Ormar

Ormar's introduction as "Ormar the Shroudmaker" — a warmage candidate on the Great March. "As dark and intimidating as his name was, however, he came by it honestly. His family members were morticians and undertakers in Wenshar, and he had indeed sewn hundreds of shrouds before he had discovered his rajira. He got drafted into the Magical Corps about the same time I did, and a warmage doesn't let a great nickname like 'the Shroudmaker' go idle, no matter how mediocre you are."

Paired with Landrick on the trek to give him stone-acclimatization time. "Ormar was a good guy, and I wanted to give him his stone, but I also wanted to exploit the free labor." Specialty: alchemical warmagic. "When you wanted alchemical fires or smokes or poisons, acids or caustic powders, Ormar was the kind of guy who could pour a couple of things together and give you just the right bit of nastiness."

Supplies the thermite mixture Minalan uses at Olum Seheri:

I was no alchemist, but Ormar was — he'd called the mixture thermite, taken from ancient texts from Merwyn's oldest libraries. Something else thermite does, as it burns. If it's exposed to ice — and there was still a fair amount in the box — it explodes.

Ormar becomes a major member of the Anghysbel expedition. "Ormar was a former warmage whose passion was alchemy; he was in charge of the mysterious Stenchworks, a special installation somewhere in the foothills of the Kulines that produced rare elements and alchemical reagents for the duchy. Its exact location was a state secret, one of the most closely held state secrets, at that."

Anghysbel's dry wastelands become Ormar's personal paradise:

The salts, the pockets of acidic sediment, the calcifications . . . this place is an alchemist's dream. There are compounds occurring naturally here that we can produce at the Stenchworks only with great effort. I'll be sending a prospecting party, after I return.

"Only an alchemist would see this place as worthy of pilgrimage," Gareth counters.

Manages the expedition's air-filtration masks, rationing the special charcoal within the filters. Collects tiny bottles of sand and dust with near-religious glee. Intensely curious about new discoveries: "What is the name of this beast?" asked Ormar, intrigued. Participates in the baithsagalan fight at the Vista Ridge and accompanies Minalan's party throughout the striekema hunt. Rolls something under the Kurja spawn's body during that fight and rolls back out of the way for the explosion.

Returned from Anghysbel. Resumes operations at the Stenchworks and ships alchemical weapons and supplies for the Gilmoran war effort.

Supplies alchemical weaponry for the Darkfaller campaign. Continues as Master of the Stenchworks.