Fraa Arsibalt

Overview

Fraa Arsibalt is a Tenner from Saunt Edhar and a close peer of Fraa Erasmas. During a Peregrin, he joins a small contingent detouring toward Bly's Butte to look for Fraa Orolo before continuing on. On the road he travels alongside a Thousander elder, Fraa Jad, and engages in extended exchanges about Sconic thought with the driver Ferman Beller while accepting hospitality at a monastery associated with Bazian Orthodox.

Appearance and Traits

• Formal diction and careful distinctions; prefers to separate observation from conjecture.
• Methodical and courteous; when uneasy he becomes extra‑polite. He is described as prone to motion sickness and sometimes shifts seats to steady himself.
• Comfortable in Orth and Fluccish when needed, and eager to sketch arguments or calcas to make abstract points clear.

Roles and Actions

• Navigation and route‑finding: provides a profile sketch of distant peaks used with a cartabla and historical clues to identify candidate mountains forming a triangle around the area of interest; helps set expectations about road conditions and timing; concurs with a plan to lodge nearby and start early.
• Sconic explanations: outlines the “Sconic Discipline” as a third way between naïve realism and radical skepticism, arguing that some topics (e.g., a non‑spatiotemporal deity) are outside productive thought; clarifies that his recent reading concerns non‑spatiotemporal objects in theorics rather than deity claims per se.
• Teaching by parable (calca): presents “The Fly, the Bat, and the Worm,” a didactic story in which differently sensing creatures converge on a shared language of geometry and time; extends the idea to how human brains integrate senses into a coherent model of the world.
• Analytical caution: in a calca run with Hundreders, notes that a large icosahedral craft seems too small to carry the propulsion needed for interstellar speeds given its apparent mass, proposing as a hypothesis that the visitors or the craft might be from another cosmos. He ties this to interest in metatheoricians who address cross‑cosmos questions (the suggestion is framed as his speculation, not established fact).
• Community tact: accepts books from the monastery on behalf of the group and gives a gracious acknowledgment.

Relationships

• Fraa Erasmas: peer, travel companion, and frequent collaborator during planning and on‑the‑road discussions.
• Fraa Jad: present elder whose remarks and presence shape the level of caution and inference Arsibalt adopts.
• Ferman Beller: primary interlocutor for Sconic discussions during the drive; Arsibalt uses parable and careful framing to bridge outlooks.
• Sammann (Ita): Arsibalt is described as unfailingly polite around him, signaling some discomfort even as the group cooperates.
• Lio and other peers: participates in walking debates and calcas; shares concerns about practical risks while keeping an abstract lens handy.

Current Status

Traveling extramuros with a small caravan. After an overnight at a mountain retreat, he continues toward the candidate buttes to search for Orolo before rejoining the broader route toward the destination.