Martus Makfleye d'Phiarlan
Martus and his pixie companion Tok the Brownie are perhaps the most famous explorers in the history of Eberron. Although Martus did travel extensively both as a skilled troubadour and as a scion of House Phiarlan, many historians are quick to point out that he was not as well-traveled as several other notable scholars nor were his observations particularly insightful or, in some cases, even accurate. However, the characteristic Makfleye had that those others did not was that he was highly entertaining. His three-volume travelog, Onward to the Past: My Adventures in Eberron, was wildly popular in the Five Nations and is still in wide circulation today. First printings are highly sought and ludicrously valuable since few copies survived the ravages of decades of war. Indeed, Martus himself is presumed to have fallen victim to the Last War: He was in residence at the Cyran headquarters of House Phiarlan on The Day of Mourning.
In one of Martus' more entertaining yarns, he claims to have flown a miniature airship into a temporal vortex and traveled back in time some 400 years. There, he met both his mother and his father in their eras of elven adolescence. Forced to fight off his father's amorous advances and bolster his poet mother's self-confidence, Martus amusingly claimed not only to have ensured his own existence but to have saved House Phiarlan from certain ruin by providing them with a treasure trove of popular poems and songs that had not yet been written. Like many of his adventures, the veracity of this tale (which inspired the now famous title Onward to the Past) is questionable at best. However, it must be admitted that House Phiarlan did experience an unprecedented golden age of creativity and wealth just after Martus claims to have made his journey. Even so, such flimsy evidence is far from fact, and Makfleye's accounts remain firmly wedged in the category of "fiction" by all serious historians.
Physical Description
Apparel & Accessories
Although he wore a variety of colors and styles, Martus became well known for his orange troubadour's vest, probably because he was wearing it in the "author's image" rendering which accompanied each copy of his first book.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
It's noteworthy that Makfleye's books contain detailed descriptions of territories that did not exist at the time of his death. Many of his tales refer to circumstances that were established by the Treaty of Thronhold, which was signed nearly a year after the Mourning. Even more peculiar, these references exist in all known copies of his books, even those printed decades ago. Readers insist that there were no such anachronistic passages in the original versions, yet they are there now and no one seems entirely sure when or how they appeared. This phenomenon, while quite vexing to some, has made the books more popular than ever. The increased demand has been a boon to House Phiarlan at the precise time they need it the most.
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