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Living Portrait

This Portrait represents Talimar exactly at the end of Session 0, after his initiation into Lhankor Mhy. It remains as a snapshot: later sessions have their own Portrait so that the Protagonist's evolution stays visible.

“Things are. Even when contrary, they are there, together.”

Talimar, called Tal — man, 20 — Sartarite of the Grey Heron clan, newly initiated into Lhankor Mhy.

Runes​

Air — the middle​

Tal recognizes himself in the space between things: earth and sky, high and low, clouds, wind, Moon and stars. Far from his clan, Air has also become the tangible reminder of his roots.

Law — what binds​

Tal first called Harmony his intuition that different, even contrary things could belong to the same Cosmos.

During his initiation, he understands this experience differently: for him, it was more deeply Law, what binds without erasing differences.

Truth — what sets him in motion​

Tal first called Movement his curiosity and desire to go elsewhere.

His initiation reveals a direction: that movement was seeking Truth. Not certainty possessed, but what compels him to keep searching.

Young Grey Sage​

Tal has just been initiated into Lhankor Mhy after an apprenticeship under Hendrik, son of Enderos.

  • insatiable curiosity;
  • distinguishes what he knows from what he thinks he knows;
  • can sustain several hypotheses without prematurely turning one into a truth;
  • tablet of the seven differences, kept since meeting Hendrik;
  • ancestral knife given by his father.

Grey Heron and the roads of Tarsh​

Tal is the son of Calimar and Urestona, carls of the Grey Heron clan, of the Colymar tribe.

His uncle Grimar, a merchant, took him to Tarsh when he was young. Tal discovered a Lunar civilization there that he admires in some respects and rejects in others. This contradiction remains one of the deep tensions that set him in motion.

Away from the clan, his roots have become more tangible rather than less important.

Among the people who matter:

  • Calimar and Urestona, his parents;
  • Grimar, his merchant uncle;
  • Hendrik, his teacher;
  • the Grey Heron clan;
  • the clan's old traditionalist Grey Sage, whom Tal found dull but who had very early given him a glimpse that there were other ways to serve Lhankor Mhy.

Myth of Lhankor Mhy — the quest for knowledge​

Hendrik told Tal the myth of Lhankor Mhy, born of Orenoar, Mistress of Truth, upon Mostal, the Mountain of Law. When knowledge is lost in the Darkness and Elasa disappears, Lhankor Mhy invents writing to preserve what has been learned, then continues his quest with the Lightbringers.

Tal retained five gestures from it:

  • distinguish what is true;
  • remember what has been learned;
  • preserve knowledge through writing;
  • seek what is missing;
  • continue searching even when one already knows.

Before his initiation, these formulations were personal understandings of the myth. Tal is now connected to the God; what they can mean in play remains to be discovered.

Trace — initiation​

Tal entered the sanctuary thinking he knew himself through Air, Harmony, and Movement.

Before Law and Truth, his doubt transformed his understanding of himself: Harmony was not erased but reread as his personal intuition of Law; Movement was not denied but recognized as the way his quest for Truth had always driven him forward.

In the experience that accompanies his acceptance, Tal has the sensation of standing in the world of the gods and hearing Hendrik's first question again:

“Tell me what's wrong.”

Initiation therefore does not retroactively correct the Portrait: it leaves a Trace because Tal understands differently what he truly lived.