Valerius possesses the sharp, regal features of his lineage, though his face is often obscured by the shadow of a deep hood. His silver hair is tied back with a silk cord. He wears frayed indigo robes and a signet ring that glows with a faint, pulsing blue light. His hands are stained with iridescent ink that never seems to wash off.

He carries himself with the stiff posture of a monarch despite his current poverty. He is obsessed with intellectual purity and views most other wizards as sloppy practitioners. He often speaks of himself in the plural as if representing his entire defunct house.

The House of Sylvaranth was once the keeper of the Great Archive, a floating bastion of logic that surveyed the world. When the sky-keep fell centuries ago, the family status vanished beneath the waves. Valerius was born to a line of impoverished clerks who clutched at the titles of lords, living in the cellars of the city they once ruled. Valerius did not accept this fate. He spent decades translating the fragmented, water-damaged manuscripts of his ancestors. He discovered that their mastery over the weave was not just in power, but in the efficiency of the arcane script. By altering the syntax, he has learned to modify the fundamental properties of his magic, a technique he calls Enhanced Invocation. Now, Valerius travels to recover the scattered relics of the Sylvaranth Archive. He will not stop until the banner of his house flies once more over a reconstructed spire of glass and silver.