Fraa Jad

Overview

Fraa Jad is a senior fraa (male honorific) of the Thousanders (long-cycle order) at the Concent of Saunt Edhar (scholars' cloister). He favors first-principles reasoning and trims conjecture with a habitual caution he calls "the Rake." While traveling extramuros (outside the walls) with a small Peregrin (formal journey) company toward Bly's Butte, he examines evidence at Orolo's cell, infers that Orolo has gone north, and—after securing and destroying sensitive notes—quietly sends a trusted younger avout (cloistered scholar) to follow north, planning for the rest to continue toward Tredegarh.

Appearance and Traits

• Elderly, poised, and precise in language; often restates uncertainties explicitly.
• Capable of a resonant, low register sometimes described as "subsonic."
• Unflustered by unfamiliar praxes and tools, adopting them quickly when needed.
• Inclined to historical framing and gently ironic turns of phrase; skeptical of over-interpretation.
• Companions recall that, on the road north, he dropped a hint of being unnaturally old; when later pressed, he reframed longevity talk as a plausible "mythology" built from quantum‑level events and nearby "Narratives" in Hemn space, cautioning against promoting comforting stories to fact. In subsequent company, when a peer spoke of his having lived "centuries," he did not contradict it.
• During recent travel, companions describe him chanting softly for long periods and being rarely, if ever, seen asleep.

Roles and Actions

• Peregrin leadership: Keeps discussions grounded during the detour toward Bly's Butte and helps reorganize seating and vehicles as plans change.
• At Orolo's eyrie: Surveys a wall of leaves and phototypes, selects a few images of a large excavation for separate consideration, then orders Orolo's working leaves burned and confirms, on the spot, that Orolo has gone north.
• Ecba/Orithena dig recognition: When presented with phototypes of a large, ordered excavation, he is described as recognizing the site at a glance as the buried remains associated with the Temple of Orithena on Ecba; he goes out of his way to ensure that Erasmas keeps those images for later work.
• Gate invocation at Orithena: At the gate of the Temple of Orithena, Erasmas identifies him as "Fraa Jad, Millenarian" (thousand-year order) and states that Jad sent him to seek Orolo; this is part of the exchange preceding entry and highlights Jad's commissioning of the search.
• Convox involvement and directive: Identified among those Evoked (formally summoned from the cloister) to the Convox (rare gathering of Evoked avout) at the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh; per Erasmas, Jad told him to "go north until you understand," implied a later return to Tredegarh, and is understood to have wanted Orolo fetched to the Convox.
• Intercession at Tredegarh: By Erasmas’s account, Jad had promised on Bly’s Butte to "make it all okay" upon reaching Tredegarh; Erasmas later infers that this intervention succeeded at least enough for him to be permitted to celebrate Inbrase, though he suspects it may have earned Jad some enemies whose opposition now reaches him as well.
• Reasoning about Orolo's work: In Orolo's later telling, Jad’s fast deductions from the wall leaves and a pruned "family tree" of the Hylaean Theoric World are explained as ordinary shared training; Orolo says Jad would infer Evenedrician datonomy (study of basic givens) and see Ecba as a place that would admit and sustain him.
• Route inference over the pole: Companions later note that Jad had already reasoned out the practical way to reach the far side of the world without documents by traveling north to the sledge ports and going over the pole—an insight that reframes the search for Orolo.
• On the visitor: Reviews a processed image of a vast icosahedral craft and its exterior geometric emblem; he adopts cautious labels (e.g., "the Cousins") while emphasizing the boundary between observation and speculation. In paraphrase, he also suggests that the craft's electrical systems might be susceptible to a burst from a field-inducing array, while others reply that the needed theorics are not commonly mastered.
• Edhar's waste cavern: Describes a sealed cavern beneath Edhar that holds nuclear waste cylinders and explains the long-term maintenance of thatched covers as a thatcher's avocation passed down among the Thousanders.
• Hospitality with monks: Accepts lodging at a mountain retreat of Bazian Orthodoxy, conversing in Orth and contributing a sustaining low drone at table prayer before dawn.
• Support for the northbound search: His money card is later used by Erasmas to purchase fuel, food, and warm clothing for the drive into the mountains in pursuit of Orolo.
• Hemn space framing and "Narratives": Within Tredegarh conversations, others explicitly attribute to Jad the use of "Narrative" to describe coherent worldtracks; the term is now in circulation among servitors and Sæcular advisors. Some worry about how to present such framing to hardheaded officials, and others joke that this line of talk challenges ordinary assumptions about time. These are reported as attributions and remarks by participants, not settled doctrine.
• Messal contributions at Tredegarh: During a dinner dialog on Protism and questions about the plurality of worlds, he made a single, concise interjection that framed testability—observing that such claims could not be verified "unless those worlds came to us"—and later eased a fraught exchange by naming the subject a taboo and redirecting attention to historical experience, asking how the Matarrhites had fared in the Third Sack.
• Plurality of Worlds articulation: At a subsequent messal, he stated that "consciousness amplifies the weak signals that, like cobwebs spun between trees, web Narratives together" and that it "amplifies them selectively" so as to create "feedback loops that steer the Narratives." Others then unpacked this into a discussion of how only certain inter‑cosmic crosstalk—especially where it impinges on nerve tissue—could be amplified, and how feedback between close worldtracks might yield persistent "attractors." These are preserved as Jad's framing and the messal's clarifications, not as settled doctrine.
• Quiet authority during the Tredegarh reveal: In a Faraday‑caged messallan where two supposed Matarrhites were being questioned, he briefly restrained a doyn who was about to intervene, allowing a candid exchange to proceed; this is consistent with his habit of minimal action to decisive effect.
• Evacuation and cell assignment: During the organized evacuation of Tredegarh, he took a seat with a small departing cell (identified as 317) that included Valers, Edharians, and military personnel; members of the Vale cohort paid formal respects to him before departure on a military aerocraft.
• Aboard the aerocraft: During that flight he was awake and chanting, his low drone nearly indistinguishable from the engines.
• Caravansery of Elkhazg and the Teglon: After arrival with the cell at the Caravansery of Elkhazg, he found a Decagon courtyard and, overnight, laid out a distinct new solution to the classic Teglon tiling using a different set of tiles; the Heritor identified it as the fourth solution achieved there, and Valers bowed to him when they discovered it.
• Low‑orbit assembly and recovery: After the cell’s ascent to low orbit, Jad became unintentionally entangled with a cargo payload and went unresponsive. Arsibalt grappled the fused rigs and began correcting a dangerous trajectory, and at the balloon rendezvous Sammann hauled Jad in and confirmed signs of life despite irregular readouts. With initial care from Suur Vay, he rested briefly and then returned to sorting and securing incoming payloads with the others.
• Reticulum discipline and transmitter disabled: During the covert approach phase, with confusing Reticulum traffic and signs of automatic recording in play, Jad quietly drifted off and physically disabled the team's line‑of‑sight transmitter. He later summed it as stopping "leakage" that was forcing choices without improving matters; Sammann remarked he had been steeling himself to do the same. Suit‑to‑suit links continued on hard lines thereafter.
• Sextant navigation and final orbit tweak: After the cell received a star‑recognizing sextant, Jad seized it and spent hours mastering its functions to derive attitude and orbital elements. Working with Fraa Jesry and Fraa Erasmas, he timed and executed a precise cut of the long tether—using a knife when a particular star aligned with it—to impart the last momentum change needed for the approach toward the Daban Urnud.
• Under the Cold Black Mirror: He participated in the release from concealment under the reflective screen, after which the team made visual contact with the rubble shield and began the hands‑on approach.
• Core‑temperature transponder refusal: When suit biometrics behaved oddly, Suur Vay noted that both Jad and Jules Verne Durand had not ingested their core‑temperature transponder “pills,” leaving the devices loose in their suits. Fraa Jesry later proposed that such pills might be adapted as Everything Killers; Jad said only that he had judged it wiser not to swallow his. This weaponization is presented as a working theory within the cell.
• Decision‑making in Emergences: In conversation about how to act under time pressure, he stated that minds trained to think through possible outcomes forge connections to neighboring cosmi and so become able to decide correctly when naïve emotion or exhaustive advance planning would fail. Others drew a parallel to his earlier success with the Teglon.
• Aboard the Daban Urnud—observatory entry and disguise: After teammates from the Ringing Vale under Fraa Osa broke off to board the World Burner, Jad asserted that the World Burner served as a bluff and that their work still mattered. He and Erasmas entered the observatory vertex, waited for the dome to be repressurized, doffed their suits, and adopted local firefighting gear (coveralls, full‑face respirators, and extinguishers) to move unchallenged through pressurized corridors.
• Through the Tendon and bearing: Moving as firefighters amid growing commotion, the pair traversed a long service corridor (“Tendon”) to the forward bearing chamber, where activity focused on the damaged World Burner route. As a huge ball valve began to close, they used the recoil of their extinguishers to push through its bore into the Core.
• Descent toward Orb One and confrontation: At the Nexus where the Core connects to the inhabited spheres, Jad located the shaft for Orb One and descended as gravity increased. He opened the access by keying a four‑digit code and led Erasmas onto the oculus catwalk within the orb, where armed men confronted them. In the ensuing moments a shot was fired; Erasmas reports that Jad was hit. Immediately afterward, the Everything Killers were activated and Erasmas describes the mission’s objective as accomplished.

Relationships

• With Fraa Erasmas: Treats the younger avout as a capable agent, privately directing him to go north in pursuit of Orolo and promising to help avert sanctions for lateness. Erasmas later reports using Jad's money card to outfit the journey and characterizes himself as "technically a Feral" for having let Jad "push" him into the detour. While recovering at sea, Erasmas reflects that Jad likely knew of the long-established migrant route over the pole and believes Jad did not intend to put him in mortal danger; he interprets any peril as misfortune or shifting conditions rather than design. When presented with a chance to travel a safer route instead, Erasmas explicitly invokes Jad's charge—calling him "the Millenarian who sent me"—and decides to continue the task rather than quit; this is presented as Erasmas's own reasoning and respect for Jad's sending. Upon reaching Tredegarh, Erasmas concludes that Jad kept his promise to "make it all okay," since he is allowed to celebrate Inbrase; he also suspects that Jad’s maneuvering has created opposition that now targets Erasmas. During the infiltration of the Daban Urnud, Erasmas accompanies Jad through the observatory and inward toward Orb One and witnesses the moment when Jad is shot.
• With Fraa Orolo: Erasmas tells Orolo that Jad "could use your help" at the Convox and likely wanted Orolo’s thoughts on the Geometers (aliens in orbit) brought to that forum; Orolo demurs about trying to redirect such a large gathering and explains Jad’s quick deductions as arising from shared observation rather than secret communication. During the crisis at Orithena, Orolo further suggests that the most senior orders may already accept—and even test by their own methods—a view of mind and reality involving many parallel possibilities; he speculates that Jad sent Erasmas partly to gauge whether Orolo "knew." This is presented explicitly as Orolo's inference and is not independently confirmed. Later at Tredegarh, Jad remarks that Orolo would have passed through the Labyrinths in due time and become his fraa on the Crag; he speaks of looking forward to working by Orolo’s side.
• With traveling companions: Others defer to him as a Thousander; he moderates speculation and settles practical matters with few words.
• With extras: Speaks readily in Orth with extramuros allies and moves comfortably in their settings when it serves the work.

Arsibalt and Sammann

During the launch and initial low‑orbit work, Arsibalt grappled him when he had become fused to a cargo payload, and Sammann secured him at the balloon rendezvous. Jad later rejoined the tasking and contributed to unpacking.

Suur Vay

Vay provided immediate care and monitoring after the incident; Jad asked to be left to rest and later returned to activity.

Current Status

Last seen inside the Daban Urnud after entry via the observatory vertex. With Erasmas, he traversed a Tendon and the forward bearing into the Core and descended to the access for Orb One. On the catwalk at the oculus there, he was shot by soldiers moments before the activation of the Everything Killers. His immediate survival is not stated; the narration that follows emphasizes that the objective was achieved.