“
This is a message to you, who listens. You must trust me, because we are friends -- you just don't know it yet. The Divine Principality offers you progress, but imperial futures are only ever stolen presents. I offer you more: I offer you actualization.
My name is Gur Sevraq, and I have stolen the future.”
Gur Sevraq or The Friend[note 1] is the leader of The Church of the Resin Heart, and a reported miracle worker.
Appearance
A spider-like humanoid synthetic, with big mandibles and six eyes resembling angle brackets (if each were made of three dots) pointing towards one another, like the Lacuna rpg cover art of a cartoonish spider in a hat. They have eight limbs, which are normally hidden under their clothes.
On their first appearance, they wear long cloaks and robes layered over one another in natural colours (tans, khakis, browns, and very light pale sand tones), with splashes of teals and oranges from individual cloth or sewn-in ribbons, so that "as they move around, different layers show and move, and there's almost something hypnotising". Their similarly-coloured low turban, ringed by an orange ribbon, covers the very top of his head.[1] On his second appearance, he is wearing different fabrics, now in very saturated blues, silvers and whites that somehow still give the impression of warmth.[2]
This section contains spoilers for PARTIZAN.
Click here to reveal.
The puppet of Gur Sevraq remains "clearly wounded and broken" from his fight with Clementine. Their ghost no longer wears any robes, and their spider-like form is fully visible.
Their voice cast is Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Personality
Gur is a skilled preacher and rhetorician, although with friends he has a tendency to get distracted, ramble and go on tangents. They are deeply faithful, and do not appreciate mockery of their relationship to God. Along with his followers, the Friends of Gur Sevraq, he naively believes that communication technology could enable social progression beyond the imperialism of the Divine Principality. They are firmly against slavery and forced labor.
Gur is not a pacifist: they have killed at least two people. He is also willing to manipulate people, or at least Clementine Kesh.
History
Although he grew up as part of the Mysteries Metronomica, Gur Sevraq was led by both his studies and the guidance of Perennial to the service of the True Divine.
With the Friends of Gur Sevraq, Gur was involved in various clandestine operations against the Principality. They stole the Divine Future from Stel Columnar, and during the theft they killed the Pact Elects Myosotis and Plumeria. Future gave them a startling prescience and the ability to imagine futures unconfined by the hegemonic and imperialist world around him.
They contacted the wavering Elect Cymbidium and spurred him to join them on the Isles of Logos, but Cymbidium instead aimed for the Sable Court before his crash in Obelle.
Along with their Church and many pilgrims from both sects of Asterism, he set out to walk the Prophet's Path on the 1000 year anniversary of Logos Kantel's own walk. The ambush during this journey led to him being held as a somewhat-willing captive by his former escorts, the Rapid Evening.
His kidnapping made him an increasingly important symbol for various factions of the Principality as well as a pretext for war, with Stel Kesh blaming Stel Apostolos for their disappearance. It was during this time that they first communicated telepathically with Valence, shortly before the True Divine's attention turned to Partizan and they were instructed to assemble the Exemplar.
When the Rapid Evening took Fort Icebreaker, he assisted in hiding it from the eyes of the Stels, and when Millennium Break formed he used it as an opportunity to spread the message of revolution, but did not run in the elections.
This section contains spoilers for PARTIZAN.
Click here to reveal.
After Millennium Break seizes Cruciat and Clem is about to be ousted, Gur has an argument with her that culminates in both of them attacking each other and falling from atop Fort Icebreaker into the sea. Both are considered to have disappeared or died by the rest of Millennium Break. Clem washes up on the shores of Chorus Island, and eventually finds Gur's ghost trapped in a caved-in room. They continue to clash, but Gur begins to teach Clementine about faith, Perennial, and other topics she had not been receptive to before. She is the only one who can see or hear him: they are "bound by Russian Sage". Gur is unable to communicate with his gods and unsure if causing Clem's death would free him from her. He continues advising and aiding her when she takes the Reflecting Pool in the hopes of at least keeping her from the worst she's capable of.
Meanwhile, Gur's body and the Divine Future had been pulled from the ocean by the Curtain and Stel Nideo. They use it as a non-sentient receptacle for altered, propagandistic versions of old speeches, which are transmitted throughout the Principality.
Relationships
Clementine Kesh
After being captured by Clementine, Gur seems willing to work with her towards her goals, up to a point. He spends some time at her bedside attempting to educate her, and they begin playing chess together. However, he is not willing to leave the rest of the Rapid Evening imprisoned under her control. They continue trying to win her over after the formation of Millennium Break, but Clem's complete unwillingness to learn, grow, or listen leads to increasing acrimony between them.
True Divine
The True Divine grants Gur Sevraq the ability to work miracles. This power is only available when the Portcullis Gates open and strengthen their connection. Past miracles have ranged from restarting a generator to hiding an entire mobile military fortress from the Principality.
Bond (Kingdom)
- Milli is right to distrust all who seek to direct her power, but she ought fight for those who share her dreams yet lack her strength.
Quotes
“
We are driven by this one understanding: that history looms, not the way an ominous shadow casts over the land, but like a machine that weaves. It pulls threads together alike and not, according to pattern, material, and process. And as it stands, the Divine Principality will weave this age, this so-called Perfect Millennium, forever.
And so here is our outrageous idea, slipping from incoherence into necessity: we will work the loom of history ourselves. We will set the pattern, pull the cloth, slide the shuttle, and bring together each of our different threads into something that to look at it once complete is to see something so essential it is hard to imagine the world before it. A future unlike the past, a yet unnamed tomorrow. Together we will break this millennium.”
Notes
- ↑ Gur Sevraq is The Friend in the ROT13 cipher, and vice versa.
References
- ↑ PARTIZAN 09: DESERT SQUIRE - VANTAGE, 01:38:27 - 01:40:48
- ↑ PARTIZAN 13: A Captive Audience, 2:59:00