V

"V" is a figure known so far only by that single initial — the name signed to a note found in the Fixer's satchel, and the thing the Fixer herself was most afraid of.

The note in V's hand ordered the Fixer to retrieve the lens and bring it to a "waypoint," and warned her not to return to Aristonia. When the party questioned the captured Fixer, it was clear that she feared V far more than she feared her captors or the noble house that had hired her. Her associate Sable had heard V spoken of only in passing, and could say only that V is a "he" who "imposes his will — what he wants to happen, happens." Sable believed her one sliver of survival lay in fleeing beyond V's reach.

V appears to be the one collecting the six-piece set that the lens belongs to. The path to a meeting with V runs through a fence in Saltmoor named Octavian Drell, the Fixer's contact for the rendezvous.

An Ancient Elf with a Blackened Hand

In Saltmoor the party learned more of what V is. The dwarven scholar Bevin had seen another lens like theirs pass through the port about a month before, carried by a very old elf with a blackened hand, who said little, paid the fee, and moved on. Octavian Drell, pressed, confirmed this man to be his client V: an eccentric collector of Second Epoch arcane instruments and artifacts, a very old elf with a blackened hand, who had bought an identical lens from him at a steep markup and paid it out of pocket without complaint.

Drell had met V only once and was plainly terrified of him. He called V "a creature," warned that the party did not understand how dangerous he was, and said V was learned, immensely wealthy, and wholly unbothered by the council of six. Bevin judged him most likely a wizard able to draw on power beyond ordinary men. Both men urged the party to have nothing to do with him.

At the party's insistence, Drell sent word to V by a swift magical means — ink that pooled and vanished into a page, and a reply that welled back moments later — and arranged a meeting at his storehouse the following morning. V himself was not in Saltmoor at the time.

The Meeting

At dawn the party met V in the flesh at Drell's barred warehouse. He did not walk in. The lamp-flames leaned inward all at once, the air went cold, there was a sound like a long-held breath let go, and where no one had stood there was a man — tall, ancient, gaunt, in plain dark travelling clothes, his bare left hand charcoal-black to the wrist and held unnaturally still. He studied each of them in turn and named himself only: "You may call me V." He noted at once that the party was "about one short" — Aelion had stayed away.

V was unhurried and never raised his voice. He said the party held something of his, that he did not answer to this small city's accords but was a patient man, and that he knew they had laid bare all their dealings with the Fixer to Drell. He made no demand for the lens and took nothing. Instead he made an offer: there are places he cannot go and items he wishes to collect, and if the party retrieves them for him he will pay handsomely — a standing, open arrangement, to be taken up in their own time. Pressed on what happens if they decline, he answered that anyone in the same business is a competitor, and "I don't keep competitors for long."

He offered his good hand to each of them in parting; Randy shook it. Then he stepped back, the air condensed and chilled once more, and he was simply gone — the same cold vanishing by which he had come. Drell, who had said nothing throughout, turned them out the moment he left.

V is still known only by the initial. His true name remains unknown.