Keth — The Truthless Windrunner
Also known as: Cass, Kef, Cath, Kai-El, “Young Boinevo Man” (his own failed attempt at naming Torin before “friend” stuck) — the transcript cannot commit to a spelling of his name and this wiki has made its peace with that Status: Alive Homeland: Shin, though the Shin would very much prefer not to discuss him Order: Radiant-in-training, Windrunner (Adhesion + Gravitation) Spren: Unnamed on the record — one offhand reference to “my spren Galena” exists in the transcript and nowhere else, so take it as a rumor with unusually good sourcing Companion: Teal, fellow truthless Shin swordswoman Mentor: Taszo (deceased) — murdered before the campaign proper began; his death is the entire reason Keth exists as a character Nemesis: Shai (logged consistently in these sessions as “Shy” — see Overview)
Overview
Officially: a Shin swordsman of the Knight caste, marked truthless under Shin law, who arrived in the Shattered Plains hunting the people responsible for murdering his mentor and found, somewhat to his own surprise, a Windrunner spren willing to bond a man his own countrymen had already legally discarded. He introduces himself to strangers by not introducing himself — his first instinct on meeting Torin was to withhold his own name entirely and go interrogate a shopkeeper about him instead, which is either extremely sensible tradecraft or a symptom of having spent too long being nobody’s problem but Taszo’s.
Unofficially: a man who reflexively slices open locked doors because that’s simply what a Windrunner does, who once informed the table with total sincerity that stealing a fellow truthless’s Oath Stone would carry “consequence” in a system the source material insists carries none, and who once rolled four natural ones in a single session and had the GM personally apologize to him on behalf of the dice. He travels everywhere with Teal, whom he refers to, without a hint of irony, as “my truth list” — and anyone who so much as flirts with her gets told, immediately and without room for negotiation, to get away from his truthless.
Origin
Keth trained under Taszo as his student — the how and why of that mentorship isn’t detailed in the record, but its aftermath is: Taszo was murdered, allegedly by a singer working for a woman named “Shy” (this wiki treats “Shy” and “Shai” as the same established figure; the transcripts never once spell it the second way, so the variant is preserved here for the record rather than silently corrected). Keth picked up Taszo’s trail, tracked the party responsible all the way to the Shattered Plains, and arrived at the party’s doorstep already truthless, already Radiant, and already furious — with a fellow truthless swordswoman, Teal, and a very strange new merchant named Mel and Mel’s manservant in tow, none of whom Keth had apparently gotten around to explaining himself to yet.
His truthless status under Shin law is treated in-session as simply a fact of who he is, on the same footing as Teal’s — two exiled swordspeople who found each other and kept moving. What the Shin actually think about a Windrunner walking around in their discarded Knight-caste armor has not come up, mostly because Keth has shown zero interest in going home to ask them.
★ The Interrogation of Veth: A Case Study in Getting What You Came For
If Keth has a defining scene, it’s this one — a boss fight that ends not with a killing blow but with a man on fire, stuck to a wall, screaming a name.
Keth spotted the singer he’d been hunting — Veth, the man mercenaries along the road had already fingered as present when Taszo died — walking briskly out of a building in the war camps, and spent most of a session refusing to even talk to strangers about him on principle before the actual fight broke out. When it did, Veth turned out to be a designated tier-two boss with a mistress, a javelin, and — thanks to Ravan’s flame and Keth’s own Adhesion — a increasingly permanent relationship with a burning wall. Restrained, immobilized, and on fire simultaneously, Veth eventually broke, gasping “get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.” Keth used Gravitation to pull his own Stormlight back — unsticking Veth from the wall just long enough to drag him out of the flames — then stuck him right back down before letting him breathe. The confession that followed named Kael first, then the actual target: “our Lady Shy” was who Veth’s mistress was, and yes, per the party’s own prior knowledge, she was “ultimately responsible for Tazzo’s death.”
Keth’s response was to level a Shardblade next to the man’s head and promise to behead him on the spot for any lie. An Insight check said Veth was telling the truth about not knowing where Shai currently was. So — per the letter of his own threat — Keth appears to have let him live: stripped him of sword, armor, javelin, and fifty marks, and told him to run. This wiki has to flag, in the interest of honesty, that the same stretch of transcript also shows a Shardblade going through Veth’s neck and a dying “see you soon” a few minutes earlier. Both readings are in the record. Both cannot be fully true. This page is committing to neither — see Veth’s own entry for the full, unresolved mess.
Key Moments
Windrunning, As Advertised
- Introduced himself to the party by refusing to introduce himself, choosing instead to go grill Dblar and Gavlin about the mysterious “Cass” who’d just walked out of a nearby building — a level of caution about strangers that evaporated the instant Mel started flirting with Teal.
- Infiltrated the Yips’ command building alongside Torin and hit a locked door with the single most Windrunner sentence available: “When you are Windrunner, nothing is ever locked,” followed immediately by summoning his radiant blade and cutting it open. It worked. It always works.
- Posted Teal at the top of the stairs with standing orders — “don’t let anyone in that isn’t part of this party, and don’t let anyone out without my approval” — treating a truthless swordswoman like a one-woman perimeter, which she accepted without comment, because she doesn’t really have the option to comment.
- Helped Torin and Torin’s newly-manifested spren, Paul, search the building’s back offices for a hidden exit. Paul found a secret latch behind the fireplace on the strength of a single “very insightful” perception check; the room behind it turned out to be an old axehound den, complete with cage and a doggie door leading outside — the same tunnel this wiki understands Thack later used to vanish from a very similar situation, because apparently everyone in the war camps knows about the good escape routes except the party.
- Named Torin “Young Boinevo Man” on the spot, because he genuinely did not know Torin’s name yet. Torin, deeply unimpressed, offered “bow and arrow man” as a counter-suggestion before landing on the actual point: “you could just call me friend, you don’t have to call me bow and arrow man.” Keth’s reply — “Okay. Friend. That I have never talked to before.” — is as close as this wiki has to an on-record start date for that friendship.
- Transformed his spren into “the heavy spear thing” mid-fight and chucked it at an enemy on a Heavy Weaponry check, because a Shardblade that can only be a sword is a Shardblade that isn’t trying hard enough.
The Reckoning
- See ★ above. Cornered and interrogated Veth — the man present when Shai/Shy killed Taszo — extracting her name and confirming, via Insight, that Veth wasn’t lying about not knowing her current whereabouts. What happened to Veth after that is a genuine contradiction in the record, not just campaign ambiguity — see Veth for both endings.
- Reactively adhered Ervel to the floor of the Yips’ meeting room during the ambush that followed Odium’s agents revealing themselves; when Ervel broke the bond by tearing up the stone floor itself rather than snapping the adhesion, Keth and Torin both got free reactive strikes in on him for the trouble.
Famous For The Wrong Reasons
- The Four Nat Ones: rolled a natural one during the Ervel ambush, was gently asked by the GM if that was his third of the session. It was his fourth. The table’s collective reaction was recorded for posterity as a genuine, unprompted apology from the GM to the dice gods on Keth’s behalf — “Hey, Craig, if you’re listening, we need to record the kill. I’ve got four nat ones today for our history, just as an FYI.”
- Learned what an Oath Stone is by threatening to behead a man over the hypothetical theft of Teal’s. Was told, accurately, that in the source material an Oath Stone changing hands carries no built-in consequence whatsoever. Was not moved by this argument in the slightest and declared “there would be consequence for this” anyway — a stance nobody at the table has tested.
Relationships
- Taszo (deceased) — his mentor and teacher, murdered before the party ever met him. Every major action Keth has taken on-screen traces back to this.
- Teal — fellow truthless Shin swordswoman and constant companion. Keth commands her the way her Oath Stone entitles him to, posts her on guard duty without a second thought, and reacts to anyone showing romantic interest in her with immediate, unambiguous hostility (“Get away from my truth list right now”). Whatever this relationship is beyond master-and-truthless, the transcript keeps it close to the chest.
- Mel — traveling companion since the party’s introduction; the two met the same day, with Mel immediately deciding Keth needed “a good protector” and adopting him as a project. Mel has also, separately, tried to flirt with Teal directly in front of Keth, which went about as well as expected.
- Torin — went from an unnamed stranger Keth couldn’t be bothered to name correctly to “friend,” on the record, inside a single session. Fought alongside him through the Yips infiltration and the Ervel ambush.
- Paul — Torin’s spren, whom Keth was present for the manifestation of and has apparently accepted without further comment.
- Veth — the man who led Keth to Shai. Interrogated, broken, and either released or killed on the strength of an honest answer — the transcript supports both, and this wiki isn’t picking a side. See Veth’s own page.
- Shai — logged in these sessions as “Shy”; responsible, per Veth’s confession, for Taszo’s death. Keth’s actual target, still at large as of the record.
- Ervel — an Odium agent encountered during the Yips ambush; briefly adhered to the floor by Keth before breaking free by destroying the floor itself.