Ervel
Also known as: Erval, Ervil (see A Note on the Spelling, below) Status: Alive, and currently in possession of a hostage. Affiliation: Odium — direct emissary, works alone or with a small retinue of Singer subordinates Notable for: Ambushing the party mid-recruitment-pitch, calling Ravan a traitor to his face, and ending Session B by walking off with Gavlin inside a carapace cocoon.
Overview
Ervel introduced himself the way most Stormlight villains do — politely, in a room the party had already searched and cleared, moments before everyone found out it hadn’t actually been cleared at all. He arrived flanked by two Singers in forms the party had never seen before, announced he worked for Odium personally, and got straight to business: he wanted Gavlin, specifically, for reasons that started at “teach us about fabrials” and escalated to “would you like to live forever” within about four lines of dialogue. When the answer was no, he picked up an entire conference table and threw it at the party. This wiki considers that a reasonably efficient use of a Tuesday.
He is calm, well-spoken, capable of picking up furniture and throwing it like a javelin, and gets visibly, glowingly irritated — his eyes brighten several shades of red in real time — whenever someone stalls him past his patience. He is also, apparently, catching up on a few centuries of missed research. When Gavlin pointed out he’d never known Ervel’s kind to take an interest in fabrials, Ervel’s answer was a shrug and “my kind has been gone for a while, but we’re back and we need to be caught up on some research.” Read into that whatever you like. This wiki is reading into it plenty.
A Note on the Spelling
The record is not united on how to spell this man’s name. Across a single session he appears as Ervel, Erval, and Ervil, sometimes within the same page of transcript, with no apparent pattern to which one shows up when. This wiki has picked “Ervel” as the house spelling and is sticking to it, in keeping with how it already handles Theren/Theron and Marren/Merren — one canonical spelling for the page title and the running text, with the variants noted here for anyone cross-referencing the session logs directly. If a future session settles this definitively, this note gets deleted. Until then, treat “Erval” and “Ervil” in any raw transcript as the same person.
Key Moments
The Pitch
- Cornered the party at the Yips’ command building — the same building they’d already searched top to bottom for Thack — flanked by two Singers in unfamiliar forms, and announced without preamble: “my name is Ervel.”
- Made his interest explicit immediately: his master wanted Gavlin, specifically, to teach him about fabrials — “from beginning to end” — and told Gavlin he could “name his price.”
- Opened negotiations with eternal life. When that didn’t land, he didn’t blink — he offered to pay Gavlin, and by extension the rest of the party, “whatever you want,” and confirmed the eternal-life offer extended to everyone present.
- When Gavlin asked for time to discuss it with the party, Ervel refused outright — “we must have an answer before you leave” — and his eyes visibly brightened as he said it. Subtle, he is not.
- Named his employer without hesitation the moment anyone asked: Odium. No euphemism, no cover story — he’s proud of the org.
The Recruitment Pitch, and the Vision It Answered
- Gavlin recognized something in Ervel’s pitch that connected straight back to a vision he’d had that same morning at the party’s Shattered Plains base: a golden, crowned god-king figure, Gavlin kneeling before it, his own eyes glowing red, and — worst part — a spren-bond severed in front of him. The specifics of whose bond were never spelled out to Gavlin in the vision itself, only that it happened.
- When Ervel refused to elaborate on what he actually wanted beyond “come learn from us,” Gavlin made the connection out loud in his own head: this is the same deal from the vision, and in the vision, it ended with somebody’s bond cut. He turned it down. Ervel took the refusal about as gracefully as expected — he kicked the conference room doors in and escalated straight to violence.
- Ervel’s counteroffer to “no” was characteristically direct: “we’ll put your friends to good work. And this one, we’ll have to beat the betrayal out of him. But once we do, he’ll be a valued partner.” This wiki notes that “beat the betrayal out of him” is not, technically, a yes from Gavlin’s side of the table.
”Traitor”
- The instant Ravan spoke up to ask who Ervel’s master was, Ervel’s warmth evaporated: “I don’t believe I extended the invitation to you, traitor.” When Ravan pushed back, Ervel clarified without apology — Ravan’s ancestors, “the Listeners,” betrayed “our people,” the Singers. He said it as established fact, not accusation, which is somehow worse.
- Asked directly if he knew who Shai was, Ervel gave a flat “no, no, I don’t” — for whatever that’s worth from a man who lies about very little else in this scene.
The Kyle Question
- Before things went sideways, Ervel’s opening move was to ask after someone else entirely: “are you not traveling with one named Kyle?” — and, once he had the party’s attention, clarified he’d “heard he likes dueling.”
- Ravan deflected without confirming or denying who Kyle actually is: “there’s few who can match him in raw talent, but he won’t be joining us for the foreseeable future.” Nobody at the table has explained who Kyle is, whether he’s a person the party has met, or why an emissary of Odium wants to talk to a duelist by that name. This wiki is filing it exactly where Ravan left it: unresolved, mildly ominous, someone else’s problem for now.
The Fight
- Opened combat by picking up a full conference table and swinging it at the entire party — Torin was the only one who didn’t get out of the way, and ate ten points of damage for his trouble.
- Fought with Carapace-based abilities throughout — spikes that shot out and tagged Keth for 17 damage, an adhesion effect strong enough that breaking it meant tearing up the floor tile rather than the bond itself, and a reactive strike that put Teal down for 19 points off the back of one bad roll.
- Took real punishment across the fight — at one point falling off the ceiling as his Investiture ran out, and by the tail end visibly realizing he “doesn’t really have much support here left.”
- With the fight going against him, made the call that mattered: grabbed the carapace cocoon Gavlin was already trapped in and simply started walking out of the building, using a wall of carapace to block the party’s pursuit.
The Kidnapping
- Escaped with Gavlin still sealed in the cocoon, with roughly a 40-foot head start by the time the party broke through his carapace wall. Session B ends here — Gavlin in Ervel’s custody, the party regrouping outside a building that used to have a functioning wall.
Relationships
- Odium — his master, named without hesitation and served without visible reluctance.
- Gavlin — his target from the moment he walked in, and his hostage by the time the session ended. Offered him tutoring, wealth, and immortality; settled for kidnapping when refused.
- Ravan — treated with open contempt the instant his Listener heritage came up. “Traitor” is not a term of endearment here.
- Teal — took a serious hit from him during the ambush; otherwise no direct interaction on record.
- Kyle — asked after by name, specifically as a duelist. Identity, relationship to the party, and reason for Odium’s interest all remain unconfirmed.