Garach Rodao

**Garach Rodao** was the oldest sibling of Shuos Jedao. He narrates the short story Silence and is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, flashfics Omens, Honesty, Bunny, A Belated Blessing, and Hunting Trip, and the short story Extracurricular Activities.

## Appearance and Personality

Favoring his biological father, Rodao was "built like a bear" and did not resemble his siblings. A gentle man despite his size, he only had firearms training because his mother Garach Ledana insisted on it for all her children, and later relied on his wife Teia to get rid of insects in the house. Though he loved his poetic sister, he never felt he understood art or artists. Jedao learned most of the cooking he knew from Rodao. His siblings called him "Ro" and he called Jedao "Jay."

## History

Born in 804, Rodao older than his brother Jedao by five years and his sister Garach Nidana by ten. Each sibling had a different noncustodial biological father and all were raised in the Shparoi traditions on their eccentric mother's agricultural research facility on Eshpatan. Rodao's biological father, like Jedao's but unlike Nidana's, was also Shparoi. While all three siblings learned the high language as a second language after Shparoi, Rodao spoke it flawlessly by fourteen.

During Rodao's adolescence, he kept adult magazines in his dresser, forbidding his siblings to enter his room. He occasionally skipped out on chores to see his boyfriend. However, as the straightlaced oldest sibling, he always used to see through Jedao's tricks. He informed on Jedao to Ledana when he learned that Jedao was skipping class to play games as a teenager, and when Jedao hacked his floater vehicle to impress a local crush, Rodao, then twenty, interrupted the subsequent make-out session with a lecture on covering one's tracks.

After Jedao's first year at Shuos Academy, Rodao was the only one to notice something hollow and performative under Jedao's convincing pretense at normality. Though he reflected on the subject several times during Jedao's brief visits home, he never asked outright what was wrong.

After Jedao became a Shuos, Rodao married a woman named Teia. At a family gathering later on, Rodao and Teia's hovercar was painted with traditional Shparoi fertility-and-happiness blessings by Jedao and Nidana. The couple had three daughters, whom Jedao subsequently spoiled with occasionally flammable gifts.

Rodao gave Jedao a near-antique camera as a gift, and Jedao used it to take pictures for his family.

On the one-year anniversary of the slaughter at Hellspin Fortress, Rodao shot his partner and their three daughters in their sleep, and then killed himself.

## Trivia

* Rodao is the only character in the continuity to narrate a story in the first person.
* The last time he remembered Jedao crying was when he was thirteen years old, after Jedao lost a fight at the age of eight.
* Rodao's daughters had trouble keeping pet goldfish alive. One of them may have been named Mareida.

## References

1. ↑ A Belated Blessing
2. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
3. ↑ Extracurricular Activities
4. ↑ Honesty
5. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hexarchate (And Heptarchate) Timeline
6. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 10
7. ↑ Honesty
8. ↑ Bunny
9. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence; Author's Note
10. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
11. ↑ A Belated Blessing
12. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
13. ↑ Hunting Trip
14. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8
15. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Hunting Trip
16. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence