Mel — The Multiplicative Man
Also known as: Possibly Kyle. See Overview. Do not ask this wiki to elaborate further. Status: Alive. Has been downed and unconscious exactly once on the record, and regenerated back to full charm within a turn of waking up. Order: Radiant, Illumination-based (Lightweaver-type Surgebinding) Signature ability: “Multiplicative light weaving” — his own term for a talent that lets him hand out an illusion to an entire group for the Investiture cost of casting it on one person Companion: Tavin, also recorded as Tavon — the transcripts cannot agree on this either, so both spellings are preserved here rather than arbitrarily picked Companion’s job description, per Mel: informant, accomplice, occasional target of pickpocketing lessons, first responder to Mel’s feelings getting hurt
Overview
Officially: a Surgebinder specializing in Illumination who introduced himself to the party mid-execution crisis, immediately declared Keth “a good protector” worth attaching himself to, and has since made a habit of turning a single Investiture cost into simultaneous illusions for everyone standing near him — a disorienting flash split across three targets here, a “spiritual illumination” buff shared with the whole group there, once, memorably, an entire mirror wall built specifically so a squad of archers would end up admiring their own reflections instead of shooting anyone. He is, by his own repeated insistence, extremely tired and can’t do the tricks “very often” — a claim that has yet to be borne out by anything he’s actually done on-screen.
Unofficially: a compulsive flirt, a low-level pickpocket, and possibly — possibly — a man traveling under a name that isn’t his own. Twice now the GM has slipped and addressed Mel’s player directly as “Kyle” before self-correcting to “Mel.” Separately, and on its own, an Odium agent who would later introduce himself as Ervel asked the party — unprompted, before anyone present had ever said the name to him — whether they were “not traveling with one named Kyle,” describing him as a duelist “highly sought after in this world.” Ravan deflected without confirming or denying anything: “he won’t be joining us for the foreseeable future.” Nobody at the table has connected these dots on the record, and this wiki isn’t going to be the one to connect them either. Mel is Mel. Whoever Kyle is, he is a separate open question, filed and left exactly where it was found.
Origin
Mel’s introduction to the party doubles as the introduction to his entire personality: he showed up already traveling with Tavin/Tavon, walked straight up to Ravan mid-crisis to compliment his swordwork, and cheerfully admitted to being “a SurgeBinder” who can “do the little tricks” when something “catches his fancy” — all while Tavon, audibly, in Mel’s ear, panicked about him revealing this to strangers at all (“I thought, sir, I thought you weren’t going to tell anybody”). Mel told him to shut up. Nobody has explained where Mel actually learned Illumination, who trained him, or why a man this instinctively cagey about his own name is this loose-lipped about his Surgebinding within five minutes of meeting new people. The wiki assumes there’s a story here. The wiki does not currently have it.
What is on the record: within his first scene in Dblar’s shop, Mel picked Dblar’s own new shop assistant, Bitsy, clean for seven marks while she was mid-sentence measuring him for clothes, then turned down a wardrobe fitting because “the man with the robes over there… needs me. He needs, like, some life coaching” — meaning Keth. He decided, unprompted and immediately, that Keth needed both protecting and improving, and has behaved accordingly ever since.
Key Moments
Illusions, Creatively Applied
- The Distracting Illusion, Times Three: in the opening skirmish against Odium’s parchmen, cast a single distracting illumination and, via multiplicative light weaving, handed a copy to Keth, Torin, and Robin (Ravan, still deep in his Seneschal cover at the time) simultaneously for the price of one action and one Investiture — the ability’s entire reason for existing, demonstrated in its first real outing.
- The Mirror Wall: mid-fight against archers, requested to build a “complex illusion” in the shape of a literal mirror wall — not a wall that reflects light incidentally, but one built specifically so the archers would “see themselves in the mirror wall” instead of their targets. The GM’s reaction on record: “Wow, that is super creative.” It cost him a single Investiture and no roll at all, because — his own clarification — “it’s illumination, it would be a… a wall,” which is either a very precise use of the Surge or an extremely funny way to describe tricking archers into admiring themselves.
- The Buff Nobody Asked For: partway through the fight to free Torin, decided Torin “seems pretty cool” and cast a spiritual illumination buff on him — then extended it to everyone standing nearby, including Gavlin, purely because his ability lets him.
Pickpocketing and Petty Grift
- Robbed Bitsy, Dblar’s shop assistant, for seven marks during his very first scene in the shop, mid-measurement, without so much as breaking eye contact.
- Whispered plans to Tavin/Tavon to rob Dblar himself immediately after politely declining Dblar’s offer of free clothes and “life coaching” in the opposite direction — “we are going to definitely steal from this man, and it will be so easy.”
- Instructed Tavon, on the way into a locked meeting room, that if he wasn’t going to be allowed inside he should at least “steal some marks” while waiting. Tavon’s confirmed personal motto, per Mel, is “if I’m not stealing, I’m not leaving.”
Combat, Reluctantly
- Explicitly declared, before a fight even started, that he “will not follow” the party into a room because he “is not interested in engaging in more combat” — the most honest assessment of his own combat enthusiasm on record.
- Took an 18-point carapace-spike hit from Ervel during the Yips ambush, went down, rolled a shallow injury, and was ruled unconscious for a full round — the only time on record Mel has actually been taken off his feet.
- Woke back up mid-fight to a chorus of relief from the table, immediately healed 25 points across two actions (“Beautiful, that’s nine… so 26”), and got back to business without missing a beat — the fastest possible return from “unconscious” to “fully operational and smug about it.”
- Later in that same fight, wriggled his own way out of a sinkhole trap, earned a Focus back for the trouble, and used his remaining action to conjure the mirror wall described above. Efficient multitasking, somehow, even from inside a hole.
The Bit With Teal
- Attempted, over her Oath Stone-bound silence, to strike up conversation with Teal — Keth’s truthless companion — despite her flatly informing him, via the rules of her own binding, that she has “not been commanded to speak with you, and thus I will not.” Undeterred, Mel declared he’d get her Oath Stone one of these days “so you can finally talk to me,” complained to Tavon about how much this hurt his feelings, and sat down next to her in companionable silence anyway. Keth’s reaction was immediate and unambiguous: “Get away from my truth list right now.”
The Kyle Question
This wiki wants to be extremely clear about what it does and does not know. It knows the GM called Mel “Kyle” twice and corrected himself both times. It knows Ervel, an agent of Odium, asked the party by name whether they traveled with a duelist called Kyle, and that Ravan’s answer — “he won’t be joining us for the foreseeable future” — confirmed a Kyle exists in-world without confirming who he is. It does not know whether Kyle is Mel under an old name, a completely separate person the party once traveled with, or a slip of the tongue that escaped containment and wandered into an NPC’s mouth. The wiki is not going to guess. If you know who Kyle is, the wiki invites you to keep it to yourself a little longer, because the not-knowing is funnier.
Relationships
- Tavin/Tavon — constant companion, informant, conscience, and designated victim of both Mel’s affection and his crime sprees. The spelling of his name changes depending on which session you ask; his loyalty does not.
- Keth — met the day the party formed and immediately adopted as a personal project (“he finds Kef to be a good protector”). Also the reason Mel now knows what it feels like to be told to get away from someone’s truthless.
- Teal — the subject of an ongoing, entirely one-sided flirtation Mel has shown no intention of abandoning, Oath Stone or no Oath Stone.
- Torin — fought alongside during the Yips ambush; buffed him mid-fight after deciding, on the spot, that he “seems pretty cool.”
- Ravan — one of the first people Mel met and complimented; also the person who, much later, fielded Ervel’s pointed question about a duelist named Kyle without giving anything away.
- Dblar — robbed his own shop assistant in front of him and plotted to rob him next; Dblar, for his part, remains committed to getting Mel into some clothes.
- Bitsy — Dblar’s shop assistant, and Mel’s first recorded victim.
- Ervel — an Odium agent who asked the party, unprompted, about a duelist named Kyle. See The Kyle Question.