Zahir

Zahir was a Peren and not a new man in the Ten Lashes. He had spent a long stretch close to Captain Torr in the months before the end, and it had started him wondering whether he wanted to stay in it at all. Ashtara Walnut, going down the roster for the party, put the same thing less generously: very close to Torr, gone a little yellow, still gets the job done.

When the auction camp fell he surrendered instead of fighting (S1E10), one of two lash-marked men the party carried out of the cave alive. By the next morning he had decided which way he was going (S1E11). He answered what he was asked and then went further than asked. Koa came to him first, before questioning Xylum, on the chance that he knew a way to make the man cooperate; Zahir’s assessment was that nothing would, and he delivered it with enough sarcasm to be sure it was understood. He worked the interrogation anyway from inside the cell, telling Xylum he stood to gain from talking and that what he stood to gain was mostly his life. When Koa dragged the man out to the other room, Zahir stepped back out of the way and said nothing at all.

His value did not stop at the cave. Pressed on whether anyone could put a face to the man bankrolling the organization, Ashtara said Zahir would very likely have seen him, even if he had never been given a name for him. He left with the prisoner cart of his own accord and was handed over with the rest.

Haudh-Gwenn executed him, and did it quickly. The party argued for him and was not listened to. Nobody who knew him pretended he was innocent, Aldo least of all, whose summary of the man was that he had done bad things and had been trying to get out from under them. Outside Loshev, the cairn the party later set for Phil stands at the tree Zahir brushed as he ran for the woods.

His name came back a long while afterwards for a reason nothing to do with him. Torgun Kurvroc was building a case against the Crestbornes on the Loshev council, and the case was that the family was related to one of the Ten Lashes. Nathan Fox went through his own papers for the party and confirmed which lash it was. Aldo turned the accusation straight around: a family accused of sympathy with the ring would want the surviving members brought north to Loshev for trial, if only to be seen wanting it (S3E33).