Valentine

**Valentine**, often simply called **Val**, is a human male, the first human ever encountered by galactic civilization in Spectra, and the protagonist of the series.

## **Biography**

### **The Mark of Eden**

#### **Awakening**

In AY 2996, Val awakened from a strange metal pod. He had no memory of who he was or where he had come from, but noted a symbol on the front of the pod. Upon listening to the instructions of an AI that spoke to him, he learned that he had been captured and abducted by creatures called the Cell for unknown reasons. Using the matrix chip given to him by the AI in the pod to unlock various doors and systems aboard the ship, he seized control of the bridge, catching sight of a brilliant beam of light hanging out in the void of space. Unknowingly, Note, the AI consciousness within the chip, initiated a random null jump which caused the ship to crash on the planet of Jantii, but not before she was accidentally jettisoned off the ship through the communications array as a data-package beam and intercepted by the Mercantile.

When Val woke up from the crash, he came face-to-face with new aliens; Pragley Rok and his niece, Ten, who both had dragged him out of the ship's wreckage when it crashed in the fields of their farmland. They shared his confusion when he told them he was a human, as no human had ever been encountered in the galaxy before.

They took him to a Sentinel investigating the crash site to see if it can identify him. When it scanned him, it referred to him as a 'spectral' and 'paragon', and latched onto his wrist with wires before burning the same symbol he'd seen on the pod into his skin.

Taking Val back to the house, Prag interrogated Val but was stopped by Ten. Prag revealed what the symbol meant, calling it the Mark of Eden, an image associated with danger and fear, thought to be a warning from the Architects. At the end of the night, Prag invited Val to stay for supper, unofficially offering him a place to live.

#### **Reunion**

Two years later, Val had recovered from his ordeal and grown stronger after the fact. While he and Ten were preparing to harvest crops, a stolen racer ship landed near the house and a synthoid resembling a human stepped out, identifying herself as Note and revealing that she'd been looking for Val for the past two years.

Prag let slip that he originally took in Val because he believed him to potentially be in danger if he were to leave the farm, speaking of his previous work in searching out Architect ruins and technology for the Empire, and how he found a temple in the Umbra that was unlike any he'd ever seen and apparently caused insanity in one of his men. Before he could finish, however, the Cell managed to locate Val by tracking Note, and blew up the farmhouse. Val found Prag impaled by a bar of wood in the wreckage and was there as the irva died, giving Val a small white orb, and instructing Val to go and find out who he is.

The surviving trio was able to make it off Jantii and escape the Cell on Note's ship, watching as the Sentinels arrived in the sky and repelled the invaders.

#### **Building a Team**

The three of them traveled to the Mercantile to evade the Cell. Ten nearly broke down, lamenting the loss of her uncle, but Val comforted her and told her they'd be fine so long as they were together. Her courage renewed, Ten joined him and Note as the latter told them they needed to find protection in the form of a bodyguard. Note set up a meeting with a potential candidate.

Entering a cantina, the trio met with the contact; a kugraw mercenary named Niles. While he was initially abrasive and disbelieving of their claims, he eventually agreed to protect them for a sum of sixty thousand credits. When he heard that Val was experiencing hallucinations and lapses in consciousness, he suggested bringing the boy to a friend of his that lived in the Scrubs, an exodeist scientist. Leading the other three through the Scrubs, Niles brought them to the makeshift abode of his friend, Hopes Quixotically. Studying Val intensely, Quix theorized that he was undergoing 'Mnemonic Synthesis', a concept where two different sets of memories, their previous set and their current set, were merging and trying to join messily.

With no clear answers relating to his or Note's origins, Val declared that he would venture into the Umbra to find the temple that Prag had told him about, revealing the orb Prag had given him. Identifying it as a nav orb, a cartographic tool used to chart star routes, Niles told him that they would need a Vaulter if they were going to explore Architect ruins.

Val and Niles met with a prospective Vaulter at the Aris Baths, though it turned out to be a team of two consisting of a nox and vett'iri who introduced themselves as Isaak and Chellor respectively. Realizing that Val wanted their help to break into an Architect ruin in the Umbra, the pair was keen to turn down the job, but Isaak decided to stay upon learning that Val was being hunted by the Cell, vowing to protect the boy from the gene-splicers for personal reasons. Chellor, feeling he had no choice but to stick with his partner, came as well.

Meeting back with the others at one of the Mercantile's dockyards, Niles introduced the crew to his ship, the *Manta*. Once everyone was board, the crew set out to find the temple hidden in the Umbra.

While traveling to the Umbra, Val was awoken from sleep by a dream where he and a woman he didn't recognize fought. Realizing that Ten was missing, he sought her out and found her in the *Manta's* lounge, mourning Prag. The two shared a heartfelt conversation about their mutual pain, then spent the night together on a couch.

A day later, Val was awakened by a nightmare of a massive Cell which called him "the murderer of billions" and assured him that they would meet very soon.

#### **The Dead Moon**

Upon arrival at the dead moon in the Umbra, Val and the others discovered evidence of an Imperial camp, the same camp Prag had spoken of, outside the temple. The *Manta* crew then descended into the temple and found the chamber where Val's Chrysalis had been. In the same room, an AI designated as Ouroboros appeared and revealed the truth that Val and Note came from the Architect civilization.

A creature living on the moon attacked them, and Val ran with Niles and Ten into the temple's archives. Interfacing with the archives, Val triggered a prerecorded message from the original Valentine warning of the Sensus and its inevitable return. Val succumbed to a seizure of mnemonic synthesis and had to be carried out to safety.

#### **The Cell's Attack**

Val woke up two days later, and was reprimanded by Ten for his behavior in the temple. The two reconciled after he explained his perspective, still not over the shock of realizing he was the last of a long-dead species that had essentially created galactic civilization.

When the *Manta* eventually emerged from null space, everyone witnessed the Cell attacking the Mercantile. After they crash-landed inside the station, Val and some of the others were chased through the Scrubs. He and Ten eventually fell into a water canal where he broke down, blaming himself for all the death and destruction that seemed to follow him. Ten reassured him that none of the events transpiring were his fault, and stated that she didn't think she could live without him. A cell pursued them through the canal to a crossway, and Val pushed Ten into one path while he took the other to draw the cell's attention and was captured.

On the Cell flagship, Fear taunted Val and revealed that the Cell wanted him so that they could pass safely through the energy cloud surrounding Eden to free the Sensus and unleash it on Spectra, sparing themselves from its wrath when it undoubtedly returned regardless.

#### **Eden**

Upon reaching the center of the energy cloud, Val was dragged through the streets of the Rings of Eden, seeing that it had once been home to many of his people. He warned the rest of the Cell that they would follow the Architects' example if they proceeded with this, but was interrupted by the arrival and subsequent crash of the *Manta.*

Val was thrown through a Tear by Fear, all of the Cell joining him on the other side. There, he found himself in the true Eden, the home planet of the Architects in a galaxy far from Spectra where the Sensus and its accumulated fleet of billions had been lying dormant for millennia. Fear revealed that the Sensus was already in Val's mind, tying the two of them together. Fear was then converted by the Sensus into a full wraith, the entity mocking Val and assuring him it would take everything he knew and loved as its own before he fell unconscious as it began to convert him too.

In his mind, Val struggled to fight against the Sensus as it showed him memories of the original Valentine, as well forcing him to relive Prag's death. In one memory Valentine and a woman named Kateri fought about his decision to stay and fight the Sensus instead of running from it. Realizing that the Sensus was intentionally trying to make him afraid because it feared him, he was able to take back control of his mental state and regain consciousness.

The *Manta* crew traveled back through the Gate's Tear to Spectra where Val and Note worked together to close it and seal the Sensus away again. The ensuing explosion of null energy from the collapsing Tear damaged the *Manta* as it escaped and stranded everyone in space for several weeks before they were picked up by a Hegemony patrol and arrested.

## **Personality**

In The Mark of Eden, Val is intelligent and creative, but often insecure about himself due to the uncertainty surrounding his origins and not knowing his place in Spectra. He is slow to trust others entirely due to his lack of knowledge about society as a whole, unsure of who is trying to help him and who is trying to exploit him. He is, however, quite compassionate for those he cares about, going out of his way to comfort Ten whenever she needs reassurance. This can also be seen in how disturbed he was to discover the process of 'cleaving', believing that committing such an act against an individual was despicable.

## **Trivia**

• Valentine's name is inspired by Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, epileptics, and beekeepers in catholicism.