# Elias Vae'lor

> DM-facing NPC writeup. Student-aged AV/tech kid with more access than he should have.

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## Role

- **Title:** Subnode Technician’s Assistant / Student Systems Tech  
- **Age:** 16–17 (a couple years older than the PCs)  
- **Heritage/Class:** High elf; artificer / tinkerer flavor  
- **Public Image:** That quiet AV club kid who:
  - Fixes projectors,
  - Knows how to get into locked hardware cabinets,
  - Appears at the worst possible time with a toolbox and a coffee.

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## What Students Know

- He works part-time for Maintenance and the arcane IT crew:
  - Runs cables,
  - Checks node readouts,
  - Curses at miscalibrated runic controllers.
- He’s around just enough that everyone recognizes him, but:
  - He’s not particularly popular or unpopular.
  - He just… exists in the background with a multitool and a datapad.

- Rumors:
  - He “sees all the good camera footage” and could ruin lives if he wanted to.
  - He once got locked in a subnode chamber during a power test and came out “different.”
  - He’s on some kind of unofficial Oversight scholarship.

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## What He Wants

### Surface Goals

- Graduate with enough **credits and experience** to get hired into a real tech team:
  - Root monitoring,
  - Titan armory maintenance,
  - Or some cushy city node job.
- Keep the campus grid running **without** explosions, screaming, or surprise inspections.

### Deeper Goals

- To understand what the hell is actually happening in the Root:
  - He has seen too many “impossible” graph patterns.
  - He’s curious, not just scared.
- To prove to himself that he’s not crazy for seeing the patterns he sees:
  - Older techs tell him “it’s noise.”
  - D’serris’s logs suggest otherwise.

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## Methods & Tactics

- **Data first:**
  - He trusts logs, graphs, error codes more than people’s stories.
- **Avoids conflict:**
  - Will absolutely let a teacher rant at him rather than push back.
  - Folds in front of admin, vents later.
- **Helps students quietly:**
  - “Off the record” fixes,
  - Looking the other way if a lab is slightly out of spec but no one’s in danger.

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## Relationship to Oversight & Maintenance

- Maintenance sees him as:
  - Useful hands,
  - Cheap labor,
  - “The kid who actually understands the new firmware.”
- Oversight (D’serris) sees him as:
  - A **low-level asset**:
    - Someone who can be fed selected data and instructions.
    - Not trusted with full truth, but trusted to follow technical orders.

- He occasionally gets:
  - Direct system messages “from Root Oversight” with:
    - Task lists,
    - Warning flags,
    - Weird log snippets to investigate.

He’s starting to suspect that:
- The system is sometimes pinging him about anomalies **nobody else sees yet**.

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## Relationship to the PCs

- He was with them in **Subnode A3 / B2** and saw:
  - The Root do something he can’t fully explain.
  - The PCs walk out far less “fried” than they should have been.

**Initial view:**

- They’re trouble, but:
  - They’re trouble that pays attention, asks questions, and doesn’t forget what they see.
  - They might be the only people on campus willing to crawl into places he can’t justify going alone.

### How He Might Use Them

- As **eyes on the ground**:
  - “If you see this pattern again – the humming, the flicker, the way the sigils twist – I need you to tell me exactly where and when.”
- As **muscle / backup**:
  - He can’t defend himself in a fight.
  - He can absolutely guide them to vulnerable spots if they go with him.
- As **confessional**:
  - If he’s going to blow the whistle on something Oversight or Admin is doing, he’s more likely to tell the PCs than any adult.

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## Secrets & Pressure Points (DM Only)

- During a previous minor anomaly, Elias was:
  - Trapped in a subnode chamber for several minutes while the Root did its “structured hum” thing.
  - He heard something whisper his name in the noise.
- Since then:
  - He sometimes hears faint echoes when near stressed taps.
  - He chalks it up to nerves, but you can decide how much is Root attention.

- D’serris has flagged him in the system as:
  - “Technician-tier access, potential long-term recruit.”
  - If the PCs burn Elias, D’serris may try to pull him closer or throw him under the bus, depending on who’s more useful.

- Elias has minor illicit projects:
  - Personal logging daemon scraping more Root data than he’s supposed to.
  - Secret backups of certain anomaly logs in case Oversight “loses” them.

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## How to Play Elias

- **Voice:** Quiet, slightly awkward, sentence fragments that trail off into jargon. Speeds up when talking about technical stuff.
- **Body language:** Shoulders a bit hunched, always fiddling with a tool or crystal tablet, rarely makes long eye contact.
- **Key Lines:**
  - “Uh. That… that’s not what it’s supposed to do.”
  - “Okay, so, if this graph is right, we should *not* be in this room right now.”
  - “I can’t officially tell you to go there. But if you did, and took notes, I… might be able to fix something.”
- **Pivot:** When the PCs back him up against admin or Oversight, he can:
  - Crack and spill a bunch of classified info in a panic,
  - Or retreat and ghost them for a while, terrified he’ll lose his job.

