Alluin

Alluin (Glint)

Alluin (also known by his Under alias Glint, and briefly as Gorgon) is a major protagonist—and temporary antagonist—in The Metalwood Saga. He features prominently in the adventure The Drowned Below.

Originally a promising Cothellon Planner and mergemelder, Alluin was exiled to the subterranean depths of the floating cities, an area known as the Below. After uncovering the horrific secrets of the city's water supply and discovering he was secretly a gatesender, a tragic accident wiped his memories and stranded him on Earth. Returning decades later as the broken, half-mad underkid "Glint," his journey to reclaim his past forces him to choose between enacting apocalyptic revenge or saving the city that destroyed his life.

Appearance and Personality

For much of his time in the series, Alluin masquerades as "Glint." In this persona, he appears as an older, grizzled, and hunched man with long, wavy hair, a thick, unkempt beard, and rows of jagged brown teeth. He walks with a pronounced limp, leaning heavily on a clanking metal pole he uses as a cane. He typically wears tattered gray fabric that drapes over his bony frame in layers, resembling a long-lost, ancient robe. His eyes are a striking feature, described as the "chill blue of a frigid storm". He projects an aura of a broken, distant man who is merely trying to survive the harshness of the Under.

However, this frail appearance is largely a symptom of his profound memory loss. When his memories are restored, the "Glint" persona instantly drops away. He stands tall and straight, discarding his gray robes to reveal a tightly-fitted black shirt, a thin black belt, and tapered trousers. In his true state, Alluin is a highly fit, heavily muscled warrior—stronger than almost anyone else in the Under—capable of extreme speed and lethal combat. His chin sharpens, his blue eyes become clear and focused, and he radiates a tense, dangerous energy.

Personality-wise, Alluin begins as an ambitious but disillusioned Planner who simply wants to prove his worth. Despite the dark nature of the Planners, he possesses a genuinely noble heart, deeply disgusted by cruelty. However, after enduring decades of memory loss and the perceived death of his family, his restored persona is volatile, feral, and consumed by a terrifying thirst for revenge. Driven insane by grief, he becomes a ruthless antagonist willing to murder millions to punish the system that wronged him, before finally being pulled back to his true, heroic nature.

Biography

The Planner and the Below

Three hundred years after the Sundering, Alluin was an up-and-coming mergemelder within the Cothellon. For reasons he never fully understood—though he suspected it was because Lorelei harbored a prejudice against mergemelders—he was stripped of his position and given a dead-end "Resource Assignment". He rode a rickety elevator thousands of feet down through the city's infrastructure, passing through an impossibly vast, floating underground lake, and arrived in the Below.

There, he met the breathtaking High Priestess Glimmer, who informed him he was now in charge of the Department of Water Supply. Over the next six months, Alluin desperately tried to repair the Below's failing pipes. He eventually discovered the horrific truth of the city's water: because the original gate to Earth had failed, the Planners were enforcing strict quotas, forcing addicted mages to transmute refuse—and eventually living human beings—into water.

Disgusted by the evil of the Planners, Alluin chose to stay in the Below rather than return topside. He fell deeply in love with Glimmer, and they married, eventually having a son named Glisten.

The Gate and the Exile

Four years later, the Planners ruthlessly raised the water quotas. Desperate to save the transmuters from being worked to death, Alluin investigated the ancient Machine at the north end of the city. There, he touched a piece of darkprime willow and miraculously discovered that he possessed the rarest of all magics: he was a gatesender.

Determined to save the city, he successfully opened a massive gate to Earth, but quickly realized no water was flowing through it. Realizing the portal was placed incorrectly, he decided to step through the gate briefly to see where it needed to be repositioned. However, the act of passing through the portal triggered a catastrophic bout of memory loss. While standing disoriented on the other side, he was ambushed from behind by the local inhabitants, a bag was shoved over his head, and his old life was lost forever.

Gorgon of Sacranub

Alluin awoke in a garbage dump in the brutal human settlement of Sacranub on Earth. Having no memory of his name or past, the Remnant named him "Gorgon". For twenty years, he was enslaved by the humans—including the burly warrior Balgad—and forced to learn how to fight in their brutal, gladiatorial society.

Nineteen years into his captivity, while filling a canteen at the Sacranub River, the sight of the rushing water suddenly sparked a memory. He remembered the faces of Glimmer and Glisten, and the portal he had created. Guided by this fractured memory, he managed to gatesend himself back to the Under of New San Francisco. Still heavily amnesiac, he stumbled upon Dill, introduced himself as "Glint," and joined Shock Crew.

The Drowned Below

For years, Glint lived as a quiet, broken old man in Shock Crew, secretly harboring vast knowledge of the Under's resource caches. When the Under's water supply critically failed, Glint told Dill and Phoenix that he vaguely remembered where the water came from.

He led Phoenix and her three-year-old son, Rylan, deep into the infrastructure, eventually taking them through the lake seal and into the Below. While navigating the abandoned streets, they stumbled into Alluin's old apartment, where the sight of his son's toys began to severely agitate him. Shortly after, they were ambushed in the Gate Chamber by Wavelight guards. In the ensuing chaos, Glint instinctively grabbed Rylan, dropped his frail persona, and gatesent them both away.

Vengeance and Redemption

The act of gatesending fully restored the last twenty years of Alluin's missing memories. Believing that his wife and child were long dead and that the Below had taken everything from him, the restored Alluin was driven completely insane with grief. He resolved to destroy the entire flying city as revenge against the Planners.

When Phoenix, Lorelei, and the Planner mages Galan and Celenor arrived to repair the lake seal, Alluin ruthlessly attacked them. Using his mergemelding magic to bypass their forcefields, he effortlessly broke Galan's leg and strangled him with wires, before engaging in a brutal hand-to-hand fight with Phoenix. He even used his gatesending magic to banish Lorelei and Celenor to an unknown location to prevent them from interfering.

In the end, it was not magic that stopped Alluin, but the innocent empathy of three-year-old Rylan. Seeing the boy reminded Alluin of his lost son, Glisten. When Rylan hugged him, Alluin's madness broke. Weeping, Alluin touched the Echo device and opened the gate to the river, permanently restoring the city's water supply.

Ashamed of the monster he had become, Alluin gated away to Earth to start a new life, completely unaware that Glimmer (revealed to be the elven woman Allana) and his son Glisten were still alive and had arrived just moments too late to reunite with him.

Powers and Abilities

Alluin is exceptionally rare in that he possesses two distinct magical Talents, making him one of the most versatile and deadly combatants in the series:

Mergemelder (Dark Oak): By burning darkprime oak, Alluin can selectively render his body intangible. He can walk through solid walls, thick pipes, and rushing water. In combat, he uses this to completely bypass enemy forcefields and ignore physical strikes, making him nearly invincible.
Gatesender (Dark Willow): The rarest of all magics, Alluin can use darkprime willow to tear holes in space, instantly teleporting himself or others across vast distances. He can create massive portals capable of funneling entire rivers.
Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Due to his two decades of brutal survival training with the Remnant in Sacranub, Alluin is an incredibly lethal physical fighter, easily overpowering trained Planner mages and highly-skilled assassins like Phoenix.

Key Relationships

Glimmer (Allana): His wife. He met her when she was posing as the High Priestess of the Wavelight Church in the Below. His love for her convinced him to abandon his Planner life.
Glisten: His son. Alluin's devastation over losing Glisten drove him to madness, and the memory of the boy ultimately saved the city.
Phoenix (Megan): He traveled with her into the Below as Glint, but fought her brutally once his memories returned. Despite their battle, Phoenix recognized his underlying pain and helped talk him down.
Rylan: Phoenix's son. Alluin protected him, and Rylan's innocent hug broke through Alluin's murderous grief.
Lorelei: The Cundu who originally assigned him to the Below. Alluin despised her for the cruel quotas she enforced and gleefully used his magic to banish her from the Gate Chamber.
Dill (Dillon): The captain of Shock Crew who took him in when he was wandering as the amnesiac Glint.