Aldric
Thessaly’s companion and protector. Not a hired sword — something closer than that, and more complicated.
Thessaly found him in circumstances he doesn’t discuss: poor, in a bad place, the kind of situation that ends one way if nothing intervenes. She intervened. He has been with her since. He thinks of her as his patron in the old sense — the person who gave him a future — and also as someone whose mind he genuinely admires, even when he can’t follow it. Especially when he can’t follow it. He’s watched her work for years and still can’t predict what she’ll notice next.
He is not her assistant in the way assistants are assistants. He carries things, yes, and keeps watch, and handles anything that requires a different kind of strength than hers. He does these things because they need doing and because she trusts him to do them. What he is, more than any of that, is the person who makes sure she comes home.
The party met him possessed by a ghost he had no defense against, doing things he has no memory of. He woke on the floor next to a catman he had apparently been playing ball with for an hour. River poured a potion into him. He came to in time to watch Thessaly recover and give the party her calm professional thanks, and to understand, from context, that he had not been there for any of it.
He has never failed to protect her. He does not yet know what to do with the fact that this time he did.