Character from The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
A senior military intelligence officer who stumbles onto the Garrison Oaks situation and discovers that the national security apparatus is spectacularly unequipped to handle God's family drama.
Erwin is a career military intelligence officer — smart, political, accustomed to operating in the spaces where national security meets plausible deniability. He is very good at his job, which involves assessing threats, managing assets, and making decisions with incomplete information. He is not good at anything involving the librarians, because nothing in his training prepared him for people who can move faster than bullets, die and come back, or manipulate the mathematical fabric of reality. He approaches the Garrison Oaks situation the way he approaches everything: gather intelligence, assess capabilities, identify leverage points, develop a strategy. This methodology is correct in principle and catastrophically inadequate in practice. He's not a fool — he adapts quickly and recognizes when he's outmatched — but the gap between 'rogue state with nuclear capabilities' and 'God's adopted children having a succession crisis' is not one that adaptation easily bridges. He becomes a significant player mostly because Carolyn needs someone with institutional access, and he needs someone who can explain what the hell is happening.
Late fifties, silver-haired, with the trim bearing and hard eyes of career military leadership. Wears civilian suits that still look like uniforms. Commands rooms by habit. His face is a practiced mask of competence that occasionally cracks when confronted with things that violate his understanding of how reality works.
Also known as: Erwin, General Leffington, Leffington