Shield-Captain Valerian

Shield-Captain Valerian of the Hykanatoi is a Custodian of the Watchers of the Throne who served at the Lion’s Gate and in the Palace on Terra. Those engagements taught him that the quiet millennia of the Ten Thousand, as the Custodians are also known, had ended.

He fights on the premise that Terra remains a fortress that can be held by excellence, and the Rift has repeatedly tested that premise. His companion Aleya of the Silent Sisterhood shared that education. Together they have left the Palace walls to destroy the threats that required it, then returned to a Captain-General who must now expend Custodians as a resource rather than preserve them as a relic.

Valerian is distinct from Valdor and Valoris. At the rank of Shield-Captain, he represents the Palace as an individual rather than as an institution. Terra is his homeworld, his place of duty and the matter still in dispute, and he has not yet lost it.