Valko Hans (IPA: /ˈvælkoʊ hænz/) was a noted musician and performer, and later court bard to Duke Fokspak of Thesion.

Born in Mevron, Valko was a highly unorthodox, progressive lute-player and pianist, whose outlandish and loud compositions led contemporaries to dismiss him as something of a childish "punk". Despite their criticism, he continued to lived in the "big city". It was in Mevron, formerly Mustavesi, where he did everything. He was burdened by debt, for he was inclined to drink, yet all the highborn ladies were said to love him. When they passed him in the street, every one of them would shout, "Come and perform for me, Valko!"

Thus, he was something of a "superstar", indisputably popular, and was thought to be so exalted because of his characteristic flair. A virtuoso, sometimes even named an irreverent "idol" by the priesthood, everyone would cry, "Come and play for me, Valko."

Oh oh oh.

Hey. It was around 180 AE, and it was in Mevron, that his letters of credit were summarily not accepted anymore, for the moneylenders took up against him. Whence his debts arose was well known to everyone - he was a "ladies' man", for ladies loved his disparaging designation of "punk".

He continued to be lauded as a "superstar", for he remained so popular, yet in truth he was too exalted - but it was precisely this that was his "flair". A renowned virtuoso, he was indeed a heretical idol, yet everybody still yells, even today, years after his death, "Come and play for me, Valko."

He was soon ostracised from Mevron for this rabble-rousing gibberish, with the joint priesthoods of the Okterians pressuring the Symbol to vote him into exile. Valko went on a brief world tour of eastern Lokren, performing all of his most well-received compositions, including "The Captain of the Watch", "Mevron Calling", "Lokrenny", and "The Sound of Cacophony".

He blithered aimlessly about Siladent Forest for a year or two before finding employment in the court of Duke Fokspak of Thesion, where he was commissioned to compose his most well-known ballad, "Rock me Amalaes". In the late 180s, he returned to Mevron and wrote the song "Coming Home (Lokrenny part II, six years later)".

Valko died in 198 AE, as the result of an unexpected fall from an expensive pleasure-boat that was sailing the waters of the Thalas Sea off Mevron. The pretentious yacht, the Wanker, collided with a public ferry. Valko, dining and drinking with the aristocrats on board, was smacked in the face by a silver platter when a servant was thrown into him by the force of the collision, causing Valko to swoon and tumble over the rail, whereupon he was eaten and subsequently vomited up by an enormous toothsome sea-beast. His final successful composition, "Out of the Shark", was later found in his squalid rat-nest of a home and performed after his untimely death at the hands of this unknown large fish.

Valko's dismal failure to remain alive as the indirect result of a single feeble strike to the face has led many later commentators to dismiss him as a "one-hit wonder". The fish that ate and regurgitated him was never found, though many of Valko's harshest critics spent years roaming the waves hunting the creature in order to congratulate it.