Fond

Fond is the Jibleya leader encountered by Will and Loth in the ruined throne room, where survival has forced former enemies into an uneasy coalition. He represents a people reduced by violence but not stripped of pride: practical enough to share territory with kobolds when necessary, status-conscious enough to defend an extraordinary treasure, and perceptive enough to recognize Loth the Luminary’s intellectual reputation immediately. Fond’s brief appearance gives the Jibleya a political voice and makes cooperation across species one of the scene’s central possibilities.

Identity and People

Fond belongs to the Jibleya, a species described as having distended, translucent pink flesh with shiny skin stretched tightly over the body. Their physiology is naturally resistant to poisons and acids, a trait that has guided them toward alchemy. This is not merely an ornamental description: the Jibleya’s bodies, environment, and preferred discipline are presented as parts of a coherent adaptation, making Fond’s people technically capable as well as physically distinctive.

He leads a small remnant rather than a secure community. When Will asks whether the gathered Jibleya and kobolds constitute everyone, Fond explains that there used to be many more. The group numbers only around two dozen, and the decline has occurred rapidly enough that the Jibleya can no longer afford their customary hostility toward kobolds. Their diminished numbers turn an old species conflict into a question of immediate survival.

The Throne-Room Standoff

Fond first appears as the voice behind a spear pointed at the humans. More Jibleya emerge from the edges of the room, while a half-dozen kobolds reveal themselves from beneath carefully arranged stools. The arrangement had concealed a coordinated ambush, and Fond’s command establishes him as the negotiator and public authority of the Jibleya side.

The encounter takes place amid evidence of a larger threat. Bodies lie along the route into the room, and Fond identifies the danger as the Tangled. The Jibleya and kobolds have been fighting over loot, but the Tangled have reduced their numbers so severely that the two groups have begun cooperating. Fond therefore enters the scene with two competing obligations: he must protect his people from Will’s party, yet he must also preserve the alliance that gives the survivors a chance to claim what they regard as a score of a lifetime.

The kobold leader’s contemptuous claim that his people are gods among their kin, even when sharing with the Jibleya, exposes the imbalance within the coalition. Fond does not answer with submission. Instead, he remains part of the negotiation, allowing Will’s offer of extra hands to reach the point where the rival groups must consider whether cooperation is more valuable than pride.

Relationship with Loth the Luminary

Fond’s most important personal connection is formed with Loth. After the standoff, he introduces himself and offers his hand. Loth responds by praising the Jibleya’s intelligence and natural talent for alchemy, while imagining what the two species might create through cooperation. Fond’s reply is cautious but receptive: such collaboration might be possible, provided Loth is truly the figure the kobolds call the Great One.

The recognition is immediate when Loth identifies himself as Loth the Luminary. Fond knows him as the author of a treatise on mechanical force and a work explaining how Abilities distort the laws of physics. Loth adds that he discovered the latter principle while designing a trap, linking his abstract knowledge to the practical ingenuity expected of a Climber. Fond’s reaction is strikingly deferential: he drops Loth’s hand and bows deeply, declaring that the Jibleya would gladly work with him.

This exchange changes the alliance’s basis. The Jibleya do not merely tolerate Loth because he offers additional strength; Fond recognizes a rare intellectual resource whose expertise could combine with Jibleya alchemy to produce dangerous and beautiful inventions. Fond’s leadership thus includes the ability to identify knowledge as a strategic asset, even in the middle of an armed confrontation.

Boundaries, Survival, and Narrative Role

Fond occupies a boundary between enemy and ally. His people normally do not get along with kobolds, yet scarcity makes their old division untenable. The same pressure that narrows the Jibleya community also expands the range of cooperation they can imagine. Fond’s conduct is neither sentimental reconciliation nor complete trust. It is an alliance negotiated under threat, shaped by numbers, loot, and the need for competent assistance.

His meeting with Will also exposes the unstable boundary between human and monster in the surrounding society. The kobolds remember having taken Will’s hand, or at least argue over whether they did, and threaten to take all of him if he touches Loth again. Fond does not erase that danger; instead, he offers a framework in which different peoples may work together while retaining their own status and resentments. His role is consequently less that of a converted enemy than of a broker between incompatible groups.

Fond’s significance is concentrated rather than expansive. The narrative does not provide a later biography or a personal ending for him, but it establishes three durable facts: he commands the surviving Jibleya, he understands the cost of continued conflict with the kobolds, and he sees exceptional value in Loth’s scientific reputation. Through him, a threatened minority becomes an active political participant, and a hostile encounter becomes the beginning of a possible Jibleya-Loth partnership. Fond’s appearance also reinforces the broader pattern by which the Tower converts bodies, species, abilities, and reputations into bargaining power: survival depends not only on force, but on knowing when another kind of strength is worth welcoming.