Quartz 4

Gavlin

16 min read

Gavlin (Ryan)

Also known as: — Status: Alive — though as of the most recent session, in the custody of Odium’s forces, sealed in a carapace cocoon and carried off by Ervel. This wiki is not changing the status field over a cliffhanger; ask again once the party actually gets him back. Order: Truthwatcher — “Enlightened” path (Second Ideal) Spren: Glimmer in Doubt Mentor: Rilano (Rolano) Family: Brothers Harlan and Varden, in Highprince Aladar’s camp Notable Possessions: The Raysium dagger — the same blade that killed Sebarial and still holds his trapped cognitive shadow in its pommel gemstone. Handed to Gavlin personally by Nucko on his way out the door. Also, more recently: an Armor Augmenter fabrial of his own make, quick-activation, once per scene, +2 Deflect and +1 Physical Defense until the end of the fight. See Key Moments.

Overview

Somewhere in this campaign there is a version of events where the party’s mild-mannered artifabrian spends a year building his patron’s god-killing superweapon, discovers the plan mid-construction, and does something other than keep building it anyway out of professional curiosity. That is not this version. Gavlin spent the back half of the campaign embedded — happily, enthusiastically, three-projects-at-once embedded — in Sebarial’s hidden research lab, The Shallow Crypts, constructing modern Roshar’s first Surge-replicating fabrial and a Stormlight reservoir capable of holding investiture indefinitely. He built the machine. He also, eventually, figured out exactly what it was for, and turned it — and himself — against the man who paid for it. More recently, he turned down an offer from an actual agent of Odium for a very similar reason, which either means Gavlin has developed a consistent moral principle about refusing god-adjacent employers, or means the universe keeps handing him the same test to see if he’ll fail it differently. So far: no.

Officially: an artifabrian of terrifying competence, a Truthwatcher who bonded a spren, watched it get retroactively touched by a dead Unmade’s power, and came out the other side with literal futuresight — futuresight that, as of Session B, has started showing him things before they happen in real, actionable time, not just as a campaign twist. Unofficially: the party’s healer, its Strength-0 punching bag, its designated victim of every “who has the worst stat here” joke at the table, and — by informal, unanimous, group-chat-documented vote — its MVP. The numbers back it up. Nobody has ever counted exactly how many heals Gavlin has put out over the life of this campaign, and this wiki suspects that’s for the best, because the total might actually break something.

Origin

Gavlin comes from a lighteyes family in Highprince Aladar’s war camp — older brother Harlan, a rising squad leader with a healthy respect for anyone holding a Shardblade, and younger brother Varden, who did not take kindly to his sibling choosing “scholarship” over the family’s more traditional martial path. (“Women’s work,” Varden called it, immediately before Kael broke his sternum for saying it. Gavlin healed him anyway. That’s the whole relationship in one scene.) Whatever friction exists between Gavlin and his blood family, it hasn’t stopped him from patching them up when Kael’s discipline checks run out.

His actual family, professionally speaking, is Rilano (Rolano) — the mentor who trained him as an artifabrian and who Gavlin kept reuniting with throughout the campaign, first in Kharbranth, later inside Sebarial’s own lab. Rilano was, at the time, a fugitive from The Diagram, having abandoned the organization when it put a hunt on him — a detail that should have been everyone’s first clue that “reputable research consortium” was not an accurate description of anyone Gavlin was about to start working for.

Somewhere along the way Gavlin bonded a spren of his own — Glimmer in Doubt — and became a Truthwatcher. That spren later got personally modified by a Unmade mid-campaign, which is the kind of sentence this wiki did not expect to type about the party’s gentlest member, and yet.

★ Killing a God: The Shallow Crypts Job

If you want the one story that explains Gavlin, it’s this one.

Sebarial recruited him with the most artifabrian-brained pitch imaginable: build me a Stormlight reservoir fabrial that can hold investiture without leaking, and I’ll pay you in the one thing you can’t say no to — a flawless, non-leaking gemstone template, the exact material science problem Gavlin had been chasing for the whole campaign. Gavlin weighed his party loyalties against his academic obsession, checked his own futuresight, and took the deal. He handed out 100 marks to everyone as a goodbye present, gave Kael and Ravan his finished Drainer Fabrials, returned the half-shard shield, and boarded Sebarial’s ship with Rilano at his side. For a while, this was just Gavlin living his best life: three research projects running simultaneously in a lab with unlimited crafting budget, “just vibing,” as the table put it, blissfully unaware his boss’s long-term plan involved a dagger and a deicide.

Then Sebarial asked him a question with a boarded-up box and a straight face: “Would you like to help me kill a god, boy?” Turns out Sebarial is a Returned from Nalthis — a demigod stripped of his memories by his own patron deity, Endowment, and nursing a vengeance plan a decade in the making. Gavlin kept building. He also kept thinking. A Dirty-20 futuresight breakthrough handed him a full sequential vision: the Everstorm arriving, Sebarial’s scarred hand driving the golden Raysium dagger into a crowned old man, red-violet light consuming Sebarial’s body, and — worst of all — Gavlin’s own completed reservoir fabrial sitting in the background, actively fueling the whole apocalypse. He pushed the vision further with a 22 on deduction and pieced together the real plan: Sebarial wasn’t reuniting Honor’s shards. He was using Gavlin’s own technology to key his spiritual identity to Odium and absorb the god of passion whole.

Gavlin didn’t stop there. He broke into Sebarial’s own locked office with his Disruptor fabrial and found a torn letter, signed by someone calling themselves “Cephandrius,” warning Sebarial off the exact plan he was pursuing — physical, damning proof that Sebarial had tried this kind of thing, or something like it, before. Armed with the vision, the letter, and a spren who’d started looking distinctly uncomfortable every time the subject came up, Gavlin kept his research face on right up until it mattered. Then he used everything he’d built to help kill the man who built it with him.

★ The Second Offer: What Gavlin’s Vision Was Actually Warning Him About

Months after Sebarial, a second god came asking Gavlin to build things for him, and this time Gavlin already knew how the story went before it started.

The morning of the Yips HQ infiltration, Gavlin woke from a vision at the party’s Shattered Plains base: a golden-robed, crowned god-king, Gavlin himself kneeling before it, his own eyes glowing red, and somewhere in the same frame, someone’s spren-bond severed. He didn’t know whose. On a 10 he started making the connection while it was still just an ominous morning dream. He didn’t need long to finish the thought.

Enter Ervel, a Fused emissary who cornered the party mid-search with two Singer subordinates and a pitch that escalated fast: teach us fabrials, from beginning to end, name your price. When “your price” didn’t land, Ervel offered eternal life. When that didn’t land either, he offered it to the whole party and told them to name a number. Gavlin, doing the math out loud in his own head, put it together: “specifically in that vision… you said that he stood there with his bonds severed.” This was the same deal. It ended, in the vision, with somebody’s spren-bond cut. He turned it down flat — “I don’t know if that’s something that I want… I just don’t think it’s time for me to leave my party right now. There are things that I need to do.” Ervel did not take rejection gracefully. He kicked in the conference room doors and started the fight that would end, several minutes later, with Gavlin in a carapace cocoon and Ervel walking out the front door with him. See Ervel’s own page for the full fight. This wiki notes, for the record, that Gavlin correctly identified the trap a full combat encounter before it sprung shut on him, and it happened anyway. Futuresight has never once been the same thing as a way out.

Key Moments

The Artifabrian’s Craft

  • Reunited with Rilano at the Kharbranth conclave and was immediately handed a project: a combined attractor/repeller fabrial for the hospitals, capable of both drawing blood and administering medication. Demolished the crafting checks and spent two full days trapping the necessary spren, missing an entire date in the process without noticing.
  • Achieved a Natural 20 replicating the flawless internal geometry of a perfect ruby template to cut high-grade emerald, ruby, and diamond replicas out of Sebarial’s raw gem cache — then, using his Overwhelm with Details talent, deduced the replicas still leaked Stormlight, meaning geometry alone can’t make a truly perfect gemstone. Something realmatic is missing. The mystery remains open.
  • Piled tables, bookshelves, and crates into a lab pit to build an enormous artificial center of mass, deliberately attracting a Tier-4 gravity spren — and, on a 32 with a complication, successfully manufactured modern Roshar’s first Surge-replicating fabrial.
  • Crafted the blueprint for the party’s entire boutique shoe inventory at The Glyph Pool pop-up shop, granting advantage on all future crafting checks for anyone using his schematics. Also crafted Theren a disguise so fashionable it drew more attention than no disguise at all — possibly the only case on record of Gavlin’s competence actively working against him.
  • Crafted 10 bomb arrows over four days of downtime (2d8 energy damage, 10-foot radius), later used by Torin to put a bullseye through a burning chapel’s stained-glass window from 600 yards. Not present for that particular arson — see Party Chaos below for the one he was present for.
  • Used his Disruptor Fabrial in combat to disintegrate a pesky Larkin’s core for a clean kill (24 roll, 16 damage), and separately identified the golden Raysium dagger’s material with a 23 Lore check, correctly recognizing the name and understanding nothing else about it — which turned out to be the correct amount of understanding for the object that would eventually end the campaign’s final boss.
  • Most recently, built himself an Armor Augmenter fabrial — quick-activation, once per scene, a focus to trigger — that boosts his own Deflect by two and Physical Defense by one for the rest of a fight. Immediately started trying to work out how to extend the bonus to the rest of the party rather than just himself, because apparently even his own personal defense upgrade has to become somebody else’s problem too.

Visions & the Truth

  • Helped free a spren trapped inside a “perfect gemstone” for months by forcing Stormlight into it rather than breaking the gem — working alongside Kael and Ravan, and meeting the Unmade Sja-Anat (the Taker of Secrets) in the process. Defended the decision to the rest of a skeptical party, arguing his spren believed not all Unmade are evil.
  • Watched that freed spren become Glimmer in Doubt, gaining Odium-touched investiture and shifting Gavlin onto the “Enlightened” Truthwatcher path — unlocking a new futuresight talent tree (Stained-Glass Visions) on the spot, followed immediately by a 15-second catatonic vision of three possible futures involving Sebarial and a hooded figure.
  • Learned from Sja-Anat, in the same exchange, that Honor is dead — the Vorin “Almighty” gone, his power scattered, leaving only Odium and Cultivation standing. Glimmer in Doubt admitted he’d always known and had simply forgotten.
  • Pieced together Sebarial’s true plan through a full sequential futuresight vision and a 22 deduction check: not reuniting Honor’s shards, but keying himself to Odium via Gavlin’s own reservoir fabrial to kill the god Endowment. See the Shallow Crypts case study above for the full breakdown.
  • Recognized a hooded figure at the New Natan Glyph Pool on sight — thanks to that same catatonic vision — as the man destined to be stabbed by Sebarial. It was Rilano, freshly returned and warning the party that Dahl’s organization was hunting him.
  • Collaborated with Nucko on a near-flawless forged copy of The Book of the Returned (23 Agility, 15 Crafting) to feed Sebarial false intel, deliberately misdirecting him toward the mountains of Shinovar and away from Odium’s actual Perpendicularity on the Shattered Plains.
  • Woke from a fresh vision the morning of the Yips HQ raid — a crowned god-king, his own eyes red, a severed spren-bond — and, within the same day, watched it start coming true in real time. See ★ above.

The Final Battle

  • Stood in the research facility as Sebarial revealed the full plan out loud: harvest Voidlight from the incoming Everstorm, key his soul to Odium, and slay the god who made him. When the fighting started, Gavlin swore the Second Ideal of the Truthwatchers — “I will seek truth wherever it is hidden!” — becoming Empowered on the spot and channeling rapid healing across the entire party for the rest of the fight.
  • Kept the party alive through a demigod who was immune to physical damage, standard injury, and Soulcasting, while Nucko stole the Raysium dagger off Sebarial’s belt and drove it into his chest, trapping his cognitive shadow inside the gemstone pommel for good.
  • Lost Kael in the same battle. The healing wasn’t enough to save everyone; it was enough to make sure it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Party Chaos, As Documented

  • Was voted party MVP by unanimous, unprompted acclaim in the group chat — “the amount of heals that man put out is unreal” — for services rendered across the entire campaign, not just one battle.
  • Picked as Nucko’s arm-wrestling target specifically because his Strength score is zero. Also picked by Ravan for the same reason. Did not argue the point.
  • Sat contentedly eating popcorn next to Jaro in a hole while the rest of the party extorted a nineteen-year-old girl and got stabbed for it, in what remains one of the most unhinged 35-minute stretches of the entire campaign. Filed, as ever, under “not his problem.”
  • Sprinted across a connecting plank mid-boarding-action to save crew hand Chungledown Bim from dangling off an enemy ship’s railing, then later channeled an 11-point Regrowth heal on himself after Sebarial’s Skybreaker rival hit him for 18 unblockable damage stealing back a stolen box.
  • Investigated a gruesome, bloodless gash on Sebarial’s crew hand Young Jebber and got the casual, horrifying answer from Sebarial that Young Jebber has been dead for a long time. Filed under “things Gavlin now knows and cannot un-know.”
  • Joined Kael and Torin investigating the main Church of the Yips chapel, hunting for the missing Hansy — present for Torin dousing the bookshelves in Horn Eater White and setting the whole top floor ablaze while Kael kept the guardian Shifty distracted downstairs. (A second, separate chapel got torched later by Kael, Nucko, and Torin at Sebarial’s war camp location — Gavlin was not present for that one; the party has apparently made a habit of this.)
  • Visited Aladar’s war camp with Kael and Torin to reconnect with brothers Harlan and Varden — watched Kael break Varden’s sternum for an insult, then quietly healed him anyway before the group moved on.
  • Handed over the flawless ruby to Sebarial at the New Natan Glyph Pool, collecting a 500-mark apology payment for an earlier kidnapping stunt, then used inside knowledge that Sebarial didn’t know the party had already arrived in the city to negotiate a four-day delay. Sebarial called him “cheeky” and agreed.

The Departure

  • Was one of three people — alongside Torin and Ravan — that Nucko sat down with for a real goodbye before walking off down the road with Vesper (Blue), done with the party for good after losing Theren and Kael.
  • Received, in that same conversation, the Raysium dagger itself: the blade that killed Sebarial, still holding his cognitive shadow inside its gemstone pommel. Nucko decided it belonged with Gavlin rather than in his own pocket on the way to go pick fights with the Ghostbloods. Gavlin now physically carries the one object on this wiki capable of casually undoing the campaign’s central plot resolution. No pressure.

The Recruitment and the Kidnapping

  • See ★ above for the full account of Ervel’s pitch and Gavlin’s refusal.
  • Fought through the Odium ambush that followed, landing at least one confirmed kill with his Disruptor Fabrial — a clean, silent drop, “like you tased him” — and activating his new Armor Augmenter fabrial mid-fight to shore up his own defenses as things got worse.
  • Was sealed in a carapace cocoon before the fight turned decisively against the party, and carried out of the building by Ervel as the session’s closing image. As of the last recorded turn, still in Ervel’s custody, somewhere outside a building that used to have a functioning wall. See Open Threads.

Relationships

  • Rilano (Rolano) — mentor, research partner, and formerly a fellow fugitive from The Diagram. With Sebarial dead, what happens to Rilano next is genuinely unclear — this wiki doesn’t have an answer and isn’t going to invent one.
  • Sebarial (deceased) — patron, research funder, and ultimately the target. Paid Gavlin in gemstones and academic freedom right up until the day the party killed him.
  • Nucko — departed the party, but not before handing Gavlin the Raysium dagger that killed Sebarial on his way out the door. One of the three Nucko sat down with to say goodbye.
  • Harlan & Varden — brothers in Highprince Aladar’s camp with complicated feelings about Gavlin’s chosen path. Complicated enough that one of them got his sternum broken over it; not complicated enough that Gavlin didn’t heal him immediately after.
  • Kael (deceased) — fellow party member, present for the final battle against Sebarial and lost in the same fight Gavlin swore his Second Ideal in.
  • Theren (deceased) — fellow party member, lost earlier in the campaign.
  • Ravan — worked alongside Gavlin freeing Sja-Anat’s trapped spren, consulted on gravitational mechanics for the gravity-spren fabrial, and was one of the three Nucko said goodbye to.
  • Torin — fellow investigator of the Church of the Yips and the Aladar family reunion; also one of the three Nucko said goodbye to; fought at his side in the fight that ended with Gavlin captured.
  • Ervel — Odium’s emissary. Offered Gavlin tutoring, wealth, and immortality in exchange for teaching him fabrials; escalated to violence and then kidnapping when refused. Currently holds Gavlin hostage.
  • Keth — fellow combatant during the Yips ambush; buffed by Mel’s illusion work in the same fight Gavlin was captured in.

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