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11 Overview
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33 Alistair Grace is the Count of House Grace, a noble family in the Hernand region. His household has been plagued by constant scandal, giving him a somewhat troubled reputation among the other noble houses. Despite these difficulties, Alistair is notable for pursuing a boyhood dream of creating a flying wagon, an ambitious and eccentric project that reflects his unconventional personality.
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55 Location
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77 Alistair Grace can be found at Reedfield Graves, the estate of House Grace. The estate is located outside the walls of the City of Hernand.
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99 Background
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1111 Alistair's household has been a frequent source of gossip and scandal among the Hernand nobility. Despite this, he channels his energy into an unusual passion: building a flying wagon. This eccentric ambition, rooted in a childhood dream, sets him apart from the more politically focused nobles. Whether his invention will ever take flight remains to be seen, but his dedication to the project is genuine.
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1313 See Also
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1515 House GraceHernandNobles of Hernand
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1717 The Bastard Heir
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1919 Alistair's most consequential decision was a private one. Over years of traveling on House Grace business, he used his status to seduce women he met across the duchy. He eventually succeeded in siring a bastard heir, a boy named Aldrin, and brought the child into the family as a possible successor. The household scandal that followed (which contributed to the steady erosion of House Grace's standing among the other noble houses) traces back almost entirely to this single arrangement.
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2121 Aldrin's standing collapsed in early youth when he fell sick with the plague. The disease left him disfigured, and the count made the decision that defined the rest of his life: rather than continue caring for an unwell heir, Aldrin was locked away inside glenbright manor and forced to wear a mask to disguise the face of a leper. He was kept out of public view to protect the family's honor. The arrangement held for years.
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2323 The Order
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2525 The arrangement broke when Aldrin crawled out of his room one day because he could no longer endure the confinement. A memory the player can later view inside glenbright manor records what happened next. Alistair told his son to stay back and accused him of crawling out to cause a scene. Aldrin answered that he could not bear it any longer. Alistair then gave the order to his butler: take Aldrin to the Reed Fields in the south, where lepers are cast to rot, and see the work done quietly. His exact words were that no one must ever know, because the family's honor was at stake.
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2727 The memory captures the butler's hesitation. Whether he carried the order out in full or, taking pity, told Aldrin to run and never return, is left ambiguous. What is known is that Aldrin's mask later turned up in sunset valley, the small lapers' village south of the Reed Fields, suggesting that he survived the trip long enough to live among the patients there. The abyssal wraith of the burial ground reached him afterward, and Aldrin returned years later as the reed devil.
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2929 Cloud-Cart Sponsorship
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3131 Alistair's public reputation rests on the cloud-cart program. House Grace's funding of the Emberwind Workshop is the primary driver behind hot-cloudcart development, and the duchy's transportation network depends on the technology. The work has given Alistair more practical influence in Hernand than his formal rank as count implies. The contrast with his private conduct is part of what made him a target for gossip: the same man who is admired in public life for advancing transportation is the same man who allowed his disfigured son to be erased to keep the headlines from turning.
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3333 Death by the Reed Devil
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3535 Years after Aldrin was sent to the fields, the Reed Devil came home. The boss assault on glenbright manor at the start of chapter three is led by Aldrin himself, accompanied by the faction's scarecrow minions. Alistair flees in terror through an open window in his study, taking the two hired protectors naira and andrew with him as escort. The Reed Devil tracks him to a shack outside the manor and finds him there before Kliff can intervene.
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3737 Their last exchange is recorded in dialogue. The Reed Devil mocks Alistair ("Why so fearful, my dear count? You look as if you've seen a ghost. Or is it perhaps guilt that makes you tremble so?"), and Alistair attempts to appeal to shared blood by calling him son. The appeal fails because the count had treated that blood as worthless when Aldrin was a child too inconvenient to be seen. The Reed Devil kills him on the spot. The fight that follows in the Reed Fields is Kliff pursuing Aldrin into the fields, not avenging Alistair; the count's death is treated by both Kliff and the villagers as a debt long overdue.