| Sabrino | |
| Fictional Character | |
| Darkness Fantasy< | |
| Appearance(s): | Into the Darkness through Out of the Darkness |
| Type of Appearance: | Direct POV |
| Nationality: | Algarve |
| Occupation: | Dragonflier, Nobleman |
| Spouse: | Gismonda |
Colonel the Count Sabrino was an Algarvian nobleman and military officer. A footsoldier in the Six Years' War, he continued serving the kingdom in the Derlavaian War as a leader of a dragonflyer squadron in the campaigns in Forthweg, Valmiera, Unkerlant, Yanina and the Land of the Ice People, and finally in the foredoomed last-ditch defense of Algarve itself.
He opposed the use of the "Special Magecraft" involving the cold-blooded mass killing of Kaunians herded into Algarve's "victory camps" whose true purpose was to kill them en masse so as to use their life energy to fuel sorcery in the war.
The count openly confronted King Mezentio over this issue several times during the war, as few other Algarvians dared to do - earning the king's intense displeasure and foreclosing his own chances of promotion. Sabrino started and ended the Derlavaian War a colonel.
Sabrino's foreboding on this issue was vindicated in the campaign at the land of the Ice People, where the killing of especially-imported Kaunians angered that strange land's imperfectly-understood powers, causing them to turn on the Alagavians. Only Sabrino and his dragon-riders survived of their country's expedition. This did nothing, however, to endear him to King Mezentio.
He was severely burned and wounded during the final months of the war, having his leg amputated, and witnessed the fall of King Mezentio's empire from a hospital bed.
Shortly after the end of the war Sabrino was approached by the Unkerlanter General Vatran, who had been sent by King Swemmel to ask the count if he would like to be the puppet King of West Algarve; hearing of his having opposed Mezentio, they assumed he might be amendable to being a puppet king. However, Sabrino refused out of hand. Soon after he was released from the hospital, and as the Unkerlanter occupation set in he exposed a fraud trying to swindle crippled soldiers into buying a "cure potion".
In personal life Sabrino - in line with the mores of his aristocratic millieu - saw no contradiction between having an affectionate though not passionate marriage and maintaing a mistress on whom he spent a lot of money. Far from resenting this situation, Sabrino's wife Gismonda actually warned him of his mistress Fronesia being unfaithful to him with another officer, Viscount Spinello. Later on, after Sabrino was wounded and crippled, his wife tended him most devotedly.
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