[hider=No-Quarter Kuro][quote=No-Quarter Kuro][i]I spent two decades learning how to avoid death. Now I teach others how to meet it.[/i][/quote]
[b]Name:[/b] Kuro
[b]Race:[/b] Human
[b]Age:[/b]33
[B]Magic potency:[/b] None[hider=Physical Description]Kuro is tall, with a lean body and only light musculature, possessing cords rather than bunches of muscle. His layered clothing and small personal armory of equipment lends him a deceitfully broad appearance, but when divested of his garments his overall frame is somewhat smaller than is typical. His manner of clothing includes a dark overcoat worn over an unassuming gray cloth shirt and trousers, along with a bandoleer of small pouches slung down from his right shoulder - all worn over ringmail padded with leather, only just visible above the neckline for his shirt. 

Kuro's skin is the color of wheat sullied by ash, somewhat pallid and unclean in appearance. His face is slightly gaunt and drawn, with generally rounded edges along with a thin mouth and nose. His somewhat protruded eyes are a dull and empty shade of orange, and their lids have a softer definition than normal, which serves as the only physical evidence of Kuro's distant heritage. He is clean-shaven, with his dark hair cut close to the point of either balding or faint stubble.[/hider][hider=Equipment][list][*]Padded leather ringmail.
[*]One dark overcoat.
[*]One bandoleer of pouches.
[*]Two collapsible Dwarven crossbows.
[*]One shortsword with an asymmetrical guard that extends parallel to the blade in a hooked shape.
[*]Three knives, various.
[*]Two iron knuckles.
[*]Two garrotes, one normal, one barbed.
[*]Two flints
[*]Two whetstones
[*]Crossbow bolts, various.
[*]Two bolt quivers.
[*]One skein.
[/list][/hider][hider=Skills][b]Ineffable Grace:[/b] More than two decades of battlefield and survival experience has gifted Kuro with a general, almost preternaturally heightened awareness of his surroundings. His vision and hearing are much sharper than average, and he has an uncanny sense that allows him to detect unseen foes and threats. Evading Kuro is difficult, catching him by surprise is a trial.

[b]Scale Tipper:[/b] Kuro has built his career upon entirely unfair, one-sided fights stacked grossly in his own favor. Kuro uses and does whatever works, questionable ethics and honor be damned - his idea of a 'fair fight' is one where he grinds the enemy into dust effortlessly, and he goes out of his way to stack the deck in his favor with any and every sort of underhanded tactic and ploy. Anything is acceptable, in order to secure victory. 

[b]Tactical Guile:[/b] Kuro is experienced in leading soldiers and warriors into combat, making the best possible use of their skills, equipment, positioning, and maneuverability. This skill is limited to relatively small groups - Kuro is most effective when leading ambushes, guerrilla strikes, or planning for skirmishes. His competence as a commander in other realms of battle is untested.

[b]Silent Steps:[/b] Kuro is well aware of the value of stealth upon the battlefield. He can walk and run silently, and knows how to make good use of his surroundings for concealment purposes.

[b]Dwarven Machinations:[/b] Kuro is familiar with the construction and design of a large number of Dwarven weapons. He can clean, disassemble, reassemble, maintain, and even build nearly any kind of Dwarven mechanical weapon (or any device intended for battlefield use). This expertise does not extend to other forms of Dwarven artifice.[/hider][hider=History & Military Service]Kuro was born in the year 1139 shortly before the death of King Lysteria to a blacksmith who lived along the Southern borders of the Northern Empire, situated at the base of the local mountain chain. When the succession crisis arose, the small township Kuro grew up in was largely isolated from the bloodshed due to its low strategic value and unremarkable position. For the first few years of his life, Kuro led a largely carefree and peaceful existence under the lax tutelage of his father in preparation for an eventual apprenticeship in the nearby Dwarven steading, as the township and the blacksmith in particular had historically - and unusually - good relations with the population of natives. 

Kuro's days of peace were not to last however. Although the township itself was of faint importance, the Dwarven Steading was attacked and raided by forces from a neighboring state, covetous of their mechanisms and devices. They seized and sacked the township afterwards as a matter of course, taking every boy old enough to be of use but young enough not to stir up trouble and forcibly conscripting them. Kuro, along with many of his peers, were brutally beaten and threatened in the process of their reeducation for a year before they were assembled into a levy attached to a skirmishing force. Forced to act as a screen for a vanguard's unsuccessful charge during an assault on a small village, Kuro was trapped beneath a slain horse and was summarily pressed into service by the victorious defenders when they discovered him. Thus did Kuro's next years and early adolescence play out, with him being traded back and forth between militias, surviving each battle due to serendipity and his quickly learning how to stay out of the worst part of every fight. Always seen as just old enough to be useful, and just young enough to be reconscripted, Kuro soon determined that eventually he would wind up in the hands of a force that would decide he was too much of a risk to keep. He stole weapons and armor from his would-be allies and fled, approaching and joining the next militia he found as a free-rider mercenary.

During Kuro's adolescence he managed to survive and make a small reputation for himself as a sell-sword, attached to militias and even large professional armies as part of their mercenary cohorts. However, he made little effort to discriminate between sides and was eventually ostracized, declared a turncoat and threatened with summary execution should he continue. Searching for a means of living, for a time he traveled with a caravan of Dwarven Merchants. During his tenure with them, he learned a great deal in regards to the mechanisms and operation of Dwarven mechanical weapons, particularly their crossbows, from which most of his familiarity with Dwarven armaments is derived. Eventually the caravan was raided by highwaymen who killed all of the merchants and most of their guards save for Kuro, who had sensed that the battle was fated to end poorly and fled after taking a moment to pilfer a pair of crossbows from the caravan.

By this time the Dwarven populaces of the North had become highly suspicious of Humans due to the frequency of attacks by independent states upon their fortress and caravans, and Kuro had difficulty finding work with any of them. Starving and desperate, he was forced to resort to banditry. For some time he operated alone along sideroads, having no compunction with killing his victims if he had to and barely managing to subsist off of the meager fare they carried. Looking for safer and more reliable means of living, he joined up with a larger group of organized highwaymen who specialized in targeting convoys and carriages along more frequented roads. At this time Kuro was exposed to a number of personalities who served as role-models and mentors of sorts, although they inevitably parted ways in time. Eventually the band was broken during a failed attack on a particularly large convoy, and the few survivors rallied around Kuro who by that time had become one of the band's senior members despite his young age.

It was at this time when Kuro became known as Blackguard Kuro, leading his small band of cutthroats in meticulously planned and carefully organized raids on watchtowers, courier outposts, inns, and stables. They made great and effective use of traps such as pitfalls and weighted nets, along with fire. For a time, the fractuous state of the Northern lands allowed Kuro and his band to operate with near impunity, as no local force was both organized and swift enough to chase down and corner his group before they had fled to some other state with their spoils. However, the year was 164, and King Jaython of Arden had just begun to reunite the shattered Northern lands. Kuro started to have to deal with increased vigilance, and more thorough manhunts - with retreat to neighboring states not part of the expanding influence of the Ironmount Throne becoming increasingly difficult. Eventually, Kuro even had to begin to deal with a group of particularly relentless questors who had been tasked to specifically hunt him and his band of cutthroats down and eliminate them. For years, Kuro managed to slip through their fingers - until one night in 1167 when they managed to catch up. In a surprise attack, they slaughtered Kuro's band, with him barely escaping alive and fleeing South, to the lands of Lord Starly.

Kuro joined with the Company of Wolves then, due largely to an interest to escape the pursuit of the questors as well as a new and convenient means of surviving. As a professional mercenary organization with few scruples, his ostracism from the forces of the Northern Realms proved to be no obstacle to his enlistment. The squad he joined moved far too quickly for the questors, and his years of service precluded any further criminal activities on his part (at least, no criminal activities not sanctioned by Lord Starly). Eventually, the questors dropped their pursuit, assuming that the notorious Blackguard Kuro would no longer be plaguing the southern outposts of the Northern Lands - Kuro, for his part, has no apparent ambitions either within or without the company and is seemingly content to serve.[/hider][hider=Psych Profile]Kuro is, in a word, pragmatic. Forced for more than two decades to resort to any means necessary just to subsist, his morality is most generously described as flexible and his methods most politely described as broad. Kuro is a man who will do anything -absolutely anything- just to survive and, by extension, to secure victory.

A stoic man by nature, he is economical and succinct in all things. Blunt and to the point, he will only ever say precisely what he means to say. He can and will deceive others, but he will not spare their feelings or sensibilities in the process. Highly goal and work oriented, Kuro has very little patience for idle words and behavior. 

Despite his brevity and seeming lack of social grace, Kuro has a deeply integral sense of camaraderie with those he knows, at least up to a point. If he thinks that a life can be saved by sacrificing his own, he will do so - but also, notably, ONLY if he also thinks the life he saves can then lead his side to victory. Kuro will abandon his allies without any remorse if he thinks their battle is a lost cause or that their death is imminent in either case. It would be most accurate to say he is deeply sympathetic to soldiers of fortune and mercenaries, whose troubles and hardships he is intimately familiar with.

Kuro, as described previously, is economical - and efficient. He has learned many lessons from his decades of experiences. Never tolerate standoffs. Never draw a weapon without intent. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Trust but verify. Avoid battles you have no stake in. Never do anything for free. He ascribes to these lessons almost religiously, and expects everyone else to do so as well, becoming extremely irritated and even angry if they should behave in a contrary - and to him, idiotic - fashion. He has maimed people in the past simply for drawing their swords in order to show off, by way of example.

This further manifests in his professional decorum and behavior. Kuro is highly methodical, meticulous, and thorough, taking great pains to plan ahead for what he can. He follows through on his promises (when possible), always investigates possible leads, prepares in advance for all eventualities, and never assumes anything he does not known to be true.

Kuro is distrustful of both religion and magic, the former reminding him too much of his experiences as a child soldier and the latter striking him as too unreliable on the battlefield. He has a deep respect for the craftswork of Dwarves.[/hider]
[b]Character Motivation:[/b] Survival. Since he was a boy, he was forced to fight or else be killed. As a young man, he had to fight in order to eat. As a man, he resorted to banditry and highway robbery to survive. As a notorious Blackguard, he overstepped his needs and paid the price for it. Kuro will do anything he needs to simply to exist...no matter what that may be. He is cautious and wary of reaching for that which he cannot grasp.

[hider=List of Known Associates][b]Tribal Mountebank:[/b] One of the more violent cutthroats that Kuro had a brief association with during his days as a highwayman. Later joined The Company of Wolves around the same time as Kuro, and is one of the infamous few to have been expelled from their ranks due to his unacceptable behavior.

[b]Andromache:[/b] A Northern Warlord of an independent state in the North whom he served under in the capacity of a mercenary for a time. Although their association was brief, Kuro learned a great deal from Andromache just by watching her, and still partly idolizes her to this day.

[b]Chalarensis:[/b] A powerful spellcaster, and the leader of the Highway gang that Kuro joined as a man. Served as a mentor figure to Kuro for several years before the battle that led to the group disbanding. Currently presumed dead.[/hider][hider=Coterie Opinions]To Be Added.[/hider][/hider]