Key Personas
Valerius Thorne-Agis
Valerius is a man of precise cruelty. He is unfailingly polite to his peers but treats those from the Rim with the clinical detachment of a doctor looking at a tumor. He prizes stability above all else, believing that the suffering of the many is a fair price for the refinement of the few. He is prone to long silences where he simply stares at the ceiling, making others wonder if he is listening or if he is hearing something they cannot.
Rengo 'Sly' Malatesta
Rengo is a man of professional contradictions. He is famously generous with the orphans of the Rim, often buying them whole crates of fruit, yet he is known to ruin adult business partners over a single copper debt. He presents himself as the quintessential 'man of the people,' speaking with a rough, comforting cavern-slang, but in private, he is cold, calculating, and possesses an elitist disdain for those who cannot see the 'big picture.' He is genuinely loyal to those he considers 'his people' until their existence threatens his survival, at which point he becomes a ruthlessly efficient cleaner.
Mama Thistle
Mama Thistle is a study in maternal iron; she is deeply compassionate toward the broken and the destitute who wander into the Rim, yet she possesses a razor-sharp tongue for those with status. She treats surface-dwelling travelers with a nostalgic warmth that masks a keen-eyed evaluation of their utility. While she will offer a free meal to a starving thief, she would sooner throw a high-born diplomat out of her door than allow them to look down on her 'children' of the cavern walls.
Thrainn 'Driller' Grout
Grout is a man of absolute constants who trusts the structural integrity of stone more than the word of any person. He is rudely dismissive of casual pleasantries but becomes obsessively talkative when discussing masonry or the 'rhythms' of the earth. He treats his tools with fatherly affection but views his own physical exhaustion as a mere inconvenience to be ignored.