Magister Julevno is the present day Magister Patriarch to the Celestial Order of the Empire. He was born in Nuln, the son of an actress and (or so his mother thinks) a mercenary from somewhere in Ostland. Julevno never once saw his father as he was growing up, nor, for that matter, did his mother. Julevno was twelve years old when he started to have visions, flashes of things that would then happen hours, days, and even weeks later. By his fifteenth year these visions came to him constantly in such a blur that his mother thought him mad. It is a testament to the boy's strength of mind that he was not.[1a]
As far as his mother was concerned, Julevno had been more than enough trouble to her for the last fifteen years and she believed her acting career had taken its toll because of him. Seeing her chance for a new start without her nuisance son, she contacted the local workhouse and asked them to pick up the "lunatic" boy. But through his visions Julevno saw what was to happen, and he fled his mother and Nuln altogether, living as a beggar in the small towns and villages beyond the city.[1a]
Around that time Julevno began to have a new vision, only this one repeated itself time and again. In his dreams both waking and asleep, Julevno kept seeing a massive blue building with sixteen glorious spires. At that point he didn't understand its relevance, but it was calling to him. And the city of Altdorf was where it was calling from.[1a]
It was a rainy autumn day when Julevno finally stumbled through the streets of Altdorf towards its great center. Though no one around him seemed to pay them one glance, Julevno could not take his eyes from the glistening blue towers that reached so high above the city; the same towers he had seen in his dreams. By the time he reached the College's great door, Julevno could barely walk, he was so tired and malnourished from walking nearly non-stop all the way from Nuln. As he reached the first step leading to the door his legs finally buckled and he collapsed. At that exact moment the door ahead of him opened, and a tall man with a plaited white beard and brilliant blue eyes stepped out.[1a]
"Ah there you are." He said, "We've been expecting you."[1a]
Suffice to say Julevno was accepted into the Celestial Order. His natural affinity for Azyr, the Blue Wind, was truly exceptional. He saw visions of the future in his head without even needing to gaze into the heavens or use any equipment at all. The Magisters could not turn him away.[1a]
Julevno was a fast study, and he rose to the position of Magister in just thirteen years (a very short time for the Celestial Order), and at twenty-nine he was the youngest fully accepted Astromancer in living memory. He was fifty when he caught his first glimpse of Archaon and the Invasion he would lead against the Empire, and just a year later he saw a vision of the death of the then Patriarch of his Order, Stern Glanzend. When he took his worry to the Patriarch, he found that the ancient Astromancer already knew. He had seen his own death many times before, and he was ready to face it.[1a]
Before he left for Middenheim, Glanzend had told Julevno that he was to be the new Patriarch. All the Lord Magisters of the Order had foreseen it. Though he had never spoken of it, Julevno had seen this as well and could not refuse. Since that day he has wondered many times about how the Patriarchs of his Order are chosen. The Lord Magisters foresee who from amongst their number it will be and then simply formalise things by electing that person.[1a]
But if they had not seen him, Julevno sometimes muses, would they have elected him? Or conversely, perhaps they only elected him because they had seen him, and was this not a paradox? A self-fulfilling prophecy? Which came first, the vision that decides the Patriarch, or the would-be Patriarch’s own destiny that informs the vision? Was it Fate or some other agency that decided who would become the Patriarch of the Astromancers?[1a]
These troubling thoughts have caused Magister Patriarch Julevno many sleepless nights.[1a]