First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1
Faucius Golden Shield, the Golden King, ruled from The Dread Fortress until his own brother cut him down. He is the father of the Grandmaster, and his murder on the Night of the Long Shadow set off everything that followed: the reign of The Shadow King, Elusia’s exile, and her eventual return in Skypiercer. He never fights on screen and has no lines. Everything we know about him comes from the night he died and from the people who remember him, not always kindly.
Story
The Night of the Long Shadow
Faucius’s story opens with its ending. In a flashback at the start of Skypiercer Part 1, 300 years before the main tale, screams echo through the Dread Fortress that “the Golden King is dead.” Faucius had been assassinated in his own throne room. The killer was his brother Agdrel, Elusia’s uncle, who seized the realm that night and became the Shadow King.
The king had planned for the worst. When mercenaries burst into young Elusia’s chambers, the Knights of Chaos cut them down. Elusia grabbed an obsidian dagger that had belonged to her grandfather, a gift from her father. Then Sir Boros, a large orc in black and red armor, told her this was “the king’s plan” and escorted her to the Ceremonial Chamber. There she drank a bowl of viscous gold liquid. The knights slit their own throats and stayed standing until every drop of their blood was spilled, and that blood opened a portal beneath her. Leaving the Void is extremely difficult, and Faucius’s last plan cost the lives of his knights. It worked: his daughter escaped to the distant realm of Cor’thun.
Remembered
Faucius stays dead, but he hangs over the rest of Skypiercer. When Elusia meets Vythorn, later The Arbiter, he admits that he once served her father. He also tells her that the coup was not universally mourned: “many in the realm welcomed the change. They found your father to be weak and greedy.”
In Skypiercer Part 3 (finale), Agdrel has his own unflattering memories of his brother. He sneers that Faucius was “always counting his coins” and “hiding behind his golden shield in battle.” The Shadow King goes further and claims he was more of a father to Elusia than Faucius ever was, since he was the one who raised her. Elusia does not paint her father as a warrior either. In her memory, he had extravagant taste and no taste for the sword.
Personality and Abilities
By every account, Faucius was a king of gold rather than steel. His title, his shield and his reputation all point to wealth, and his critics called him greedy and weak. His own daughter remembered a man who loved finery and had little interest in swordplay. The shield in his name was apparently something he fought behind, at least according to the brother who murdered him.
Whatever his faults, he was not careless. He prepared a way out for his daughter before the knives came, and he commanded enough loyalty that the Knights of Chaos gave their lives to carry it out. He also gave Elusia the obsidian dagger that had belonged to her grandfather, which she grabbed on the night he died.
Relationships
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: his daughter, whose escape he planned and who remembered him as extravagant and no swordsman.
- The Shadow King: his brother Agdrel, who murdered him, took his throne, raised his daughter, and also loved Faucius’s wife.
- The Arbiter: Vythorn served Faucius before the coup.
- Knights of Chaos: his loyal knights, who carried out “the king’s plan” and sacrificed themselves to send Elusia out of the Void.