Role: Retired priest of Orlaine; Ulfgar Kegbreath’s adoptive father
Status: Reported alive and among the refugees camped outside Marin’s Hold’s gate (Session 4) — not yet seen by Ulfgar. Previously living in Orlaine when whatever is happening there began
Background
A retired priest known far better by what he did than by what he said. Valos caught a young, orphaned Ulfgar mid-theft in the Orlaine markets — Ulfgar was a poor pickpocket — and instead of turning him in, took him in.
What followed was an education by practice rather than sermon. Valos taught him enough to understand how the world works and deliberately not one word more, leaving the rest for Ulfgar to find out himself, and stood behind him as well as any second-hand father could. When Ulfgar entered the order of Ord, he attended the order’s teachings and spent every day off back with Valos. The habit of service without piety that Ulfgar carries — the courier work, the chaperoning of orphans, the plain unwillingness to talk about any of it — is Valos’s, inherited whole.
Where He Is Now
Ulfgar was blamed for the theft of several barrels from the order’s communal depository and banished from Orlaine. Valos stayed. He has been there through everything that has happened to the village since: the disappearances, the failing crops, the dry cattle, and then the silence when the food shipments stopped and the last messenger from Marin’s Hold failed to return.
Ulfgar does not know any of this. He has been in exile, and then in Ravenloft.
Session 4
A refugee woman from Orlaine told Ulfgar that Valos came away from Orlaine with the refugees and is “here somewhere” in the camp at Marin’s Hold’s gate. Ulfgar asked Ysolde Brack to look for him — “an older gentleman, scruffy beard” — and the party left for the forest before he could search himself.
Open Questions
- He is reported alive and a few hundred yards from the gate. Does he know Ulfgar is back?
- If people are disappearing from Orlaine, is he one of them?
- Which faith was he retired from — Ord, or another?
- Did he believe Ulfgar took the barrels?
- Would he still know Ulfgar, after Ravenloft and the Count’s mark?