. Aldo had read him perfectly: the amulet at his collar meant he could only be taken in close, and the whole plan was built on that one deduction. Mikhail, who had been feeling the blade’s pull for weeks, found the resolve to break it when all was on the line. When he grabbed for the Wraithblade, it was for one purpose only: to shut it away.

Koa charged. He gave a tell, telegraphed a swing wide enough to be read, and let Beltran settle into exactly the guard he was hoping for. Koa fought to remember that the sword mattered more than the monster. Instead of delivering a killing blow, he brought the hilt down on Beltran’s wrist, and the Wraithblade clattered to the ground. Mikhail dived on it with the oubliette and scooped up seven hundred years of cursed souls without letting his skin touch the steel, then turned his back and fled. Having internalized Aldo’s warning, he knew to spoil whatever effect Beltran’s eyes inflicted. To cut off his retreat and keep him off balance, Aldo slipped in behind him and cracked the back of his head. Finally, Koa ran him through the heart.

Five and a half seasons of being untouchable, of foiling everything the party was trying to accomplish, and of bringing pain and suffering to Haudh-Gwenn and much of Idir. He went down without ever landing a blow. He collapsed to the ground with Koa’s sword still in his chest, to the sound of hundreds of people cheering for what they took to be a play.

He is survived by his mother, who outlived the plot she joined against him. The city did not stay fooled for long. Aldo told the crowd from the same spot that it had not been a performance, that the tyranny had ended and that it was time for a revolution, and three quarters of them marched off to make one.

The morning after, in the keep beneath the city, the Elder drew Beltran’s shade out of the Wraithblade, every master of that blade joining its ranks at death, and the company questioned their dead enemy about the size and command of his own army before he was let go to dissipate. The blade did not outlast him by much. It was struck apart on the anvil at Wraithblade Keep and the seven hundred years of souls in it went free. The overarching curse over Idir broke at the dawn three of its seven keeps fell together, and four keeps carry theirs still.