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Vilnius (Steve)
It's plainly obvious that Vilnius is the character that represents me in the story; and indeed there are many parallels. Vilnius spends too much time traveling, pursuing vain and often futile projects at far-flung corners of the Manlands. Perhaps that's overstating the case about myself, but it is more than a coincidence that I wrote this bio about myself (as well as numerous chapters of the book) while flying home after spending a week on the other side of the world. I hope that most of my adventures turn out better than Vilnius', but I have to admit that some of them don't.
Being the author of the book comes with some privileges. And so in addition to writing myself into the story in a critical fashion, I also took the liberty of introducing my alter-ego in the form of one of the other characters. But my alter-ego is entitled to a certain degree of privacy; and so I leave it to the reader to figure out which character I have in mind.