Glück

A middle-aged man with light hair and bangs split evenly across his brow, Glück had thick eyebrows set above narrow eyes, and the years gradually etched wrinkles into the corners and then the whole of his face. He generally wore a gray formal suit with a scarf draped at the chest over a dark undershirt, light trousers, and a cigarette pack tucked in a pocket. After his daughter's death he traded these for darker garments.

Glück was a man of formidable composure and iron resolve, unshaken even with a Sage of Destruction's blade at his throat. For thirty years he lived beside a creature who only feigned obedience for its own amusement, and he never once let it see his fear. He held a cynical view of people, telling Macht that a being innocent of good and evil lived a happier existence than any human, yet at his core he remained an idealist bent on rebuilding Weise into a city worthy of its people, in honor of his dead son. Cunning and politically seasoned, he was willing to stoop to assassination to clear his path, and he recruited a powerful demon with full awareness of the danger. He still found room for genuine care, looking after the grieving boy Denken and counting Macht, of all beings, an irreplaceable partner in crime; though the bracelet gave him the power to command the demon, he let Macht pursue the experiment that doomed them both. He favored tobacco and, by Macht's account, a good cup of tea.

Glück came to Weise, the refuge of nobles who had lost out in the capital, with his wife and son, and took the title of feudal lord in name while a rival house held the real power. Corruption ran rampant and citizens starved, but he stayed his hand until his son publicly pressed the other nobles to mend their ways, an appeal that got the young man murdered and dressed up as a suicide. The loss hardened Glück's purpose. On a night journey home his carriage was set upon by Macht, who cut down his guards; offered the blade, Glück calmly asked for a last cigarette, and the demon's curiosity was piqued. Macht sought to understand guilt and malice, and Glück, claiming deep acquaintance with both, struck a bargain: he would school the demon in those feelings if it served him and destroyed his enemies. Macht slaughtered the ruling family, and Weise fell into Glück's hands.

Presenting the demon as his house mage once the Demon King had fallen, Glück leaned on Macht's gift for deceit to win the other nobles' loyalty and on its power to drive off the army the Demon King had left behind. He set Macht to tutor his orphaned relative Denken, channeling the boy's grief and hatred into magic; Denken matured into a capable imperial mage and married Glück's daughter, Lektüre, only for her frail health to claim her young and drive him away in mourning. Left to grow old with none but the demon for company, Glück visited his daughter's grave nearly every day. When Macht at last resolved to destroy everything in pursuit of the emotions it chased, Glück accepted it, asked for one final cigarette, and admitted he had long expected such a betrayal. Calling the demon at once a magnificent accomplice and an irredeemable monster destined to answer for it all one day, he was turned to gold along with the whole of Weise.