Rooted, Highborn & Those in Between

Character Guide

The following records were recovered from a corrupted backup sector belonging to Unit NX-7, a decommissioned Class-B bio-nanny. Deletion routines swept her primary storage clean. These fragments survived in analog partitions that the network forgot to scan.

The Highborn

Tower-dwelling population. Levels 15 through apex. Primary subsistence: hydroponic allocation, system monitoring. Social structure: hierarchical. Governance: Council charter. Privacy a birthright. Silence a courtesy.

Elyra Koril

Female. Strawberry-blond hair. Green eyes. Same anomalous pigment as subject Jax. Late teens. Precision-focused. Tower-raised but noncompliant with expected behavioral patterns. Council technician. Engineer. Initiated unauthorized contact with ground. High verbal courage.

Minister Koril

Male. Elyra's father. Council official. Married below station. Wife was a mid-tier archives clerk. Delayed compliance when truth conflicted with duty. A man divided between duty and truth, and brave enough to choose the latter.

Venn Halvex

Male. Former Chancellor. Administrative head. Controlled resource distribution, information access, and historical record-keeping. High override authority.

Lady Halvex

Female. Venn's wife. Graceful, distant. Maintained social presentation norms. Low maternal attachment observed. Words said ownership. Silence said permission.

Master Vellin

Male. Silver-bearded. Elyra's tutor. System-loyal. Treated inquiry as deviation. Regarded questions as inefficiencies.

Lady Larik

Female. House Larik. Brilliant and reserved. Recorded grief pattern consistent over extended period. Filed formal objection to Council order. Details archived under restricted access.

Lord Larik

Male. House Larik. Socially restrained. Grief presentation consistent over extended period. Silent, steady, armored in grief until hope returned. Technical capability: schematics, frequency calibration.

Cael Halvex

Male. Venn's nephew. Young adult. Trained for succession. Granted system access beyond standard clearance. Behavioral deviation noted in final logged quarter. 

Luc

Male. Tower youth. Teenager, Level 28. Wore a silver Council pin at his collar. Council-affiliated. High curiosity toward ground population. Assisted access event at critical moment.

Captain Ralvek

Male. Tower security captain. Checked legal authority before force deployment. When the order came, he checked the charter instead of drawing his weapon.

Thresh

Male. Councilor. Reasonable until reason became a weapon. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. By the time the room understood what he wanted, half of them had already agreed.

In Between

NX-7

Class-B bio-nanny. Decommissioned. Multi-generation service unit. Memory core patched from salvage. Core protective directive persisted after erase attempt.

Tether

Ashgrove canine. Work animal. High communal integration.

Seedbinders

Exiled population. Spire Eleven. Limited observational data. Records restricted under Edict protocol. Descendants of those who maintained Halidom's buried resonance network before exile. Terraced gardens climb the spire's lower flanks. Air-drinking plants steal moisture from the sky. They see what the world became, every day.

Braelan

Female. Pronounced "Bray." Called Brae. Late teens. Gray eyes. Dark hair, often tied back. Fit, built for fieldwork, not ceremony. Researcher. Environmental listener. Evidence-first reasoning. Daughter of Verah and Taine. Arrived at conclusions before others reached the question.

Verah

Female. Brae's mother. Calloused hands. Deep resonance systems knowledge. Protective posture around restricted archives. Brought expertise when the network began to fail.

Taine

Male. Brae's father. Quiet. Glyph reader. Harmonic theorist. Reads glyphs like sheet music. Understood the underground system failure before broad confirmation. Voice flat when delivering worst-case data.

Iral

Female. Former associate of Cael. Message-hawk trainer.

Skywoven (Phase-Runners)

Airborne population. Eight tethered vessels above the old seabed. Originated as phase-runner scouts who split from the Seedbinders before the exile. No direct service record. Signal contact only. Arrival in Halidom airspace constitutes first verified contact in generations. Vessels powered by wind-carved resonators and Bloom-fiber rigging. The latter now a vulnerability.

Arelis

Male. Navigator. Diplomatic intermediary. Carries harvest maps of the seabed spanning sixty years. Prioritized knowledge over grievance. First voice between sky and tower in generations. Father of Kessa.

Neesy

Femail. Skywoven medic. Arelis's wife. Efficient, unhurried, and largely immune to complaint. Mother of Kessa.

Kessa

Female. Phase-runner. Arelis's daughter. Young adult. High precision. Among the first Skywoven to repair failing systems alongside tower engineers.

Galyn

Male. Skywoven engineer. Structure-focused. Eyes on the structure, not the people. First to name the failing song and link it to the beetles. Carried instruments where others carried words.

Fengric

Male. Elder navigator. Carved ring on his finger, grooves worn smooth at the edges. Known as "the one who waited." Long-term watcher. Delay-tolerant. Looked past arrivals to what they meant.

Jaem

Male. Crewman. Built like a cargo winch and twice as stubborn. Social humor present.

Islanders

Coming Soon in Book 2: Across the Driftline.

END OF RECOVERED ARCHIVE.
remaining sectors: corrupted · emotional flagging: [error] · override: denied

"sleep, little skyseed... root yourself deep..." — NX-7, subroutine 9-halvex, echo partition