Character Note: Chyralane Rannuleonis, In the Path of a Nightmare

The Triempery series has a variety of villains. Nammuor is the main villain, of course, but he’s not the only threat faced by the other main characters.

Foremost among this second tier of villains is Chyralane, Denizen of Phaer: murderer, schemer, and almost Nammuor’s peer when it comes to the number of times she appears in the series. Is she a sorcerer in possession of a god-infested device of immense power? No. But she’s leader of the Seven Houses and that’s almost as nasty.

But who is this woman?

SPOILERS: While not heavy with spoilers, this character notes refers specifically to events in Sordaneon.

Background

Chyralane Rannuleonis Phaeraea was born in the summer of 2/1767 at Leppora in Rannul, as the eldest daughter of Egonon Rannuleon, second son of the ruling Prince Lehardus II. The Rannuleons were of Malyrdeon descent and Chyralane was seventh in the line of succession to the Principate of Rannul, behind her male cousins. As a royal princess, she attended school at Merath and, later, at Permephedon, where she studied under Cibulitan Sages, gaining high marks in mage arts, philosophy and history. She learned riding and archery as well as courtly etiquette and dancing.

Chyralane’s high birth and rich inheritance as the daughter of a Highborn prince pointed to her entering a marriage of alliance. Among the partners considered for her were Enreddon I Malyrdeon (who would become Prince of Stauberg and father to Enreddon II) and Labran Sordaneon. Those marriage possibilities fell through for various reasons, including that Chyralane considered Labran’s mixed race beneath her.

Appearance

From childhood, Chyralane stood out among her peers. Even for a girl of Staubaun birth, she was tall, and in adulthood surpassed all but a few men of her race in height. Her build was lean and her overall impression was vertical—an impression she later augmented by wearing headdresses. In youth she had silver blond hair that she wore long and brushed to shimmering smoothness. Her features were true to her race: symmetric, fair, high boned, slightly narrow, and handsome rather than classically beautiful. She has thin lips and her topaz gold eyes are often described as piercing.

By the time of the series, Chyralane is 90 years old and her hair has silvered, though she wears it covered by her statement headdresses. Because she is pure Staubaun and also had a Highborn father, she has aged better than most and shows no infirmity, though she has begun to develop some stiffness in her joints.

Marriage and Rise to Power

In 2/1797 Chyralane wed Antal Phaeros, Denizen of the First of the Seven Houses, the merchant cartel that dominated Rill commerce in Essera. Antal thought much of himself and sought a royal bride, while Rannul saw advantages in placing one of its princesses with the increasingly prosperous and powerful cartel.

Though dutiful and aware that she had few other prospects as she did not wish to become a Sage or a Sister of Mercy, Chyralane greatly resented the match. She was the daughter of a prince and should have wed better than to someone who was essentially a commoner, albeit one with noble blood. Antal was descended from the daughters of Hebdomon and Mezeon Archons. He was even distantly related to the Merrydeon Princes. Still, Chyralane found him wanting and no issue ever sprang from their union.

What Chyralane did not find wanting were Antal’s assets: the Seven Houses might be common merchants... but they were obscenely rich common merchants who controlled Dazun River trade routes and had extensive Rill holdings—and the House of Phaer was the oldest and most powerful member of that cabal. Intelligent and seeking more control over her situation, Chyralane set about to understand, then master and manipulate, the Rill cartel. At first presenting her plans as being those of her husband, she soon had Antal conceding that Chyralane was much better at structuring Rill slots for profit. Moreover, his wife possessed loftier ties to the nobility and other connections that made her a formidable negotiator.

Antal was more interested in appearing to be a mover and shaker than he was in actually moving or shaking; he began to leave Chyralane in control of his functions as head of the House of Phaer. His fellow Denizens of the other Houses recognized her leadership—she had taken over Antal’s seat at cartel meetings—and upon Antal’s mysterious but unlamented death in 2/1816 Chyralane was allowed by the House of Phaer to keep her late husband’s seat as Denizen. Or perhaps she blackmailed her way into it.

That Chyralane was responsible for Antal’s death was whispered behind closed doors but never investigated.

Chyralane and Marc Frederick

Chyralane was 33 years old when Marc Frederick was born and 60 when they met. Due to her race and privileged life, she looked much younger. That they met at all was due to her scheming: she needed to know more about the supposed great-grandson King Endurin had brought so unexpectedly into his court and was beginning to use in suspicious ways.

Marc Frederick was in need of friends, still confused by being uprooted and thrust into Esseran society, and Chyralane presented herself as a possible ally. There’s speculation that she and Marc Frederick were, for only a short time, lovers. This is possible. However, Chyralane never had much use for lovers and would have found Marc Frederick repulsive. Certainly he eventually found her repulsive. The facts are that they met when he was younger and before he became King.

Chyralane and the Sordaneons

Chyralane had been presented to Labran Sordaneon as a possible bride; he had disliked her height—she was taller—and she had disliked his Ardaenan coloring, i.e. dark-haired and gray eyed. Labran went on to wed Ermenthalia, a princess of Suddekar.

As Chyralane gathered the reins of the Seven Houses into her hands, she came to see the Sordaneons as obstacles to gaining control of the Rill, the god-machine upon which the cartel’s fortunes depended. Indeed, the cartel depended on it utterly. And the Sordaneons held the Rill by means no other mortals could replicate. She looked for ways to circumvent those bonds.

Labran’s grandfather, Tarlon, had been a true Rill Lord, able to communicate with and—to a great extent—influence the behavior of the god-machine. He had awakened the node at Randpory and had even explored the possibility of awakening the node at Stauberg, on the sea. An awakened Stauberg node would have potentially crippled the Seven Houses and their dominance. Chyralane possessed secret records of the Seven Houses and several noble factions threatening Tarlon in a successful move to get him to abandon those plans.

When the dying King Endurin of Essera made Marc Frederick his Heir, Labran threatened rebellion—as did the Mormantaloran Nuarch Camas Cienoreon—and Chyralane saw an opportunity. She aligned with Marc Frederick. An Esseran schism with the Sordaneons worked to her advantage.

Even more to her advantage was when Marc Frederick, on the day of his coronation and acceptance by the Leur’s Ring as King, took Labran prisoner. Labran briefly stopped the Rill from running, proving his bond and aptitude, but the wizard Marenthro restored Rill service at Marc Frederick’s request. Chyralane recognized a master move—and a situation she could exploit.

Though the Seven Houses presented a petition that the remaining Sordaneons, who might possibly also wield Rill ability, be removed from Sordan to Essera for safekeeping, Marc Frederick refused to do this. He did, however, allow greater Esseran oversight of Rill operations, shifting control of the god-machine to Essera.

Adding control of the Sordaneons to this mix remained a goal for Chyralane. She unsuccessfully sought to have Labran’s two sons removed from Sordan to a location less symbolic or protected. She also pressed to force Labran’s heirs to wed Esseran—indeed, Seven Houses—daughters. These attempts proved unsuccessful. When one of the Sordaneon heirs died (Delos), Chyralane quietly celebrated. She turned her full attention on isolating Labran’s remaining Heir, Deben.

Chyralane advocated for Deben’s marriage to a princess of mixed blood; Valyane, daughter of Sebbord Teremareon, had sprung from a half-Ardaenan mother. Chyralane, and all Essera, believed that diluting the Sordaneon lineage with lesser bloodlines would further ensure Essera’s possession of the Rill god-machine by making the Sordaneon hold weaker.

Still hoping to gain physical possession of the Sordaneons, Chyralane spearheaded a movement to have Deben send his young son Dorilian to Essera—again, for safekeeping. To provoke the already paranoid Deben to agree to this plan, Chyralane collaborated with Esseran administrators to poison Valyane, who was steadfastly resisting the plan. Though Valyane died of the poison, the plot failed when Sebbord took his grandsons—Dorilian and the newly born Levyathan—under his protection and removed them to Teremar.

Thwarted, Chyralane actively continued her efforts using her connections and financial leverage. Eventually she recruited enough strong voices, including some of the Malyrdeons, to demand that Dorilian be sent to Essera for his education. Dorilian was by then a teen—and the remainder of her efforts with him can be read about in Sordaneon.

Following the opening of the Hestya Rill node and the massive shift in Rill commerce it engendered, Chyralane sought to get to Dorilian, who she saw as a child and therefore most controllable, through arranging for Sebbord’s assassination in Merath. She found Marc Frederick’s decision to allow Dorilian to return to Sordan frustrating and possibly dangerous. Chyralane believed the Sordaneons needed to be caged.

Chyralane and Dorilian

Most of the series shows Chyralane’s ongoing contention with Dorilian after he becomes an adult and is aware of the danger she presents to him. She also sees the danger he presents to her and the Seven Houses.

Nammuor is Dorilian’s primary enemy—a god-infested sorcerer who doesn’t just want to kill him but would make him suffer for eternity—but Chyralane is a close second. She doesn’t want to kill him, at least not most of the time. She does want to control him by whatever means will accomplish that end.

Chyralane first meets Dorilian in person when he is 19, at a wedding in Dazunor-Rannuli.

He turned to see an old woman, taller than he, wearing a headdress of ruched silk checked with white and black beading. Moonlight did her face no kindnesses, revealing the seamed canvas of her skin. How had she gotten to him?

And later that same scene, after they have each stated their positions:

“Ruin, Denizen?” Dorilian breathed the scent of old woman and nervous sweat. “What ruin do you foresee being visited on me? Or on him? A plague of Khelds to kill me as they did my grandfather? Let me tell you now: that is not the path by which I will die. Are you warning me that your King might fall from his Throne? Too late, for I know already that it will pass to his Heir. Let me advise you instead: make no move against me—or him—you are not certain will succeed. For you have no idea, none in the World, of the kind of enemy I would be.”

Chyralane eventually finds out, because Dorilian proves to be everything she fears he might be.

As their story advances, so does their conflict. Chyralane moves actively, deliberately, and with cunning to thwart Dorilian’s evolution. As their conflict advances, so do its effects on the Rill and the Seven Houses and, indeed, the Triempery which the Rill created. Chyralane, Highborn daughter and student, whose years have been spent studying the Rill and its godborn descendants, knows better than anyone—better than Nammuor or Marc Frederick, and far more than Quirin—the immense change Dorilian can wreak.

For her and the Seven Houses, change means damage. Maybe even disaster.

Or as she says here:

He smiled. “Do you realize what I am?”

“I always knew. You are a nightmare.”