Fraa Osa

Fraa Osa is a senior Valer—described as the "First Among Equals"—from the Ringing Vale (Math). After being Evoked, he and roughly two dozen Valers moved through Mahsht and prepared to continue toward Tredegarh. In Old Mahsht, Osa directed a rapid intervention when a mob targeted an avout in a public square.

Appearance and Traits

• Seen as a shaven-headed man in a red T-shirt (issued at Voco via a local ark), moving with exceptional balance—at one point perching one-legged atop an expanded sphere to shield a prone avout.
• Speaks sparingly and with calm precision; he prefers concise historical shorthand to convey plans.
• Describes using a "nerve pressure technique" that seems to hurt a lot but does no lasting damage, emphasizing control and restraint.
• Appears to be in his fifth decade.
• Offers succinct counsel in moments of uncertainty, emphasizing disciplined action even when the full plan is not revealed.
• Articulates Vale doctrine on Emergence and nested loyalties; he frames difficult choices as training-born responses rather than on-the-spot calculation and occasionally cites concise Vale aphorisms in support.

Roles and Actions

• Evocation and route: Osa states that the Valers were Evoked the previous day, consulted a globe, and selected Mahsht as the efficient route toward Tredegarh. Local supporters provided transport. In the streets he was recognized by Magister Sark, who alerted the Valers that a lone avout was being hunted.
• Emergence and rescue: Osa identified the unfolding street crisis as an "emergence" (a Vale-lore moment when action must be taken without time to devise or brief a detailed plan). He shielded the targeted avout with a sphere, then led a coordinated maneuver—feigned retreat, flanking elements, and rapid disarms—designed to disorient and scatter the attackers while minimizing injury.
• Post-incident: When constables arrived, the Valers adopted composed, meditative postures and cooperated while Osa spoke with authorities and allies. He later accepted a stack of letters to bear to avout at Tredegarh.
• Confirmed delivery: Later, Ala states that Osa personally handed her one of those letters from Erasmas.
• Tredegarh evacuation and cell assignment: During the organized evacuation, Osa is seated with a small departing cell alongside other Valers and Edharians. He and the Vale cohort pay formal respects to Fraa Jad. When Lio boards and begins working the aisle, even Osa bows more deeply to him, signaling Lio's role as the cell leader.
• Preparations at Elkhazg: With the Valer cohort and the Edharian cell, Osa participates in equipment familiarization and training on individual suits and launch hardware. He remarks on the fine, mostly mechanical workmanship of the suit manipulators ("simple, yet very complex") and notes the sophistication of the new suits compared to those used on earlier flights. Addressing the group, he urges them to proceed despite not knowing the entire plan, to manage humiliation and uncertainty, and to focus on the tasks at hand.

Orbital Operations

• In low orbit, Osa works with Suur Vay to link drifting payloads into a single cluster sheltered behind a reflective balloon, preparing them for secure attachment and retrieval.
• After Erasmas secures the tender’s power source and Fraa Jesry comes to assist, Osa joins Lio in towing them in and helping fasten the arrivals to the growing assembly.
• Alongside Arsibalt and Erasmas, Osa helps assemble a decoy craft on a platform of lashed upper stages, intended to draw attention away from the team’s primary reflective array.
• Just before the decoy’s programmed departure, Osa hauls Erasmas beneath the main reflective structure and helps strap the team down for their own maneuver. From there, the group proceeds under covert cover toward the Daban Urnud.
• Communications ambiguity: During later operations, Osa asks whether the visitors had found a way to jam the Reticulum. In the ensuing discussion of misinformation defenses, he quotes a Ringing Vale aphorism about preserving the integrity of defenses by subjecting them to unceasing assault.
• Loyalties and Emergence: When tensions rise over conflicting allegiances, Osa states his enduring loyalty to the Valers while acknowledging overlapping bonds to the cell, the Mathic world, and Arbre. He gives Jules Verne Durand a brief tutorial on Emergence, using a swordfighting decision tree as an example of patterns and rules of thumb that trained minds can apply without enumerating every move; Fraa Jad connects this to whole‑pattern feats such as the Teglon.
• On potential weaponization: As the cell considers the risk that "Everything Killers" might be involved, Osa offers a pragmatic conjecture that a strategist might rely on allies within the visitors opposed to the Pedestal to gain access aboard the ship. The group also notes that the swallowed core‑temperature transponders—the "Big Pill"—would be the natural hiding place if any such devices exist.
• Final approach: After a timed cut to the tether and casting off the Cold Black Mirror, the cell turns matte black, ropes together, and fires grapnels into the ship’s rubble shield. The Valers use cold‑gas thrusters to bleed off relative motion, and the team secures a grip on the wire mesh.
• Boarding the World Burner: On the shadowed rubble facet facing the device, Osa initiates an Emergence with the Ringing Vale quartet—Suur Vay, Suur Esma, and Fraa Gratho—spreading out and deploying cold‑gas thrusters to glide headfirst across the facet for a covert boarding of the World Burner. They separate from the rest of the cell under stealth.
• Attack and vertex standoff (Ala’s account): Ala recounts that the quartet planted three shaped charges around the installation. Osa then approached a conference‑room window overlooking the device, slapped a charge directly onto the glass, and gave a signal; nearly simultaneously, explosions tore through the primary detonator, the inertial guidance system, and the propellant tanks, followed by a secondary blast as tanks ruptured. In the fighting outside the complex, Suur Vay was killed while taking on multiple suited workers—one carrying a plasma cutter—and Fraa Gratho was struck by debris and killed amid the blast.
• Securing noncombatants and sealing the node: According to the same account, the Geometers opened an airlock; Esma entered while Osa remained outside as deterrent. Esma, still suited, herded as many Geometers as she could into the conference room and welded the doors shut using Saunt Loy’s Powder. Osa then came in carrying the window charge. Together they locked and welded the doors into the vertex and detonated the fourth charge to vent most of the node’s atmosphere, leaving approach possible only for people in suits. With their own suits out of air, they shed them and sheltered in one of the few rooms that remained pressurized.
• Breach and outcome: After two days, Urnudan responders blew a hole in the vertex wall to reach the trapped personnel. The remaining atmosphere vented to space, and Osa and Esma died.

Honors and Commemoration

• During the opening of peace talks in Orb Four aboard the Daban Urnud, Osa's remains were honored alongside his fellow Valers Esma, Vay, and Gratho.
• A mixed honor guard bore their coffins in procession to the water's edge for a formal aut; the coffins were ferried by ceremonial boat before being turned over, undisturbed, to the Arbran delegation.

Relationships

• Ringing Vale (Math): Osa is the First Among Equals of the Valers and speaks for the cohort traveling under Evocation.
• Erasmas: He and his cohort intervened to protect Erasmas from a Gheeth mob in Old Mahsht; afterward Osa returned to speak with him, explained the Valers' actions, and agreed to convey letters to multiple recipients at Tredegarh.
• Magister Sark: According to Osa, Sark is known to the Valers and has attended their Aperts. In Mahsht he recognized them and helped by both alerting them to the crisis and arranging onward transport.
• Tredegarh and the Convox: Osa indicates the Valers are bound for Tredegarh, currently functioning as a Convox receiving Evoked avout. He treats delivery of letters there as part of their southbound departure.
• Fraa Jad and Jesry: On hearing that a Millenarian Thousander had sent Erasmas, Osa urged him to finish the task; he also reacts with amused recognition to the name "Jesry," calling him "famous."
• Jules Verne Durand: In orbit, Osa instructs Jules Verne Durand in the Vale view of Emergence and decision‑making under pressure; the Laterran acknowledges with approving "zhoost."
• Ala: Reported recipient of a letter that Osa delivered on behalf of Erasmas, and later the source for details of the action at the World Burner node.

Current Status

Deceased; died aboard the Daban Urnud during the sealed‑vertex standoff that followed the attack on the World Burner.