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Character guide · first on-page appearance: Dark Age
Who is Volsung Fá?
Volsung Fá is a huge Obsidian war leader who arrives with the Ascomanni and challenges Sefi’s rule. He claims a legendary ancestry and uses public brutality to make people submit.
Current status
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Alive
Deceased
Appearance and personality
Fá has white hair and wears heavy, spiked armor with a skull helmet. He displays mutilated trophies to frighten opponents. He recognizes Volga before she understands who he is or why he wants her.[1]
In private, Vagnar removes his voice amplifier, dresses in silk and talks about retiring. He has carefully built the terrifying identity his followers know as Fá.[2]
Attributes and abilities
Fá combines immense physical strength with protective armor and mechanical enhancements. Rifle fire fails against his armored advance, although gravity and bodies caught on the spikes can slow him. He commands followers through a mixture of conquest, ritual authority and promises aimed at existing resentments.[1]
Fá’s size, armor and poisoned weapons make him hard to fight head-on. Darrow prepares countermeasures and changes his movements to get past those advantages. When he starts losing, Fá calls for forbidden help and runs.
Fá also tries to control Volga by making her take part in atrocities. He wants shared guilt to bind her to him, but she resists when he demands another sacrifice.[3]
History
Book 5
Dark Age
Ephraim meets Fá at the Valkyrie Spires after Freihild’s death. Fá displays her partially eaten heart, maims Ozgard and challenges Sefi. He later attacks Pandora, recognizes Volga and cuts through the defenders.
Xenophon reveals that Fá is an agent of Atlas placed among the Ascomanni, changing the meaning of the apparent invasion. At the summit, however, the public performance presents a returning conqueror and father of Ragnar. Fá exploits resentment of the queens, defeats Sefi and kills her with a blood eagle before consuming her heart. His followers sack Olympia.
Ephraim’s explosive attack kills Xenophon but only wounds Fá. The war leader completes Ephraim’s killing and demands Volga as the price of releasing prisoners and leaving Republic territory. She submits while intending revenge. His claimed parentage would make her his granddaughter, but the claim is not independently established in this novel.[1]
Book 6
Light Bringer
Fá’s forces attack the Rim in coordination with Atlas. The private scenes expose Vagnar Hefga beneath the performance: a cultivated Gorgon who removes his voice amplifier, wears silk and hopes to retire under a new identity with Volga. Atlas identifies him as Ragnar’s genetic father and plans a staged death to conceal the operative’s escape.
Winning Volga’s love becomes another operation. Fá tries to implicate her through shared atrocities, demanding that she kill captives including Lyria. Darrow interrupts the intended sacrifice and challenges him through ashvar. Bound by the ritual authority on which his rule depends, Fá accepts.
When Darrow gains control of the duel, Fá calls for forbidden interference and flees. The ensuing pursuit makes his cowardice and use of followers as shields public. He eventually confesses his identity and service to Atlas before the people he has deceived. Volga kills him with the recovered gauntlet after Darrow refuses to grant him royal standing.
After Fá’s death, Volga must still win election and help negotiate a future for her people. The Covenant with the Rim addresses reparations, freedom and where the Obsidians will go.[4]
Relationships
Sefi
Fá uses resentment of the Obsidian queens and his claimed relationship to Ragnar to challenge Sefi. He kills her publicly, and his followers sack the society she has tried to build.[5]
Volga
Fá demands Volga after killing Sefi. She goes to him to secure the prisoners’ release, while intending to take revenge. His claim to be her grandfather has not yet been independently confirmed.[6]
Fá wants Volga to love him and tries to bind her to him through shared atrocities. After he confesses his deception, she rejects his plans for their future and kills him.[7]
Atlas au Raa
Xenophon reveals that Fá works for Atlas as part of a Gorgon operation.[8]
Atlas directs Fá’s invasion and plans to help him retire under a new identity. Fá calls him his brother and teacher. Darrow forces Fá to expose their operation in public.[9]
Ephraim ti Horn
Ephraim tries to stop the coup and kill Fá with an explosive attack. It kills Xenophon and wounds Fá, who then kills Ephraim.[10]
References
- Dark Age, chapters 45–46, 49, 75–77, 88, 91. ↩1 ↩2 ↩3
- Light Bringer, chapters 47, 49–50. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 49–50, 67–74, 76. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 36–37, 39–40, 43, 45, 47, 49–50, 67–69, 71–74, 76, 86, 89. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 45–46, 75–77. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 88, 91. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 49–50, 67–69, 76. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 75. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 47, 49–50, 76. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 75–77. ↩