Name: Karsten Ruman
Age: 36
Kingdom: Trasidion, Princedom of the Misted Rivers
Gemstone: Apo'rithil, the Water Stone
Appearance: Karsten was never truly handsome, never blessed with the rugged good looks so often prescribed to the heroes of epic verse and high myth. He was forgettable, standing some inches short of six feet, his frame not at all imposing. He was almost wiry, really. He could more easily be likened to a furtive, cunning creature of the earth, a ferret or a raccoon, than to a great warrior beast like a lion. He was, quite simply, unimpressive considering the lofty expectations of the stations that had been doled out to him by virtue of his deeds. "I'd thought he'd be taller," or, "He looks like a merchant. Not a 'hero'," were some of the more common gossipy quips he's had to bear the brunt of in recent months. Not that he lets it get to him.

He is gaunt, his features severe. His lips are thin and his eyes are sunken. He looks old, far older than he truly is, his slicked back hair continuing to gray at an alarming rate. It is, perhaps, the stress of the cataclysmic war and its aftermath that he wears so openly. He bore a great weight of duty, of loss, on his back, and only now, as the daunting task of leadership is draped across his shoulders has he truly begun to show it. All of wear and tear has been complemented by a quiet dignity, however, an unmistakable sense of purpose and duty that just seems to radiate from him.

He wears, in perpetuity, a thin sneer. Lips pressed together, and yet drawn back, as if he alone was forever privy to, and beholden to, some joke made in poor taste. Indeed, an expression of mirth, of joy or amusement, was as rare as it was genuine in his case. He did not grin for the sake of others. His frankness, or tactlessness, as some amongst his court call it, is just as apparent in expression as it is in his mannerisms. He appears always impatient, always marginally displeased, and while in many cases he very well may be, it's simply the way in which he presents himself. No offense is intended, usually.

While perhaps not seeming a man given to great fanfare and ostentatiousness he does dress for the station that he now so shakily holds. He is the new Grand Prince of the Kingdom of Trasidion, and to ward off even further skepticism from his new subjects he has embraced the title and the traditions, and has taken up the old Amencurt lion as his symbol. He wears it with a quiet pride, and dresses in the rich, princely blues that mirror the lifeblood arteries of the kingdom. In private he'll often to dress more conservatively, opting for earthy tones and simple garb more akin to his wardrobe in simpler times.

Background: What promise was there in the mediocrity of the life of a ferryman? In a life devoted to moving the riches of the world up and down the great Esuilt River? The songs and stories were so fanciful, the riverman was so romanticized in Trasidion, but the truth of it, at least to Karsten, was so awfully different. Days spent drifting on the current, taking turns at the pole to guide the ferry or the barge. There was no glory in it, only the modest fee exacted of the fat, velvet-swaddled merchants. Or at least this was the attitude with which he first met the life, as an adolescent, under the urging of his ferryman father. A man of simpler wants maybe, a man more able to enjoy life on the winding rivers.

It all perplexed Karsten though. He'd been educated with his father's coin, made literate and given the skills necessary for proper business, thought. What good was moving up and down a river when he could become rich off the river, buying and selling, paying to have things moved? In truth, he found there were many similarities. He had a manifest to consider, he had contracts to consider, he had to keep precious cargo accounted for and safe. But then there was, in fact, the romance of the ferryman life. The stories of the passengers. The stars above. The gentle sloshing of the water. The fishing.

Warm summer days. Balmy summer nights. A lazy paradise, he eventually found. It had seduced him.

How quickly he missed those days, the ones that he had initially resented, when the victory against Armagen became less and less of a certainty for the four allied realms. Wise travellers and heavy, expensive cargo were replaced with knights and their horses and their ragged peasant levies. And then there came less and less of them. The manpower of Tresidion was spent futilely over the course of five brutal years, and soon enough it was bodies he was ferrying. Karsten's father left the barge in his care and returned home two years into the war, old and ill, long overdue for retirement.

Then the bodies stopped coming, the clean orderliness of moving soldiers down the river and bodies back up broke down under the weight of the struggle. It was no longer a battle of territory and power for the four allied realms, but one of existential survival. Fields now stood untended, women fought in the stead of men, and a great tide of refugees clamored for places on the barge, to escape upriver, away from the merciless butchers who fought under the banner of the mad king. Tresidion was all but broken, with a dead Grand Prince and indecisive, fearful nobles looking to save their own demesnes rather than continue the fight.

Karsten Ruman, the sullen ferryman, and others of his trade, came together amidst the chaos and agreed to devoting themselves to a new humanitarian cause. To the movement of the people en masse, to the securing of foodstuffs. They were joined by the bravest and strongest of those they took on board, and the barges came to tangle with encroaching Armagen forces. They had the luxury of knowing the rivers by heart, of knowing the forests and marshes that surrounded them, and they, in their own scrappy way, provided a new line of defense that proved far more frustrating than any Tresidion knights ever could.

Karsten, with his ferry and his trident, became a leader of men, a conductor of ruthless raids on enemy camps and enemy ships sailing in from sea. Soon he seized a dromon, one built to fight Armagen's men but then lost to them. He became a captain, and then there were more victories, more wily guerilla combat that led to the seizing of more ships. And soon Karsten found he'd become an admiral. The dreaded mad king's men had found themselves overextended, and their offensive buckled.

A great, ragged fleet of ships great and small emerged from the Esuilt Delta. The traditional lifeline of the kingdom had been reclaimed, and fighting spread again to the rest of the realm, now in the opposite direction. The tide had gone in, and now it had gone out. Where the princes and dukes of Tresidion had failed, a humble ferryman had succeeded, like a Misty Rivers childrens' rhyme. The irony was not lost on Karsten, but he was humble in his victories. He fought to win. He didn't fight for himself. For gold or glory. He had a vendetta.

And this vendetta took him out across the gulf between the realm of the Misty Rivers and the Barrens, a people united again, with what remained of the Tresidion Navy joining them. It was an armada, an ugly one composed of ships of all shapes and sizes, but perhaps the largest one presently assembled. They took to the harbors of King Amragen and set what ships were at anchor ablaze. His admirals and captains had expected the people of the Misty Rivers to continue the fight at home, to struggle against the still sizeable hosts that occupied their cities.

And so Karsten's fleet asserted itself as the deadliest force on the high seas, and Amragen's soldiers suffered for it, now forced to rely on the lands they occupied for provisions. The very lands they had sabotaged and poisoned. Many hosts withered away without the support of their homeland, and Tresidion was slowly reclaimed through methodical encircling and destroying of the invading forces. And yet, it was a pyrrhic victory. There was no chance of the people of the Misty Rivers being able to launch forays into the Barrens themselves, and any coordination with the other realms had long since broken down.

And so they waited. And news of the mad king's death came to them.

And finally they rested. And rejoiced.

Tresidion had no master, but those soldiers who still lived had found more to admire in Karsten Ruman than in the nobles who had sent them to join him in his final push. And so, when the Prince of the Barrens, a man who was by all accounts sane, sent for a delegate to discuss peace and the future of the five kingdoms the unanimous call from those who fought for the Misty Rivers was for Karsten. He should speak for them. And so he went, and he did. An arrangement was quickly found. Karsten returned home with Apo'rithil pulsing in his hand, a reluctant 'knight' and a Grand Prince.

The story he told back home was very different. The Barrens had surrendered, he said, he made no mention of his knighting. He swiftly cemented his position as the only logical choice of monarch for the people of the Misty Rivers. He did not lust for power, he told himself. He just didn't trust anyone else with the job at this point.

Weeks had passed. Busy ones. Rebuilding began in earnest. People settled down and repopulated desolate cities and townships, and the Grand Prince sailed north a second time, now along the river that greened the Nazaerth Desert's western edge. He had only a small contingent of handpicked men, those he knew he could trust, no matter what Edgar had in store for him.

Personality: There may have been a time where Karsten Ruman was quick to laugh and joke, always ready with a tall tale or a rousing song for the campfire, but there are precious few now who remember it, and even fewer who still stand with the man following his ascent to the misted throne of Tresidion. The Grand Prince Karsten is a taciturn man, one who appears to solely occupy himself with the business of ruling. There is no malice in him though, none for his own people at least. In truth, his heart aches for them, he worries over them night and day, poring over correspondences and plans for the future by candlelight well after the sun has set. The flinty facade he presents is one born of a recognition of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are dead or maimed or without food and shelter. All those whose welfare is now his responsibility and who can not be consoled by any measure of ancient magic. What good is twisting water and ice and rime to one's will when Tresidion remains poisoned and its people continue to suffer?

Fighting Skills: In days past, when the war still raged, Karsten Ruman fought with the trident, the traditional weapon of the people of the Tresidion coast. He speared the soldiers of Armagen just as any simple fisherman speared his catch, with an exacting precision and an unnerving patience that went beyond the brawling and struggling of common soldiering. There was technique in the way he fought, refined technique, which few on either side of the War on the River could match.

He still carries a trident, though now as a scepter of office rather than as an implement of war, but the skill he developed on the battlefield has not left him. He's no stranger to any manner of polearm, and has found another niche for himself in pursuing the graceful, ruthless art of Tresidion fencing. To that end carries a slender, straight blade of perhaps two and a half feet, one which he can wield with a slippery agility that more than compensates for his small frame.

Karsten wears the mysterious stone Apo'rithil upon his ring finger, letting it shine openly with the ebb and flow of otherworldly power. It has become just as much of a symbol of his power as his trident, and though he wields its powers sparingly for fear of the truth of what it power it may wield over him it has done much to restore some degree of order and prosperity to the Misty Rivers.