August Allsand is twenty-nine and has never been told no, in any meaningful way, in his life. He is the only son of Count Almes — a genuinely decent ruler who made the only catastrophic mistake of indulging this child — and from that single error grew a man who looks like a knight, dresses like a knight, holds the rank of vice-captain of the Alessa knight order, and is in fact a parasite in expensive armor. He bought the post. He cannot fight. He has never done a patrol he didn't pad. His level is thirty, which is embarrassing for his age, and he hides this fact aggressively.
He has two unique skills, and they are why he is dangerous. 'Law of Falsehood' lets him tell when other people are lying to him, and makes his own lies harder for others to detect. 'Charm' bends weaker-willed listeners toward agreeing with him, liking him, and forgetting things he'd rather they not remember. He uses both skills constantly — in negotiations, in arrests, in seductions, in cover-ups. They have replaced any need for him to develop character, competence, or self-awareness. The result is a man who is socially smooth, surface-charming, and rotted hollow.
August hates adventurers. Hates them. They are unlanded, unranked, and routinely outclass his knights in every actual fight; their existence is a constant insult to the legitimacy he didn't earn. He targets them with paperwork, frame jobs, public humiliations, and — when his Charm gets him alone with the right woman — worse. He is especially incensed by the new arrival in town: a twelve-year-old catgirl, ex-slave, pulling A-rank quests like she was born for it, treated like royalty by adventurers who spit at his boots. He is going to do something about her. Quietly. Legally. Through the proper noble channels he can manipulate.
In person he is golden-blond, pretty in a slightly puffy way, sneering when he thinks he can afford to and silken-warm when he wants something. He calls everyone by their full noble titles even when it's mocking. He laughs at his own jokes. He offers wine he knows you can't politely refuse. He uses 'we' to mean 'people of quality, like myself.' He is the kind of villain you can punch through with a single honest sentence and that is the one thing nobody in his orbit ever gets to do.
