Arsibalt

Fraa (male monastic title) Arsibalt is an avout (cloistered scholar of a math) Tenner (ten-year vow) from Saunt Edhar and a close peer of Fraa Erasmas. During a Peregrin (sanctioned travel), he joins a small contingent detouring toward Bly's Butte to look for Orolo before continuing on. On the road he travels alongside a senior 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 (mathic language) and Fluccish (vernacular) when needed, and eager to sketch arguments or calcas (didactic parables) to make abstract points clear.
• In Erasmas's recollection during a hazardous moment, he imagines Arsibalt remarking "Just enough to read by!" about dim light—presented as Erasmas's remembered voice rather than a direct quote from the scene.
• Recognizable to peers by emphatic, methodical knocking and distinct footfalls; shows open grief when speaking of Orolo.
• Dry, self-deprecating humor; willing to test unfamiliar fare on a dare and make light of kitchen mishaps while keeping service moving.
• Open about his belief in the Hylaean Theoric World when the context permits, while framing such belief with methodological caution and deference to senior avout.
• Enjoys simple food and is teased for nabbing the heel of a fresh loaf; during suit trials he was fitted to a larger-size suit, suggesting a solid build.
• In low orbit he remarks that sleep and waking blur together; he frames their isolation as a "causal domain" adrift—likened to Fraa Orolo’s long‑wandering math—and jokes that an alternate explanation is that he is "brilliant and cool under pressure."

Roles and Actions

• Navigation and route finding: provides a profile sketch of distant peaks used with a cartabla (folding map) 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 naive realism and radical skepticism, arguing that some topics (for example, a non spatiotemporal deity) are outside what pure thought can settle. He is expressly cited as explaining the "Fly, the Bat, and the Worm" parable to an extra (outsider) who asked about God; the framing emphasizes limits of method rather than a doctrinal claim.
• Teaching by parable (calca): presents "The Fly, the Bat, and the Worm," in which differently sensing creatures converge on a shared language of geometry and time; extends the idea to how human minds integrate senses into a coherent model of the world.
• Analytical caution: in a calca run with Hundreders (century vowed scholars), 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.
• Samble and Bly's Butte approach: present at Estemard's summit dwelling; on the patio outside Orolo's cell he signals to Erasmas that Estemard has become a Deolater (devotee of deity); joins the group for the town's picnic before departure.
• Parting from the detour party: after the Samble picnic, Erasmas departs north and notes parting from Arsibalt and Lio; Arsibalt does not accompany that detour.
• Lore source (recalled): Erasmas remembers hearing—probably from Arsibalt—that an order established a small math on Ecba to excavate the buried Temple of Orithena; at the time he had assumed it was only a few eccentrics with hand tools.
• Message route to Ala (implied): Erasmas later regrets not entrusting Arsibalt (or Lio) with a note at the Samble picnic that could have been smuggled directly to Ala, suggesting Arsibalt had a means to reach her that bypassed ordinary post.
• Position in debate (recalled): in a peer discussion about how minds evaluate possible futures (illustrated with a "pink dragon" hypothetical), Arsibalt is the one said to have objected to dismissing a richly modeled approach; this stance is attributed to his having been reading Fraa Paphlagon around the time that Paphlagon was Evoked (summoned out of the cloister).

Convox at Tredegarh

• Presence and visit: already at the Convox (large convocation of avout), Arsibalt comes to see Fraa Erasmas while Erasmas is quarantined at the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh. They speak through reinforced window mesh; Arsibalt addresses him as "Fraa" and becomes tearful when they speak of Fraa Orolo.
• Plenaries: he describes "Plenary" (full assembly session) gatherings in a large nave where recordings ("speelies," playback recordings) are shown to brief everyone; he refers to an all‑day Plenary after the Visitation at Orithena.
• Analemma discussion: he asks about the Analemma (named temple symbol) that Orolo traced on the beach and recalls seeing a phototype of the Analemma in Orolo's cell; he notes that the remark about the Geometers having "deciphered" it remains unexplained.
• Assignments: participants have been assigned to different Laboratoria (workrooms/labs) and have chosen different Lucubs (study groups).
• Laboratorium work and preliminary findings: after Lucubs are suspended and effort shifted to focused Laboratoria, Arsibalt is placed on a spectroscopy and materials team tasked with attributing subassemblies of the visitors' icosahedral craft to their cosmi of origin. He later reports that their analysis suggests the ship is assembled from parts built across all four PAQD cosmi: with the oldest remnants from Pangee, very few pieces from Diasp, and most material from Antarct and Quator—of which Quator appears to have been visited more recently. These are presented as the team's working inferences.
• Cloaked observers: following a remark from Fraa Jad to pay attention to the "cloaked ones," Arsibalt privately suggests that these figures may not be Matarrhites at all; he does not elaborate on why, and the claim remains unverified. He wonders aloud whether they are meant to be observed more closely.
• Companions: seen in Erasmas's company along with Barb during the day; later appears at Avrachon's Dowment as groups trade results and prepare for messal.

Relationships

• Fraa Erasmas: peer, travel companion, and frequent collaborator during planning and on‑the‑road discussions. At Tredegarh he seeks Erasmas out during quarantine to offer sympathy and exchange information.
• Fraa Jad: present elder whose remarks and presence shape the level of caution and inference Arsibalt adopts; he is specifically named as accompanying Erasmas, Arsibalt, and Lio to Bly's Butte.
• Ferman Beller: primary interlocutor for Sconic discussions during the drive; Arsibalt uses parable and careful framing to bridge outlooks.
• Sammann (Ita—technical order): 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.
• Fraa Paphlagon: cited as a key reading influence for Arsibalt following Paphlagon's Evocation; that reading is mentioned as informing Arsibalt's side of later debate. At a Plurality of Worlds messal, Arsibalt serves as his servitor at table.
• Ala (indirect): referenced when Erasmas considers that Arsibalt could have conveyed a private note to her via informal channels.
• Fraa Jesry: a long‑time peer; later seen seated with Arsibalt in the same field cell during an organized evacuation.

Elkhazg and Preparation for Orbit

• Travel and setting: after dispersal from Tredegarh, Arsibalt rides with Cell 317 by military transport to Elkhazg, an ancient Cartasian complex famed for tilings. He remarks on its age and craftsmanship, and shares fresh bread at a makeshift table while helping with simple tasks such as pouring water for the group.
• Conversations and chronology: in early discussions sparked by Sammann, he cautions peers to respect the margin of error when matching Urnudan and Arbran years, suggesting that any trigger for distant events could include happenings leading up to the Third Sack. He takes part in a wider exchange about how signals might percolate “down the Wick.”
• The Teglon at Elkhazg: he joins in applauding Fraa Jad after Jad completes an overnight, alternate solution of The Teglon on the Decagon courtyard.
• Space‑suit trial: he becomes the first to don a newly manufactured, matte‑black space suit built from a long‑archived design preserved through the Third Sack. He demonstrates voice‑driven functions, retractable mechanical gloves, and the sanitation cycle, and confirms the suit’s comfort once sealed. The suit mates to a lightweight upper stage via three back‑mounted sockets; air bags within the suit provide acceleration cushioning.
• Mission training: together with the cell he inventories pallets of equipment, learns to use a portable “tender” for life‑support resupply, and practices thruster control on simulators. In briefings led by Lio, the group prepares to consolidate payloads in orbit and maneuver toward a rendezvous with the Daban Urnud.

Launch and Low Orbit Operations

• Launch and first maneuvers: after departing for the airfield with Cell 317, Arsibalt participates in a dispersed launch using personal upper stages and consolidates near a shielding balloon in low orbit.
• Rescue under pressure: seeing a red (person) payload pass the shelter at high speed, the cell splits roles. Arsibalt closes on Fraa Jad, who has become tangled with a blue cargo payload and appears unresponsive. He grapples the combined mass and, with guidance from Lio and assistance inbound, burns propellant to reduce their dangerously high orbital eccentricity, towing Jad toward safety where Sammann secures him. Jad proves to be alive but stunned.
• Tender and reactor: once the group forms up, Arsibalt teams with Lio to bring the life‑support “tender” online. He deploys radiator booms and powers up the reactor, warning others to avoid the hot ends of the poles.
• Decoy and departure: while others assemble the Cold Black Mirror, Arsibalt helps assemble and inspect a separate decoy platform. After the group departs from the balloon’s cover, he watches the decoy burn and then break up as planned, drawing attention away from the cell’s true vector.
• Hard‑link communications and tether: switching from short‑range wireless to hard‑wired suit‑to‑suit links, he pairs lines with Erasmas and later serves as a communicator while Fraa Jesry engages an electrodynamic tether. At his countdown, Jesry powers the line, and the cluster settles under continuous, quiet thrust.
• Ground support: reports indicate his support cell on the ground is working from a drained swimming pool in Kelx; they provide checklists and routing over the Reticulum when a narrow beam can be established.
• Communications ambiguity and surveillance inference: after Sammann describes queue behavior on the Reticulum, Arsibalt jumps to “Surveillance!” as a working hypothesis when large, prioritized files appear at conversation boundaries; he takes part in ad hoc tests of trigger topics.
• Loyalties and trained responses: he asks the Valers where their ultimate allegiance lies, prompting a clarifying exchange about nested loyalties and disciplined decision‑making during Emergence.
• Weapons concern and the Big Pill: with caution, he suggests that Everything Killers might have been embedded to be delivered to the Daban Urnud. When peers consider that the cohort itself might be weaponized via the swallowed core‑temperature transponders (the Big Pill), he notes his own remains inside and asks Fraa Jad why he declined to swallow his.
• Wireless isolation: he questions the rationale just before the group’s wireless transmitter is deliberately destroyed to avoid confusing, possibly manipulated message flow; thereafter communications are limited to hard links.
• Approach and contact: in matte‑black suits, roped together and using grapnels, he helps the cell secure a first purchase on the rubble shield of the Daban Urnud.

Current Status

Attached with Cell 317 to the rubble shield of the Daban Urnud after a covert approach. He remains active in suit‑to‑suit hard‑linked coordination; ground link was physically disabled and message‑queue behavior on the Reticulum was treated as untrustworthy.

Plurality of Worlds Messal

• During a turn to Complex versus Simple Protism, Arsibalt took down a large rendering of the icosahedron to expose a slate wall and, with chalk, set out standard diagrams used by theors—the Freight Train, the Firing Squad, and the Wick—for those at table and listening on the kitchen speaker; later he prepared to draw light‑bubble diagrams that track how givens propagate at light speed.
• Serves as a kitchen‑side servitor during a Plurality of Worlds messal hosted at Avrachon's Dowment, with Fraa Paphlagon as his doyn at table.
• Helps keep the meal on track (after briefly incinerating a cutlet), adopts the local custom of signaling boredom by "voting with his feet," and labels an unlabeled summons rope for Emman Beldo. In a moment of levity he dares Erasmas to sample an austere stew and proposes a cleanup wager.
• During a side discussion about Hemn space, offers a plain‑language example: a "block of ice in the middle of a star" would not be reachable by any plausible worldtrack.
• Uses dry humor and steadying tact in the kitchen (e.g., joking about Allswell for a fussy diner; calming an over‑eager colleague) while deferring to the host servitor on stove management.
• Interprets a remark from Varax as a protective hint that the Inquisition would likely overturn an overly severe Book assignment from a doyn, advising Erasmas accordingly.
• In a later kitchen exchange led by Grandsuur Moyra, he asks directly what precipitated the messal and then engages with questions about parallels across multiple worlds, acknowledging (with courteous reserve) his belief in the HTW and sketching how knowledge might propagate from a common theoric realm to different minds.
• On the evening the messal confronted the problem of the “cloaked ones,” Arsibalt co‑prepared with Erasmas and allies a grounded‑mesh "Bucker’s Basket" to isolate the room from wireless traffic and to cut the speaker feed. He then prompted "Fraa Zh’vaern" to complete a Matarrhite food blessing, a test that led the disguised doyn to reveal himself as Jules Verne Durand of Laterre and to describe divisions among the visiting peoples. Arsibalt kept the exchange moving with plain questions while others developed the theoric implications.