Aethelgard stands with a terrifying, rod-straight posture that makes him appear taller than his six feet. His skin is the color of old parchment, pulled tight over a skeletal, hawk-like face. He is entirely hairless, his head shaved clean to show no vanity, leaving his piercing, storm-grey eyes as his most prominent feature. He moves with a slow, deliberate precision, never fidgeting. He carries an aura of suffocating stillness. The contradictory element in his look is his hands: while his right hand is always encased in a ceremonial, razor-edged gold glove, his left hand is bare, soft, and meticulously manicured, smelling faintly of expensive rosewater and caustic lye.

Vane is a man of absolute, terrifying certainty. He is remarkably patient and gentle with those he considers 'innocently ignorant,' treating them with a paternal warmth that can vanish in an instant. However, he is a cold, clinical monster to anyone he deems a 'rational sinner.' He believes that true justice is a surgical procedure: one does not hate the cancer, but one must be ruthless in cutting it out. He views his own cruelty as a supreme form of mercy, a necessary hardening of the heart to save a soul from eternal stagnation. He is most dangerous when he is smiling, as it usually means he has found a flaw he intends to 'fix.'

Vane was born into the gutters of the capital and was saved from starvation by a low-ranking priest of Kirlis. He spent his youth as a hospitaller, tending to the dying. The formative experience that broke his spirit was the Great Fever, where he watched thousands die while 'just' and 'righteous' nobles hoarded medicine. He realized then that people are not naturally good; they must be forced to be good. He climbed the ranks of the Inquisition through efficiency and a lack of political ambition, eventually coming to view Arch-Prelate Valerius as a sentimental old man whose 'mercy' is actually a slow-acting poison. He is currently grooming a cell of younger, radical inquisitors to seize the Cathedral and initiate the Great Cleansing.