Galtrin ☼

## Galtrin Tiva ☼

Galtrin as depicted by DALL-E art generator

Truthseekers

Galtrin is a quarter-elven Truthseeker, with a knack for seeing into people's hearts and a staunch unwillingness to lie. His appearance is unassuming and he is ready to lend a hand in to aid in both the petty and domestic and in the dangerous and epic, though his enthusiasm sometimes exceeds his capacities. He is a trained martial artist and can wield his quarterstaff to devastating effect.

## Backstory

My sister Mara and I grew up in the Monastery of Tiva. The Monastery was founded and is still headed by Calloway Tiva, who was Thelsaan’s best friend before his apotheosis in the Time of Troubles. He still spends most of his time in communion with Thelsaan, and I only spoke with him a few times during my youth.

This is the beginning of my travel journal, so I will try to start at the beginning—or my beginning, anyway. My mother Kelam is a half-elf, and she has never felt welcome in the Forests of Tevos. Her father, Larkyn O’Scannail, was embarrassed to have sired a child of mixed blood, so he sent her and her mother Dalia out to Tevos'Nochtla, far from the capital. Twenty five years ago, she escorted my grandmother to Aldrecht, which was her home city. Then she took a boat to Xiv, and thence to Acondence, and then wandered down south, all the way past the Penumbra Marches and into Tessesscia proper. She met a man who charmed her, seduced her, and left her with a chunk of obsidian and twins growing in her womb. My mother says he called himself Amron, and said he was a wandering merchant, and that he loved her very much. She doesn’t believe him about any of those things anymore, though. He also said he was from Vyneen, and she believes that.

So my mother was pregnant, and far from home. She made her way back to Aldrecht, but she couldn’t find my grandmother. She continued on to Tevos'Nochtla and the Monastery, and begged for support for her newborn children. The Monastery accepted us as their acolytes, and she stayed in Tevos'Nochtla for just over six years, to make sure we were alright. Then she left for Aldrecht, to get away from Tevos and maybe back to her roots.

I was mentored by Simeon Tiva, a monk and Truthseeker of 400 years. In his youth, he had been a soldier of Tevos during the Drow Blight. But he served under Thelsaan during the early wars of the Time of Troubles, and when Thelsaan left the armies and sought after truth, Simeon was among those who followed and survived.

My sister Mara was more of an academic. Like me, she was taught the Truthseeker tenets, but she spent more time in their library than meditating in the gardens.

I love the Truthseeker ways. People in the Monastery see straight into you, with no superficialities in the way. People in Tevos'Nochtla seem to interact mostly on a surface level, half-lying to each other all the time. Simeon says that when he made a pilgrimage across the Peninsula, almost everyone was like that. He taught me of discernment, and integrity, and simple living. He opened my heart to Thelsaan’s, so his light could distill upon my soul. He taught me to meditate and reflect upon my own heart.

Sometimes the teaching came too slow. I don’t mean that I was an especially talented student—not like Mara was, anyway—but neither Simeon nor anyone else seemed to care whether I learned a lesson in a week or in a year. I cared, though. I could feel my life flowing like a stream, a day at a time, and I didn’t want to squander any of it. Simeon saw my enthusiasm—maybe overenthusiasm—and when I foundered on a Truthseeker practice, he’d pivot to instructing me in the Way of the Ethereal Guardian, which had been his military discipline before he joined the monastery. Thelsaan was trained as an Ethereal Guardian once, too, so I think maybe this training can also be part of being a Truthseeker.

I love the Truthseeker ways. I felt deeply that we of the Monastery had an important gift—a candle of insight in a wide, dark world. Everyone in the Monastery was kind and giving, and we unstintingly shared the bounties of our gardens with Tevos'Nochtla. We were known and loved for ourselves, and not for any masks.

But…

I don’t know how to put this properly. ~~We lovingly penned We polished our own We tried We didn’t~~

Hm.

Self-mastery and self-knowledge were more of a priority than applying these gifts for the good of others. I asked Simeon about this, in different words, several times. I remember one interchange distinctly: I asked him “What is the good of improving ourselves if we do not help others, too?”, and he answered “If good is recursive, coming only from helping others, then it is without foundation. But kindness is no vice as long as it does not forget reason and insight.”

This bothered me a lot, which is why I still remember it two years later. I made an effort to volunteer both in and outside of the monastery, putting in work to help whoever needed help. I tried to learn the people of Tevos'Nochtla as I knew the people of my Monastery—not in their half-lies, but in their whole-selves. I spent long hours dabbling as a woodcarver, mason, and carpenter around the monastery, shoring up its foundations and trying to make beautiful things.

Everyone understood, because it was a Monastery of Thelsaan. But my drive, my need to be doing more, was foreign to all of them, even Mara.

Last week, Simeon suggested that I take a pilgrimage, and both accept and share what light I might out in the wider world. I had given little conscious thought to the suggestion beforehand, even as I wondered about my mother and father, and carved myself a staff of cherry wood, and recalled the militant aspects of our spiritualized martial forms. But when my mentor broached the possibility, I knew it was what I craved. I needed to be doing, not just preparing to do.

Simeon sent me out with his blessing and his pendant, which he smithed decades before my mother was born. I took a few supplies, a little money, my staff, and my father’s little chunk of obsidian. I also have this journal and my calligraphy, and a charge to write in it every day unless great trouble intercedes. I don’t know what the world outside my little enclave looks like. I don’t know how dark it is. But I am ready to find out, and I am ready to make it a little lighter.

I plan to visit Aldrecht first, to see if I can find my mother or grandmother. Then I intend to wend my way towards Vyneen and its neighbor Leorths, stopping as need be to serve and protect. I am excited. I doubt I am fully ready, but I am so excited.

## Relationships

### Mara Tiva

Mara is Galtrin's twin sister, and one of the two people in the Tiva monastery that Galtrin was closest to. Galtrin feels protective of her, although she has never felt any need for his protection and indeed there do not appear to be any pressing dangers she would need protection against. She is much more intellectual than Galtrin, and quite content to study the books in the Tiva libraries rather than haring off on any adventure, but she worries about and prays for Galtrin in his travels, and he casts his thoughts back to her in turn.

### Simeon Tiva

Simeon was Galtrin's personal mentor in the Tiva Monastery, and he is something of a father-figure to Galtrin as well. Galtrin looks up to him for his wisdom and integrity and self-actualization, and values his approval and perspective highly. However, Galtrin is also a little frustrated by Simeon's contentment, and perhaps complacency, in improving himself within the bounds of the monastery without engaging with what goes on outside of it.

### Kelam O'Scannaill

Kelam is Galtrin's and Mara's mother. She bears her elven father Larkyn's surname, but neither she nor he likes to admit it; she is a half-elf and ostracized in the larger Tevos Valley for this and other reasons. She spent the first six years of Galtrin's and Mara's life close to the Tiva Monastery, but eventually left the Tevos Forests for a place in Aldrecht with her mother. She left Galtrin with the same chunk of obsidian that Galtrin's father left with her, which is a message that Galtrin still doesn't feel he has fully teased out.

Galtrin's feelings for Kelam are complicated, as are Kelam's feelings for Galtrin. On the one hand, Galtrin loves his mother and empathizes with her in her sacrifice and struggle and feelings of rejection and abandonment. And on the same hand, Galtrin has been grateful for and happy in his life at the Tiva Monastery. On the other hand, he still holds on to a kernel of unhappiness that his mother left him and his sister behind to follow her own mother, in what seems to be an autohypocritical gesture, and he knows that Mara feels this displeasure even more keenly. Kelam, for her part, loves both her children dearly, but sees in them ghosts of both her faithless romantic partner and her hard and dismissive father, who sent her far away. She wants them to be happy, and is willing to make large sacrifices to render it so, but time spent in either of their company is profoundly bittersweet.

### "Amron"

Galtrin has never met his father, who seems to be a rogueish vagrant from Vyneen. Although Galtrin feels no loyalty for nor desire for affection from this mysterious figure who abandoned his pregnant mother, Galtrin's uncertainty and lack of closure regarding Amron still nag at him, and he oriented his pilgrimage away from the Tiva Monastery with an eye towards reaching Vyneen and trying to regain contact with the man. Unfortunately, Juste Belmont called Galtrin back from his wanderings just as he had reached the Hadrian Pass (which leads into Hadrian Valley where both Vyneen and Leorths lay nestled), so this loose end will remain open for a while longer.

### Treagle

Years before Galtrin went on his pilgrimage away from the Tiva Monastery, he took to wandering the Tevos Forests around his home. On one particular occasion, he came across a trio of Simic hybrids, who were certainly not supposed to be there. Galtrin, outmatched and not especially stealthy, attempted to withdraw and warn his monastery. When the hybrids confronted him, he instead tried to sell his life dearly.

Then one hybrid died by an arrow to its throat, another was bound in bands of solid iron before Galtrin had registered the first death, and the battle ended quickly after that. This is how Galtrin met Treagle, a roguish elf who preferred to keep out of the civilized areas of the Tevos Forest. The elf sent Galtrin back to his monastery with a polite request not to talk about him to the town guards, and with both hybrids in tow.

Galtrin made sporadic contact with Treagle after that, but he never succeeded in truly piercing his amiable but opaque exterior. He had apparently been living almost entirely on his own for "a while"--though Treagle flatly refused to tell Galtrin whether that meant decades or centuries. Treagle's cynicism about the Tevos nation made frequent reference to events from centuries prior, however, so Galtrin suspected that the iconoclastic elf could not have been born much after the Time of Troubles.

### Juste Stocklow

Galtrin and Juste became allies quite by accident as both of them found themselves hunting a vampire of middling nobility in the fiefdom of Uroia, in the northern part of Tarkosa. The two of them became surprisingly fast friends in the heat of a difficult situation, as Juste seemed to value Galtrin’s honesty and warmth, and Galtrin, in turn, honored Juste’s integrity and pragmatism. Like salt and pepper, they compliment each other's shortcomings and together find themselves better than the sum of their constituent parts.

Although Galtrin was unwilling to commit his life to hunting down vampires in Uroia, and Juste was unwilling to abandon his homeland and his vendetta against vampirekind, both men know that they can call on the other if circumstances demand it. Juste’s understanding of both the undead and the occult is second to none, and his tireless work leaves him with countless favors he can call in from both the peasants, vigilantes, and clergymen alike.

### Illadrian Wahlor-Na

Galtrin fell to traveling with Illadrian, Aena, and Riddik in an ill-fated attempt to drive off or kill a green dragon that was poisoning the Tel-Zedraarast River and sinking vessels that crossed its territory there. Galtrin and Illadrian were nearly killed by a choking creeper partway through this jaunt, and Galtrin kept Illadrian alive long enough for Aena and Riddik to burn the creeper and drive it back. Later, Galtrin escorted Illadrian through the Tyridh portal to Ndo, and thence to Amgbamai, where she now serves as a diplomat from the Olothalan empire to the Duchy of Abia.

As a noble, a mage, and a diplomat, Illadrian is in perpetual contact with the movers and shakers of the world west of the Celicine Peninsula, so she possesses a wealth of contacts to the upper echelons of society. She is also a practiced mage with a specialty in illusion magic, and is happy to share her knowledge as long as she can also share her sense of self-superiority. Illadrian is not wealthy as nobility measures wealth, but she does have more money than the entire Tiva monastery, and her vanity and desire to live above her station prevents her from husbanding it too carefully. She also remembers her travels with Galtrin, Aena, and Riddik with mixed fondness, and while her demeanor may be begrudging, she is willing to offer any of her former companions favors as long as two conditions hold: first, that the recipient fawns adequately, and second, that doing so entails little cost to herself.

Illadrian is the sort of person that few whole-heartedly like, but the party remained friends of a sort, and Illadrian procured pairs of sending stones for herself, Aena, and Galtrin.

### Aena & Riddik

Galtrin met Aena and Riddik as part of the same venture where he met Illadrian, but he got along much better with the pair of them. Like Galtrin, Aena was thoughtful, devout, and eager to make the world a better place. Like Galtrin, Riddik was energetic and eager to find life's next adventure. Galtrin sometimes feels clumsy or slow around the pair of them, with their quicksilver dynamic and adaptability to all manner of circumstances, and he is uncomfortable with Riddik's cavalier attitude towards "borrowing" and deception, but he still considers them fast friends, and he is glad to remain in contact with the pair even if their travels have separated them by many miles.

## Magic Items

* Sending Stone (Juste Stocklow)
* Sending Stone (Illadrian)
* Sending Stone (Aena & Riddik)

## Trivia

* Galtrin is flatly unwilling to lie or deceive, regardless of circumstance. At most, he will hold his silence.
* When Galtrin is bored, he likes to whittle. He tends to give his carvings away to children that he meets along the road.
* Galtrin keeps a journal religiously.