Pyro Carraden

Pyro Carraden was the second Archmage of Altarra Tower and one of the most influential arcane figures of the late Third Age. Born during the final years of the Third Age, he lived during the same era as Winrey Auric and Gabriel Aurellian.

He joined Gabriel’s rebellion following the Fall of Ostagar and the Siege of The Celestial Gate. During the war, he became central to the effort to counter divine relics deployed by the Pantheon’s loyalists. Pyro Carraden ultimately sacrificed his life to contain these artifacts, preventing catastrophic arcane destabilization on a continental scale.

He was Althea Aurellian's cousin and remained closely tied to the Aurellian family throughout his life.

Early Life

Pyro Carraden was born into an Imperial noble lineage during the final years of the Third Age. From a young age, he displayed exceptional aptitude in arcane theory, particularly in the study of divine residue and relic structure. Unlike many mages of his time, Pyro combined theoretical understanding with direct application. His work focused on how divine artifacts interacted with mortal arcane systems and how such power could be stabilized, suppressed, or contained within controlled frameworks.

He would later become one of the founding figures whose work made the creation of Altarra Tower possible. Though he did not serve as its first Archmage, his designs and theories formed the foundation upon which the Tower was built.

The Rebellion

Following the Fall of Ostagar and the Siege of The Celestial Gate, Pyro joined Gabriel Aurellian's rebellion. During this period, Pantheon loyalists and Ostagarian forces deployed relics of immense power. These artifacts demonstrated the ability to dominate entire populations, erase military formations, and fracture the boundaries of time and space. Their use threatened not only the rebellion, but the structural stability of the mortal world itself. Pyro became central to the effort to counter these threats. His research provided the first reliable understanding of relic behavior and laid the foundation for methods of containment that had not previously existed.

Creation of Pyro’s Vault

As relic recovery increased, Pyro proposed the construction of a permanent containment complex within Altarra Tower. This structure would later be known as Pyro’s Vault. The Vault was designed to hold artifacts too dangerous to destroy and too unstable for open study. Its structure relied on layered dimensional anchors, harmonic stabilization, and reinforced binding matrices capable of withstanding residual divine force. Even with these measures, several recovered relics exceeded expected containment limits, revealing the full scale of the threat they posed.

Sacrifice

During the final containment of several high-tier relics, standard containment structures began to fail. The artifacts exhibited the capacity to alter temporal structure and disrupt the laws governing arcane interaction. Rather than allow uncontrolled release, Pyro Carraden enacted an emergency containment protocol of his own design. The procedure required direct integration with the failing containment systems. The containment held. Pyro Carraden did not survive the process. His actions permanently sealed the unstable relics and prevented widespread structural damage to Altarra Tower and the surrounding regions.

Legacy

Following his death, the containment complex was formally named Pyro’s Vault in his honor. Subsequent Archmages inherited responsibility for maintaining the systems he established. The Vault remains the Empire’s primary repository for divine remnants and unstable artifacts. Pyro Carraden is remembered as the figure who made large-scale relic containment possible. His work reshaped arcane understanding of divine artifacts, and his sacrifice ensured that weapons capable of rewriting the world did not remain in active use.

He is regarded as one of the foundational arcane defenders of the late Third Age and a central figure in the survival of the post-Godwar world.