Jarek Voss

Jarek Voss was captain of the Bronze Mantle Company, the mercenaries the Gilded Coven hired to guard its machines once the Sylvan Sanctuary began breaking them. He answered to no guild, which is much of the reason he came out of the Gilded Expansion with his reputation intact and his conscience mostly so.

He was human, broad-shouldered, going grey at the edges of the beard, in plain armour scarred by old repairs. His company was a mixed one — dwarven riflemen, goblin crossbowmen, a minotaur shieldbearer, a lizardfolk tracker — and looked a good deal less impressive than the machines it was paid to protect.

He was a professional, which in the expansion made him unusual. He wanted to know exactly what he was being paid to shoot, and made Lord Marcellin Auric state his rules of engagement plainly in front of witnesses rather than leave them for clerks to reinterpret afterwards. He would not let his company become the army Marcellin needed: he refused to retaliate against Sylvan who had not attacked him, and once threatened to cut a fuel line himself to stop his own employer’s machine. Marcellin accused him of growing sympathetic to the Sylvan. Jarek’s answer was that his sympathy was for getting his people home.

He had insisted on being paid in advance and fought to keep his company’s wages current, so the Bronze Mantle left the Sanctuary in better shape than most of the Neon Synapse crews. He still lost many of his people there, and kept their names in a small leather book.

On the morning his company rode out, he met Vaelor Thane, Warden of the Thornwake, beside the abandoned road. Each said what his side had lost, and neither tried to compare the numbers after that. Vaelor watched him ride east and found, to his own surprise, that he did not hate him.