The year is 4714. Alonso is younger than he looks, which is not a compliment, and bitterer than most, even of his apparent age. The day his village burned and parents died set him on a shaky path, taking what jobs he could afford, struggling with travel permits and bribes. The eye became infected, and is now glass; the source of his nickname, and a constant reminder of his loss. Ramir joined with the Hellknights that eventually liberated the ruins from Florena the Incandescent; his last letter to Alonso excitedly described a trial he was looking forward to, and Alonso assumes the lack of future letters meant that Ramir had failed.

For the last eight years he has worked at a clerk at the Deepmar Prison Colony, shifting between the island itself and offices in Vyre. With the change in leadership, many of the political prisoners are set free, but the process is gradual and involves careful investigation of records scattered across Cheliax. When the convention is announced, the people of Vyre treat it with some suspicion, like anything else from the Empire. They have their own governance, and it seems unlikely that the Chelish nobility would care for the instructions of any true Vyrish citizen, and so the consensus is that someone practiced in dealing with Cheliax (that is to say, someone from the colony) should go. Alonso is picked, and decides to suffer this indignity like the many others life has thrown at him.