Eusebia Phokas is the imperial Thesmothete of the Azure Fortress and, by jurisdictional extension, of the whole town of Glastumville. The chancellery of Narsileon assigned her around 2986 AEP, shortly after Sir Glastum’s wardenship was consolidated.
| Type | Character |
| Office | Imperial Thesmothete (thesmothetes archonteus) |
| House | Phokas |
| People | Archontean |
| Seat | North wing of the Azure Fortress |
| Era | From about 2986 AEP |
| Spanish entry | Eusebia Phokas |
The office
The Thesmothete (“administrator of laws and records”) is a minor but structurally key imperial office. It keeps the jurisdiction’s official books: population register, merchant census, accounts of the dungeon tithe, patent books, minor lawsuits, and correspondence with the higher chancellery. It holds no military command, officiates no liturgy and signs no major sentences, but without it the imperial apparatus does not operate and a wardenship remains a personal post with no institutional support.
Sending a Thesmothete to Glastum was a chancellery signal: the empire recognized him as legitimate authority (an unofficial but confirmed warden) on condition that he accept formal administrative oversight. He accepted, and Eusebia was sent.
House Phokas
House Phokas is an imperial aristocratic lineage of middling antiquity, originating in the exarchates of Narsileon and linked by side marriages to some major chancellery families. It does not go back to the Pact or the Reconquest of Bellatrix, but it is solid: for generations it has produced Thesmothetes, minor exarchs and Orthodox priests of middle rank.
Eusebia is the third Phokas of her generation in a Thesmothete’s office. An older sister serves in Arcturos; a cousin serves in an unnamed eastern province. The family works as an administrative network that supplies information from other regions before the official chancellery processes it. According to Arkos, the chancellery of Drusus IX tolerates the network because it does not compete with the apparatus.
The tactical agreement with Sir Glastum
Their relationship is what the Decadian archive calls a “tactical agreement”, neither strictly hierarchical nor fully collegial:
- Eusebia keeps the books; Glastum signs the seals.
- Eusebia knows the real census; Glastum proclaims the public one.
- Eusebia records the dungeon tithe; Glastum collects it.
- Eusebia corresponds with Narsileon; Glastum receives dispatches through her.
She holds the information, he holds the patent, and neither operates without the other. She does not comment on his tolerance of the clandestine shrine of Thoth in a side chamber of the Fortress; he does not comment on her private correspondence with her family network.
Faith
Eusebia professes Decadian Orthodoxy; the Phokas are traditionally Orthodox, with no known leanings toward the Twelve. She attends the Decadian office in the makeshift chapel the warden set up for Mithra in the Fortress. Her devotion is discreet. She does not discuss theology or ask about the Thoth shrine, kept by some mages of the warden’s retinue. Her formula: “lo que no entra en mis libros, no existe en mi jurisdicción” (“what does not enter my books does not exist in my jurisdiction”). The shrine is not in her books.
Daily administration
Her day, as reconstructed by inference:
- Morning: the town ledger — minor lawsuits, new patents, tribute accounts.
- Midday: audiences with merchants, mainly the Factorial Merchants, with whom she keeps cordial but formal relations.
- Afternoon: letters to the Narsileon chancellery, private letters to the Phokas network, dispatches from the exarch.
- Night: archival work — cataloguing, translating dispatches in minor languages, correcting the quarterly census.
Her office in the north wing has a low window over Glastumville, overlooking the market street, the main inn, the guild workshops and the chapel of Mithra, but not the lanes of the Benevolent Brotherhood, the adventurers’ taverns, or other places the census does not reach.
Personal details
- Age: estimated between thirty-five and forty-five by the imperial count.
- Status: unmarried, no recorded children. Phokas tradition prefers the office held by a member without full family commitments, to avoid conflicts of loyalty.
- Languages: cultured imperial Archontean, the valley’s common tongue, ecclesiastical Latinized, basic northern Thorcin, and elementary Old Archontean for archaeological dispatches.
- Pastimes: some rural dispatches suggest she keeps a small private garden in the Fortress (medicinal and aromatic herbs, none condemned by the Orthodoxy); others suggest she reads old pre-Schism Archontean chancellery manuscripts late at night. The reading is unconfirmed.
The Hiatus
Her whereabouts during the Fifteen-Year Hiatus are an open question. The archive’s hypotheses:
- She survived in the Azure Fortress, if it stood while the valley was sealed into the Mist domain, and went on serving under Glastum, if he also survived.
- She withdrew to Narsileon, if the Fortress fell or was cut off when the mists of Valakhan stitched themselves to the valley.
- She worked clandestinely in Glastumville as the official of a deposed warden (a minority hypothesis, from rural dispatches of the present cycle).
In the present cycle her fate is unknown.
Open questions
- Which of the Hiatus hypotheses is true, and whether she survived, is unresolved.
See also
- Sir Glastum
- Azure Fortress
- Glastumville
- Baron Argus de Ritornello — neighboring baronial authority, without direct jurisdiction over Glastumville
- Theron Glesteon — factor of the Mint, administrative collaborator