Akrites Salonikas

Akrites Salonikas, a mage of the Seers of Chronos, was one of the members of the First Cabal and one of the few known Oracles.

Backgorund
Salonikas was the illegitimate son of a Macedonian solider, born to a Persian slave, and was disowned by his father after dropping out of the University of Constantinople. He regularly experienced visions of both the past and future from early childhood. During his Awakening, he had a powerful vision a dismal, Technocracy-controlled future despite powerful magic meant to prevent such scrying. This experience shook him badly and left him with a signature Paradox Flaw: whenever he was excited, a cloud of hashish smoke formed around him.

A passionate and rebellious man by nature, Salonikas was nevertheless chosen by the Seers of Chronos as their representative in the First Cabal. He became very close in different ways to Fall Breeze, Walking Hawk and Daud-Allah Abu Hisham ibn Muqla al-Baghdadi, and seemed to see Heylel Teomim as something of a substitute father figure. He also had an unrequited crush on Sister Bernadette. However, his allegedly loose morals, personal vanity and eagerness to play the devil's advocate created friction in the group. Modern Ecstatics claim Salonikas individually seduced every member of the Cabal, though their contemporary Porthos Fitz-Empress considers that highly unlikely.

Visions
While the Cabal was traveling in Norway, Salonikas was overcome by a powerful vision that lasted nine days. In his vision, he foresaw the Great Betrayal, but could not be confident in the veracity of what he saw. During this time he also accidentally killed Tormund, a mage whom the Cabal was trying to recruit, and his tremendous guilt further prevented him from speaking up about what he had seen until much later.

Some time later Salonikas had a further vision, of an even bleaker future in which Teomim unites the Traditions with the Order of Reason and becomes the god-like ruler of a mechanistic dystopia. Salonikas even suggested that this vision was, in fact, sent to him by the twisted future Teomim who had come to regret his actions. He confided these visions in his fellow Seers, who agreed with his interpretation: Teomim was fated to betray the Traditions in some capacity, and by permitting him to betray the Cabal they could prevent him from committing even worse crimes later on.

Betrayal and Aftermath
When Teomim brought the Order of Reason down on the camp of the First Cabal, Salonikas was able to escape. He alerted the Traditions and lead the rescue mission that saved Bernadette, Eloine and Walking Hawk. However, many in the Traditions found it too convenient that the Cabal's great seer was able to avoid capture: some accused him of complicity with Teomim, while others suspected (correctly) that he had foreseen the attack but allowed his colleagues to perish. Salonikas did not try to explain or justify himself; instead, after Teomim's execution, he went into self-imposed exile in the Arctic very near to the place where he had killed Tormund during the first of his two critical visions.

Salonikas spend centuries in isolation, during which time he wrote down his own account of the Betryal and his role in it, ''The Revelation of Akrites Salonikas the Seer. ''He also pioneered the subject of temporal ethics. In 1705 his apprentice, Assam the Wanderer, returned from a trip south to find that Salonikas had vanished from his hermitage.