Age: 32

Appearance:
Gastó Canalis stands at 1.87 meters tall. He has a strong physique and body that conveys a lot of inner strenght. His muscles can be seen stretching the exquisite drapes of his dress, somewhat hiding his true strength: intelligence. He has a brownish skin like the other people from the deserts of Saqquar. He also has plain brown eyes like most other Southerners, and has a similarly dark hair color to match the whole picture. His facial features cannot betray his Saqquar blood, and he is the perfect image of a strong, healthy man from the south, curtesy of the Royal treatement.

Known for:
Canalis is from the royal family of the Saqquarian people, the current lineage of vassals who run the southernmost regions of Empire. Just this can be enough to give a man fame, but Canalis is known for more than his lineage. An excellent tinkerer who was teached by master smiths and artificers of the Saqquarian people, he has a certain knack at dealing with machinery and architecture. He is also regarded as the best Pazak player in the Empire.

Known as an excellent strategist, Canalis has won many battles that his brothers would have claimed lost. His cunning on the field of battle has often lead the Saqquarian division of the Empire to surprising victories in many scenarios. With a plathera of unorthdox strategies used by him, he is known as an out of the box thinker.

Dirty little secret:
- There are questions and rumors circling around that question why a royal descendant of Saqquar would visit the new Emperor as an Ambassador.

Skills:
- Sword training. Skilled in swordsmanship due to royal training from an early age. While not particularly good at it, Canalis can hold itself against opponents of average skill.
- Excellent strategist. When it comes to the grandiose scale of a battle, or the overarching goals of political opponents, Canalis can hardly be deceived into making a wrong move.
- Tinkerer. Thought not particularly an artform of the royalties, Canalis often plays with different ideas and creates small constructs of various uses.
- Rational thinker. Canalis is known as a down to the earth kind of person who uses his head rather than his heart when making big decisions. Ruthlesness is replaced with "necessity" in his dictionary.

Motto:

Liege: Weigar Canalis, Grand Duke of Saqquar

Position: TBA

Specialty:
As a province ruled by arid climate, Saqquar has little in natural resources. Most of the nation population lives on the fertile riverside of the two large rivers of Ifrit and Granat, named after their unique gemstones formed in their riverbed. Though most natural resources are scarcely avaible, a plathera of exotic minerals and materials can be found in the province that catch an insane price on teh market. The province borders a small portion of the ocean to the east, where the Ifrit and Granat flow into it. These are busy trader ports where Saqquarian traders laod up their cargo and take it to north, towards the capital and other provinces.

Despite the lack of resources, Saqquar is known to be the best at utilising the already existing ones and providing hardy people for the Emprie. A Saqquarian breastplate can be trusted not to break in the heat of battle, and a fletcher hailing from the province will turn wood, not into a bow, but a piece of masterfully crafted art. The province has a long history of extensive use of siege warfare, and the province mostly provides craftsman and plans to create these terrifying machine beasts for the army.

History:
Before becoming a province of Torivia, Saqquar was very similar to the empire in the way it was built up. However, decades of infighting that ruined the lives of so many, led to the people in the area becoming hardy folks that would endure just about everything that nature could throw at them. After being subdued by Torivian, the people of Saqquar welcomed the peace in their lands and became faithful subjects to the empire. Saqquarian nobility was not a commonplace visitor in the capital that lied so far north to them, but their arrival always meant news of foreign lands and gifts of exotic nature. Many folks and royalties regarded the previous emperor as an honorary Saqquarian who brought peace to the war torn nation, and the entire nation mourned his death as hundreds of thousands took to the streets to honor his achievements.

Tarvak a popular dice game that is palyed throughout empire. Used both in gambling due to the luck factor, and in competitions thanks to the amount of trickery it needs, the Tarvak is a game that both peasants and royals play.

Rules:
Tarvak is a game easy to learn, but hard to master. Each player starts with six D8s (8 sided dice) that have the numbers 1-4 on them, with each number having two sides on the dice. Both players roll their die and then hide them from the other player, usually with their hands. Now that the dies are rolled, the game begins. The starting player states an amount of dice faces that he thinks are shared between both hands. For example, a player can say that "There are four 3 faces" or as we write it, 4x3. This means that he thinks that from the 12 dies, there are at least 4 that have the "3" face showing upwards. The other player then must decide whether he thinks that this statement is true or not.

In our scenario the die faces are as follows: 2x1, 1x2, 5x3, 4x4.

If he decides that the statement is true, then the player must "Raise". Any statement has more value if either there are more dies involved, or if the die faces are worth more. After the 4x3 in this scneario, the current palyer can only say 4x4 if he wishes to stay on 4 dies, otherwise he will have to state the faces of 5 dies, with any face values. Naturally this means that any statement that states that there are x number of 4 faces, forces the opponent to raise the amount of dies that they try to guess. The only rule of "Raise" is to not lower the value, but a player can always go from 2 dies to 5, or switch from the "1" face to the "4" face in his statement.

If the player decides that his or her opponent's statement is false, then he can "Call". When a palyer calls, both players reveal their hands and count the amount of faces. If there are more or equal dies with the desired face on them, then the calling player loses a dice, otherwise if there are less, then the opponenet loses a dice. In our example, the opponent said 4x3 and we called, however there are 5 dies with 3 faces, 5x3. In this case the player who called must sede a dice to the die pool. The die pool is where the lost dies are stored.

After a call the round ends, and the palyer who called will begin the next turn. Whenever a player has only one dice left, he or she will always be the one starting the round. If both players have only one die then the player who most recently lost a dice starts the turn. The game lasts until one player is out of dies, upon which the player with remaining dies wins.

It is a valid strategy to call out a true statemnt in a winning situation, and lose a dice in exchange for starting the next turn.

Variants:

Some variants of the game allow players to get back one of their dies if they call when there is exactly the same amount of dies with the desired faces as their opponent called. However, the tournament rules do not follow this rule.

Similarly, there are variants of the game where the starting palyer is determined by adding together teh values of their dies, and the player with the higher value starts. This is usually reserved for beginners as it gives away valuable intel.

A popular variant of Tarvak is when multiple people play. In this variant the same rules apply, and the turn order goes counter clockwise.

Through the ages many other, even stranger forms of Tarvak have popped up empire wide, some of which use different dies or have vastly different rulesets or goals.