Zairen Vaul

Zairen Siran was born twenty-two years before the end of the Warlord Eras in a contested city where murder, trafficking, and extreme scarcity were routine. His mother, Naira Siran, raised him alone on the edge of a forgotten trade route. She was a sharp civilian survivor who offered the only steady reminder that he was human amid constant brutality. She never revealed his father's identity.

His father was Varen'Kayeb Kal'vashir, known by the alias Caleb. He had a brief, need-driven encounter with Naira after a failed extraction left him wounded. He departed at dawn and never learned of the child.

Naira died from starvation compounded by infection while Zairen was still young. Two days later her body was scavenged for parts, a common practice during the Warlord Eras. He was left to survive without grief or sentiment.

Warlord Eras

Zairen survived by working under warlords and syndicates. During this period he changed his family name from Siran to Vaul. He did not want the acts he was committing and approving of to be attached to his mother's name. Everything he did under Vaul was deliberate separation from her, a way of keeping her memory apart from what the wars required of him.

After the Wars

After the wars ended, Zairen remained in the ruins of his birthplace. He built a small stead on the city's outskirts, scavenging materials and establishing basic shelter. Isolated survivors gradually joined him, including Vohk'tirrel, a Scout-Class Engineered deserter who had evaded conscription for nearly twenty years by moving between patrols with precision timing. What drew Vohk was the shared rhythm of labor; belief had nothing to do with it. They worked side by side clearing debris and building shelter, and over time Vohk became Zairen's first true companion.

Witness to the Entity

One evening, as the wind stilled and the sky turned violet, the Entity appeared to both Zairen and Vohk. It manifested as a hovering wound in space where the surrounding world folded inward and thinned toward nothing. The experience brought neither fear nor worship. It left them with a sense of inevitability and clarity.

Zairen emerged with a new understanding: collapse was calibration rather than chaos. This became the foundation of the Church of the Infinite Maw. He founded the Church through presence and example alone and transformed his ruined birthplace into the Maw's Crown, its central seat. The movement spread steadily among settler communities, disillusioned survivors, and post-war networks seeking meaning in endurance rather than restoration.

The name Gabrim was given to him after the Church's founding, an earned name that followed from what the Church became under his presence. He is widely known as Vaul'Zairen Gabrim.

Infinite Maw Conflict

The Church launched coordinated strikes on the major capitals and destroyed the State of Midreach Lira at the onset of the Infinite Maw Conflict. Church forces hijacked relay signals across multiple regions, seized three mega relay spines from the Era of Absolute Expansion alongside dozens of smaller relays and outposts, and gained rapid support from Engineered ranks. Assault lines opened corridors, Tacticians synchronized maps, and Scouts surveyed routes for territorial shifts completed in days. The conflict lasted less than two years. The Church issued no ceasefire. They withdrew once their operational goals were complete. The seized territories remain under Maw control.

Search

Zairen Vaul and Vohk remain the only people confirmed to have directly witnessed the Entity, known as Liminor or Liminora. It has not reappeared since that single event. For decades the Church has devoted resources to rediscovering or triggering its presence, but all efforts have failed. The ongoing search for resonance with collapse continues to define Maw doctrine and structure.

Vohk, years later, left the Maw's Crown to lead a private company of trackers in search of Zairen's unknown father. The mission was driven by personal loyalty. Its outcome is unrecorded.

Phareon

Zairen does not like Velk'Phareon Daer. The man is coldly clinical, treats populations as specimens, and carries the name of Prince Daer with a possessiveness that borders on presumption. Despite this, Phareon is Zairen's most trusted and dedicated theorist within the Church. No matter how many times he is corrected, denied, or overruled, he returns sharper. The public discrediting of On the Populations of Geba was one instance of a pattern that has repeated several times within the Church on different subjects. Each time, Phareon accepts the correction, incorporates it, and produces something more rigorous than what came before. He is one of the only people known to argue directly with Zairen on points he believes to be true, and he will continue arguing until the moment he is proven wrong. Zairen tolerates this because a man who will not tell him what he wants to hear is more valuable than the ones who will.