Terren is a name that appears twice in the records: a marked orphan boy adopted by Lord Valanthru, and a voice lodged inside the heart of a turtle. The name suggests they are one person; nothing else proves it.
| Type | Character |
| Adoptive father | Lord Valanthru |
| Spanish entry | Terren |
The marked orphan
“Little Terren” lost his parents, dead or “irrevocably disappeared”, and was taken into an orphanage in a city that “is not so big”.
He bears a mark belonging to “certain lineages that have arisen here over the years”, so there were other marked ones. The mark is called “that grace, good luck”, but it comes with a grim forecast: «Esperamos que lo que sea de su vida, si no es larga, por lo menos sea feliz» (“We hope that whatever his life may be, if not long, it is at least happy”). Against it, “here we have ways of protecting things”; which ways is not recorded.
Three guardianships were laid on him:
- The orphanage, where he lives and where his childhood companions remain.
- Adoption by Lord Valanthru, so “immediate” that formal explanations were demanded. It did not take him out of the orphanage.
- The temple, the monastery, where his adoptive father sent him.
He may visit his former companions “whenever he wants”, with an escort and bringing gifts.
The voice in the turtle
The other Terren “is inside the heart” of a turtle; to speak to him, one addresses the creature: “Terren?“. He took a topaz and set it “as a kind of stone”, from which “some roots” grow and bind it to the turtle. The stone is the control; whoever placed it steers the creature from inside the organ. He is the only means of communicating with the turtle and the only one who controls it.
He answers by a sending spell, slowly: a full reply takes a whole day. At one point he “was seen no more and went into the water”, descending toward “the core, so to speak. The heart of the earth”. This descent is the only link between the orphan and the voice.
A network that “abducted a lot of people” is mentioned near him; whether it bears on his orphanhood or his mark is not established.
Open questions
- Whether the orphan and the voice in the turtle are the same person is not established.
- The adopter is also heard as “Lord Balandro”; the spelling is unresolved.
- A Kerem is also recorded as adopted by the same lord; whether Kerem and Terren are one person or two wards is unknown.
- The name Jaromir was explicitly denied for this character.
- The boy’s age, clothing and face, the mark’s form, and the turtle’s size are not recorded, nor what Terren does with the turtle once he steers it.