Valentine

Valentine, often simply called Val, is a human male of unknown origin, the only human ever encountered by the races of Spectra. He and Note have fragmented memories from their past, but no concrete recollection of where they came from.

Awakening
In AY 2996, Val awoke from a pod similar in concept to a cryogenic storage device, where the occupant's body processes are halted and resume only when released. He had no memory of who he was or where he had come from, but noted a strange symbol on the front of the pod. Upon listening to the voice of an AI that spoke to him from it, he found that he had been stolen and abducted by creatures called the Cell, but could not ascertain the reason. Unwilling to find out, he used the AI matrix given to him by the pod to unlock various doors and systems aboard the ship, eventually using it to seize control and set the ship on a collision course with the planet Jantii, but not before catching sight of a brilliant beam of light hanging out in the void of space. Unbeknownst to him, Note, who had been on the matrix when he'd wielded it, had accidentally been jettisoned off the ship through the communications array as a data-package beam and was intercepted by the Mercantile.

When Val woke up, he came face-to-face with new aliens; Pragley Rok and his niece, Ten, who had dragged him out of the ship's wreckage when it crashed in the fields of their farmland. They referred to themselves as Irvagaleni, a term he'd never heard before. They shared his confusion when he told them he was a human, as no human had ever been encountered in Spectra before.

They took him to a Sentinel investigating the crash site to see if it could identify him. When it scanned him, it called him an 'anomaly' and latched onto his wrist with wires before burning the same symbol he'd seen before on the pod into his skin. It told him to 'free those who have been caged', but his response was not accepted, and it resumed its normal functions.

Taking Val back to the house, Prag interrogated Val but was stopped by Ten. He told Val what the symbol meant, calling it the mark of Eden; the Mark was an image associated with danger and fear, thought to be a warning from the Architects. At the end of the night, Prag invited Val to stay for supper, and the boy was unofficially adopted into the family.

An Aggressive Reunion
Two years later, Val had recovered from his ordeal and grown stronger after the fact. While he and Ten were preparing to harvest their assigned field of okinlas, a small ship landed near the house. When they and Prag approached it, a synthetic body made in a human's image stepped out. Identifying herself as Note, she told Val that she had been looking for him for the last two years, having been building her new body aboard the Mercantile.

They went inside to reconnect and trade stories while Ten and Prag watched. When the latter revealed that he believed Val to be dangerous to the rest of Spectra, Val demanded that he share whatever other secrets he'd been hiding. Prag told him of his previous work searching out Architect ruins and technology for the Empire, and how he found a temple in the Umbra that was unlike any he'd ever seen. Before he could finish, however, the Cell managed to locate Val by tracking Note, and blew up the farmhouse in an explosion that set the house ablaze. Val found Prag in the wreckage and was there as the irva died, his last words telling Val to find out who he was.

The surviving trio was able to make it off Jantii and escape the Cell on Note's ship, watching as the Sentinels arrived in the sky and began to repel the invaders.

Building a Team
The three of them traveled to the Mercantile to evade the Cell. Ten nearly broke down, lamenting the loss of her uncle, but Val quickly comforted her and told her they'd be fine so long as they were together. Her courage renewed, Ten joined him and Note as the latter told them they needed to find protection in the form of a bodyguard. Journeying to Straxe Plaza, they found a bank with access to Spec-Net and Ten withdrew funds while Note analyzed potential candidates on the Shadow Market for their bodyguard. Eventually satisfied with one, the android set up a meeting and had Val and Ten follow her to their next destination.

Entering a cantina, the trio met with the contact; a kugraw mercenary named Niles. While he was initially rather abrasive and disbelieving of their claims, he eventually agreed to protect them to the tune of sixty thousand credits. When he heard that Val was experiencing hallucinations and lapses in consciousness, he suggested bringing the boy to a friend of his that lived in the Scrubs, an exodeist scientist.

Leading the other three through the Scrubs, Niles brought them to the makeshift abode of his friend, Hopes Quixotically. Informing her of the fact that Val was a completely unknown species and was experiencing visions, Quix immediately became curious. Studying Val intensely, Quix theorized that he was undergoing 'Mnemonic Synthesis', a concept where two different sets of memories, their previous ones and their current ones, were merging and trying to join messily in their heads.

With no clear answers relating to their origins, Val declared that he would be venturing into the Umbra to find the temple that Prag had told him about. Ten was the first to join him, telling him that there was no way she was going to let him go alone. As the others joined in too, Niles told them that they would need a Vaulter if they were going to explore Architect ruins.

While Ten, Quix, and Note went shopping for new clothing for Val and Ten, Val and Niles met with the Vaulter at the Aris Baths. The Vaulter turned out to be two Vaulters, a team consisting of a nox named Isaak, and a vett'iri named Chellor. Realizing that Val wanted their help to break into an Architect ruin in the Umbra, the pair made their way to the exit, but Isaak stopped upon learning that Val was being hunted by the Cell. Vowing to protect the boy from the gene-splicers, Chellor had no choice but to come along.

Meeting back at one of the Mercantile's dockyards, the four of them waited for the other three to arrive. Upon seeing Quix, Chellor expressed outrage at the idea working alongside an exodeist, but Niles immediately resolved the issue by telling the vett'iri to either deal with it or find other work. With everyone ready for their departure, Niles introduced the crew to his ship, the Manta. Once they'd all boarded, the new crew of the Manta set out to find the temple hidden in the Umbra.

Personality
Val is intelligent and creative, but often insecure about himself due to the uncertainty surrounding his origins and not knowing his place in Spectra. He is slow to trust others entirely due to his lack of knowledge about society as a whole, unsure of who is trying to help him and who is trying to exploit him. He is, however, quite compassionate for those he cares about, going out of his way to comfort Ten whenever she needs reassurance. This can also be seen in how disturbed he was to discover the process of 'cleaving', believing that committing such an act against an individual was despicable.

Trivia
• Valentine's name comes from Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, epileptics, and beekeepers in catholicism.

• His first words after being released from the pod were, "Who are you?"