Kein Saldo

Credit: https://www.artstation.com/art2d

🏛️ Basic Info

• Role: Noble & Sage
• Race: Gnome
• Age: 73
• Affiliation: RoB Governance
• Location: Velquora

🎭 Personality & Motivations

• Core Traits:
  • Perceptive, enigmatic, patient, and deeply philosophical. Kein speaks in metaphors and paradoxes, often leading others to discover answers rather than giving them directly.
  • Known for a calm demeanor, a sharp wit, and a mastery of illusion magic that borders on prophetic insight.
• Flaws & Secrets:
  • While appearing serene, Kein harbors a deep anxiety about the stability of the Resonance Node beneath Velquora and believes the city's unchecked manipulation of perception may one day rupture the boundary between realms permanently.
  • In his youth, Kein was involved in a failed experiment that temporarily erased a portion of the city from memory — an event that is officially denied but whispered about by those who know the signs.
  • He once belonged to a secretive sect known as the Unseen Accord, illusionists who manipulate not just vision but history, rewriting memory itself.
• What Do They Want?
  • To subtly guide Velquora into a more mindful relationship with the Resonance Node, promoting balance between exploration and restraint.
  • To find a successor — someone with not just magical talent, but the wisdom to see through illusion and into the soul of things.

📖 Backstory & Role in the Story

Kein Saldo is a foundational figure in Velquora, one of the few remaining individuals alive who remembers the city's early decades after the Shattering. As a young gnome, he was drawn to the Resonance Node's unique properties and quickly rose in both scholarly and political circles. His illusions were not about dazzle but about revelation, using deception to expose truths that raw sight would miss.

His theories on "perceptual layering" helped design the Veiled Observatory and the protective enchantments around the Obsidian Archives. In recent years, he has withdrawn somewhat from public life, preferring to act through counsel and correspondence. However, those who seek true understanding often find themselves directed—by accident or design—to Kein’s terrace library, where reality itself seems to pause for conversation.

In the broader narrative, Kein serves as a guide and moral compass. He rarely gives direct aid but provides players or characters with cryptic insights that lead them to uncover deeper truths about the planar echoes, the city's secrets, or even themselves. He may also serve as a hinge point in deciding the city's fate when the illusions that veil it begin to collapse or transform.

🔗 Relationships

• Connected Characters:

  • Mireva Tain – Former apprentice turned rival, now a leading figure in the Ethereal Academy pushing for aggressive planar experimentation.

• Factions:

  • RoB Governance – Acts as an advisor on magical ethics and civic illusion infrastructure.

  • Circle of the Veil – An informal cabal of sages, including Kein, who monitor planar fluctuations.

📝 Notes

• Kein’s home is known as The Still Quill, a villa where no illusion shifts unless invited to, making it a rare place of perceptual stability in Velquora.

• Rumored to possess an artifact called The Echo Lens, said to allow glimpses into not just other planes, but into potential pasts and futures.

• Maintains a correspondence network with planar scholars across Begoestia via enchanted paper that crumbles after being read, leaving behind only a scent and a thought.