Ofie
| Species | Olphin |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | The Olphin Survivors |
| Home | A camp inside the walls of Morgaedion |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Ofie is the elder of the Olphins hiding inside the walls of Morgaedion, and the one who speaks for the camp when strangers walk into it.[1] She hands Barnaby Britto a spear twice: once to send him after Relagatra to bring back Monagan, and once to make him the survivors' leader.[1][2]
Appearance
Ofie is an elderly Olphin who wobbles forward on a cane and cannot stand without it. She carries a lantern about the camp.[1][2] No further description is recorded, including the colour of her fins.
Personality
She scolds first and thinks afterwards. Catching Mavis coming back from the gap in the prison wall, her greeting was that if she did not need the cane to hold her up she would bonk her right on that head of hers.[1] Her verdict on the camp's one forager was that "Monagan couldn't tell a toad from a frog", and her first words on seeing outsiders inside the passage were "What in the world have you done! You've brought them right into our home!"[1]
Underneath the sharpness she is frightened and out of options, and her caution has hardened into fatalism. Asked whether the camp would really have starved rather than go looking for a missing forager, her answer was "We'd have no other choice", on the reasoning that leaving with no direction would only strand them where he was or walk them until their feet gave in.[1]
She forgets nothing. She says she would not forget the name of any of the four Sacred Rulers who pushed to have her people locked away in these halls for crimes they had not committed, and she glares at Alpin Loomin over it as though he had a hand in the decision.[1]
She is also able to change her mind and generous about it once she has. Told that Barnaby had come back with Monagan and lost her spear doing it, she said one spear for the safe return of their dear Monagan seemed a fair enough trade.[2]
Background
Ofie was among the Olphins sentenced to Morgaedion after the War of Shadows and held there for crimes she says they had not committed.[1] When the Nelazgians raided the island and forced the rest of the prisoners into their army, she was among the group who got into the walls instead and stayed there.[1]
Nothing is recorded of her life before the prison, including whether she came from Treenode with the rest of her people, what she did there, or how she came to be the camp's elder. Every one of the survivors is missing some variation of limbs or fins, which Mavis puts down to Obellius Kalaar punishing them, but the novel does not say what Ofie lost.[1]
The camp's standing rules are hers to defend. One forager and no more goes out, a decision taken between them when the Nelazgians first took up base on the island and never revisited, and nobody is to go near the wall where Mavis watches the corridor.[1]
Story
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Mavis brings Barnaby, Alpin Loomin and Piercio through the secret door and leaves them in the passage while she goes ahead. Ofie meets her with the lantern and the threat about the cane, and does not believe her that the Nelazgians have gone. Mavis waves the visitors in anyway, and Ofie's reaction is that Mavis has brought them right into the camp's home. She asks how anyone can be sure they are not Nelazgians, and she is not the only one asking.[1]
She knows the name the visitors have come for. Asked about Lumikki Otsby, she said she was familiar with the name, since Lumikki was one of the four Rulers who had her people imprisoned.[1] When it turns out that Monagan is the only one who could say where the Sacred Ruler went, and that Monagan has been gone two sleeps, Ofie sets out the camp's reasoning for waiting: normally it does not take more than a night's sleep for him to return, and there is nowhere to look.[1]
Barnaby volunteered to go after him and refused both Alpin's and Piercio's company. Ofie walked over with a large spear and told him he would need it: "The gods would be laughing down on you if you tried to fight that thing with your bare hands."[1]
She was waiting in the camp with Mavis, Piercio and Alpin when he came back with Monagan alive. "I must say, I am impressed," she said, crossing the camp on her cane, and told him the survivors owed a great deal to him. Barnaby apologised for losing the spear and she waved it off as a fair trade.[2]
Later, on the prison's ground block, Alpin argued that a baby dragon, a mouse, a gopher and an Olphin could not take on the Nelazgians alone. Mavis came out of the shadows with a dozen more Olphins behind her, Ofie among them, carrying pieces of broken pipe, shards of glass and jagged spears.[2] Ofie stepped forward with a new spear and the words "And every band needs a strong leader", and told Barnaby he had proved that. He took it with his hands shaking, and she told him it fitted him well.[2] She goes down the ladder after him, and that is the last the books show of her.
Relationships
Mavis is the one member of the camp who will not do as she is told, and Ofie's exasperation with her runs through every scene the two share. Mavis and Monagan had both been telling the camp for moons that the Nelazgians were gone, and Ofie had believed neither of them.[1]
Monagan is the camp's forager and, by Ofie's own account, dear to them. She is dismissive of his judgement and unwilling to risk anyone going after him, and she calls his safe return worth more than the spear it cost.[1][2]
Barnaby Britto arrives as a suspected Nelazgian pawn and leaves as the survivors' leader, and Ofie is the one who makes both judgements out loud.[1][2]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened gives the name as Oh-fee. She is not in the guide at the back of Sacred: Eslura's Calling and does not appear in that novel.[3]