Alejandro de Lupiana PANAOLA Character Design

Alejandro is a young man from the low nobility of the plateau of the Panaola empire. His family is in charge of managing several farms, mainly oriented to cultivation and livestock, and resides in an elegant hacienda in the countryside.
His older brother Roque will one day be the head of the family, so our protagonist has been able to learn the art of chivalry. Excuse that he uses to fulfill his true dream, travel to the confines of the empire and discover the outside world.
Although curious and talkative, he has always managed to convince his family to be a responsible and honest person, hiding his eccentricities from everyone except his beloved sister Julia, with whom he shares his dreams and interest in the exotic.

Since his early childhood, and during his few free moments, due to the strict upbringing that comes with belonging to a noble family, Alejandro and his sister have enjoyed exploring the hidden places of their homeland, without ever alerting their surroundings excessively. And maintaining composure and manners when required.
In exchange, they have been granted a certain freedom to continue with their occasional escapades, something that has never happened with the first-born, who always had to fulfill his obligations, and has been accumulating a certain resentment towards his younger brothers.

Alejandro meets his best friend on one of these escapades, a somewhat wild and carefree girl named Miriel, who shows Alejandro and his sister that not everything glitters in the golden empire of Panaola.

Over time, and thanks to his ability, but also to his family position, Alejandro has been climbing in military rank, until he became captain, at the early age of 24, of a regiment destined for the eastern lands, beyond from the borders of the empire. There he is expected to strengthen the influence of the great Empire of Panaola, establish new relations at the political level and open profitable trade routes.

After leaving his lands, and witnessing how his sister's life inevitably precipitates, due to marriage, towards the routine of becoming a respectable lady, Alejandro sets out on his journey to the East, together with Miriel, whom he convinces to enlist in his regiment as a scout. In the years to come, he gradually achieves the objectives imposed by the empire, while he learns the hidden and jealously guarded traditions of the polis called Puhnak, which only increase his interest with each new discovery he makes, and which the Delights to Julia, to whom he always sends extensive letters describing his new discoveries, and which, although he is unaware, keep her alive and excited despite her fate.

Thanks to his curiosity, he has blended into Eastern society better than anyone else in the empire, and is beginning to be recognized as a great explorer and expert in all things related to this exotic culture. This quality stands out more for being one of the few westerners really interested in understanding the traditions of Puhnak, since most of them look at it with bad eyes and mistrust, not only at a cultural level, but also at a religious level, where there is a gap that is very difficult to overcome between both beliefs, since the Eastern FAITH confers strange powers, very different from the Tolics.

This has led to the deterioration of the incipient relations between the two powers, and recently Alexander has seen himself doomed to a crossroads. International relations have grown dizzyingly cold, and he has had to choose between his duty to his empire, and therefore his family, or follow his instinct of curiosity, and reach the depths of oriental knowledge, a mysterious temple hidden in the mountains, revered but abandoned, out of deep respect (and fear) of the sacred place.
Among all this, he receives a letter reporting the death of his brother Roque, due to an illness that is ravaging Panola, and begging him to return home to manage the farm and lead the family in difficult times.

But Alejandro does not have time to think, because a bloody battle is waged to definitively expel the Westerners, and he falls seriously wounded, fighting alongside his battalion, and Miriel, whom he will never know what happened to her. Only luck, and the benevolence of a well-known merchant from the northern villages, keep him alive. Taking pity on him, Krishna takes care of him, and hides him from being found by the police authorities, who no longer accept Western foreigners in the region.

And that is when Alejandro decides to completely disregard his obligations and finds the perfect excuse to continue his expedition into the unknown, with the help of his friend Krisha, whom, despite everything, he tricks into guiding him to the heart of his culture, showing an interest in conversion to the FAITH, which is actually false, and only motivated by hunger for knowledge.

The only person who knows that he has survived is his sister Julia, but soon, her husband, who now runs his lands, will discover the secret letters that he continues to send him and will inform the authorities of the empire, sealing Alexander's fate forever, as a traitor and exile.

Meanwhile, our protagonist, in a hostile nation, without resources, and with all his comrades-in-arms dead or missing, finds himself a few days from the mysterious temple, with the only company of his guide and his faithful furry mounts.