Elias Vae'lor

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.