Arashi #5. Former Master of Magic.
Profile
Before Veles held the title of Master of Magic, it belonged to Velho — a Folkwynd mage of extraordinary power who served as Master from 846 ACC until his death in 889 ACC during the Wizard Uprising.
Velho was, by most accounts, a sincere believer in the idea that the radical insurgents at the heart of the Uprising could be brought back from extremism through dialogue. He spent the Uprising’s final years attempting to function as a mediator between the most violent faction of the revolutionary Malefici and the kingdom governments demanding their suppression. He was not naive about the violence they had committed. He believed, regardless, that the alternative — a continent-wide purge of magic users by frightened governments — would be worse for everyone in the long term, and that a negotiated framework, however uncomfortable, was better than a decade of retaliatory killings.
In 889 ACC, a mob of more than one hundred revolutionary Malefici raided his home. He offered them a compromise peace. They killed him.
His death was the most significant single event of the Uprising’s closing phase. The faction that claimed magic users deserved to rule the world had killed the most powerful recognized magic user on the continent because he asked them to stop. The contradiction collapsed whatever remained of the insurgency’s ideological coherence. The Uprising’s practical disintegration followed within the year.
How Velho was resurrected is not known. The circumstances remain one of the more carefully guarded mysteries in Criozevan. What is known is that he began appearing again around the time the Arashi first emerged as a formal organization, and that he has not visibly aged since his death. He now holds the rank of #5 in the Arashi.