Phelps was a half-elf mercenary and one of the two members of the Brass Blades to survive the destruction of the Brass Bastion in 8751 SE. Raised largely in an orphanage with intermittent support from Davrek Valzorwyn, he entered the Blades after a youth marked by theft and violence. He later learned that the vampire Luther Mortanas was his biological father and Rose Mortanas his sister.
Early Life
Phelps was rejected by his mother shortly after birth. Davrek, who had learned of the infant through his own mother, arranged for Phelps to be taken in by an orphanage and contributed money toward his care. Davrek visited when he could and gradually became the closest thing Phelps had to a father, though his mercenary life kept him from being consistently present.
Phelps developed a hard, defensive personality in the orphanage and learned early to rely on himself. At about fourteen, a long conflict with an older boy ended in a sudden and extreme act of violence. Phelps killed the other youth and fled rather than remain to face the consequences. The incident included disturbing behavior involving the victim’s blood, a detail that took on a different significance years later after Phelps learned who his father was, though the precise cause of what happened was never established.
After leaving the orphanage, Phelps survived through theft and eventually paid killing. At eighteen, the assassination of a well-connected target brought dangerous pursuers after him. He went to Davrek for help. Davrek persuaded the pursuers that they had the wrong man and then brought Phelps into the Brass Blades, hoping the company could give him both a place to belong and a more disciplined outlet for the skills he had acquired.
The Brass Blades
Phelps remained suspicious of authority and was often more interested in the immediate reward than in the risks surrounding a job. Even so, he found genuine comradeship among the Blades and became deeply loyal to the people he fought beside. He and Davrek were part of the 8751 SE operation against Luther Mortanas arranged through Brenton Woolfe. When the contract collapsed and the Brass Bastion burned, Phelps was the only member on the job other than Davrek to escape.
The two fled to Trinswood, where the attack that formed the core of the reforged Brass Blades took place. Phelps continued with the company through its pursuit of Mortanas, Zhaken Amberheart, and the wider threats that eventually led to the Harrowing. During the Lycan Raids of 8752 SE, Elgaard’s heightened security detected something unusual about him and he was taken into custody. The Blades intercepted the prison caravan and rescued him before continuing their campaign against Mortanas’s influence in the city.
Mortanas and Rose
The Blades eventually discovered that Phelps was Mortanas’s biological son. The revelation explained a relationship Phelps had never known existed but did not make Mortanas a father in any meaningful personal sense. At Mortanas’s mountain castle, Phelps also learned that Rose Mortanas was his sister and that Mortanas’s centuries of soul harvesting were tied to his bargain with Veshar to preserve Rose’s life.
The confrontation ended with Mortanas defeated and Rose finally able to pass on to the afterlife. For Phelps, the discovery placed his own childhood and the strange circumstances surrounding his bloodline inside a history much larger than the one he had known.
The Harrowing
During the final confrontation with the Aspect of Othrazhul, Phelps intended to make the sacrifice needed to end the threat. Davrek refused to let him do so. Using Wish, Davrek forced Phelps and the other Blades to safety before driving the Rift Spar into the Aspect himself. Davrek died in the resulting release and was only later restored.
Phelps survived the Harrowing and remained with the Brass Blades afterward. By then the company that had first offered him a place to belong had been destroyed, rebuilt around him, and transformed into one of the most widely known adventuring companies of its age.