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Biography
Rafael Rodiev was born in Mansenwill — a small eastern settlement on the edge of the desert trade routes. It was a harsh place where people lived among caravans, scarcity of resources, and the constant need to rely only on themselves. It was there that Rafael grew into a man who was not used to waiting for rescue from outside.
In his youth Rafael held no high title and did not belong to an ancient ruling house. His influence grew gradually: he knew how to make decisions, keep his composure, and take responsibility when it was needed. In Mansenwill people listened to him because he knew how to act. From his early years Rathan was at his side — his closest comrade and friend, his right hand, and one of the few people he could trust.
The turning point was Rafael's meeting with Aldeviy. Aldeviy came to Mansenwill as the representative of a force that understood the scale of Namibius's threat far more deeply than ordinary city councils and military commanders. He saw in Rafael not merely a local leader, but a man capable of becoming the center of the resistance.
After his conversation with Aldeviy, Rafael made one of his first hard decisions: he left Mansenwill and set out for the coastal city of Ammat to seek allies across the sea. Aldeviy and Rathan stayed in the city to prepare it for defense against Namibius's forces, while Rafael set off on his journey.
Ammat became a hub in Vorto where resistance to Namibius had not yet faded; he knew this and sent his vast army to subdue the city. Aruas's army pressed on relentlessly. Aldeviy and Rathan understood that the city could not hold forever. Everything depended on whether Rafael would return in time with a real force or not.
Rafael returned to Ammat no longer alone. He brought united bands of allies — an army of mages, gamds, and titans. The very force that became the turning point of the war. He returned as the man around whom a true resistance to Namibius had finally taken shape.
At Ammat, Rafael did not simply reinforce the defense. He changed the very course of the battle. Mages broke the suppression lines, gamds drove into the enemy's positions, titans shattered heavy formations, and allied bands closed the gaps in the front. Rafael commanded not from a safe hall, but among his own, seeing the cost of every decision. He was not an infallible general. He was a man who learned quickly on the battlefield. The defense of Ammat turned into a counterstrike. For the first time, Aruas's forces met not scattered defenders, but a united army that knew how to fight back. The victory at Ammat became the first major defeat of Namibius that could not be written off as chance. The city held, but the point was not even in its walls. The Battle of Ammat proved that Namibius could be stopped.
After Ammat, Rafael's name began to spread across Vorto. To some he became a liberator, to others — a dangerous new center of power, and to still others — the man who did the impossible.
The victory at Ammat became the beginning of the Liberation War. The alliance Rafael had gathered began to grow. Cities and settlements that had once thought only of their own survival began to join the common resistance.
The Liberation War ended in Namibius's defeat. But victory did not bring an easy peace. In its wake remained ruined cities, displaced peoples, broken lines of power, the fear of the old evil's return, and far too many people who no longer knew where to go. It was out of this necessity that Rodia was born.
After the war Rafael returned to Mansenwill no longer as an old desert settlement, but as the future symbol of Rodia. On the site of the city ruined by war, with the help of new magical technologies, he began to build a vast flying city that would become the heart and capital of the new state. It came to hold fortified terraces, airborne platforms, magical lift nodes, workshops, war archives, council halls, and quarters for those who had lost their homes.
In the postwar years, Rafael's personal life was bound to Ariel, whom he had met in the Yonarian lands, and it was Ariel who taught him magic. The birth of Iriaz became for Rafael a symbol of the future for which he had endured the Liberation War. Iriaz was not only his son, but the heir of the new Rodia. His presentation was meant to be a sign that the time of Namibius lay behind, that the peoples of Vorto had endured, and that the world had a future ahead.
But during the presentation of Iriaz, followers of Namibius, seeking to kill the heir, accidentally cast him and his father into our world, to Earth.
In the earthly world, Rafael grew into a public figure tied to Reed Industries. His Earth-side story was built around energy, technology, the study of light, and the soliton cassette — an idea that in time became the foundation of new energy systems. But all of this was merely a formal explanation for the technologies he had brought from Rodia.
Reed Industries quickly became the largest corporation in the world and was, for Rafael, not just a business but an earthly way to keep doing what he had done in Vorto: to unite the world and help people.