Agu — Diary of a Dead Wizard

Agu is a Faceless One and former second-rank wizard whose divided soul survives as the administrators of Gorsa's library. After Saul transfers one fragment into the Dead Wizard's Diary and later reunites all three, Agu becomes his most consistent scholarly adviser, laboratory assistant, and operational companion.

Biography

The three administrators and the bargain for freedom

Agu first confronts Saul through the young administrator who manages Gorsa's public library. Trapped there for more than a century, he has divided his life experiences into young, middle-aged, and elderly segments so that each soul fragment can rest while the others work. The young fragment wants more than mere survival: he wants to leave the mist-bound library and eventually regain freedom. He offers Saul one hundred years of service, knowledge of every book, and access to secrets spanning multiple tower owners if Saul will smuggle him out without alerting Gorsa. (Chapters 233–234)

Saul accepts the bargain but cannot carry the wraith conventionally. He absorbs the young administrator and transfers him into a new black page of the Dead Wizard's Diary, where thought and speech consume finite soul energy. Faced with this harsher dependence, the administrator still chooses cooperation and introduces himself as Agu, a former second-rank wizard who abandoned his original name while being hunted. He then reveals that he is a Faceless One born from the Lightless Abyss and that “Agu” was the name given by the daughter of the last man whose identity he assumed. The later name Gustav identifies the reunited Faceless One behind all three librarians rather than a separate adviser. (Chapters 235–237, 535)

Black-page adviser and borrowed-body expedition

Inside the diary, Agu quickly turns captivity into a position of value. He answers questions about the tower, magical creatures, historical practices, items, and regions, while also learning the rules of Saul's mental realm. When Saul supplies energy, Agu can manifest as a semi-transparent soul body and observe experiments directly. His caution around unknown powers is matched by initiative: he protects Saul's position when other consciousnesses appear, identifies risks the younger wizard has overlooked, and treats precise knowledge as the strongest means of securing both his own continued existence and Saul's willingness to honor their agreement. (Chapters 236–237, 253–254, 284–314)

For the Elven Valley expedition, Saul places Agu and the other consciousnesses into prepared corpses. Agu adapts to the same-sex vessel, advises against destabilizing experiments before entering elf territory, and helps the party interpret the valley's magical environment. The borrowed body gives him independent movement and spellcasting, but it is temporary: a foreign soul and corpse reject one another over time. Agu nevertheless accepts dangerous assignments, helps Saul cross the Dead Season, and participates in a decoy plan that allows his vessel to appear lost. The journey changes him from a voice in a book into a field companion whose judgment can affect Saul's immediate survival. (Chapters 355–380)

Reunification and the Purity Tower

After Saul awakens the Purity Wizard Tower, the middle-aged and elderly librarians emerge from its preserved soul system. The middle-aged fragment still embodies the fear and avoidance associated with part of Agu's life, while the elderly one faces Saul more steadily. Both accept absorption into the diary, repairing the ragged black page and reassembling the life experiences divided long ago. The narration identifies the complete being as the Faceless One Gustav, but Saul and the household continue calling him Agu. Reintegration takes time, confirming that the three administrators were neither disguises nor interchangeable copies, but separated chronological portions of one soul. (Chapters 534–535)

Once restored, Agu becomes part of the Purity Tower's working core. He advises Saul on tower systems, helps Camus and Byron with pollution and formation problems, teaches newcomers, and assists with dissections and magical analysis. This work fits the aspiration he expressed in the library: to turn exhaustive reading into practical judgment. It also creates a new kind of belonging. Rather than serving an impersonal library prison, he helps build a place where his memory, research discipline, and concern for other soul bodies shape daily decisions. His relationship with Saul becomes less a desperate escape arrangement and more a sustained professional partnership. (Chapters 542–593, 609)

Keeper of Saul's household and independent purpose

Agu's loyalty is tested when Saul's experiments become dangerous even to his own companions. During Saul's involuntary opening of the doors within his body, Agu coordinates the response, restricts entry to the island, catches and seals expelled pollution, and works with Byron rather than abandoning the unstable wizard. His instinct is procedural: protect by controlling the environment, preserving observations, and assigning the right person to each task. After the crisis, he continues supervising Herman and other consciousnesses, helping refine their Soul Armaments while strengthening his own spiritual body, memory, and thinking capacity so that he can become Saul's private library. (Chapters 660–677)

Saul eventually reframes their old hundred-year bargain. He promises Agu independent travel as soon as his consciousness body is strong enough and offers the diary's recall as protection if he encounters danger. Agu does not immediately leave the household; greater freedom instead lets his service become a choice. He teaches, performs research, accompanies Saul and Keli, and uses his unusual experience of having divided life rather than personality to advise on other split souls. When Saul later experiments with merging black-page consciousnesses, Agu explains that the diary made his own reintegration possible, converting a traumatic division into expertise useful to others. (Chapters 677, 685–703, 713–794)

Iskaper, Fiona, and Meurich's cruelty

With the old restrictions loosened, Agu volunteers to accompany Byron to Iskaper and later hides while investigating Byron's capture. There he encounters Fiona, whom he recognizes as the girl he raised. Agu explains to Saul that Fiona's biological father had already drowned when he found the body; after taking that man's identity, he cared for the five-year-old child until she was fifteen. He then faked the father's death and fled because his pursuers had found him, believing distance was the only way to keep her alive. His earlier evasiveness is therefore rooted not only in fear for himself, but in a paternal attachment he has carried through death and imprisonment. (Chapters 953–958)

Fiona initially hunts Agu as a Faceless One and tries to extract information about his species. He refuses to call Saul for rescue because he wants a chance to reach the daughter he remembers. By using the private nickname “Nana” and recalling details of their ten years together, he convinces her that the father of her childhood was him, destabilizing the hatred the Stargate Council cultivated in her. Meurich then murders her in front of Agu and reveals a second manipulation: this Fiona is another Faceless One implanted with the original girl's memories, while Agu's daughter died after he fled. Whether every accusation about her killer is reliable remains uncertain, but the layered deception is enough to break Agu's renewed hope and drive him back into isolation inside the diary. (Chapters 972–976)

A home chosen over resurrection

Saul responds to Agu's devastation as an injury to a member of his household, not the loss of an expendable servant. He investigates the alleged half-elf killer through Byron, rejects Meurich's manipulation, and joins the Stargate program partly to gain leverage over the man who engineered Agu's torment. Agu remains withdrawn for a time, but the diary preserves him and Saul's other companions speak on his behalf. The aftermath demonstrates how far their relationship has moved beyond the original bargain: Saul changes strategy because Agu was harmed, while Agu's absence from the laboratory is felt as the loss of a trusted colleague rather than a missing tool. (Chapters 976–980)

Agu survives the final black tide as a consciousness, but he ultimately declines the resurrection that could return him to an independent body. Instead, he goes back to the small house where he once lived with his daughter and disappears there in an unknown year. The decision resolves the tension governing his entire existence. He first entered the diary to escape confinement and recover freedom, yet his final freedom is not another identity, another vessel, or endless service. It is the right to choose an ending tied to the one relationship that made the borrowed name Agu meaningful. (Chapter 1037)

Appearance and personality

Agu has no single permanent human appearance. In the tower library, his divided life is represented by young, middle-aged, and elderly male administrators. The young form can appear proud and determined but becomes visibly terrified when Saul absorbs him; the middle-aged form habitually cowers and avoids eye contact; the elderly form carries greater composure. Once transferred into the diary, Agu manifests as a semi-transparent male soul body whose shape reflects his retained self-image. In the field he uses male corpses as temporary vessels, so the visible face and body belong to the borrowed corpse rather than revealing a canonical Faceless One identity. After a Faceless One dies or loses an assumed identity, the body has no facial features, hair, or distinguishing contours. (Chapters 233–237, 253, 355, 534–535, 975)

His personality combines caution, scholarly pride, patience, and a deep need for autonomy. Long imprisonment makes him quick to assess danger and initially willing to accept formal service as the price of escape. Once secure, he is diligent rather than passive: he volunteers warnings, organizes other consciousnesses, teaches, and studies constantly. His reserved manner conceals powerful attachments. He can accept the destruction of a borrowed vessel as part of Saul's plan, yet abandons tactical judgment when Fiona is killed, revealing that the paternal life represented by the name Agu remains central to him. His eventual refusal of resurrection is consistent with that private loyalty and his desire to make at least one choice no master can revise. (Chapters 234–237, 355–380, 660–677, 972–976, 1037)

Abilities

Faceless One nature and divided life

Faceless Ones originate in the Lightless Abyss, lack stable identities of their own, survive by replacing others, and can reproduce by self-division. Agu used that nature in life to assume the identity of Fiona's drowned father. He later divided his soul according to three periods of life experience, allowing the resulting administrators to alternate labor and rest without deliberately creating conflicting personalities. Separation still altered their behavior and made reunification difficult; only the diary's black-page mechanism successfully fused the complete set of memories back into one continuing consciousness. (Chapters 234, 237, 535, 703, 955)

Encyclopedic memory and magical analysis

More than a century in Gorsa's library leaves Agu able to recall its books, identify which texts are dangerous, assess outside claims, recognize items and locations, and explain tower history. After reunification, he expands this role through active research, aiming to become Saul's private library rather than merely repeat memorized passages. He assists with soul vessels, pollution, formations, body modification, magical anatomy, and experimental design. His greatest strength is synthesis: he can connect old records to an immediate problem, although incomplete information and phenomena beyond his former rank still limit the certainty of his conclusions. (Chapters 234–237, 294–314, 438–567, 662–703)

Diary-bound consciousness

As a black-page consciousness in the Dead Wizard's Diary, Agu can communicate through writing, manifest in Saul's mental realm, receive purified soul energy, and be recalled from danger. The diary preserves his identity and enables reintegration, but also imposes dependence: thinking and answering consume energy, Saul controls access to the page, and prolonged existence outside requires continued support. Once Saul relaxes those controls, Agu can travel separately while retaining the diary as an emergency return point. This combination gives him unusual persistence without making him fully resurrected or physically independent. (Chapters 235–237, 253–254, 535, 677, 703, 972)

Vessels, spellcasting, and research support

Agu's surviving true-wizard soul can enter a compatible corpse and use it as a temporary physical vessel. This permits movement, spellcasting, laboratory manipulation, and field assistance beyond what a page-bound voice can provide. Same-sex bodies reduce cognitive mismatch, but even compatible corpses eventually reject a foreign soul, and the vessel's magical capacity restricts the power Agu can express. He therefore favors support, analysis, formations, and controlled attacks over direct combat. Later Soul Armament work strengthens memory and spiritual cognition rather than turning him into a front-line specialist. (Chapters 355–380, 542–593, 660–677)

Relationships

Saul: Agu first treats Saul as the risky means of escaping Gorsa's library and agrees to a century of service. Saul preserves, reunites, and empowers him, then offers independent travel before the bargain expires. Agu becomes Saul's adviser and household organizer, while Saul later changes his Stargate strategy in response to Meurich's abuse of Agu. Their relationship develops from negotiated dependence into chosen loyalty and mutual regard. (Chapters 234–237, 253–254, 534–535, 660–703, 976–980)
Fiona: Fiona is the daughter of the drowned man whose identity Agu assumed. He raises her from five to fifteen and regards those years as genuine fatherhood, despite having entered her life through replacement. The adult Fiona he meets is later revealed to be another Faceless One carrying the dead girl's memories, but Agu's tenderness toward her remains real. His final return to their old home shows that this relationship defines the name and identity he chooses to keep. (Chapters 237, 955–958, 972–976, 1037)
Gorsa: A third-rank wizard of Gorsa's family kills Agu in life, after which his soul becomes an eternal library servant. Whether Gorsa personally arranged every stage is not established, but the tower preserves and confines Agu's three fragments for more than a century. Saul's theft of the young fragment and later control of the Purity Tower finally break that institutional captivity. (Chapters 234, 237, 534–535)
Byron: Agu and Byron work together on Purity Tower research, pollution control, and Saul's dangerous advancement experiments. Later, Agu voluntarily accompanies Byron to Iskaper and helps investigate the Stargate Council until Byron is separated from him. Their partnership relies on complementary strengths: Byron supplies physical experimentation and field endurance, while Agu supplies memory, magical interpretation, and logistical caution. (Chapters 609, 662–665, 916, 953–965)
Herman: Agu helps stabilize the newly preserved Herman, works beside him in borrowed vessels, and later supervises his Soul Armament revisions. Both are diary-bound consciousnesses dependent on Saul, but Agu usually assumes the coordinating and scholarly role while Herman handles speed, errands, and practical assistance. (Chapters 253–254, 284–314, 355–380, 587–593, 660–677)
Meurich: Meurich weaponizes Agu's paternal attachment by allowing a seeming reconciliation with Fiona, killing her, and then revealing the identity and memory manipulation behind her life. The cruelty produces no reliable resolution of the original daughter's murder; its immediate result is Agu's collapse and Saul's determination to undermine Meurich's plans. (Chapters 972–980)