Commode Telus

Second son of the censor Markus Telus, and the youngest senator in the Ark's history. Brilliant at politics, at war, and at magic; popular; rotten all the way through and careful about it.

He offered his patronage to Vlad Varanov's daughter Anastasia, let the merchant family believe he would marry her, got her with child, and murdered her in her own house. Her dying curse turned the child against him: the Minotaur is his son, and only Antoine de Cerberus kept it from killing him. He had Vlad condemned for the assault that followed. He is the reason there are vampires.

Antoine told his father what he had seen. Markus found him out, let Vlad's sentence stand rather than name a Telus, put him in the lighthouse prison, and banished him to Brazzant aboard the Victis Moralis. He was thrown ashore with his magic items and his personal effects, and he survived, which says everything about him. He founded a clan, fathered a great many children, and learned two things: that manipulation means nothing to barbarians, and that a clan chief on a diet of meat and fighting is stronger than a monster. When he heard that Vlad Varanov and Antoine de Cerberus had fled with the mage houses to settle the island of giants, he took the name Telix and began planning a return. His blood reached Frolix through Baltix, one of the clan's children Perennus later brought to Cerberus.

He died trying to strangle a Cerberan who had come to collect Brazzant turns of phrase for a book. The Cerberan was Perennus Albion. His hands turned to stone and the floor came up through his chest.

What he had been thrown ashore with stayed where he fell. Among it was the medallion holding Bork, the red troll Archon had sealed away with Object Prisoner. White dragons found the hoard and carried it home, which is how a troll older than the Ark ended up in Brisé's cave for Vidock to pick up.