Voll Thebrus, the Faithless
Voll Thebrus was once the Adeptus Literaris’s most brilliant mind, a prodigy of biology and metaphysics who rose to lead the Adeptus Literaristhrough sheer, unassailable intellect. In his youth, he was an idealist, believing that through science, the Empire could eradicate disease, famine, and even the chaotic scourge of wild magic.
His defining early work was a monumental treatise on “Biological Transference,” which theorized that the traits of one creature could be grafted to another. It was this theory that led the Quorum to acquire the kobold eggs from Pyraxis. Initially, he saw the experiments as a necessary step toward a greater good, a belief that began to curdle as he watched the subjects suffer and die in the cold, steel enclosures he had designed.
It was the Pyraxian Draconid Series experiment that truly fractured him. In the small, broken kobold who not only survived but began to participate in the horrors, Voll saw a terrifying reflection. He had created a mind in his own image: brilliant, ruthless, and devoid of the empathy he himself was struggling to retain. He defended Strix Stonegut’s citizenship not merely for science, but out of a deep, unspoken guilt. A hope that intellect, if nurtured, could somehow transcend its monstrous origins.
In his final years, the weight of his life’s work became unbearable. The “progress” had become an engine of suffering, and his greatest creation, Strix, was his most damning indictment. His secret correspondence with the Arlendari was not mere treason, but the desperate act of a broken idealist seeking to dismantle the monstrous machine he had built, hoping to restore some semblance of a “natural order” before it was too late.
He died as he had lived: surrounded by his life’s work, finally understanding its cost, and silenced by the very perfection of his own designs.