Eshegen Virmad

Eshegen Virmad (born 827, timeslid 858, subjective age 31), formerly known as Rahal Virmad, is an ex-Rahal member of the Rebellion.

Early life

Virmad entered the Rahal academy in 845, at age 18, and graduated in 849.

Rahal career and turn toward heresy

Rahal Virmad was a low-ranking inquisitor at Smokewatch 33-67. When General Shuos Jedao requested seventy-three calendrical lenses in 852 for the Battle of Candle Arc, Virmad found himself drafted into one of the crews, and this close encounter with a heretical calendar piqued his curiosity, setting him — very slowly and very cautiously — on the path towards calendrical heresy, or at least towards seriously interrogating the foundations of the high calendar. The events at Hellspin Fortress solidified his conviction that the high calendar, and the society built on it, are broken, and he began reading up on heretical calendars and discreetly seeking like-minded would-be heretics.

Virmad is committed to the abolition of the high calendar and the institutions associated with it. Having read up on history after his timeshift, he regrets not having been present for the Liozh heresy, but given its failure, perhaps this is for the best. Maybe he’s exactly where he needs to be.

In the Rebellion

Virmad took a different route from his quarters to his office one day and stumbled through a time portal. Fortunately, Rahal formal wear has changed relatively little over the course of the Heptarchate-Hexarchate's existence; he was able to avoid attracting excessive attention to himself (no more than a Rahal inquisitor would normally attract, anyway) until he had something of a handle on what had happened.

Personal life

Virmad’s best friend used to be Rahal Ejad, another member of the inquisitor hept Virmad was assigned to and Virmad’s some-time lover, but as Virmad has drifted away from the Rahal ideologically, so he and Ejad have drifted apart. And of course, now they’re separated by several hundred years, thanks to the time-shift.

Virmad fancies himself a poet, although in truth he knows his poetry is mediocre.

Appearance

Virmad is in his early thirties (it feels odd to identify himself as a specific age, given the time jump, but subjectively, he’s 31), tall, and thin; he usually keeps his hair clipped to about half a centimeter long.

Skills and abilities

Virmad is an adequate mathematician, but nothing special — but he’s fascinated by heretical calendars, not for their mathematical properties but for their philosophical and ideological implications. He’s read as much information as he could discreetly get his hands on about as many alternate regimes (both heretical and foreign) as possible — he’s especially interested in the Poetics of the Gwa Reality, and he knows probably about as much as anyone who wasn’t involved in the heresy itself can about the Lanterners’ beliefs.

Virmad is a reasonably effective scryer of signifiers, and his ideological discomfort with the Rahal and interest in other cultures notwithstanding, he sets great store by signifiers and their traditional meanings, and he can and will want to ask everyone who would know about their signifiers as soon as he can get away with it without it being rude. His own signifier is Scrywolf Circling at the moment, but if someone were watching him constantly, they would see signs already of Scrywolf Uncircled.

He has also studied several languages in addition to his native language and the high language, including Tlen Gwa (which he reads comfortably but cannot speak).

Miscellaneous notes

Virmad refers to an eight-day week. He is the author of Eshegen Virmad’s essential Heptarchate Rahal dating guide.