Arrian Virelius
Duke of Carteia, High Warden of the Stormbound Aegis, Keeper of the Citadel of Aetherglass
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Arrian wears the years like he wears his mantle—layered in discipline. His face is angular and wind-cut, with a short, squared beard of iron-grey. His hair, once obsidian, is now streaked with silver at the temples. Eyes the color of stormlit steel seem to look through both men and illusions alike. His skin bears the pallor of high elevation, with faint arcane sigils etched into the left side of his neck—old wards, self-bound during the Frostfall Crisis.
He is never seen in anything but tailored robes reinforced with sigil-threaded lamellar, rich in deep blue and silver, bearing the seal of House Virelius. Around his throat hangs a circlet of wardstone chips, and his staff, Nullbrand, hums faintly with suppressed abjurations.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Duke Arrian Virelius was born within the Citadel of Aetherglass on the 2nd day of Raging in the year 1947, the eldest son of High Warden Lucan Virelius and Lady Calpurnia Aequitara, both stern paragons of noble discipline. From childhood, Arrian was trained not for comfort but for command—raised within warded chambers, drilled in abjurations before he could write, and taught that leadership was not glory, but burden. By the age of fifteen, he had memorized the entire lineage of Carteian Dukes, reforged a fractured wardstone conduit under supervision, and cast his first city-scale protection ritual under the scrutiny of the Magisterium.
His rise to power came early. When his father perished during the Frostfall Crisis of 1972—activating the Aetheric Aegis to protect the city from an extraplanar maelstrom—Arrian assumed the mantle at just 25. In that crucible, he oversaw the re-weaving of Carteia’s failing defenses, personally led the defense of the outer harbor, and sealed the breach with a binding so potent it remains active to this day. That single act earned him the title Stormwarden, and secured both the city and his rule.
Since then, he has governed with unflinching control, strengthening the city’s infrastructure, expanding the Spiral Archive’s arcane reach, and holding both Church and Senate at careful distance. Though Duke Arrian Virelius has no spouse and guards his personal life like a sealed vault, he has publicly named Marcellus Virelius as his heir. The youth—his nephew and the son of Arrian’s late younger brother—has been raised within the Citadel, tutored by the Spiral Archive’s finest minds, and drilled relentlessly in both statecraft and abjuration. Arrian lives not for legacy, but for vigilance; in his eyes, the greatest threat is not blade or rebellion, but complacency—and the ever-humming wards that slumber beneath the mountain.
Relationships
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