Lem is a renegade modron of the Alley of the Gatehouse of Sogol, a scribe and cataloguer in the Hall of Records who fights with two longswords.
| Type | Character |
| Species | Modron (renegade) |
| Chronicle | SGL |
| Spanish entry | Lem |
Description
Lem has a cubic, hunched body, oversized arms, two backward antennae and one eye on the front face. He scraped his serial-number plate down to the metal himself. His swords are crossed on his back; after a fight he spins them like a fan to shed the blood. Those who know his species say that a fault that was not a fault, a flicker of agency, made him Lem.
Role in Sogol
In the Hall of Records he enters and vectorizes property titles. He holds that whoever controls the past controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past. He has seen altered entries and years answering “access denied”. Bureaucracy is his weapon: he entered — or will enter — that the Temple of Ashtar of the Ice belongs to whoever redeems it. He does not use the neighborhood’s modron repair shop.
History
In the crypt of Ungarn, fighting a dead guardian that demanded enchanted weapons and took payment in life, Lem died, claiming the right to stay and protect his friends. His friends carried him to the temple and asked the angel of the hammer and the chisel to restore him. He returned reconfigured, with his memory and a tougher shell. “It is done, and now the price must be paid,” said the angel.
In Nothenvell, Lirio gave him the crypt guardian’s sword, a repaired blade that bites hard into things that regenerate. In the Halls of Frost he descended by rope into the pool of the six-pillared watchtower and had to be hauled out of the snow. A mayor of Ungarn dictated a contract to be entered in Sogol’s Hall of Records; a paladin of his company carries it.
In the dealings with Sidqa of Ascalon, Lem noted that a seal’s power does not by itself make it valid in Sogol; the company worked with the mercane without signing the magical contract. Control of the Halls produced neither deed nor Crown grant.
On the road to Karlstorf an attacker with a split polar-bear badge knocked him into the snow. In a bear’s lair, a creature that had eaten the bear caught him in its jaws; Lucio freed him with a rock blast, his shell wrecked.
Dandy lent him Gunhilda’s ring, which restores strength when its wearer wounds. At the Threshold of Aries he held against the knight of the whale and survived.
Relationships
- Adriel, Dandy, Lucio — his companions in the Alley.
- March of the Modrons — the destiny his species deserted, or he did.