Jezabel Varlas

Overview

Jezabel Varlas leads the Barleys, the guild that breeds and manages the city’s insect stock for silk, venom, alchemical glands, and meat. The Barleys are traditional and protective of their breeding lines, and they consider their work essential to the survival and economy of Odrun Fell. Jezabel fits this culture fully. She enforces standards, protects bloodlines, and resists rapid change. She treats breeding, harvest, and sale as a single controlled system. Her public image is strict, precise, and reliable. She attends Council with careful notes and narrow goals tied to measurable outputs: stable yields, safe pens, reliable guards, and clear contracts.

Background

Jezabel was born to Barley handlers who worked venom lines beneath the Sprigs. Her early training focused on basic pen care, controlled feeding, cull protocols, and record keeping. After family losses to a mishandled fang strain, she rebuilt her household’s compound with strict procedures. She introduced tighter breeding ledgers, standardized keeper shifts, and closed pen designs. Over time, her compound recovered and began to outperform neighboring lines. Senior Barleys noticed her results and brought her into guild leadership.

Her druidic gifts developed later. She did not seek temple training. Her practice formed around direct control tools that aided breeding and handling. These include insect call-and-settle patterns, pheromone masking, and short commands that align feeding and breeding cycles. She uses magic to calm or redirect swarms, to stabilize brood rooms, and to sense disease or stress in a hive. She limits shapeshifting to practical tasks, such as fitting through pen gaps or scouting short routes between hatch yards and loading bays.

Jezabel’s standing rose when she began presenting new luxury silk and controlled-venom lines to the Sprigs. She opened the Varlas Conservatory as a showcase site under ward and watch. Nobles visit the Conservatory to view, bid, and negotiate rights to select strains. These dealings support the Barleys’ core work without exposing field pens to outside pressure. Jezabel uses the Conservatory to control access, set expectations, and convert prestige into funding for brood facilities, keeper pay, and pen repairs.

Public Role and Authority

As Guildmaster, Jezabel holds a Council seat. The Council consists of the four guild masters and the Regent. The Regent breaks ties but has limited direct power. Jezabel negotiates from the Barleys’ position as the city’s supply base. She argues that without stable brood the city’s markets, forges, and healers will fail, so breeding lines and pens must be protected first in any dispute. She frames policy in terms of survival, order, and long-term yield stability.

Jezabel manages three major sites:

The Barley Fields outside the northern walls. These hold treebugs, grubs, and beetle lines that provide food, fibers, and glands. They are warded and closed to outsiders. Line markings and pennants identify bloodlines and rights.
The Varlas Breeder’s Archive near the Hilt. This site stores ledgers, samples, and experimental pens behind sealed hatches. It is a controlled research and reference space.
The Varlas Conservatory in the Sprigs. This is a display and negotiation venue for luxury and rare lines. It operates under ward, silence rules, and pre-screened attendance lists.

Personality and Habits

Jezabel speaks in precise, brief statements. She expects the same from others. She does not permit debate to drift off topic. She rewards staff who deliver clean records and predictable results. She is courteous in public, but she does not flatter. She avoids threats and favors enforceable terms. In private she is direct and private with feelings. She views kindness as useful only when it strengthens order. She respects skill and self-control. She reacts poorly to improvisation that ignores procedure.

Daily, she reviews pen logs before dawn, meets a deputy to select that day’s culls or pairings, inspects at least one high-risk pen in person, and then moves to the Council or to the Conservatory as needed. She performs one brood-calming rite each day to keep her own practice current. She audits at random and will shut down a line for a single serious breach.

Relationships and Politics

Jezabel maintains formal ties with the Ashcoats for pen hardware, with the Cudgel for site security, and with the Promissory for contracts and auctions. She sets strict terms for any Cudgel detail assigned to Barley pens: no unsupervised movement, clean gear, and no handling without a Barley handler present. She expects Ashcoats to provide parts that can be repaired on-site by trained keepers. She expects Promissory contracts to be clear about liability, waste, and recall obligations.

Jezabel distrusts rapid political swings. She views Captain Orin Vellak’s wide popularity as a potential source of instability if it changes Council behavior or encourages policy by acclaim. She is not hostile to Orin personally. Her concern is the effect of public pressure on guild decisions and succession talks. She prefers quiet continuity and firm process. Several notes in city briefs record that the Barleys and the Promissory have reasons to resist sudden shifts in power, especially in Regent elections.

With the Regent, Jezabel keeps a correct and distant working relationship. She treats the Regent’s office as ceremonial and useful mainly for tie-breaking and diplomacy. She dislikes public appeals to the Regent over guild matters. She argues that technical issues belong to the responsible guild first.

Druidic Practice in Service of the Guild

Jezabel’s druidry focuses on insects and pen ecosystems. She favors spells and rituals that calm, command, or monitor swarms. Typical tools include:

Scent Masking and Lure: She applies and reverses pheromone trails to guide movement during cleanings and load-outs.
Brood Calm: A controlled hum and gesture pattern that lowers aggression in certain lines during handler rotation.
Infestation Sweep: Quick detection of mites, molds, or invasive larvae before they take hold in wood or silk.
Pen Stasis: Short-term suppression of activity in a pen to permit a safe repair or a medical intervention on a breeder.

She does not present druidic work as faith. She presents it as technical craft aligned to breeding plans. She trains handlers in basic cues and reserves higher functions for certified tenders. She records all uses and audits outcomes weekly.

Operating Standards

Jezabel enforces the following standards across her sites:

Line Integrity: No crossbreeding without signed approval and quarantine space.
Handler Safety: Masks, gloves, and scent control mandatory. Two-person rule in high-risk pens.
Culling: Breeders with defects are removed promptly. Byproducts are recorded and routed to approved buyers.
Transport: Cudgel escorts for high-value or high-risk cargo. Routes avoid the Slough unless pre-cleared.
Containment: Any escape triggers a full stop. Pens are counted, routes are closed, and the Council is notified.
Records: Every pairing, feed, cull, and shipment is logged against a line ledger and a handler ledger.

These standards raise costs, but she argues that one breach can end a line or damage a district market for months. She cites Barley doctrine that the guild’s work is the foundation of the city’s economy and survival.

Current Projects and Priorities

Brood Stability in the Barley Fields. Recent weather and tunnel activity have stressed outside pens. Jezabel has increased ward checks and rotated grazing plots to lower stress. She is also raising keeper numbers per shift to reduce errors.
Luxury Silk Line Demonstrations. The Conservatory continues limited showings to select Sprigs clients. Jezabel limits attendance and bans unscreened devices and containers. Profits fund pen maintenance and Archive upgrades.
Archive Expansion and Hazard Study. The Varlas Breeder’s Archive is adding sealed galleries for experimental strains. Each new cell requires an acid-proof lining, a Barley and Cudgel supervision rota, and an Ashcoat inspection before live use.
Council Guard Protocols. Jezabel argues for continuing Cudgel protection of Barley cultivation areas in tunnels and for clear pay scales tied to route risk levels published by the Threadspire Archive.
Odrun’s Head Containment Support. Jezabel backs the closed border and refuses harvesting there. She states that mutated colonies present risks that outweigh any gain. The Barleys will not deploy brood handlers to that zone.

Council Posture

On Council votes, Jezabel often aligns with the Promissory on contract clarity and with the Ashcoats on equipment standards. She pushes the Cudgel to prioritize stable routes serving pens and fields, and she backs overtime pay when Threadspire risk levels rise. She opposes any measure that would force the Barleys to open pens to outside survey without Barley control. She supports the Regent’s ceremonial role, but she expects the Regent to respect guild domains unless a tie requires a vote.

Reputation

Among handlers and breeders, Jezabel is respected and feared. She dismisses keepers who cut corners. She promotes those who submit clean ledgers and steady counts. Among delvers, she is seen as strict but fair when contracting guards. In the Spindle, merchants view her as reliable but demanding. In the Sprigs, nobles see her as valuable when they want rare stock, but they dislike her privacy rules. Across the city, her reputation is stable: she does what she says, and she expects the same.