A'gaeris
| Race | D'ni |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Died | Leesahn 30, 9400 DE |
A'gaeris (a'gåris[contested]) was a D'ni citizen, a disgraced former member of the Guild of Writers, and one of the architects of D'ni's destruction.
Some time in the 9340s, A'gaeris was convicted of stealing a Book, and stripped of his membership in the guild. He professed innocence throughout his trial, and his conviction caused him to take a dim view of the guilds. The loss of his position as a guildsman also resulted in the loss of his upper-class home and his bride-to-be. For fifty years, he lived in the lower-class Kerath'en district on Ae'gura, writing angry pamphlets under the pen name "The Philosopher" railing against outsider involvement in D'ni and trying to stir up unrest among the lower classes. He became a master at forgery, able to quickly and expertly emulate anyone's handwriting from just a small sample. He also adopted a mute orphan child named Corlam, whom he treated as more of a servant than a son.
In 9392 DE, A'gaeris first met with the young lord Veovis. They were introduced to each other by Suahrnir, a mutual acquaintance in the Guild of Maintainers. News that Aitrus and Ti'ana—a non-D'ni woman from Earth's surface—had just had their first child, Gehn, disgusted them both, and they quickly developed a rapport. However, A'gaeris had an ulterior motive to their relationship. Over the ensuing months, he orchestrated a scheme to directly pit Aitrus and Veovis against one another. He fabricated illicit Ages in Aitrus's handwriting and showed them to Veovis. At the same time, he lured Aitrus into witnessing their meeting, and framed it such that it appeared that Veovis was trading in illicit Ages. He also murdered two junior members of the Guild of Maintainers, planting evidence on their bodies that would incriminate Veovis. When they were finally discovered in an Age which he supplied to Aitrus, Veovis was arrested and sentenced to life in a prison Age.
Four years later, A'gaeris and Suahrnir worked together to free Veovis from his prison. Together, he and Veovis developed a scheme to get back at the guilds for the wrongs they felt had been inflicted upon them. They coordinated assaults on high-ranking guild members, bombed the Guild of Ink-Makers's Ink-Works, and even defaced one of the five great classic Ages of the Writers's canon. Veovis was eventually arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for these crimes, though A'gaeris and Suahrnir managed to evade capture. Ti'ana pleaded for mercy, and the Council commuted his sentence to lifelong imprisonment in a new prison Age that would be burned as soon as he linked there. With Suahrnir's help, A'gaeris reconstructed the room in which the sentence would be carried out. The date and time of the sentencing was publicly known, and A'gaeris took advantage of this to execute his jailbreak. At the appointed time, Veovis linked into his prison Age, and A'gaeris linked into the sentencing chamber, dressed in the same prisoner's uniform and positioned so that his hand would immediately link him into the prison Age as well. The plan succeeded—none of the assembled Council members suspected anything, and dismissed his momentary appearance as an artifact of the unique way in which the prison Age's Book was written.
On Leesahn 8, 9400 DE, Veovis and A'gaeris unleashed their ultimate vengeance. They released an airborne biological weapon into the D'ni cavern which killed almost 100% of the population. To ensure that those who escaped to D'ni's many Ages were not spared, they gathered up piles of the dead and linked them through, spreading the contagion to every corner of the empire.
Over the previous eight years, A'gaeris's misanthropy evolved into a full-blown god complex. After he and Veovis destroyed D'ni, he demanded that Veovis write an Age for him where they could both go to live as gods, ruling over the native population. Veovis refused, and A'gaeris stabbed his former partner in a fit of rage. He made for their base on K'veer, and happened to come across Ti'ana and Gehn were waiting in the harbor for Aitrus before leaving for the surface. Still furious, A'gaeris kidnapped them and took them to the island mansion with him, intent on luring Aitrus there so he could kill all three of them at once. With help from Veovis just before he died, Aitrus managed to arrive before them, and set its library ablaze. He then lured A'gaeris into the Age of Ederat, which he had modified to be highly unstable. A'gaeris died shortly after linking to the Age, thrown into a chamber of magma by an earthquake caused by the now-unstable Age's rapid collapse.
