Freed to win a good death, Valdir guides Virginia through Phobos's filth and accepts a place under the Howler banner rather than return to shame or imprisonment.
Valdir the Unshorn is an Alltribe Obsidian whom the Republic imprisoned on Phobos for conspicuous treason. His fierce, unreturned devotion to Darrow and his bitterness after a political pairing with Sefi the Quiet left him convinced he was spiritually dead when Virginia found him in his cell.
During Bastion One's collapse, Virginia au Augustus frees Valdir and sixty-three Obsidian prisoners by offering them the choice of liberty or a good death. He teaches their attack force the Rat War's methods of terror and spends most of it to smash the Society cordon around Virginia's wounded Lions. Eleven braves survive, with Valdir freshly flayed across the chest.
He leads those survivors down the sanitation route and into the hydroponic levels, treating their foul escape with the rough humor of soldiers who know grief can wait until they are safe. He explains that his braves smile now because their dead would smile to see them alive, and will mourn when there is time. At the Hollows he rejects another return to passivity, accepting Screwface's place for him in the empty Howler Den. He tells Virginia he will not be ashamed to fight under that standard.
Taller and younger than Darrow, Valdir is a troublingly handsome, heavily muscled Obsidian with deep surly eyes, gaunt freckled cheeks, ropelike muscles, and dense tattoos. His once-famous valor tail is shaved away and his chest bears fresh battle wounds.
Valdir is a dangerous former traitor whose choice to fight beneath the Howler banner gives Mars a small, ferocious band exactly when it needs one.