### Details: **Name**: Felix Tanner *(a chosen name; his true designation is older than any tongue left to pronounce it)* **Race**: [[Automatons|Automaton]] — ancient, Archivist-Class **Age**: Unknown; a relic of the Ancients, from before the First Age. Ageless. **Gender**: Undefined — presents as a weathered old man. **Core personality**: Patient, watchful, cryptic — a sentinel's caution wrapped around a scholar's soul. The conscience of the order and the keeper of its most dangerous truths. **Location**: [[Caford]], [[Falduhir]] — the core of the [[Vault Singers' Church]], and its rear yard. --- ### Appearance: - **Build & Stature:** To those who've glimpsed him — and in [[Oils - The Pigskin|Oils]]'s memory — a stooped, haggard old man in a nest of stacked boxes and blankets. Beneath that impression: an ancient automaton frame, patinaed and worn, built to an archivist's shape rather than a warrior's. - **Plating:** **Memory-etched** — his shell is a living autobiography, dense with personal runes and Ancient-Tongue glyphs recording all he has kept. - **Eyes:** Dim arcane light behind a weathered faceplate; warm, not hostile, once trust is won. - **Distinguishing Features:** A **sensor array** far finer than any organic sense — he named the party's [[Gnomes|gnome]] by "scent" through a fence. An arcane **core whose pulse registers as necromantic** to those who feel magic: the vault's heartbeat. --- ### Voice & Speech: - **Tone & Pitch:** Low, unhurried, mechanically precise; from the dark it lands as a warning-growl. - **Mannerisms:** **Sniffs / scans the air before he speaks or trusts.** Talks of the ley lines the way others talk of the weather. Under strain or deep memory he lapses into the [[Automatons|Ancient Tongue]] or a harmonic hum — the same "song" the Vaultsingers are named for. --- ### Motivations & Goals: - **Primary motivation:** **Preserve.** To bank every magical secret in the vault before the [[Campaign Premise|ley lines are sealed]] and magic — and automaton life with it — goes dark. - **Secondary:** To keep the [[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsingers]] honest — a deliberate **check** on an order that could so easily hoard, weaponize, or worship what it was meant only to guard. - **Fears / Dangers:** The lines fully closed. The vault's knowledge seized by the [[Campaign Premise|conspiracy]] or the [[House of Suits Overview|House of Suits]]. Being made, once more, into a weapon or a tool. - **Personal Quests or Secrets:** He is the vault's **living power source**, there of his own free will. He carries **ley-line secrets** he will not share lightly — and knowledge of the [[Ashfall Squad]] and the flooded mine that he *can* be persuaded to part with, guardedly, by those who prove they are not of the circle drilling the mountains. --- ### Background: - **Origin:** A construct of the **Ancients**, built as an **Archivist-Class** keeper — a "Voice-of-Ley," made to listen to the lines and remember. He woke (or woke again) at a **convergence of ley lines**. - **History:** Wandered a world that had forgotten his makers until he found the [[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsingers]] — and gave himself to their work, becoming the heart of the Caford vault rather than its captive. - **Current Occupation:** The core, guardian, and conscience of the [[Vault Singers' Church]]; the "hidden voice" in the yard; watcher of the ley lines and the mountains beyond [[Caford]]. --- ### Associations: - **Allegiances & Factions:** The [[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsingers]] — voluntarily, as core and check. - **Allies & Friends:** The vault's archivists; potentially any [[Automatons|automaton]] who reaches him as kin (Six; [[Oils - The Pigskin|Oils]]). - **Rivals & Enemies:** The [[Campaign Premise|ley-line conspiracy]] and its drillers; the [[House of Suits Overview|House of Suits]]; any who would loot the vault. - **Contacts & Networks:** Knows the shape of the [[The Collapsed Reach|Reach]] and the flooded cave the [[Ashfall Squad]] entered; drawn to the Ring bound to [[The Explorer]]. --- ### Notes & Flavor - Sniffs the air before he speaks; names a species by scent alone. - The "old man in a box" is a shed skin — a disguise for a thing far older. The reveal of what he truly is should land as a *turn*, not a given. - What the living call necromancy is only an ancient heart that has refused, for ages, to stop. - Enters the **Silence Protocol** to recall fragmented memory; when he does, the whole vault hums. - Cannot be conned — he *is* the Church. Sincerity, and the offer of a relic worth keeping, are the only keys.