Overview
Jareth is a long-lived atraxi scientist, engineer, air mage, and void navigator. He calibrates the escape gate from Atraxis Prime Alpha, adapts atraxi technology for Atraxis Prime and Xalmyrra's gates and essence towers, lives in Haverloch as Jarin Jassaro, and later becomes a Thalassai researcher allied with Thalena and Cassian. His work spans gates, essence towers, windweavers, trains, god-core theory, and non-essence technology.
Appearance
Jareth is tall, dense, sturdy, and muscular by human standards, with dark streaked hair and gray eyes. During his life as Jarin, his pale skin develops opalescent patches from atraxi-like dissolution. His body also carries a faint purple pulse near the place where his original heart should be, part of the Malverand heart mystery around Arcanis.
Personality
Jareth is casual, irreverent, technically restless, and resistant to ceremony. He meets danger with dry humor and often gives practical or self-serving reasons for his choices. He repeatedly protects people drawn into Thalena's plans. His loyalty to Thalena rests on a life debt, and he keeps secrets for her even when Cassian presses him.
Abilities and Knowledge
Jareth is a powerful air mage. He flies at extreme speed, carries passengers through the air, shapes barriers and blasts of wind, and fights with tornadoes, slicing currents, and large-scale air pressure. During the pursuit of Eira, he and Amos force Silas and Deylin into a sustained defense before retreating through the void with gate activators.
Jareth brings technical knowledge of atraxi gates, gate activators, essence towers, spell containers, void navigation, essence-made clothing, and the limits of non-essence technology into his later work. In Chronasis, he collaborates with Cyrena, Thalvian, and the Nexus Research Center on trains, windweavers, prototype engines, gate equipment, reinforced shields, and tools derived from Atraxis Prime.
Jareth also understands constructs, god cores, and hybrid technology well enough to reshape Abraxas after Abraxas collapses into a black-box form. He enters the void with Jin; the object is technology beyond atraxi capability, and Jareth binds its reworked form through Cassian's will.
History
Jareth's later life begins at the damaged Vireen gate. Two atraxi bodies emerge from the gate and are killed shortly afterward; Eira takes them aboard the Malverand expedition ship, implants Barachiel's and Arcanis's crystalline hearts as Malverand hearts, revives the future Belanor and Jareth, and sends them through the void toward the atraxi gates. Jareth carries Arcanis's heart, a spiritual or essence remnant from Arcanis, and the geometric core.
On Atraxis Prime Alpha, Jareth serves among Jorhan's atraxi alongside Amos, Belanor, and Eshmir. When their homeworld collapses into the void, Amos and Jareth work in the research bay to calibrate the gate that sends the survivors toward an expedition gate. After the survivors reach Xalmyrra, Jareth adapts atraxi technology to essence, builds new gates and essence towers, and scouts Valrindor for places where their people can survive.
Jareth later spends years in Haverloch as Jarin Jassaro. He joins the council of Haverloch City, reorganizes it as the Axial Concord, rebuilds the capital as Axanaxa, and builds engines, mirrorwork, vector carts, and a culture of extreme symmetry. He gives Nahm the geometric core, after which Nahm and Haverloch's symmetry devotion intensify beyond what Jareth intended.
As Jarin, he accepts the seventeen-year-old Helena Hyperion into the Axial Concord after she completes the symmetry trials perfectly. Jareth is his real name, and he wants freedom from Jorhan's hold. He takes Helena to the Varnhallow temporal bubble; Helena stabilizes his illness with temporal magic, and the two form a bargain that eventually becomes a long-running hidden alliance with Thalena.
Through Haverloch's alliance with Rimvold, Jareth joins Thalion's circle in the Order of Thalion Zenith, brings Helena into the Order's work, and joins missions with Helena, Zero, and Mia during the Order campaign against Malverand's surviving guardians.
While Jorhan controls Atraxis Prime, Jareth remains outwardly a disciple of Jorhan. After Jorhan's forces capture Eira, Jareth and Amos study her power in Atraxis Prime and later pursue her protectors. At the same time, Jareth preserves the thread of Thalena's bargain, keeps Eira alive long enough for her escape, and eventually turns fully to Thalena's side. After Jorhan leaves Atraxis Prime, the dying Thirun names Jareth among the attackers who destroy it.
After Jorhan's defeat, Jareth joins Thalena in Thalassai. In Chronasis, he supplies Cassian's rule with engineering for the Nexus Research Center, the train project, windweaver development, void expeditions, and gate responses. He remains active in Thalassai's research and military preparations after the attack on Pyrenis.
Relationships
- Amos is Jareth's closest scientific counterpart among the atraxi. They work together on gates, activators, essence towers, Atraxis Prime, and void travel.
- Thalena is Jareth's old friend, rescuer, and chosen leader. His bargain with Helena becomes explicit loyalty to Thalena.
- Cassian relies on Jareth for Thalassai's most difficult engineering problems, including trains, gates, windweavers, Abraxas, and void work.
- Jorhan is Jareth's former leader and the power whose hold Jareth spends centuries trying to escape.
- Eira begins as Jorhan's captive and research subject, but Jareth keeps her alive and later works around the consequences of her Vireen story.
- Nahm receives the geometric core from Jareth, and the two codify Haverloch's oath against teaching or revealing the truth about Malverand.
- Jareth carries Arcanis's Malverand heart, an essence resemblance, and a spiritual remnant from Arcanis. Arcanis and Jareth have separate lives.