Shuos Mikodez

**Shuos Mikodez**, born **Vauhan Mikodez**, is the current Shuos hexarch. He appears in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. He is the older brother of Vauhan Istradez and uncle to Andan Niath.

## Appearance and Personality

Having inherited his family's good looks, Mikodez is tall and a little too thin, with "flawless dark skin, glossy black hair, and smiling eyes." He wears his hair short in the back, with a long forelock. His voice is a mild tenor. Unlike many Shuos, he chose not to modify his appearance except to stay reasonably young. He frequently wears earrings with distracting bells or dangling beads.

Despite all attempts at intervention, he prefers a diet of sugary foods, though he also eats a Kel ration bar for breakfast every morning. He takes numerous medications for concentration.

He insisted on keeping an analyst despite Zehun's attempts to fire her because he enjoyed the sheer absurdity of her conclusions (such as suggesting Jedao controlled an army of ghosts and intended an assault on the laws of entropy).

Hexarch Vidona Psa judged his firearms prowess as on par with Shuos Jedao. His many hobbies include knitting and container gardening.

## Personal Life

Mikodez was creche-born one year before his sister Vauhan Istradez, who later volunteered to be modded into one of his body doubles and became his brother. Their birth proximity was taken as a sign that they would be exceptionally close. They grew up together and called each other "Miki" and "Istra" throughout adulthood.

When his nephew, Andan Niath, returned from a disastrous mission with emotional damage and his parents were too afraid to look after him, Mikodez, immune to Andan enthrallment due to his rank as hexarch, took custody of him and visited him frequently to assuage his loneliness.

Mikodez has no interest in sex for its own sake, though he and Istradez were occasionally lovers, to their parents' bemusement. Nonetheless, Mikodez does not exempt himself from his requirement that all Shuos staff see trained courtesan conversationalists/therapists on a regular basis.

## Career

### Shuos Academy

Mikodez attended Shuos Academy Prime. Upon briefly manifesting Ninefox Crowned With Eyes at the age of eighteen, he was pulled out for a surprise evaluation by Shuos Zehun, who chose not to have him culled despite the ominous signifier. A late growth spurt in the following years left Mikodez, to his own bemusement, taller than Zehun.

Mikodez was put through a Shuos variation of the Purple Paranoia exercise. After acquiring information on which exercise would be run, he briefed the other cadets, allowing them to work as a team and win.

### Hexarch

Mikodez rose to his current position at twenty-five, becoming the youngest Shuos hexarch in three centuries. The previous hexarch, who had been having a nervous breakdown after three years in the position when Mikodez "happened to him," retired to change his face and sex and breed cockatiels. Mikodez visited her once afterwards to make sure she was doing all right, and Zehun had to talk him out of bringing a cockatiel home.

During Mikodez's second year as hexarch, when he was twenty-seven, he ordered two Shuos cadets assassinated, apparently as a lark. In private -- though with a caution about his skills as a liar -- he explained to Shuos Jedao that the two were part of a heretic plot to blow up Shuos Academy Tertiary. Time had been short, the details messy, and the plot closer to completion than he liked to admit, so he had his agents terminate the students while they were playing a drinking game and allowed the world at large to believe he had done it out of boredom, securing a mercurial and dangerous reputation.

Since Jedao's victory at Scattered Needles had dangerous repercussions, Mikodez had few objections to Kujen's insistence on using the carrion gun to kill the undead general, despite the massive accompanying loss of life.

He had been hexarch for forty-two years at the time of Nirai Kujen's disappearance.

After being informed of Kujen's disappearance by Shuos Zehun, Mikodez participated in a conference call with the other hexarchs, during which he negotiated with Kel Tsoro for the release of his agent Shuos Mazeret, detected that Tsoro was having a side conversation with Andan Shandal Yeng, and argued unsuccessfully against the other hexarchs' plan to unsettle Jedao by exterminating the Mwennin, calling it terrible policy. He also warned Tsoro that Kel Command's distrust of General Kel Inesser could easily backfire.

After careful study of Jedao's history, notes poached from Kujen, and Jedao's recent engagements of the Hafn, Mikodez spoke with Jedao to assess his state of mind, repeating, almost word for word, a conversation about formation instinct which they'd had at the black cradle facility decades ago and which Kujen had wiped from Jedao's memory.

[etc]

## Trivia

* Mikodez once joked that he had chosen his career path because the red-and-gold Shuos uniform complemented his coloration.
* Mikodez will appear as "The Hexarch" in Hexarchate Tarot. The card stands for power and mastery of those around you; reversed, it symbolizes falling short of your goals.
* Mikodez grew a green onion because a green onion was the first plant the author grew by himself as a child.
* In the original draft of *Ninefox Gambit*, Mikodez only existed as a couple of throwaway lines.

## References

1. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
2. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 2
3. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
4. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 11
5. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 9
6. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7
7. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7, 11
8. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 11
9. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
10. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 25
11. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
12. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 3
13. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7
14. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 9
15. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 9
16. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7
17. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7
18. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7
19. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 7, 9
20. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 9
21. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
22. ↑ Author's design
23. ↑ Hexarchate Tarot: Major Arcana
24. ↑ Author's blog
25. ↑ TheBookSmugglers interview: Oops, I Accidentally Wrote A Trilogy