The career soldier Aric is first mentioned in the archives as one of the co-conspirators in the so-called "Rescue Plot" that freed the Historian and disgraced the Good Doctor.

The present Writing is a transcript of Aric's testimony, either in deposition or in open court, given during the investigation into the affair. It follows the traditional format of a scriptor's "realization", wherein only the utterances of the subject of the interview are recorded — but, as in most realizations, the interlocutor's questions are not difficult to infer.

According to a problematic dictation found among the Last Writings of Egderus, it was Aric who carried out the assassination of the unnamed 8th Superius Frater of Mountain House, Egderus' mentor and predecessor in that office — the motivation of which remains a mystery.

There is also ambiguous evidence in [The] M[issionary]'s Writings implicating Aric as the man who broke his spirit and set him on the road to conversion.