Fatren

Fatren is a skaa from Vetitan on Scadrial. After the Collapse, he organized his home town's citizens. He becomes a lord under Emperor Elend Venture. He thinks he "isn't much to look at" after the stress of months leading his city.
== History ==
After the Collapse, the lords of Vetitan left the town. Fatren convinced the other skaa to keep working. He also held the press gangs away from Vetitan, frequently paying crops in bribes not to lose men capable to work in the armies. He managed to gather two thousand soldiers, a thousand of which were unable to fight well. The other thousand had very little training. It was difficult to gather even this amount of soldiers from Vetitan's small population. Druffel had the idea to build a bulwark around the city. It took a lot of work, and two years after the Collapse they had barely finished when an army of ten thousand koloss came toward the city.
Three months ago, the koloss had destroyed the city of Garthwood. The city was bigger than Vetitan, but fewer than a hundred people survived the attack and came to Vetitan. Now, the army was coming toward Vetitan. But before the attack came, Elend Venture arrived at the town. At fist, Fatren didn't believe that Elend was who he claimed to be. Elend claimed Fatren had asked him for help, so that Fatren would be able to claim that this had been his plan all along. Elend promised to help them fight the koloss if they accepted him as their emperor and Fatren swore fealty to him. He made Fatren into a lord and told him to later pick a family name.
Elend led Fatren's soldiers in an assault on the koloss, while they weren't in a blood frenzy, because the bulwark would have been useless against the koloss. In the following battle, Elend took control over the koloss and saved most of Vetitan's people. Later, Vin Elend and Fatren inspected the storage cavern in Vetitan. After discovering the cache, Fatren said that Elend had come here to rob him, like bandits. Elend replied that if Fatren kept the food, when the secret got out, thousands of refugees would come to the city, and bandits would follow. So, Fatren agreed to give up the food supply.
The people of Vetitan came with Elend's army, and Elend exposed them to the mists, because they would have had to expose themselves eventually. Fatren was sad after they did this, but he knew it was the only way. When Elend and his convoy met another part of his army, led by General Demoux, Elend sent soldiers to Luthadel and told Fatren and his people to join them. The Emperor told Demoux to have his men respect Fatren's wishes and invited his men to join his army.
== Relationships ==
=== Elend Venture ===
Fatren resents how Elend took command of his city, but also admires him for his commanding air. Elend feels he is a tyrant from taking control and the cache's resources from Fatren, but he knows that is what is better for the empire and the city's people.
=== Druffel ===
Before the Collapse, Druffel was an optimist, and his laughter was Fatren's favorite sound. Fatren called him Druff. Fatren is disappointed that Druffel became pessimistic.
== Trivia ==
* In the first chapter of The Hero of Ages, Fatren is the viewpoint character. Brandon did this so that the readers would really get a sense of what was really happening in the world by the end of The Well of Ascension, using a character whose viewpoint isn't clouded by events. He considered making Fatren a main viewpoint character in the book, but there were already too many viewpoint characters with Elend, Vin, Spook, TenSoon, Sazed and Marsh all having an important role.
== Notes ==
Category: Viewpoint characters