Marcel du Vont
Explorer and Entrepreneur
By all accounts, Marcel was an exceptional individual, excelling at anything to which he put his mind. He combined a strong work ethic with a natural charisma and Kayla's blessing to rewrite Tarien's understanding of geography and the potential way by which merchant companies received funding.
After pulling himself up from nothing - he was orphaned by age 8 and by 14 had earned a full scholarship to the Yatian Finishing School - Marcel began working on various merchant vessels that worked the Sea of Storms. He quickly worked his way up the rigid shipboard hierarchy, making second mate before his twenty-second winter. When he learned of Cedric Kandar's desire to sail around Azermathia to the Merdenkal Peninsula he quickly signed on and was named first mate.
While Kandar gets most of the credit for the voyage, those that knew Marcel well understand that without his steadying hand the voyage would never have succeeded. One could well believe that he would befriend the otherwise hostile Kari-Zaro that the crew met in Alestria and that he somehow found common ground with Elynthi shocked to see a Yatain vessel pull into the harbor at Nosferius. Indeed, it was Marcel that rallied the crew after Kandar's death and brought them home.
Perhaps even more impressive than his historic voyage was how Marcel turned that experience into a lucrative business venture. Convinced that voyage could be repeated, he proposed the establishment of trading company that would send a small fleet of ships on this treacherous journey, leaving Yaty every spring and returning, laden with Elynthi goods in the fall. He raised money by finding merchants that believed in the idea who had coin, but no desire to undertake such a journey. In exchange for their coin, he gave them shares in future profits, making them owners of the business and the Elanthai Trading Company was born.
Marcel personally led these small fleets for over a decade before selling his own shares in the business and retiring to a post as a part-time professor of geography at his alma matter.