Jean Morin

Son of Daviau Morin and brother of Jeanne. Where his sister strikes, Jean covers. He casts water and abjuration, and in a fight his first move is a barrier he keeps reshaping — during the ogre ambush he slipped around the creature and jumped on Gyllyn so the shield would close over them both. Jeanne's ice broke it a moment later and put splinters through his legs. He drank one of the family's healing potions and kept going.

He studied under Perennus Albion with Gyllyn, Frolix, Glandir, Vidock, Ivana and Igor Varanov, and Aldor — a class of commoners and second sons that beat the Academy's noble elite in its first-year examination. His verchoix went wrong in a way no one has explained, and Perennus said afterwards that he would have liked to see it.

Jean is the one with the apartment. Velvet curtains, a table he sets himself, glasses, a wine he tastes like a man who knows what he paid for it. His class conspired in that room more often than in any classroom, and he sat through those councils with his head in his hands, appalled by plots whose outcome he could not calculate. He counselled patience against Sobiesansky and was overruled. When the class chose whom to follow, he voted for Aldor without hesitating.

That caution is a family asset. House Morin sells the potions and enchantments the dwarves of Askenon pay for, and killing the heir who negotiates them would be a diplomatic catastrophe rather than a death — a fact stated aloud, in his hearing, before a duel.

In the Free Era he is Archmage and minister of magic of Cerberus, adviser to King Aldor. He can send small objects into the past, rarely and without choosing where they land.