PERSONAE · THE RAMPART FOOTHILLS

Taras Mournwright

aka The Pale Scholar

An obsessive Guild scholar camped in the eastern hills, mapping barrow-passages he has never entered and dying of curiosity.

Taras arrived from the mainland with three trunks of notes and the certainty that Vallen's Barrow was an architectural relic, not a spiritual one. He is running out of food, candles, and the arguments that kept him safe.

KIND

mortal

SPECIES

Asheni

ROLE

Listening College antiquarian scholar

LOCATION

Pinewatch Camp

Connected

The Eastern HillsPLACE · He has camped in the hills for three weeks and inten…Vallen's BarrowPLACE · His entire fieldwork is about the barrow's exterior;…The SunderingEVENT · He believes the barrow predates the Sundering, which…The Bonesung-of-the-ValeFACTION · He is barely tolerated; he has rubbing-copies of ins…Cinder MothCREATURE · He has lost two notebooks to swarms and mentions the…A Traveler's Account of the Eastern HillsTEXT · His field notebooks, written in the hills.

Voices & Sounds

Game Data (1)

Read live off disk from data/content/*.json — the game data itself, not a copy.

data/content/npcs.json

idtaras_mournwright

gendermale

canon_refcharacter.taras-mournwright

nameTaras Mournwright

factionmages_guild

regionthe_vale

health45

disposition44

greetingYou've been below, I can smell the deep stone on you — wait, don't go, I've a hundred questions and a proposition. Taras Mournwright. The College keeps me at arm's length and the barrows keep me out entirely, and I am dying of the not-knowing. There is a seat down in Caer Vallen no living hand has touched since the Sundering. I want to know what's on it. I cannot make myself go in. You can.

spawn{"x":150,"z":-128}

behaviorwander

wander_radius2

quest_hook{"topic":"the throneless hall","quest":"vault_throneless_hall","entry":"Taras has mapped Caer Vallen's passages a hundred times and never entered. He wants the Vallen hoard — the Imperator's Word, the Last Census, the Sundered Crown — brought up from the throneless seat in the Rampart foothills, north past the College."}

quest_fork{"quest":"vault_throneless_hall","branches":[{"key":"bring-to-taras","label":"✦ It goes to you and the College, to be studied.","say":"Yes. Yes — behind glass, catalogued, the Word never struck, only read. You've given the College a century of work and given me, gods, given me the answer. You have its gratitude. Mind that gratitude has a leash on the end of it."},{"key":"serve-a-claim","label":"✦ I gave one piece to its claimant.","say":"You handed a power its old seat back. Brave. Foolish. The two you snubbed will remember exactly whose hands carried it past them — and the hall stays contested with you standing in the middle of the argument. I'll catalogue what you let me. It is not enough. It is never enough."},{"key":"keep-the-hoard","label":"✦ I kept all three. The Word, the Census, the Crown.","say":"...You wear the Crown. I can hear it from here, the low ring of it. You are the most dangerous private hand in the Vale now and three powers will hunt you to the end of your days for it. I should be appalled. I am, instead, so terribly curious how long you last."}]}

topics{"caer-vallen":"The seat of the Vallen Imperium, where the Sundering began and the Imperator's line ended. Shattered, sundered, full of resonators that still pulse and a sentinel that still keeps the dead seat. I have drawn its every passage. I have never set foot past the gate.","college":"The Listening College keeps me at arm's length — too reckless, they say, tunes too deep, forgot the second half of the lesson. Sevenn says it kindly. They are not wrong. I have simply stopped caring more about my own safety than about the answer.","hoard":"Three things rest on that seat. The Imperator's Word, a sword that was an order. The Last Census, the count of everyone the Imperium had when it died. The Sundered Crown, which rings the Long Ring in whoever wears it. I want to read the Census most. The others frighten me."}

bounty_on_assault40

bounty_on_kill1000

racevyr

Type Fields

kindmortal

speciesAsheni

roleListening College antiquarian scholar

locationplace.pinewatch-camp

affiliationsfaction.the-listening-college

disposition60

secretsHe smuggled a rubbing of the barrow's threshold inscription out past the Asheni guards. They know.

voice_notesDistracted, excitable, apologetic when interrupted. His sentences trail into notes to himself.

All Relationships (16)

located_in

→The Eastern Hills — He has camped in the hills for three weeks and intends three more.
→Pinewatch Camp — Taras has camped at the edge of Pinewatch Camp for over a year, filling trunks with rubbings of a hall he cannot enter.

references

→Vallen's Barrow — His entire fieldwork is about the barrow's exterior; he has not entered.
→The Sundering — He believes the barrow predates the Sundering, which the tribes find offensive.
←Cinder Moth — He has lost two notebooks to swarms and mentions them in his field notes as 'the primary hazard after the Asheni's patience runs out.'
←quest.the-half-echo (unresolved) — The half-echo himself.
←quest.the-throneless-hall (unresolved) — The College's pale scholar gives the expedition — he has mapped Caer Vallen for a year and will not walk it himself.
←quest.the-lost-note (unresolved) — Taras wants the Fork to read what's sealed in Vallen's Barrow; the give-fork arms his too-deep fall.
←quest.reading-the-note (unresolved) — Taras is the quest giver — the aqueduct read is for his survey of Caer Vallen.

rival_of

→The Bonesung-of-the-Vale — He is barely tolerated; he has rubbing-copies of inscriptions the tribe considers sacred.

authored

←A Traveler's Account of the Eastern Hills — His field notebooks, written in the hills.
←Mournwright's Field Notes — Exterior Survey, Year Two — The field notes are Taras's own survey work — his handwriting, his measurements, his increasingly personal marginal notes.

member_of

→The Far College — The obsessive barrow-mapper is a Deep Listener in the making.
→The Deep Readers — Taras slides toward the deep.
→The Far College — Taras is the Listening College's sanctioned scholar at Caer Vallen — dying on the foothill wind, but still sanctioned.

owns

→Mournwright's Concordance — The three trunks of survey notes are Taras's life's work in this posting — he will not sell them and will not let them go without a fight.

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