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[CHAR] The Witcher: Under the Shadow
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Hank Dionysian Mystery
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17 hrs ago
Name: Morgan.
Race: Human.
Age: 89.
Gender: Male.
Birthplace: Poviss.
Profession: Witcher of the School of the Griffin.
Appearance: Reaching almost 6’4” at his full height, the witcher known as Morgan towers over most men. However, while his slender build has packed on the typical layer of whipcord muscle that gives witchers their lightning-quick bursts of speed and strength, he lacks the bulk to truly make him an imposing presence. His body is covered in scars, left there by tooth, claw and blade alike, and his skin has a permanent paleness to it -- partly because of his Koviro-Povissan heritage and partly because of his mutations. Aside from his remarkably long fingers and toes, there is nothing particularly out of the ordinary about Morgan’s physique, especially not for a witcher like himself.
His face is somewhat gaunt and drawn, with deep lines and sallow cheeks, and his formidable nose and high cheekbones give him a serious and authoritative countenance. His hair, short on the sides and messy on top, is a strange mixture of listless, flaxen blond the longer it grows and dark hair near the roots. His full beard and mustache, complete with sideburns, are the same, with silver having crept into them a decade or two ago. Morgan has a scar over his left eye and down his right cheek but he counts his blessings in that regard, having seen the way some of his fellow witchers have been mutilated over the years. But most prominent, of course, are the feline eyes that set his kind apart from other humans, marked by their vertical slit pupils and the bright, unnatural color of their irises. His is a cold gaze, bereft of compassion or empathy, that often appears to look straight through someone with keen analysis and little regard for their humanity.
His armor is functional and quite sober in its appearance, which goes well with his personality. Once dyed in an unassuming olive green, though most of the paint has flecked off by now to reveal the barren steel and leather beneath, the armor is reinforced with chainmail and scales, like the hide of a dragon, and borrows a little more strongly from knightly influences than most other witcher gear. A black, hooded cape, woven from sturdy wool, hangs from his shoulders down to his ankles.
Personality: Whether the mutations actually stripped him of his emotions or whether Morgan merely buys into that theory a little too much is hard to say, but the undeniable truth is that the Griffin seems to be as stoic, rigid and unflappable as anything. The expression on his face only seldom wavers from a neutral and inscrutable mask of stone and emotive displays of any kind are just as rare. Morgan takes his cause and calling as a witcher quite seriously, but the paranoia and outright hostility that his kind has been the subject of throughout recent history has ensured that Morgan has little desire to interact with people for an extended period of time. He shows up, looks for work, asks around a little, and if there isn’t any to be found he departs again just as quickly. If there is work fine; he does the job, accepts his pay and then, too, he is gone before nightfall.
That said, Morgan is not entirely without personality. He is proud, independent, resourceful and curious -- not about people, but about places, events and esoteric knowledge. If and when he feels more comfortable with someone he reveals he possesses a sharp and perceptive wit, and to those he counts as friends, the Griffin is a steadfast and dependable ally. He gets along better with non-humans and mages than he does with ordinary people, though that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Morgan isn’t above playing into the stereotypes that exist about witchers among the ignorant and uneducated in order to scare them into paying him. Axii, too, can come in handy in such situations. He has long since lost faith in most of humanity and only continues his work as a witcher because it’s what he’s good at, and he figures that he might as well slay monsters on the off chance that there are still innocents left in the world who he might save from an ignoble death in doing so. As such, Morgan isn’t exactly readily helpful to strangers without the promise of coin but he maintains a moral code and displays loyalty to people he values and respects.
There is a nugget of self-loathing and self-pity at the core of his being, born from the harsh and lonely life he has been forced to live as a witcher. Morgan wants to love humanity but has been forced to resent it by their own behavior towards him and his kind. Because the witcher mutations are permanent and cannot be undone, he sometimes laments the fact that he was subjected to them in the first place and his dreams are haunted by a normal life, where he could have friends, family and the respect of his community. He struggles to separate mankind’s beliefs on his nature as a loathsome mutant and their ignorance about the true necessity of monster slayers from his own self-image. All across the Northern Kingdoms people erroneously believe that monsters are dwindling fast and that witchers are unnecessarily relics of a barbaric past. Being told something often enough can cause one to start believing it, and Morgan sometimes wonders, despite knowing better, if they aren’t right after all and his raison d'être is no longer valid. Due to all of this, being the mutant that he is, Morgan will not shed any tears in the afterlife over his own inevitable demise in the line of duty. He sees no other destiny left for him and his kindred and has resigned himself to ending up in a shallow grave somewhere desolate without having ever known love.
History: When the witcher Arthur finally slew the fiend that had been terrorizing the highlands of Poviss, after the towering beast fell to the earth and breathed its last, he turned to face the farmhouse that the monster’s rampage had destroyed during their epic struggle. Bodies had been crushed or flung clear of the structure entirely, landing in crumpled, bloody heaps amidst the amber waves of grain. An entire family perished, surely. A regrettable loss but their deaths would be the last that the fiend would ever claim. The witcher caught his breath, cleaned his blades and prepared to claim the monster’s head as a trophy when he spotted two eyes staring up at him from the wreckage. They belonged to a boy, small for his age, short and scrawny to boot. But Arthur saw a fire there, despite the death and destruction. Or perhaps because of it.
Winter was fast approaching and Arthur had already intended for this to be his last contract of the year, so the witcher decided to take the boy with him to Kaer Seren -- the seat of the School of the Griffin. He cried when he was picked up but stopped after a few hours on horseback, and fell into a sullen silence. Arthur never learned the boy’s name, which was fine. He didn’t need one yet anyway. If he survived the Trial of the Grasses, he would get a new name. The harvest had been good that year -- there were thirteen boys to train at the seaside fortress, his included. Their ages varied, but none were older than ten. Arthur handed the boys to the instructors and set about to doing the same things he always did when he wintered at Kaer Seren; drinking wine, swapping stories and resting.
Outside, in the muddy, half-frozen courtyard, the boy trained, beating others twice his size as they wrestled, his face contorted with rage.
Arthur left in the spring, after the thawing of the icy ports of the northern north heralded the end of winter, and returned each year like clockwork. And each year the boy was still there, somewhat to his surprise, because if he was completely honest with himself the truth was that he had expected the runt to die. He survived the initial training, he survived the herbs and tinctures given to him to prepare his body for the witcher mutations, and he survived the Trial of the Grasses too -- though it was an agonizing, drawn-out affair, and the masters of Kaer Seren had thought him dead a few times during the nights of the week-long ordeal. Arthur, feeling a sense of obligation, attended the Trial and watched over the boy, wiping the sweat from his brow and feeding him herbs to soothe the pain. Occasionally, the witcher would talk to him, whenever he fell silent between his bouts of screaming, crying and gurgling.
The boy that awoke was formidable, and he called himself Morgan.
Fueled by the powerlessness that Morgan had felt when the fiend had destroyed his home and killed his family, and deeply troubled by the deaths of most of the other thirteen boys at the keep, latched onto the power of the Signs immediately and with prodigious talent. His tutors and masters saw great potential in him and he was given almost free reign of Kaer Seren’s famous library on all matters arcane throughout his teenage years. Before long, the boy had learned to turn the gust of flame of Igni into a torrent of fire and was able to flatten foes all around him with Aard. He knew what his purpose was -- to kill monsters, to have his revenge, and to make sure that the deaths of his friends would not be in vain -- and felt that the simple magic he wielded at his fingertips was the key to success in that quest. Arthur was proud. Even George of Kagen, destined to later perish in Velen as the famous Dragonslayer, was impressed with Morgan’s talent.
He completed the Trial of the Medallion as one of only three out of thirteen to ultimately survive to become full witchers in their own right. The Griffins were an honorable sort and had instilled a profound respect for the code into Morgan, and he set out onto the Path with hope and optimism in his heart. These feelings quickly proved mistaken. Morgan discovered the world to be one full of ignorant and hateful people with deep and troubling misconceptions about the nature of witchers, and even when he did find work he was frequently cheated out of his reward by deceptive peasants and nobles alike. Disillusioned, but without any alternatives available to him, Morgan persevered in his thankless task, making precious few friends along the way. One of them was an elf, a mage named Duatheryn, that rescued him from the grasp of a water hag in a godforsaken swamp somewhere in Temeria. He laughed at the witcher’s biting wit instead of reacting in anger and therefore earned his lifelong respect. Morgan would continue to seek out the mage’s advice on magical matters that exceeded his knowledge, especially after the famous library of Kaer Seren was tragically destroyed.
Most of the monsters that Morgan slew were ordinary and base creatures, as most of the formidable ones had already been destroyed or forced far away from human civilization in the centuries that preceded his birth. Still, there were a few notable contracts that he completed: the higher vampire of Lyria in particular, who eluded Morgan for almost a year before the witcher finally tracked him down and slew him in a thriller of a duel that ended with him collapsing a barn on top of the vampire with a powerful blast of Aard. Bizarrely, Morgan remembered in the midst of battle the way the fiend of yore had killed his family, and used that unbidden memory as a flash of inspiration. The lord that had posted the contract, for the vampire had killed one of his sons, was so grateful that he offered Morgan full room and board for the winter, free to eat and drink to his heart’s content. The witcher enjoyed great respect within the lord’s household and the winter was one of the most enjoyable of his life. He felt almost normal for a while, and found a taste of what love could be with the lord’s daughter. But it could not last. When spring came it was time to return to the Path and find work again.
Contracts became increasingly few and far between as the years wore on, and Morgan was quickly used to living in poverty and ranging across all of the Continent in search of work. The Path was a lonely existence and while he still sought comfort here and there in the beds of women, he also believed that a witcher could not be a real lover. Work was always far away so Morgan could not stay for long, and his self-perceived lack of emotions made him an unsuitable partner. He never developed any relationships worth mentioning. With monster contracts being rarer and rarer, Morgan begrudgingly swallowed his pride and turned to other types of work that accepted anyone that could swing a blade. He felt that his talents were supremely wasted as a trading caravan guard, a bouncer or a bounty hunter, but there was gold to be made and he was in desperate need of it. The hostility that witchers faced in the 13th century, resulting in the destruction of the witcher keeps and the scattering of the Schools seated there, made his place in the world difficult to maintain and an increasingly bitter Morgan sank to taking on jobs he had always believed to be firmly below him in order to stay alive. For a long time, his steel sword saw a lot more action than his silver blade, and the rivers ran red with the human blood he washed off it time and again.
Kaer Seren, where he had spent many of his winters together with the witcher brothers he loved dearly, was destroyed by mages that were jealous of the Griffins’ collection of knowledge in the library of the seaside fortress. The ruins were rendered practically uninhabitable and most of the witchers were killed in the magical avalanche, for the mages struck in the heart of winter. It was through sheer luck that Morgan was wintering elsewhere -- he was with Duatheryn in the elf’s Novigrad home, as it so happened -- and therefore survived the slaughter only by virtue of his absence. The destruction of his home and of his School was a terrible blow to Morgan’s faith in the people he was supposed to protect and he gave up witchering out of bitterness and anger for almost ten years. Instead, he turned to a life of brigandry.
Morgan, though his name was unknown to all, even to the outcasts that joined his ragged band of merry men, became an infamous bandit throughout the Northern Kingdoms that was known rather simply as the Witchman. This had the unfortunate side effect of making life for the other witchers in the world even more difficult. It seemed to all those whose path he crossed that he was confirming all of the worst stereotypes about him and his kind. He came and went and left naught but heartache and woe, with pockets full of coin of gold, and ample blood on his blade and fury in his eyes. He burnt the corpses of his victims -- which was to say, anyone that dared to resist -- to a crisp with Igni and nailed them to trees and signposts by the side of the road. He took prisoners, kept the women for himself and ransomed the men back to their families. The Witchman was well on his way to spiraling out of control when his camp was ambushed at night, his men slain and Morgan himself kidnapped by the most unlikely of assailants: Arthur.
The old witcher had survived the destruction of Kaer Seren and been on Morgan’s trail for years, having recognized his old protege from the artfully burnt corpses left in his wake. Morgan had always had a particular fascination for Igni. Arthur brought him, bound and gagged, back to the ruins of their keep. A tribunal of his fellow Griffins, four men he had considered brothers for decades, waited for him there: all that remained of their once-proud and powerful School. Arthur unbound him, removed his gag, and before he could say anything, snatched the medallion from his around his neck. Morgan, outnumbered, unarmed and well aware of his crimes, listened in silence while Arthur explained what the purpose of his actions was. The Griffins were well within their rights to execute him on the spot and prove to the world that they cleaned up after their own, but Arthur also understood and sympathized with the aimless anger and grief that he saw in Morgan’s eyes. He, too, wrestled with those feelings, but it was important that they did not succumb to them. It was important that they did not prove the humans right about witchers. Arthur was insistent: he refused to give them the satisfaction. As such, if Morgan confessed, expressed remorse and ran the entire gauntlet of Trials one more time, Arthur and the others were willing to wipe the slate clean and restore Morgan to the status of witcher once more. After all, the identity of the Witchman had never been known to the world and it did not have to be… if Morgan cooperated.
He did. Confessing to his crimes and giving voice to his remorse was the unburdening that the conflicted witcher desperately needed, and for the first time in decades Morgan felt the sting of hot tears on his cheeks as he talked. In solemn acknowledgement, the witchers nodded and took up position around the ruins of the keep. The exact Trials as they had been administered in the days of yore could not be replicated, but the Griffins improvised. Morgan succeeded, desperate to prove himself to his old comrades, his old family, and using that desperation to push himself to the limit. Arthur placed a hand on the panting witcher’s head and whispered his absolution. With that, the Griffins disappeared into the night and left Morgan to tend to his wounds and alone with his thoughts.
Ever since, he has returned to the Path with newfound resolve to stick to the ways of the witcher until the end of his days. He would suffer the paranoia and hostility of the human race in silence as he traversed the Continent. Morgan still believed that the time of his kind had come and gone and that there would never be a need to restore any of the Schools, but he also understood that the least he could do was not to give humanity any more of a reason to despise him. That said, it was equally difficult for Morgan to pretend to love them and so he became the man he is today: detached, fiercely independent, always on the move, pragmatic and, above all, alone.
Only the Path awaits.
Skills: As a witcher, Morgan’s strength, speed, reflexes and metabolism have all been enhanced by the mutations bestowed upon him in the Trial of the Grasses. In addition, his senses were made superhumanly sharp and the aging process of his body was significantly diminished. As a result of all these changes and the extensive training received at Kaer Seren, Morgan is a competent swordsman and an accomplished alchemist, capable of brewing powerful potions, harmful blade oils and even strange decoctions derived from monster mutagens, and the bombs used by him and other witchers are the envy of any army engineer.
Morgan’s combat style matches his personality in its unflinching pragmatism. He fights without any concept of honor and will do whatever it takes to win, and that includes the usage of stealth to kill opponents without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves and the utilization of the environment to his advantage, like throwing enemies off cliffs or collapsing a tunnel on top of a group of rock trolls with a mixture of explosives and Signs. His armor, balanced between protection and mobility, allows for him to be flexible and varied in his approaches.
Specialty: The Griffins poured all their scholarly pursuits into pushing the envelope of what their quick-casted form of combat magic was capable of and Morgan was no different. His Signs are more powerful than those of other Schools and he has found several creative ways of applying them, like turning Quen into a spherical shield that sends any attacker reeling when struck, using Axii to turn enemies against each other and even burning them to a crisp with a sustained jet of torrid fire. This enhances his ability to be flexible and adaptable in the moment, and very few enemies are ever prepared to face a swordsman with that level of arcane aptitude at his disposal.
Equipment:
Weapons:
Armor:
Misc:
Race: Human.
Age: 89.
Gender: Male.
Birthplace: Poviss.
Profession: Witcher of the School of the Griffin.
Appearance: Reaching almost 6’4” at his full height, the witcher known as Morgan towers over most men. However, while his slender build has packed on the typical layer of whipcord muscle that gives witchers their lightning-quick bursts of speed and strength, he lacks the bulk to truly make him an imposing presence. His body is covered in scars, left there by tooth, claw and blade alike, and his skin has a permanent paleness to it -- partly because of his Koviro-Povissan heritage and partly because of his mutations. Aside from his remarkably long fingers and toes, there is nothing particularly out of the ordinary about Morgan’s physique, especially not for a witcher like himself.
His face is somewhat gaunt and drawn, with deep lines and sallow cheeks, and his formidable nose and high cheekbones give him a serious and authoritative countenance. His hair, short on the sides and messy on top, is a strange mixture of listless, flaxen blond the longer it grows and dark hair near the roots. His full beard and mustache, complete with sideburns, are the same, with silver having crept into them a decade or two ago. Morgan has a scar over his left eye and down his right cheek but he counts his blessings in that regard, having seen the way some of his fellow witchers have been mutilated over the years. But most prominent, of course, are the feline eyes that set his kind apart from other humans, marked by their vertical slit pupils and the bright, unnatural color of their irises. His is a cold gaze, bereft of compassion or empathy, that often appears to look straight through someone with keen analysis and little regard for their humanity.
His armor is functional and quite sober in its appearance, which goes well with his personality. Once dyed in an unassuming olive green, though most of the paint has flecked off by now to reveal the barren steel and leather beneath, the armor is reinforced with chainmail and scales, like the hide of a dragon, and borrows a little more strongly from knightly influences than most other witcher gear. A black, hooded cape, woven from sturdy wool, hangs from his shoulders down to his ankles.
Personality: Whether the mutations actually stripped him of his emotions or whether Morgan merely buys into that theory a little too much is hard to say, but the undeniable truth is that the Griffin seems to be as stoic, rigid and unflappable as anything. The expression on his face only seldom wavers from a neutral and inscrutable mask of stone and emotive displays of any kind are just as rare. Morgan takes his cause and calling as a witcher quite seriously, but the paranoia and outright hostility that his kind has been the subject of throughout recent history has ensured that Morgan has little desire to interact with people for an extended period of time. He shows up, looks for work, asks around a little, and if there isn’t any to be found he departs again just as quickly. If there is work fine; he does the job, accepts his pay and then, too, he is gone before nightfall.
That said, Morgan is not entirely without personality. He is proud, independent, resourceful and curious -- not about people, but about places, events and esoteric knowledge. If and when he feels more comfortable with someone he reveals he possesses a sharp and perceptive wit, and to those he counts as friends, the Griffin is a steadfast and dependable ally. He gets along better with non-humans and mages than he does with ordinary people, though that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Morgan isn’t above playing into the stereotypes that exist about witchers among the ignorant and uneducated in order to scare them into paying him. Axii, too, can come in handy in such situations. He has long since lost faith in most of humanity and only continues his work as a witcher because it’s what he’s good at, and he figures that he might as well slay monsters on the off chance that there are still innocents left in the world who he might save from an ignoble death in doing so. As such, Morgan isn’t exactly readily helpful to strangers without the promise of coin but he maintains a moral code and displays loyalty to people he values and respects.
There is a nugget of self-loathing and self-pity at the core of his being, born from the harsh and lonely life he has been forced to live as a witcher. Morgan wants to love humanity but has been forced to resent it by their own behavior towards him and his kind. Because the witcher mutations are permanent and cannot be undone, he sometimes laments the fact that he was subjected to them in the first place and his dreams are haunted by a normal life, where he could have friends, family and the respect of his community. He struggles to separate mankind’s beliefs on his nature as a loathsome mutant and their ignorance about the true necessity of monster slayers from his own self-image. All across the Northern Kingdoms people erroneously believe that monsters are dwindling fast and that witchers are unnecessarily relics of a barbaric past. Being told something often enough can cause one to start believing it, and Morgan sometimes wonders, despite knowing better, if they aren’t right after all and his raison d'être is no longer valid. Due to all of this, being the mutant that he is, Morgan will not shed any tears in the afterlife over his own inevitable demise in the line of duty. He sees no other destiny left for him and his kindred and has resigned himself to ending up in a shallow grave somewhere desolate without having ever known love.
History: When the witcher Arthur finally slew the fiend that had been terrorizing the highlands of Poviss, after the towering beast fell to the earth and breathed its last, he turned to face the farmhouse that the monster’s rampage had destroyed during their epic struggle. Bodies had been crushed or flung clear of the structure entirely, landing in crumpled, bloody heaps amidst the amber waves of grain. An entire family perished, surely. A regrettable loss but their deaths would be the last that the fiend would ever claim. The witcher caught his breath, cleaned his blades and prepared to claim the monster’s head as a trophy when he spotted two eyes staring up at him from the wreckage. They belonged to a boy, small for his age, short and scrawny to boot. But Arthur saw a fire there, despite the death and destruction. Or perhaps because of it.
Winter was fast approaching and Arthur had already intended for this to be his last contract of the year, so the witcher decided to take the boy with him to Kaer Seren -- the seat of the School of the Griffin. He cried when he was picked up but stopped after a few hours on horseback, and fell into a sullen silence. Arthur never learned the boy’s name, which was fine. He didn’t need one yet anyway. If he survived the Trial of the Grasses, he would get a new name. The harvest had been good that year -- there were thirteen boys to train at the seaside fortress, his included. Their ages varied, but none were older than ten. Arthur handed the boys to the instructors and set about to doing the same things he always did when he wintered at Kaer Seren; drinking wine, swapping stories and resting.
Outside, in the muddy, half-frozen courtyard, the boy trained, beating others twice his size as they wrestled, his face contorted with rage.
Arthur left in the spring, after the thawing of the icy ports of the northern north heralded the end of winter, and returned each year like clockwork. And each year the boy was still there, somewhat to his surprise, because if he was completely honest with himself the truth was that he had expected the runt to die. He survived the initial training, he survived the herbs and tinctures given to him to prepare his body for the witcher mutations, and he survived the Trial of the Grasses too -- though it was an agonizing, drawn-out affair, and the masters of Kaer Seren had thought him dead a few times during the nights of the week-long ordeal. Arthur, feeling a sense of obligation, attended the Trial and watched over the boy, wiping the sweat from his brow and feeding him herbs to soothe the pain. Occasionally, the witcher would talk to him, whenever he fell silent between his bouts of screaming, crying and gurgling.
The boy that awoke was formidable, and he called himself Morgan.
Fueled by the powerlessness that Morgan had felt when the fiend had destroyed his home and killed his family, and deeply troubled by the deaths of most of the other thirteen boys at the keep, latched onto the power of the Signs immediately and with prodigious talent. His tutors and masters saw great potential in him and he was given almost free reign of Kaer Seren’s famous library on all matters arcane throughout his teenage years. Before long, the boy had learned to turn the gust of flame of Igni into a torrent of fire and was able to flatten foes all around him with Aard. He knew what his purpose was -- to kill monsters, to have his revenge, and to make sure that the deaths of his friends would not be in vain -- and felt that the simple magic he wielded at his fingertips was the key to success in that quest. Arthur was proud. Even George of Kagen, destined to later perish in Velen as the famous Dragonslayer, was impressed with Morgan’s talent.
He completed the Trial of the Medallion as one of only three out of thirteen to ultimately survive to become full witchers in their own right. The Griffins were an honorable sort and had instilled a profound respect for the code into Morgan, and he set out onto the Path with hope and optimism in his heart. These feelings quickly proved mistaken. Morgan discovered the world to be one full of ignorant and hateful people with deep and troubling misconceptions about the nature of witchers, and even when he did find work he was frequently cheated out of his reward by deceptive peasants and nobles alike. Disillusioned, but without any alternatives available to him, Morgan persevered in his thankless task, making precious few friends along the way. One of them was an elf, a mage named Duatheryn, that rescued him from the grasp of a water hag in a godforsaken swamp somewhere in Temeria. He laughed at the witcher’s biting wit instead of reacting in anger and therefore earned his lifelong respect. Morgan would continue to seek out the mage’s advice on magical matters that exceeded his knowledge, especially after the famous library of Kaer Seren was tragically destroyed.
Most of the monsters that Morgan slew were ordinary and base creatures, as most of the formidable ones had already been destroyed or forced far away from human civilization in the centuries that preceded his birth. Still, there were a few notable contracts that he completed: the higher vampire of Lyria in particular, who eluded Morgan for almost a year before the witcher finally tracked him down and slew him in a thriller of a duel that ended with him collapsing a barn on top of the vampire with a powerful blast of Aard. Bizarrely, Morgan remembered in the midst of battle the way the fiend of yore had killed his family, and used that unbidden memory as a flash of inspiration. The lord that had posted the contract, for the vampire had killed one of his sons, was so grateful that he offered Morgan full room and board for the winter, free to eat and drink to his heart’s content. The witcher enjoyed great respect within the lord’s household and the winter was one of the most enjoyable of his life. He felt almost normal for a while, and found a taste of what love could be with the lord’s daughter. But it could not last. When spring came it was time to return to the Path and find work again.
Contracts became increasingly few and far between as the years wore on, and Morgan was quickly used to living in poverty and ranging across all of the Continent in search of work. The Path was a lonely existence and while he still sought comfort here and there in the beds of women, he also believed that a witcher could not be a real lover. Work was always far away so Morgan could not stay for long, and his self-perceived lack of emotions made him an unsuitable partner. He never developed any relationships worth mentioning. With monster contracts being rarer and rarer, Morgan begrudgingly swallowed his pride and turned to other types of work that accepted anyone that could swing a blade. He felt that his talents were supremely wasted as a trading caravan guard, a bouncer or a bounty hunter, but there was gold to be made and he was in desperate need of it. The hostility that witchers faced in the 13th century, resulting in the destruction of the witcher keeps and the scattering of the Schools seated there, made his place in the world difficult to maintain and an increasingly bitter Morgan sank to taking on jobs he had always believed to be firmly below him in order to stay alive. For a long time, his steel sword saw a lot more action than his silver blade, and the rivers ran red with the human blood he washed off it time and again.
Kaer Seren, where he had spent many of his winters together with the witcher brothers he loved dearly, was destroyed by mages that were jealous of the Griffins’ collection of knowledge in the library of the seaside fortress. The ruins were rendered practically uninhabitable and most of the witchers were killed in the magical avalanche, for the mages struck in the heart of winter. It was through sheer luck that Morgan was wintering elsewhere -- he was with Duatheryn in the elf’s Novigrad home, as it so happened -- and therefore survived the slaughter only by virtue of his absence. The destruction of his home and of his School was a terrible blow to Morgan’s faith in the people he was supposed to protect and he gave up witchering out of bitterness and anger for almost ten years. Instead, he turned to a life of brigandry.
Morgan, though his name was unknown to all, even to the outcasts that joined his ragged band of merry men, became an infamous bandit throughout the Northern Kingdoms that was known rather simply as the Witchman. This had the unfortunate side effect of making life for the other witchers in the world even more difficult. It seemed to all those whose path he crossed that he was confirming all of the worst stereotypes about him and his kind. He came and went and left naught but heartache and woe, with pockets full of coin of gold, and ample blood on his blade and fury in his eyes. He burnt the corpses of his victims -- which was to say, anyone that dared to resist -- to a crisp with Igni and nailed them to trees and signposts by the side of the road. He took prisoners, kept the women for himself and ransomed the men back to their families. The Witchman was well on his way to spiraling out of control when his camp was ambushed at night, his men slain and Morgan himself kidnapped by the most unlikely of assailants: Arthur.
The old witcher had survived the destruction of Kaer Seren and been on Morgan’s trail for years, having recognized his old protege from the artfully burnt corpses left in his wake. Morgan had always had a particular fascination for Igni. Arthur brought him, bound and gagged, back to the ruins of their keep. A tribunal of his fellow Griffins, four men he had considered brothers for decades, waited for him there: all that remained of their once-proud and powerful School. Arthur unbound him, removed his gag, and before he could say anything, snatched the medallion from his around his neck. Morgan, outnumbered, unarmed and well aware of his crimes, listened in silence while Arthur explained what the purpose of his actions was. The Griffins were well within their rights to execute him on the spot and prove to the world that they cleaned up after their own, but Arthur also understood and sympathized with the aimless anger and grief that he saw in Morgan’s eyes. He, too, wrestled with those feelings, but it was important that they did not succumb to them. It was important that they did not prove the humans right about witchers. Arthur was insistent: he refused to give them the satisfaction. As such, if Morgan confessed, expressed remorse and ran the entire gauntlet of Trials one more time, Arthur and the others were willing to wipe the slate clean and restore Morgan to the status of witcher once more. After all, the identity of the Witchman had never been known to the world and it did not have to be… if Morgan cooperated.
He did. Confessing to his crimes and giving voice to his remorse was the unburdening that the conflicted witcher desperately needed, and for the first time in decades Morgan felt the sting of hot tears on his cheeks as he talked. In solemn acknowledgement, the witchers nodded and took up position around the ruins of the keep. The exact Trials as they had been administered in the days of yore could not be replicated, but the Griffins improvised. Morgan succeeded, desperate to prove himself to his old comrades, his old family, and using that desperation to push himself to the limit. Arthur placed a hand on the panting witcher’s head and whispered his absolution. With that, the Griffins disappeared into the night and left Morgan to tend to his wounds and alone with his thoughts.
Ever since, he has returned to the Path with newfound resolve to stick to the ways of the witcher until the end of his days. He would suffer the paranoia and hostility of the human race in silence as he traversed the Continent. Morgan still believed that the time of his kind had come and gone and that there would never be a need to restore any of the Schools, but he also understood that the least he could do was not to give humanity any more of a reason to despise him. That said, it was equally difficult for Morgan to pretend to love them and so he became the man he is today: detached, fiercely independent, always on the move, pragmatic and, above all, alone.
Only the Path awaits.
Skills: As a witcher, Morgan’s strength, speed, reflexes and metabolism have all been enhanced by the mutations bestowed upon him in the Trial of the Grasses. In addition, his senses were made superhumanly sharp and the aging process of his body was significantly diminished. As a result of all these changes and the extensive training received at Kaer Seren, Morgan is a competent swordsman and an accomplished alchemist, capable of brewing powerful potions, harmful blade oils and even strange decoctions derived from monster mutagens, and the bombs used by him and other witchers are the envy of any army engineer.
Morgan’s combat style matches his personality in its unflinching pragmatism. He fights without any concept of honor and will do whatever it takes to win, and that includes the usage of stealth to kill opponents without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves and the utilization of the environment to his advantage, like throwing enemies off cliffs or collapsing a tunnel on top of a group of rock trolls with a mixture of explosives and Signs. His armor, balanced between protection and mobility, allows for him to be flexible and varied in his approaches.
Specialty: The Griffins poured all their scholarly pursuits into pushing the envelope of what their quick-casted form of combat magic was capable of and Morgan was no different. His Signs are more powerful than those of other Schools and he has found several creative ways of applying them, like turning Quen into a spherical shield that sends any attacker reeling when struck, using Axii to turn enemies against each other and even burning them to a crisp with a sustained jet of torrid fire. This enhances his ability to be flexible and adaptable in the moment, and very few enemies are ever prepared to face a swordsman with that level of arcane aptitude at his disposal.
Equipment:
- Alchemy supplies: herbs, monster parts, chemical materials and alcohol; enough to refill his existing alchemical arsenal a few times and to create new potions, oils and bombs to combat a few of the more common monster types.
- Potions: Swallow, Tawny Owl and Petri’s Philter.
- Oils: Hanged Man’s Venom, Necrophage oil and Spectre oil.
- Bombs: 2x Dancing Star and 3x Samum.
- His witcher’s medallion, representing the proud and majestic griffin.
Weapons:
- A steel longsword fitted with runes that glow in the crimson shade of blood in the darkness, sporting a pommel in the shape of a griffin’s head. Throughout all of his travels and travails, Morgan has never found better steel anywhere and therefore still uses the blade he left Kaer Seren with when he first struck out on the Path.
- His silver sword makes up the other half of the twinned pair of blades that his masters bestowed on him as a gift before he departed. Its crossguard is angled more sharply and the runes in the gleaming blade are a bright and fiery shade of orange instead.
- His years of brigandry have taught him the value and versatility of daggers. Morgan keeps two of them on his person and has taught himself how to use them as throwing knives as well, which has turned out handy in a pinch a few times already.
Armor:
- As described in his appearance, Morgan wears a set of Griffin armor in the style of the one worn by George the Dragonslayer. It is not as cumbersome as heavy armor and yet not as liberating as light armor, instead striking a nice balance between the two that Morgan and his training both favor.
Misc:
- A mixture of florens, orens and crowns, amounting to roughly 150 coins in any of the three currencies in total.
- A waterskin and some dried meats.
- A deck of gwent cards and a set of playing dice.
- Two old wanted posters with hilariously inaccurate sketches of the brigand known as the Witchman.
- A black warhorse, a stallion, named Charlemagne.
- A lute. Decades of strumming away to pass lonely nights has turned him into a veritable virtuoso, but Morgan never plays for company.
- A pipe and enough tobacco to last him a few weeks.
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Kassarock W O R L D E A T E R
Member
Seen
5 days ago
Race: Human
Age: 29
Gender: Female
Birthplace: Nazairi Highlands
Profession: Mercenary
Nadia is an unusual woman. She is of a height with most men, with broad shoulders and arms thick with well used muscle. Across her biceps the skin is patterned with strange little scars and flecks of coloured ink, the tradition markings of the old brigand clans from the rocky interior highlands of Nazair. Her skin is slightly darker than that of most northern folk, and her hair darker still. It hangs a tangled mop of black curls, shorn short on the side of the head and at the nape of the neck. It tumbles down the right side of her face, partially obscuring a long horizontal scar that clips off the tip of that ear.
The face below is also marked by the scars of battle, three smaller slashes, two across the right cheek, and one below the full lips of her mouth along the line of her strong jaw. When she smiles you can see she is missing a tooth, and the one next to it has been cracked making it appear abnormally pointed. Nadia's face would have always been more striking than traditionally beautiful, but these prominent war wounds along with her physicality leaves her something of a ferocious and dangerous air. The eyes set in his dangerous face are not ferocious however, they are cool and grey, that flash with a sly and somewhat amused look to them.
When not in armour she most often dresses practically, eschewing more traditionally female garb in favour of breaches, short tunics, linen shirts, and a leather jerkin. She generally wears non-dyed fabrics, although she does own several articles dyed bright red with Nazairi Cinnabarite.
Raised with a spear in hand by mountain bandits and spending most of her adult life in armour, Nadia is woman who can drink, spit and swear with the best and boldest of the soldiery. When she wishes to be she is the centre of attention, the loudest, brashest person in the room. Her speech is peppered with japes and swears in foreign tongues. She laughs often and loudly, frequently at her own expense. She answers insults in kind, and with a mocking smile as if to say she's heard it all before. If insults escalate to steel, she hasn't lost yet. She is a bravado, confident in her own skills, and seemingly fearless.
She is, however, no unthinking thug or lout. Nadia engages in boorish behaviours, but her quick wits often shine through either in her clever tongue or her skills in games of chance and probability. She's good with numbers and knows her letters well enough to stumble through reading her own contracts. She also excels in tactical planning, being fond of preparing traps and ambushes when has control of the field of engagement. While she isn't the most book learned or formally educated person, she makes for it with an excellent memory, and a shrewd mind underneath it all.
The only time Nadia really seems to lose her good natured boisterousness is when it comes to Nilfguaard. Her playful fiery nature changes to a cold and hard rage, quite different from her usual persona. Despite being a mercenary by profession, its said she's never claimed a Nilfguaardian ransom, none who cross her path are left alive.
Nadia was born in Nazair. Her father was prominent member of a highland clan, one inclined to the twin professions of bandit and brigand, as many of the highland clans were in those days. Nazair, like all the southern kingdoms, raises boys and girls like the elves do: they're taught how to fight, ride a horse, and go hunting as children, regardless of gender. Nadia was no exception. She spent her childhood riding surefooted mountain ponies, hunting with the sling and short bow, and training with the preferred weapon of her people: the wicked Nazairi short spear, perfect for holding narrow mountain passes, or to be thrown from behind a rocky outcrop.
It was not the kindest nor safest of childhoods, but it was a happy one. She idolised her father, strong, brave, and utterly fearless. He was not worried when Nilfguaard marched North and destroyed the ancient capital of Assengard. The highland clans had no love for the low land nobility. Who cared if they were ruled from Assengard or Nilfguaard? They would continue living free, taking from who they wanted, as they had always done.
But it was not to be.
Their new rulers took a dim view of the actions of the clans, stealing from Nilfguaardian soldiers and merchants. The empire pushed up into the highlands like no other kingdom ever had before, burning the villages and hidden camps of the clans, poisoning their wells, sowing their fields with salt. Nadia's father was executed by the empire before she was a woman grown. A few of her people refused to bend their knees, they fled north, taking Nadia and her mother with them.
In Cintra they were refugees, families dead and broken, stripped of the world they knew and the ways they held dear. They had no wealth, no land, and no skills that were valuable here other than violence. So they sold the one thing they could, their spears. Thankfully they had come to right place. Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra as she was called, was always fighting wars and suppressing rebellions. They took gold from the queen and died on her battlefields. Nadia learned to how to steal in Nazair, but she learned how to fight wars in Cintra. As the years wore on what started as a band of exiles held together through common cause began to turn into just another mercenary company, filled with unfamiliar faces and hard bitten killers.
Nadia and some of others from the clans tried to keep their culture alive. She tried to live like her father. But it seemed like destiny was doomed to repeat itself when she finally faced Nilfguaard again at the battle of Marnadal three years ago. Cintra routed, Queen Calanthe wounded, Eist Tuirseach dead. The battlefield claimed the lives of most of those who had remembered the the ways of their people, the company was finished. Nadia herself took the scar across her ear that day, and deeper scars as well.
She went North again, to Temeria. When she could fight again Nadia went with King Foltest to Sodden Hill, but they arrived so late most of the killing had already been done. When the King offered the chance to go south, into Nilfguaard, almost to the lands her people once held - Nadia jumped at the chance.
Specialty: Nadia's speciality is her role as a lightly armoured skirmisher. Her preferred fighting style is on foot with spear and shield.
Weapons: Nadia carries several weapons on her person when going into battle. Primarily she uses a six foot long light spear tipped with a diamond shaped head of iron that can be thrust with or thrown. If possible she will bring multiple spears with her. At her side is a simple one handed arming sword and a utilitarian broad bladed dagger. These act as side arms in case of the loss of her spear. In her off hand she carries a round, concave, iron plated, wooden shield.
Armor: Nadia swears relatively light armour that emphasises utility and mobility over protection. She wears grey and brown brigantine plate over an arming jacket. Pauldrons and vambraces of lobstered steel protect her shoulders and forearms. On her head, Nadia wears an open faced steel sallet.
Misc:
Age: 29
Gender: Female
Birthplace: Nazairi Highlands
Profession: Mercenary
Appearance
Nadia is an unusual woman. She is of a height with most men, with broad shoulders and arms thick with well used muscle. Across her biceps the skin is patterned with strange little scars and flecks of coloured ink, the tradition markings of the old brigand clans from the rocky interior highlands of Nazair. Her skin is slightly darker than that of most northern folk, and her hair darker still. It hangs a tangled mop of black curls, shorn short on the side of the head and at the nape of the neck. It tumbles down the right side of her face, partially obscuring a long horizontal scar that clips off the tip of that ear.
The face below is also marked by the scars of battle, three smaller slashes, two across the right cheek, and one below the full lips of her mouth along the line of her strong jaw. When she smiles you can see she is missing a tooth, and the one next to it has been cracked making it appear abnormally pointed. Nadia's face would have always been more striking than traditionally beautiful, but these prominent war wounds along with her physicality leaves her something of a ferocious and dangerous air. The eyes set in his dangerous face are not ferocious however, they are cool and grey, that flash with a sly and somewhat amused look to them.
When not in armour she most often dresses practically, eschewing more traditionally female garb in favour of breaches, short tunics, linen shirts, and a leather jerkin. She generally wears non-dyed fabrics, although she does own several articles dyed bright red with Nazairi Cinnabarite.
Personality
Raised with a spear in hand by mountain bandits and spending most of her adult life in armour, Nadia is woman who can drink, spit and swear with the best and boldest of the soldiery. When she wishes to be she is the centre of attention, the loudest, brashest person in the room. Her speech is peppered with japes and swears in foreign tongues. She laughs often and loudly, frequently at her own expense. She answers insults in kind, and with a mocking smile as if to say she's heard it all before. If insults escalate to steel, she hasn't lost yet. She is a bravado, confident in her own skills, and seemingly fearless.
She is, however, no unthinking thug or lout. Nadia engages in boorish behaviours, but her quick wits often shine through either in her clever tongue or her skills in games of chance and probability. She's good with numbers and knows her letters well enough to stumble through reading her own contracts. She also excels in tactical planning, being fond of preparing traps and ambushes when has control of the field of engagement. While she isn't the most book learned or formally educated person, she makes for it with an excellent memory, and a shrewd mind underneath it all.
The only time Nadia really seems to lose her good natured boisterousness is when it comes to Nilfguaard. Her playful fiery nature changes to a cold and hard rage, quite different from her usual persona. Despite being a mercenary by profession, its said she's never claimed a Nilfguaardian ransom, none who cross her path are left alive.
History
Nadia was born in Nazair. Her father was prominent member of a highland clan, one inclined to the twin professions of bandit and brigand, as many of the highland clans were in those days. Nazair, like all the southern kingdoms, raises boys and girls like the elves do: they're taught how to fight, ride a horse, and go hunting as children, regardless of gender. Nadia was no exception. She spent her childhood riding surefooted mountain ponies, hunting with the sling and short bow, and training with the preferred weapon of her people: the wicked Nazairi short spear, perfect for holding narrow mountain passes, or to be thrown from behind a rocky outcrop.
It was not the kindest nor safest of childhoods, but it was a happy one. She idolised her father, strong, brave, and utterly fearless. He was not worried when Nilfguaard marched North and destroyed the ancient capital of Assengard. The highland clans had no love for the low land nobility. Who cared if they were ruled from Assengard or Nilfguaard? They would continue living free, taking from who they wanted, as they had always done.
But it was not to be.
Their new rulers took a dim view of the actions of the clans, stealing from Nilfguaardian soldiers and merchants. The empire pushed up into the highlands like no other kingdom ever had before, burning the villages and hidden camps of the clans, poisoning their wells, sowing their fields with salt. Nadia's father was executed by the empire before she was a woman grown. A few of her people refused to bend their knees, they fled north, taking Nadia and her mother with them.
In Cintra they were refugees, families dead and broken, stripped of the world they knew and the ways they held dear. They had no wealth, no land, and no skills that were valuable here other than violence. So they sold the one thing they could, their spears. Thankfully they had come to right place. Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra as she was called, was always fighting wars and suppressing rebellions. They took gold from the queen and died on her battlefields. Nadia learned to how to steal in Nazair, but she learned how to fight wars in Cintra. As the years wore on what started as a band of exiles held together through common cause began to turn into just another mercenary company, filled with unfamiliar faces and hard bitten killers.
Nadia and some of others from the clans tried to keep their culture alive. She tried to live like her father. But it seemed like destiny was doomed to repeat itself when she finally faced Nilfguaard again at the battle of Marnadal three years ago. Cintra routed, Queen Calanthe wounded, Eist Tuirseach dead. The battlefield claimed the lives of most of those who had remembered the the ways of their people, the company was finished. Nadia herself took the scar across her ear that day, and deeper scars as well.
She went North again, to Temeria. When she could fight again Nadia went with King Foltest to Sodden Hill, but they arrived so late most of the killing had already been done. When the King offered the chance to go south, into Nilfguaard, almost to the lands her people once held - Nadia jumped at the chance.
Skills
- Spear and Shield Fighting
- One Handed Swordsmanship
- Horse Riding and Grooming
- Raconteuring and Carousing
- Skirmisher Tactics
- Arithmetic
- Games of Chance
Specialty: Nadia's speciality is her role as a lightly armoured skirmisher. Her preferred fighting style is on foot with spear and shield.
Equipment
Weapons: Nadia carries several weapons on her person when going into battle. Primarily she uses a six foot long light spear tipped with a diamond shaped head of iron that can be thrust with or thrown. If possible she will bring multiple spears with her. At her side is a simple one handed arming sword and a utilitarian broad bladed dagger. These act as side arms in case of the loss of her spear. In her off hand she carries a round, concave, iron plated, wooden shield.
Armor: Nadia swears relatively light armour that emphasises utility and mobility over protection. She wears grey and brown brigantine plate over an arming jacket. Pauldrons and vambraces of lobstered steel protect her shoulders and forearms. On her head, Nadia wears an open faced steel sallet.
Misc:
- Male riding horse named Wander.
- Horse tack
- Bedroll and blanket
- Water skin
- Wine skin
- Coin purse
- Fire irons and cooking pot
- Small woodaxe
- Tinderbox and flint and steel
- Whetstone
- Deck of Gwent cards
- Set of bone gaming dice
- Several days of dried rations
- Several changes of clothes
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spicykvnt Sponsored by Yorkshire Gold
Member
Seen
6 days ago
[hider Avery Vexx]
_______________________________________________
67 | ♀ | Silverton, Novigrad
_______________________________________________
Sorceress and Advisor
67 | ♀ | Silverton, Novigrad
_______________________________________________
Sorceress and Advisor
══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════
Avery stands tall and proud at 5’8 with a shapely and curvaceous physique. Her skin is pale, bearing peach undertones that she highlights with light sweeps of bronze makeup around her sharp cheekbones. She has fuller lips, but unevenly so - with the upper lip being thinner with a well defined cupid's bow. Despite her overall fondness for make-up, she prefers not to wear lipsticks unless it’s a special occasion. When she smiles, it is clearly a mischievous one that reflects her mind at work - brimming with ideas.
Her thick and angular brows provide the perfect frames for her unusual eyes. The Sorceress is well known for her heterochromia. Her right eye is the colour of sapphire, and the left an emerald green, under normal circumstances the colours individually are not particularly special - but she has a habit of using her magic to enhance their brightness and make them appear far more enchanting. This is usually as an aid to hypnotise or lure people to her. Said eyes are darkened significantly with further makeup and a soft black kohl lines her them and she applies a soft, glittering copper powder to her lids. One further detail of note around her eyes is a large freckle just beneath the right - it is unknown whether or not she was born with this complimenting imperfection.
She has brown hair the colour of chocolate, that falls in soft curled layers to her collarbones. Very few know this, as she opts to keep it well-groomed in either a mid-set bun or chignon - there is often some kind of bejewelled hairpin holding everything in place. One such piece that she owns, is a very ornate, coiled golden snake with rubies beset into it as eyes. Avery will occasionally wear this wrapped around her bun with the face staring out behind her almost menacingly. Some have whispered that this is so the Sorceresses can have eyes in the back of her head if need be, and on days where she is said to be wearing it her peers will avoid walking behind her.
Sorceresses are known to take pride in their wardrobes, and Avery is no exception to that. She opts for colourful garments in warm hues and shades of green that show off her enviable figure with sartorial elegance. She almost always chooses clothes that are practical for work, but to relax in? She'll happily and comfortably opt for clothing that leaves little to the imagination...
Her thick and angular brows provide the perfect frames for her unusual eyes. The Sorceress is well known for her heterochromia. Her right eye is the colour of sapphire, and the left an emerald green, under normal circumstances the colours individually are not particularly special - but she has a habit of using her magic to enhance their brightness and make them appear far more enchanting. This is usually as an aid to hypnotise or lure people to her. Said eyes are darkened significantly with further makeup and a soft black kohl lines her them and she applies a soft, glittering copper powder to her lids. One further detail of note around her eyes is a large freckle just beneath the right - it is unknown whether or not she was born with this complimenting imperfection.
She has brown hair the colour of chocolate, that falls in soft curled layers to her collarbones. Very few know this, as she opts to keep it well-groomed in either a mid-set bun or chignon - there is often some kind of bejewelled hairpin holding everything in place. One such piece that she owns, is a very ornate, coiled golden snake with rubies beset into it as eyes. Avery will occasionally wear this wrapped around her bun with the face staring out behind her almost menacingly. Some have whispered that this is so the Sorceresses can have eyes in the back of her head if need be, and on days where she is said to be wearing it her peers will avoid walking behind her.
Sorceresses are known to take pride in their wardrobes, and Avery is no exception to that. She opts for colourful garments in warm hues and shades of green that show off her enviable figure with sartorial elegance. She almost always chooses clothes that are practical for work, but to relax in? She'll happily and comfortably opt for clothing that leaves little to the imagination...
═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════
Upon a first impression, Avery seems to perpetuate the Sorceress stereotype - aloof, cunning, and concerned entirely with her beauty and youth. She carries herself with an almost quiet charisma and charm, she is not particularly extroverted, and in fact spent most of her studies and early career as a loner - feeling outcast by her peers. Over time, Avery came to terms with this, and now manages to carry herself with a certain je ne sais quoi, a cool effervescence that is hard to define that suggests a confidence in herself, with the way she chooses to live her life, and in the ways she does not.
She acts in an advisory position to political figures despite having a natural disliking for authority and arbitrary rules. This extends into her personal life. Where many choose to live in an organised manner - Avery flouts this etiquette. One need only walk into her quarters to see her idea of tidiness and order... Making the bed is simply the last thing on her mind when she eventually stumbles out of it at whatever ungodly hour she chooses to rise.
Avery only ever really lives by the laws of her own whims. In her profession, she has an honest, direct style of communication that isn’t held back by perceived social roles or expectations. This is something that most of those that she advises do not appreciate, but when Avery is right, she’s right - just try and convince her otherwise.. She has managed to build a good reputation for herself in her work, known for a level of wisdom and political nous that is not commonplace, and usually only found in Mages.
Behind closed doors she is an imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit. She delights in causing playful and (mostly) harmless chaos - behaving in a mischievous manner to toy with people that she believes should be brought down a notch. To cause shock and disarray thrills her, a hobby she has developed over the years that was born from a place of pain, a lack of control, and a lack of understanding of her abilities.
The Sorceress is not without compassion, and while on the surface she appears almost to be a borderline antagonistic presence to most of the people she spends her time with, it's done with mostly good intent. Should she ever stumble upon a scheme to threaten innocent lives, or the lives of those she holds dear - she will act to protect without a second thought with true and unmatched fury. As a rule, she gravitates more towards introverted, and emotionally intelligent people when seeking friendships and relationships. She has very little patience for shallow individuals, even less so for lewd ones.
She has a strong belief that her position as a Sorceress coupled with her appearance attract the sort of men whom she does not find interesting on anything other than a superficial level. She has no desire to be a notch on a bedpost or the simple, exaggerated subject of a story between drunken men as they brag about conquests with each other. It may well be rooted in arrogance, but Avery is waiting for someone different than the usual crowd - someone worthy of her time and affection. In her heart, she knows who that individual is - and there are clues and motifs on her presence that may hint at what her heart longs for. Paradoxically, growing up, she was never shown much love or affection by her family and so has always felt somewhat unworthy of it in the first place. It is a concept she is wholly unfamiliar with, and she will avoid discussion of it for the most part.
She acts in an advisory position to political figures despite having a natural disliking for authority and arbitrary rules. This extends into her personal life. Where many choose to live in an organised manner - Avery flouts this etiquette. One need only walk into her quarters to see her idea of tidiness and order... Making the bed is simply the last thing on her mind when she eventually stumbles out of it at whatever ungodly hour she chooses to rise.
Avery only ever really lives by the laws of her own whims. In her profession, she has an honest, direct style of communication that isn’t held back by perceived social roles or expectations. This is something that most of those that she advises do not appreciate, but when Avery is right, she’s right - just try and convince her otherwise.. She has managed to build a good reputation for herself in her work, known for a level of wisdom and political nous that is not commonplace, and usually only found in Mages.
Behind closed doors she is an imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit. She delights in causing playful and (mostly) harmless chaos - behaving in a mischievous manner to toy with people that she believes should be brought down a notch. To cause shock and disarray thrills her, a hobby she has developed over the years that was born from a place of pain, a lack of control, and a lack of understanding of her abilities.
The Sorceress is not without compassion, and while on the surface she appears almost to be a borderline antagonistic presence to most of the people she spends her time with, it's done with mostly good intent. Should she ever stumble upon a scheme to threaten innocent lives, or the lives of those she holds dear - she will act to protect without a second thought with true and unmatched fury. As a rule, she gravitates more towards introverted, and emotionally intelligent people when seeking friendships and relationships. She has very little patience for shallow individuals, even less so for lewd ones.
She has a strong belief that her position as a Sorceress coupled with her appearance attract the sort of men whom she does not find interesting on anything other than a superficial level. She has no desire to be a notch on a bedpost or the simple, exaggerated subject of a story between drunken men as they brag about conquests with each other. It may well be rooted in arrogance, but Avery is waiting for someone different than the usual crowd - someone worthy of her time and affection. In her heart, she knows who that individual is - and there are clues and motifs on her presence that may hint at what her heart longs for. Paradoxically, growing up, she was never shown much love or affection by her family and so has always felt somewhat unworthy of it in the first place. It is a concept she is wholly unfamiliar with, and she will avoid discussion of it for the most part.
═══════ H I S T O R Y ══════
*From the journal of Kacper, School of the Viper
Headed to Novigrad. Needed to resupply, and wanted to relax for a day or two. Stumbled upon a contract - supposed spectral activity in Silverton. A nice, hefty reward too, so how could I resist? Not something I would usually pay mind to, but I was there and it was easy payment.
Spoke to an Innkeep called Brajan who explained his son and friends were tormented by a wraith in an alleyway. Word got around, and rumours of a wraith meant that the customers weren’t exactly flocking to his Inn. No deaths though, and no injury - just a group of loud and frightened children.
When I inspected the scene, I found no traces of anything spectral in the slightest but there was a vibration in the air. Something wasn’t quite right.
Tracked down the boys and spoke to them, asked them to tell me what happened. I managed to squeeze it out of them that they had been throwing stones at cats, giving them shit, trying to hurt them when a shimmering light came out of the wall and screamed at them. Didn’t sound like a wraith to me. Needed to go back to the site, this time I took meat treats…
Put out the treats and waited.
A Witcher waiting for a cat…
Eventually cats flocked into the alley, and they weren’t alone. A little girl. She had one of them in her arms - a big tom cat it was. Ginger and fat, it was almost as long as the child. First thing I noticed about her were her eyes, bloodshot - and her pupils looked like they were bleeding into her irises. My medallion rumbled at her.
She was shy, appeared almost malnourished and her dress was torn at the hems. But she smiled at me like she trusted me, even if the cat squirmed and ran away. I asked her what her name was, Averina. She lived in Silverton with her parents, and explained that she looked after the stray cats because the other children wouldn’t play with her. She went on to tell me when the boys had hurt the cat, she’d been overwhelmed and that’s when the Spectre had appeared. Involuntary use of magic? An emotional outburst?
I asked her why she didn’t think I was going to hurt the cats too, and she said that she couldn’t decipher any feelings from me - only a calm. A natural telempath perhaps? A rare skill that could easily be exploited. I didn’t want that to happen, I liked the girl and she was not the monster that the contract had claimed. Just a frightened young girl with a gift.
The child was a source.
I took her to a mage I knew in Oxenfurt, Florian, and he all but confirmed what I had suspected. He was quite taken with the child, and she him. A natural connection of sorts. I spent some time with them both. The girl was curious about me, fussing over my medallion. Florian theorised that the magic in the medallion reacted with her own and helped her to feel its presence and ground herself - come to terms with it all.
So that was that. No Spectre in Silverton, just a young mage who then found herself a mentor.
I didn’t return to Novigrad for a long time, but when I next met Florian he told me that the child had moved on to Aretuza and was doing well.
Headed to Novigrad. Needed to resupply, and wanted to relax for a day or two. Stumbled upon a contract - supposed spectral activity in Silverton. A nice, hefty reward too, so how could I resist? Not something I would usually pay mind to, but I was there and it was easy payment.
Spoke to an Innkeep called Brajan who explained his son and friends were tormented by a wraith in an alleyway. Word got around, and rumours of a wraith meant that the customers weren’t exactly flocking to his Inn. No deaths though, and no injury - just a group of loud and frightened children.
When I inspected the scene, I found no traces of anything spectral in the slightest but there was a vibration in the air. Something wasn’t quite right.
Tracked down the boys and spoke to them, asked them to tell me what happened. I managed to squeeze it out of them that they had been throwing stones at cats, giving them shit, trying to hurt them when a shimmering light came out of the wall and screamed at them. Didn’t sound like a wraith to me. Needed to go back to the site, this time I took meat treats…
Put out the treats and waited.
A Witcher waiting for a cat…
Eventually cats flocked into the alley, and they weren’t alone. A little girl. She had one of them in her arms - a big tom cat it was. Ginger and fat, it was almost as long as the child. First thing I noticed about her were her eyes, bloodshot - and her pupils looked like they were bleeding into her irises. My medallion rumbled at her.
She was shy, appeared almost malnourished and her dress was torn at the hems. But she smiled at me like she trusted me, even if the cat squirmed and ran away. I asked her what her name was, Averina. She lived in Silverton with her parents, and explained that she looked after the stray cats because the other children wouldn’t play with her. She went on to tell me when the boys had hurt the cat, she’d been overwhelmed and that’s when the Spectre had appeared. Involuntary use of magic? An emotional outburst?
I asked her why she didn’t think I was going to hurt the cats too, and she said that she couldn’t decipher any feelings from me - only a calm. A natural telempath perhaps? A rare skill that could easily be exploited. I didn’t want that to happen, I liked the girl and she was not the monster that the contract had claimed. Just a frightened young girl with a gift.
The child was a source.
I took her to a mage I knew in Oxenfurt, Florian, and he all but confirmed what I had suspected. He was quite taken with the child, and she him. A natural connection of sorts. I spent some time with them both. The girl was curious about me, fussing over my medallion. Florian theorised that the magic in the medallion reacted with her own and helped her to feel its presence and ground herself - come to terms with it all.
So that was that. No Spectre in Silverton, just a young mage who then found herself a mentor.
I didn’t return to Novigrad for a long time, but when I next met Florian he told me that the child had moved on to Aretuza and was doing well.
*From the research journal of Urzula of Vspaden, Aretuza
1219;
The Silverton girl has shown promise throughout her schooling at Aretuza. She was slower than most, didn't take well to learning her Elder Speech as the other girls. I attribute this to a lack of reading comprehension throughout her upbringing. She is however, diligent with her studies and works far harder than the other girls out of hours. She is dedicated.
Where she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd is in her emotional intelligence. The girl is able to pick up on emotional energies in the room with much more clarity than I've seen before. She's even managed to slip past my defences and get into my own thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously, it's hard to say. I have yet to see her manipulate this ability to her advantage.
1221
The Silverton girl has adopted the identity 'Avery Vexx'. She had no surname before her arrival here, nor did she wish to align to Silverton as part of her own name. I suppose there are bitter feelings about her upbringing and this is her way of distancing herself. She gets clearly annoyed if one calls her 'Averina'. She has worked hard in tempering her natural ability, and her studies have allowed her to find further aptitude in creating illusions. I have seen her craft illusions in extreme detail. She does not show much interest in any elemental magic.
One day I happened upon Avery in her quarters, having decorated the room from floor to ceiling in creeping ivy - the ceiling had been replaced with the nights sky despite it being midday. Everything, down to the smell of roses was there. Quite fascinating.
I'm proud of the girl, she's come a long way and for all of her flaws and quirks of personality, she will fare well in her profession. She will be sent to advise a Lady in Lyria when her studies have finished.
1219;
The Silverton girl has shown promise throughout her schooling at Aretuza. She was slower than most, didn't take well to learning her Elder Speech as the other girls. I attribute this to a lack of reading comprehension throughout her upbringing. She is however, diligent with her studies and works far harder than the other girls out of hours. She is dedicated.
Where she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd is in her emotional intelligence. The girl is able to pick up on emotional energies in the room with much more clarity than I've seen before. She's even managed to slip past my defences and get into my own thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously, it's hard to say. I have yet to see her manipulate this ability to her advantage.
1221
The Silverton girl has adopted the identity 'Avery Vexx'. She had no surname before her arrival here, nor did she wish to align to Silverton as part of her own name. I suppose there are bitter feelings about her upbringing and this is her way of distancing herself. She gets clearly annoyed if one calls her 'Averina'. She has worked hard in tempering her natural ability, and her studies have allowed her to find further aptitude in creating illusions. I have seen her craft illusions in extreme detail. She does not show much interest in any elemental magic.
One day I happened upon Avery in her quarters, having decorated the room from floor to ceiling in creeping ivy - the ceiling had been replaced with the nights sky despite it being midday. Everything, down to the smell of roses was there. Quite fascinating.
I'm proud of the girl, she's come a long way and for all of her flaws and quirks of personality, she will fare well in her profession. She will be sent to advise a Lady in Lyria when her studies have finished.
*From the diary of Jonny Aurentalus
Today I am sad, diary. Sad that a dear friend of mine is leaving Lyria.
I understand I've had some differing thoughts on Sorceress Vexx throughout her time here, but in the end, I'm glad to call her a friend. Oh I shall miss her. According to my Aunt, she has taught and advised as best as she could and with my Aunt stepping down politically it makes no sense for Miss Vexx to stay.
I remember when I was just a young lad, and first met her that she was very cold and ambivalent towards me. Working as her squire was an awkward job for the longest time. She was secretive, rather impatient too. Because of this I grew to resent working for her, and it was only when I started to question and bite back that she seemed to take a liking to me.
Over the years working with her, Miss Vexx has taught me many things, from the trivial - riding a horse, etiquette at the dining table... To of course far more difficult things such as navigating political discussions with confidence. I had a stutter back when I was a boy, now I speak as clear as day. I have Miss Vexx to thank for that.
She has watched me grow up, in a way she raised me herself and yet I know so little of her. From where did she hail? Who are her parents? Who are her other friends? What I do know, is that the work of a court mage bored her, and when I was old enough to manage my own days she would be locked away in her quarters for the most part. There was a relief in her eyes that I saw when she was told her services were no longer required by my family in Lyria. Today, this evening, to be precise, is her last day in Lyria. Like many of the elements of her life, I have no idea where she is headed next or what is next for her. I can only wish her well on her path.
It was the greatest honour of my life to know her.
Today I am sad, diary. Sad that a dear friend of mine is leaving Lyria.
I understand I've had some differing thoughts on Sorceress Vexx throughout her time here, but in the end, I'm glad to call her a friend. Oh I shall miss her. According to my Aunt, she has taught and advised as best as she could and with my Aunt stepping down politically it makes no sense for Miss Vexx to stay.
I remember when I was just a young lad, and first met her that she was very cold and ambivalent towards me. Working as her squire was an awkward job for the longest time. She was secretive, rather impatient too. Because of this I grew to resent working for her, and it was only when I started to question and bite back that she seemed to take a liking to me.
Over the years working with her, Miss Vexx has taught me many things, from the trivial - riding a horse, etiquette at the dining table... To of course far more difficult things such as navigating political discussions with confidence. I had a stutter back when I was a boy, now I speak as clear as day. I have Miss Vexx to thank for that.
She has watched me grow up, in a way she raised me herself and yet I know so little of her. From where did she hail? Who are her parents? Who are her other friends? What I do know, is that the work of a court mage bored her, and when I was old enough to manage my own days she would be locked away in her quarters for the most part. There was a relief in her eyes that I saw when she was told her services were no longer required by my family in Lyria. Today, this evening, to be precise, is her last day in Lyria. Like many of the elements of her life, I have no idea where she is headed next or what is next for her. I can only wish her well on her path.
It was the greatest honour of my life to know her.
▼ S K I L L S
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Telempathy - Specialty
► Illusion - Skilled
► Defensive Magic - Skilled
► Alchemy - Novice
▼ E Q U I P M E N T
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Cat - A vicious, temperamental hairless cat named Winifred. Rescued from the streets by Avery some three or so years prior. The cat is haughty, bold, and mischievous but loyal to a fault to her master.
► Dagger - An ornate steel dagger with a bronzed hilt, beset with emeralds to the pommel which is engraved like the head of a snake. Hardly threatening and rarely used, but nice to carry around all the same.
► Megascope - She keeps a Megascope in her quarters.
► Messenger Bag - Foragers knife, rolled parchment, quill and ink. Sugared almonds, sugar cubes. Animal bait, compact mirror. Vial of perfume.
▼ M I S C
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Reader - She enjoys fictional romance novels, and has a bookshelf in her quarters filled with them. The trashier, the better.
► Sweet Toothed - She is very sweet toothed, and can’t resist anything sugary. It is one of the few well known facts about her. She always carries a small bag of sugared almonds on her person. To sweeten up Sorceress Avery’s mood, one need only bring her something with sugar.
► Night Owl - Considers herself to be a nocturnal creature and will sleep in to the early afternoon frequently, having stayed up until the early hours of the morning. On many an occasion, important meetings have been rescheduled or postponed because of her unpredictable hours.
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T Y R V A R I É L
Race: Aen Seidhe (Elf)
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Birthplace: Vallweir (Temeria)
Profession: Blacksmith, Medic and Smuggler
Tyrvariél, by human standards, is pretty much on the way of aging. However he is not human and that's why he still looks like a young man who has just reached adolescence. There is not so much as a single scar to disfigure the mostly homogenously textured area that is his face, nor are there many other noticeable impurities. His eyes are white pools with rings of a pale, blue-gray-ish mixture framing crystal clear centers of black. No yellow stench in the corners, no fine traces of blood vessels to be seen unless he's in a fit of rage. His nose is long and doesn't protrude much over the thin lines that are his lips or his somewhat marked chin. Also one really can't say that his forehead would do much better. However there's one thing Tyrvariél is truly proud of: his red hair. While any kind of beard doesn't stand much of a chance against his discipline, he has allowed it to grow as long as possible. Without the small metal bracers the thick and winding he has formed out of his hair probably would unwind and dissolve very soon, the resulting mess not only hiding his pointy ears but also falling right into his line of sight.
Tyrvariél stands at about 6 feet flat. That's tall for humans, but just barely average for Aen Seidhe. The same can't be said for his build though: He has been working hard with metal since early and for long, the outcome being not only somewhat calloused hands, but also a body having adapted greatly. Thick bones covered in unusually dense muscles and shoulders broad enough to be significant mark him as non-representative for his kind. He's definitely a lot stronger and heavier than most people would judge him to be.
Tyrvariél was born 1223 in the settlement of Vallweir, pretty much in the midst of Temeria. His parents were Setaríél (father) and Fallendre (mother), whom after the fall of Dol Blathanna roughly 60 years earlier had decided not to escape into the Blue Mountains, but to accept their fate as second class citizens in human-held territory. Being the full-blooded elf he was Tyrvariél was to learn what that meant from very early on. Over the last decades in Vallweir his parents had managed to acclimatise to the conditions as much as they could. They had even gained and then lost again some friends among that part of the general population which was the least inclined to what almost seemed like societal doctrine, but it was clear that all three were situated in the far lower half of the wealth distribution nevertheless.
Still, even when living close to the real slums, a living had to be made somehow. Setariél had been a blacksmith for the major part of his life so far and was trying to maintain this profession the best he could given the circumstances. Fallendre however had turned her anger, her desperation about the overall situation of the Aen Seidhe into criminal energy. She had learned how to utilize her small and slender build in a light-fingered fashion. A petty thief, but one good enough to provide some boost to their overall funds without being detected. Deciding between those two paths felt natural to the young Tyrvariél as neither the boy nor his parents could imagine how to support proper education for a third way properly.
He opted for going along his father and started to learn blacksmithing. It was a very slow process given the limited funding and other resources available, but age hardly was a concern for them given the long natural lifespan of an Aen Seidhe. Simple tasks such as nails, hooks and then horseshoes were the first things for Tyrvariél to do and in order to support his family and contribute more coin to this personal effort, he also picked up work at the town's hospital and leprosarium. Dealing with the injured, sick and dying there and performing a mixture between merely managing their state of lingering illness and actual treatment on a novice level was not exactly nice work, but it was work others that would have been preferred for cultural reasons often didn't want to do. Also being an Aen Seidhe meant that not all of the human's illnesses could affect him as easily and vice versa.
It took a couple of years, but with training came experience and with experience came more complex and rewarding work. The elf showed a great degree of talent. Having started to forge blades, arrowheads and small pieces of plate attached to leather Tyrvariél's small backyard business could beat the prices of more prestigious and pompous competitors with higher side costs. Adventurers of many kinds left enough coin for the Aen Seidhe to drop the tedious work at the leprosarium again and to fully focus on his metalwork.
At some point however Setariél had taught his son everything he could teach him and there was no more progress to be made within the confines of Vallweir. Turning towards one of the human competitors obviously was not really an option, so Tyrvariél started to save and prepare for a journey. Not much of the continent's original gnomish population was left, but still they were famous for their work and technology. One just had to find them. Tyrvariél hoped that him being a member of an elder race would make them more willing to help him, so he ventured on. It was early in the year 1258.
The plan had been to go for Mahakam, but Tyrvariél hardly made it to the area around the city of Carreras before something unexpected happened. Down the road he encountered a human trader's caravan which had been ambushed by Scoia'tael. A veritable piece of carnage caused by a party of his own species, some of its members still being present on site searching for loot and starting to ask questions. It didn't take long until they openly tried to convince the unwary Tyrvariél to join their ranks against humankind. It was an idea his mother certainly would have found tempting, but the young elf was greatly influenced by the bloodshed in front of his eyes. That kind of mass destruction had not occurred in the leprosarium. More busy vomiting and trying to stabilize his circulation, it didn't cross his mind that these effects might vanish over time and he deemed himself unsuitable for being a guerilla fighter, even though he could sympathise with the rebellion in terms of morale.
He left the place without a squirrel's tail decorating his head, but with knowledge about how active the rebels had become in the wide world. He now knew how to contact them and they now knew how to contact him. However the journey had to go on and, in the end, it would turn out to be a significant success. While far from eager to reveal all of their secrets towards him, the gnomes and dwarves still proved friendly and, if not forgiving, at least sometimes just oblivious about the petty fights elvenkind had brought to the continent upon its arrival millennia ago. Tyrvariél couldn't take much more back home from Mahakam then any knowledge gained, but hopefully it would be enough to become a master of the art by the standards of Temeria. The overall endeavour had roughly taken four years, so when he arrived in Vallweir it was 1262.
A few months later Emhyr var Emreis decided to cross the Yaruga.
Temeria and the remainder of the northern kingdoms were forced to push their armies to peak strength, including recruitings on a non-voluntary basis. Men were useless however if there weren't enough swords and shields to equip them, so Foltest didn't want Tyrvariél as a frontline soldier. It would have been a decision quite problematic with regard to the loyalty that could be expected of an Aen Seidhe, particularly so if the next move of the enemy was to openly advertise better relations with their kind anyway. So instead Tyrvariél was forced to enter what could be considered the medieval stage of standardized mass production.
That caused problems for him though: Having to produce weapons for those naked apes that called themselves humans was one thing, but the thought that his very products could also be used for slaughtering Scoia'tael, maybe even those he had met years earlier in particular, was a thing even harder to bear. None of his family had a keen interest in the Northern Kingdoms, last but not least the conquerors of Dol Blathanna, winning this war. So Tyrvariél, now caught firmly in the kingdom's grasp, under supervision and thus unable to just run away, opted for what he deemed to be the lesser evil. He pointed out that he also had experience in dealing with illnesses and injuries. And so, perpetuated by the influx of refugees from Cintra and the quickly mounting losses overall, he soon found himself in a sickbay close to the front. It was pretty much the opposite of the decision he had made when confronted with the Scoia'tael, but now it was too late to put things in accordance with his true sympathy.
The first weeks were outright brutal, but over time and not given much of another choice by both his morale and the men around him Tyrvariél learned how to contain himself... his stomach in particular. Tools for amputation, the process of cauterization and related things became familiar on a daily basis whether he liked it or not. Still he had to do some blacksmithing from time to time as well, but at least it was not that much. Tyrvariél did not experience the battle of Sodden Hill first hand, but certainly the fly-infested, stinky and rotting aftermath of it as the cleanup and salvaging operations picked up momentum after the war.
Things had not come without a price. Once all of it was over, Tyrvariél felt exhausted. Not physically exhausted, but psychologically burned out in a strange way. The value of a single individual's life felt as if diminished, his daily demeanour altered and riddled with habits he had not had before. Partly it was as if his purpose in life had been eradicated or hidden away in a place he could not find. Much of that wasn't even found out by himself, but instead his parents could tell the difference in their son. Or what was left of them as his mother had finally been captured in one of her little heists gone wrong while he had been close to the front.
Things improved in the two years following, but not truly returned to their original state. He picked up blacksmithing again, but this time not only for those he deemed more or less neutral adventurers but also for the Scoia'tael. He has been maintaining a secret bond with them since then, but still hasn't joined their ranks directly. A mutual agreement that he is more useful as a capable supplier and relay of information.
Why he decided to join the expedition ? Because a remote fortress deep in the lands of Nilfgaard, the one faction that seemed to be more acceptable for an Aen Seidhe than any other, might give him enough solitude and calmness to stabilize and arrange for his future. He is no fool and can see the writing on the wall that Nilfgaard might try again. In fact he hopes for it and that they succeed, ripping the place out of the northern grasp again. If his desire to have a stay close to the newfound fortress instead of being paid out in coin should fail the reward at least might help a great deal.
The almost pristine condition of his skin does not nearly reflect how shattered the situation inside Tyrvariél's mind still is. It is a statement not too far fetched that he is partly emotionally dead. At the end of his line of duty in the Temerian army patients reported that he hardly did as much as twitching an eyelash while bathing his hands in their blood and hearing their screams as he grinded their bones. He has seen too many anonymous, mutilated, half-dead and doomed bodies to care much about them anymore. However it is important to know that he has never killed anyone himself so far, so he probably would not do so without at least thinking once.
His relationship towards humans is a complicated one. He is aware that there are examples like Cregennan of Lod who are very respectable, but just as the sorcerer's example shows there are plenty of those who think otherwise, plenty of those who might deserve death for their cruelties. However Tyrvariél has effectively outsourced this task to the guerilla troops of the Scoia'tael whom he started to support with arms and armor. There is the real possibility that his current instability will turn into a vulcano and that he will join those troops personally, but as long as this hasn't happened he merely judges humans based on their stance towards the elven matter. Some he might want to become friends with, but many might find themselves confronted with a chilly conversational partner and nothing else.
Tyrvariél is quite intelligent, curious and staying in control even in turmoil has become almost second nature to him, but there are oddities: In action he seems to lose a bit of his self-esteem, sometimes almost falling into a pattern of strict obedience that marks him as an ex-soldier. Also, while traveling, he turns his head around as if expecting pursuers even when everybody knows there can't be any. Illegal deliveries can be quite risky after all... Rarely and in calm situations he might seem to drift away from the present reality around him, thinking about something vastly different for a bunch of seconds or until disrupted harshly.
And then there still are the more enjoyable, if not even humorous aspects: Most people fail to imagine how much this Aen Seidhe can eat once his stomach is empty, but he isn't afraid of alcohol either. Not for soaking past miseries in it, but for the sake of real joy. He's almost a bit of a sommelier.
Specialty: Tyrvariél is not much a fighter, but when it comes to maintaining a fighting force's efficiency he might be much more advanced than what most fighters can do on their own.
Weapons: Tyrvariél has been trained in how to shoot a bow by his elven parents, but it wasn't like the nobles and peasants owning the fields and forests around his birthplace would have allowed for much real action training. So, surprisingly for an elf, he's not excellent at this tool despite owning it and according arrows. As a sidearm he carries a morning star designed and made by himself. A simple, primitive looking weapon made for primitive skills. It can be quite effective against heavy armor though.
Armor: Tyrvariél wears a full set of light plate armor made of steel, finished with burning-in substances giving it a more shiny, leathery color. Many of its edges are decorated with polished brass. It looks as costly as it perfectly fits the body of the man wearing it. The more attentive observer might start to wonder why someone who doesn't have that much of an idea of how to wield a sword needs that kind of armor. On a second glance however said observer, if daring enough, might also come to the conclusion that it's as much about advertisement as it is about protection. Guess for whom...
Misc:
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Birthplace: Vallweir (Temeria)
Profession: Blacksmith, Medic and Smuggler
Appearance
Tyrvariél, by human standards, is pretty much on the way of aging. However he is not human and that's why he still looks like a young man who has just reached adolescence. There is not so much as a single scar to disfigure the mostly homogenously textured area that is his face, nor are there many other noticeable impurities. His eyes are white pools with rings of a pale, blue-gray-ish mixture framing crystal clear centers of black. No yellow stench in the corners, no fine traces of blood vessels to be seen unless he's in a fit of rage. His nose is long and doesn't protrude much over the thin lines that are his lips or his somewhat marked chin. Also one really can't say that his forehead would do much better. However there's one thing Tyrvariél is truly proud of: his red hair. While any kind of beard doesn't stand much of a chance against his discipline, he has allowed it to grow as long as possible. Without the small metal bracers the thick and winding he has formed out of his hair probably would unwind and dissolve very soon, the resulting mess not only hiding his pointy ears but also falling right into his line of sight.
Tyrvariél stands at about 6 feet flat. That's tall for humans, but just barely average for Aen Seidhe. The same can't be said for his build though: He has been working hard with metal since early and for long, the outcome being not only somewhat calloused hands, but also a body having adapted greatly. Thick bones covered in unusually dense muscles and shoulders broad enough to be significant mark him as non-representative for his kind. He's definitely a lot stronger and heavier than most people would judge him to be.
History
Tyrvariél was born 1223 in the settlement of Vallweir, pretty much in the midst of Temeria. His parents were Setaríél (father) and Fallendre (mother), whom after the fall of Dol Blathanna roughly 60 years earlier had decided not to escape into the Blue Mountains, but to accept their fate as second class citizens in human-held territory. Being the full-blooded elf he was Tyrvariél was to learn what that meant from very early on. Over the last decades in Vallweir his parents had managed to acclimatise to the conditions as much as they could. They had even gained and then lost again some friends among that part of the general population which was the least inclined to what almost seemed like societal doctrine, but it was clear that all three were situated in the far lower half of the wealth distribution nevertheless.
Still, even when living close to the real slums, a living had to be made somehow. Setariél had been a blacksmith for the major part of his life so far and was trying to maintain this profession the best he could given the circumstances. Fallendre however had turned her anger, her desperation about the overall situation of the Aen Seidhe into criminal energy. She had learned how to utilize her small and slender build in a light-fingered fashion. A petty thief, but one good enough to provide some boost to their overall funds without being detected. Deciding between those two paths felt natural to the young Tyrvariél as neither the boy nor his parents could imagine how to support proper education for a third way properly.
He opted for going along his father and started to learn blacksmithing. It was a very slow process given the limited funding and other resources available, but age hardly was a concern for them given the long natural lifespan of an Aen Seidhe. Simple tasks such as nails, hooks and then horseshoes were the first things for Tyrvariél to do and in order to support his family and contribute more coin to this personal effort, he also picked up work at the town's hospital and leprosarium. Dealing with the injured, sick and dying there and performing a mixture between merely managing their state of lingering illness and actual treatment on a novice level was not exactly nice work, but it was work others that would have been preferred for cultural reasons often didn't want to do. Also being an Aen Seidhe meant that not all of the human's illnesses could affect him as easily and vice versa.
It took a couple of years, but with training came experience and with experience came more complex and rewarding work. The elf showed a great degree of talent. Having started to forge blades, arrowheads and small pieces of plate attached to leather Tyrvariél's small backyard business could beat the prices of more prestigious and pompous competitors with higher side costs. Adventurers of many kinds left enough coin for the Aen Seidhe to drop the tedious work at the leprosarium again and to fully focus on his metalwork.
At some point however Setariél had taught his son everything he could teach him and there was no more progress to be made within the confines of Vallweir. Turning towards one of the human competitors obviously was not really an option, so Tyrvariél started to save and prepare for a journey. Not much of the continent's original gnomish population was left, but still they were famous for their work and technology. One just had to find them. Tyrvariél hoped that him being a member of an elder race would make them more willing to help him, so he ventured on. It was early in the year 1258.
The plan had been to go for Mahakam, but Tyrvariél hardly made it to the area around the city of Carreras before something unexpected happened. Down the road he encountered a human trader's caravan which had been ambushed by Scoia'tael. A veritable piece of carnage caused by a party of his own species, some of its members still being present on site searching for loot and starting to ask questions. It didn't take long until they openly tried to convince the unwary Tyrvariél to join their ranks against humankind. It was an idea his mother certainly would have found tempting, but the young elf was greatly influenced by the bloodshed in front of his eyes. That kind of mass destruction had not occurred in the leprosarium. More busy vomiting and trying to stabilize his circulation, it didn't cross his mind that these effects might vanish over time and he deemed himself unsuitable for being a guerilla fighter, even though he could sympathise with the rebellion in terms of morale.
He left the place without a squirrel's tail decorating his head, but with knowledge about how active the rebels had become in the wide world. He now knew how to contact them and they now knew how to contact him. However the journey had to go on and, in the end, it would turn out to be a significant success. While far from eager to reveal all of their secrets towards him, the gnomes and dwarves still proved friendly and, if not forgiving, at least sometimes just oblivious about the petty fights elvenkind had brought to the continent upon its arrival millennia ago. Tyrvariél couldn't take much more back home from Mahakam then any knowledge gained, but hopefully it would be enough to become a master of the art by the standards of Temeria. The overall endeavour had roughly taken four years, so when he arrived in Vallweir it was 1262.
A few months later Emhyr var Emreis decided to cross the Yaruga.
Temeria and the remainder of the northern kingdoms were forced to push their armies to peak strength, including recruitings on a non-voluntary basis. Men were useless however if there weren't enough swords and shields to equip them, so Foltest didn't want Tyrvariél as a frontline soldier. It would have been a decision quite problematic with regard to the loyalty that could be expected of an Aen Seidhe, particularly so if the next move of the enemy was to openly advertise better relations with their kind anyway. So instead Tyrvariél was forced to enter what could be considered the medieval stage of standardized mass production.
That caused problems for him though: Having to produce weapons for those naked apes that called themselves humans was one thing, but the thought that his very products could also be used for slaughtering Scoia'tael, maybe even those he had met years earlier in particular, was a thing even harder to bear. None of his family had a keen interest in the Northern Kingdoms, last but not least the conquerors of Dol Blathanna, winning this war. So Tyrvariél, now caught firmly in the kingdom's grasp, under supervision and thus unable to just run away, opted for what he deemed to be the lesser evil. He pointed out that he also had experience in dealing with illnesses and injuries. And so, perpetuated by the influx of refugees from Cintra and the quickly mounting losses overall, he soon found himself in a sickbay close to the front. It was pretty much the opposite of the decision he had made when confronted with the Scoia'tael, but now it was too late to put things in accordance with his true sympathy.
The first weeks were outright brutal, but over time and not given much of another choice by both his morale and the men around him Tyrvariél learned how to contain himself... his stomach in particular. Tools for amputation, the process of cauterization and related things became familiar on a daily basis whether he liked it or not. Still he had to do some blacksmithing from time to time as well, but at least it was not that much. Tyrvariél did not experience the battle of Sodden Hill first hand, but certainly the fly-infested, stinky and rotting aftermath of it as the cleanup and salvaging operations picked up momentum after the war.
Things had not come without a price. Once all of it was over, Tyrvariél felt exhausted. Not physically exhausted, but psychologically burned out in a strange way. The value of a single individual's life felt as if diminished, his daily demeanour altered and riddled with habits he had not had before. Partly it was as if his purpose in life had been eradicated or hidden away in a place he could not find. Much of that wasn't even found out by himself, but instead his parents could tell the difference in their son. Or what was left of them as his mother had finally been captured in one of her little heists gone wrong while he had been close to the front.
Things improved in the two years following, but not truly returned to their original state. He picked up blacksmithing again, but this time not only for those he deemed more or less neutral adventurers but also for the Scoia'tael. He has been maintaining a secret bond with them since then, but still hasn't joined their ranks directly. A mutual agreement that he is more useful as a capable supplier and relay of information.
Why he decided to join the expedition ? Because a remote fortress deep in the lands of Nilfgaard, the one faction that seemed to be more acceptable for an Aen Seidhe than any other, might give him enough solitude and calmness to stabilize and arrange for his future. He is no fool and can see the writing on the wall that Nilfgaard might try again. In fact he hopes for it and that they succeed, ripping the place out of the northern grasp again. If his desire to have a stay close to the newfound fortress instead of being paid out in coin should fail the reward at least might help a great deal.
Personality
The almost pristine condition of his skin does not nearly reflect how shattered the situation inside Tyrvariél's mind still is. It is a statement not too far fetched that he is partly emotionally dead. At the end of his line of duty in the Temerian army patients reported that he hardly did as much as twitching an eyelash while bathing his hands in their blood and hearing their screams as he grinded their bones. He has seen too many anonymous, mutilated, half-dead and doomed bodies to care much about them anymore. However it is important to know that he has never killed anyone himself so far, so he probably would not do so without at least thinking once.
His relationship towards humans is a complicated one. He is aware that there are examples like Cregennan of Lod who are very respectable, but just as the sorcerer's example shows there are plenty of those who think otherwise, plenty of those who might deserve death for their cruelties. However Tyrvariél has effectively outsourced this task to the guerilla troops of the Scoia'tael whom he started to support with arms and armor. There is the real possibility that his current instability will turn into a vulcano and that he will join those troops personally, but as long as this hasn't happened he merely judges humans based on their stance towards the elven matter. Some he might want to become friends with, but many might find themselves confronted with a chilly conversational partner and nothing else.
Tyrvariél is quite intelligent, curious and staying in control even in turmoil has become almost second nature to him, but there are oddities: In action he seems to lose a bit of his self-esteem, sometimes almost falling into a pattern of strict obedience that marks him as an ex-soldier. Also, while traveling, he turns his head around as if expecting pursuers even when everybody knows there can't be any. Illegal deliveries can be quite risky after all... Rarely and in calm situations he might seem to drift away from the present reality around him, thinking about something vastly different for a bunch of seconds or until disrupted harshly.
And then there still are the more enjoyable, if not even humorous aspects: Most people fail to imagine how much this Aen Seidhe can eat once his stomach is empty, but he isn't afraid of alcohol either. Not for soaking past miseries in it, but for the sake of real joy. He's almost a bit of a sommelier.
Skills
- Blacksmithing: He might not be the best, but he has had some time to learn from the best. Tyrvariél has no reason to be afraid of laying his working hands on a weapon even if it's a witcher's silver sword, even though he has seen just one of those before. If the metal and the necessary facilities are available he can not only perform repairs in the field, but also create new items even if he hears from his customer's desire or sees a schematic for the first time.
- Medicine and surgery: Alchemistic potions are a great help when fixing a human body, but still knowing how one of those looks from the inside might be crucial when it comes to severe injuries and bleedings. He has handled the tools necessary for too long in his past to forget about them and, as crude and cruel as they might look to the uneducated, they still can save lives.
- Horseriding: An essential thing for a smuggler. He has learned how to get the most in terms of speed and range out of a horse and still make it survive even if it's packed not only with himself, but also with a lot of special cargo.
- Basic weapon handling: This is primarily rooted in him having been a blacksmith for decades. While being on the producing side and merely given feedback from his customers he sometimes has picked up one of his killer devices himself and swung it around a bit. However it's really not a match for any fully trained soldier.
- Prospecting: Learned from the elves and dwarves of Mahakam, Tyrvariél can differentiate between simple rocks and valuable minerals. He also knows how to process them, given the necessary equipment is present.
Specialty: Tyrvariél is not much a fighter, but when it comes to maintaining a fighting force's efficiency he might be much more advanced than what most fighters can do on their own.
Equipment
- Smithing utensils: Hammer, prongues, a cutting device... Can't take the entire anvil with him, but in case he finds one this would definitely help.
- A large rag filled with some of the tools found in the typical army's sickbay: Bandages, leather straps, bone saw, cauterization stamps, threads and needles as well as some nearly pure alcohol.
- An average-ish riding horse
Weapons: Tyrvariél has been trained in how to shoot a bow by his elven parents, but it wasn't like the nobles and peasants owning the fields and forests around his birthplace would have allowed for much real action training. So, surprisingly for an elf, he's not excellent at this tool despite owning it and according arrows. As a sidearm he carries a morning star designed and made by himself. A simple, primitive looking weapon made for primitive skills. It can be quite effective against heavy armor though.
Armor: Tyrvariél wears a full set of light plate armor made of steel, finished with burning-in substances giving it a more shiny, leathery color. Many of its edges are decorated with polished brass. It looks as costly as it perfectly fits the body of the man wearing it. The more attentive observer might start to wonder why someone who doesn't have that much of an idea of how to wield a sword needs that kind of armor. On a second glance however said observer, if daring enough, might also come to the conclusion that it's as much about advertisement as it is about protection. Guess for whom...
Misc:
- A small satchel of orens, enough for buying food and water for a few days if necessary
- Food and water for two days
- A strong magnifying glass in order to help him identify minerals and for other studies
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Aidann na Oisin
Race: Human...ish?
Age: 174
Gender: Male
Birthplace: The fortress of Kaer Muire on Ard Skellig, Skellige
Profession: Witcher (Bear-school)
Appearance:
Aidann is a big, burly man, standing at nearly 6’3”, and as age has not dulled his instincts and skills, so too has it yet to touch his build. Despite how many winters he’s seen, he is covered with rippling, corded muscle; very little of his 230-pound mass is fat. His fair skin, leathered from long exposure to sun, sea, and snow, is festooned with crisscrossing scars earned over the course of a Witcher’s long and dangerous life. His hair is still thick, and relatively coarse; while there are streaks of gray shot through it now, most of it remains the flaming red that he’s so proud of. He keeps his beard long, but doesn’t style it as he used to, decrying such things with a laugh as the vain playacting of a younger, more foolhardy Witcher. He does, however, sweep his hair back over his high forehead, wrinkled with sun, age, laughter, and worry, so as to keep it out of his eyes during combat.
Speaking of his eyes, they are, as with most, his most distinguishing trait as a Witcher: brilliant gold, with pupils that snap open into catlike slits at his command, or when it’s too dark for him to otherwise see. They are set deep into his face, and surmounted with a pair of bushy red brows. The skin around them, just as his forehead, is deeply creased, as are the corners of his mouth. He has thin lips that are quite brightly colored, though it can be hard to see them past his bushy facial glory. He has the high cheekbones of one with good breeding, but again--these are swallowed by the beard. His face is crowned by a large, bulbous nose.
When not in armor, he prefers rich, dark colors; burgundy, chocolate, black. His choice articles of clothing are heavy tunics and long, fur-trimmed cloaks, as they feed a sense of luxury that he is seldom able to explore. But they are just that, for him: rare. He seldom removes his armor, only doffing it to sleep much of the time. A relic of a time when monsters lurked around every rock in Amell and every one of Skellige’s trees, he is determined to always be prepared to fight. Said armor is very, very precious to him. It’s a hauberk of heavy steel rings backed with brown leather--straps buckled with steel--and worn over a brown linen gambeson. A shoulderbelt of pouches--potions, tools, supplies--run across his chest, affording more protection if needed. His arms are protected by heavy plate gauntlets, and a similar situation--greaves and sabatons of unyielding steel--holds for his legs. All of it is covered in marks where it’s been hacked or smashed or torn, but lovingly repaired every time. Aidann is very attached to his armor.
Finally, we come to his tools of the trade: the swords, and the slightly unique property that his have. The typical-sized blades of most Witchers felt just a touch too small for him; with his larger frame and bulkier build, they felt more like broadswords than longswords. And so he custom-commissioned a pair of Witcher’s blades with blades perhaps four to five inches longer than are found on most of his school. They are, in the way of Witchers, slung over his shoulder, the hilts bound in leather. Each has an artfully-worked bear’s head, perpetually snarling, carved into the pommel. And as a Witcher of the Bear school, Aidann makes additional use, near-unique to his school, of a light crossbow strapped to his back next to his swords. It is a utilitarian construction, but grants a certain completeness to his appearance: armed to the teeth (one of which has been replaced with a replica carved of silver, after being knocked out in a brawl decades ago).
Personality: Aidann has a complicated personality that stems from one of the more important ways he views the world: he’s old. A relic from a time where Witchers were viewed less as a menace and more as a terrifying but necessary evil, he has a hopeless streak of...well, hope. He wants to see the best in people. He really does. He still remembers when he would return from a hunt, a wyvern’s head slung over his broad shoulder, and people would thank him profusely, pay him his due, and see him out of town. Never really offer him a place--a Witcher is always a Witcher--but perhaps not throw him out simply for being one. Never see him step into an inn, and decide that despite being largely vacant, they had no space for the night. And so every time he finishes a hunt--fewer and farther between now, so different from when he left the then-thriving fortress of Haern Cadwch--he nurses a desperate hope that they’ll thank him the way they used to. And every time he finishes a hunt, his hope gets kicked down again as doors slam and all-too-often, he goes without his pay.
He’s never angry over it, though. Not really. Rarely bitter. No, beyond his personable (for a Witcher) exterior, Aidann is desperately sad. But more than that; he’s...misplaced. His time has passed, and he knows it. There is a lesser need in the world for a Witcher now, and even room for one.
Yet despite that bitterness, that feeling of disjunction, he can’t completely suppress his care for people. He’s seen so much heartache, so much pain, both his own and others, that every time he enters a village in search of a contract, he tells himself that he’s only there for that contract. If there’s one to be had, great, he’s in luck. He’ll hunt the monster down, kill it, collect his reward, and leave. If not, then it’s as he expected anyway, and he’ll move on to the next village, or town, or city. And yet...as much as he tells himself that, as much as he knows it’ll lead to disappointment and pain more often than not, whenever someone on the corner begs for help--cattle taken, purse stolen, house robbed or burned to the ground--he stops, listens, and does his damndest to help them. Perhaps when he stops, they won’t listen to him. They’ll shy away, make signs of good luck or warding of evil, or attack him. But there’s always that chance that perhaps, they’ll tell him what’s wrong. And when he returns the cows, or brings back the money and thieves and arsonists...he almost feels like a Witcher again.
There is lesser need for a Witcher now, it’s true. And yet here he stands.
History: Nearly two centuries ago, a Skellige man named Oisin na Diarmaid was trekking along a lonely island road on Ard Skellig. His wife, a lovely lass named Bronagh, had been on the island instead of their home for many months, and now was heavy with child and almost to bear. He was in high spirits heading to his home on Hindarsfjall: He’d stayed a bit longer to speak with some old friends, and now was returning home.
Then he froze on hearing a high-pitched screaming, and threw himself to the ground as a massive griffin’s talons scythed the air where he’d been standing a moment before.
He scrambled to his feet and ran, screaming for help and putting every ounce of his energy into dodging the monster. And then, just as it looked as though Oisin’s time had come, the creature screamed in pain as a flash of pale metal sheared into its wing-joint from behind. He could only watch as the strange young man circled the griffin, darting in and out with what seemed impossible speed, crippling its wings before finally dealing a death-blow to the neck. Stunned, disbelieving, impossibly relieved, when the man sheathed his sword--why did he have two?--Oisin could only gabble out a vague promise for...well, anything at all. A life saved? No price was too high. And so the young man--a Witcher--invoked upon Oisin the Law of Surprise. The next gift he received--no matter whether it was a lamb, or a fortune’s worth of diamonds--would belong to the Witcher, who Oisin later learned was named Kondrat, in five years’ time. Nod, nod, nod, agreement. A life saved. No price too high, and certainly not that. And with that, Kondrat vanished into the mists of Skellige.
Oisin hastened back to Kaer Muire: he wanted, more than anything, to embrace his wife Bronagh, and to celebrate the fact that he was alive. So imagine his surprise when he stumbled into the healers’ hut to find Bronagh holding out to him an infant. “Look, Oisin,” she sobbed, beaming, “a gift from Freya herself.”
And with that, Oisin’s face grew ashen, and his heart fell.
Five years later, when he awoke to milk his cattle, he found Kondrat outside of his house, and worldless, he carefully carried out the sleeping child, named Aidann. In his gruff voice, he whispered to the Witcher: “you take care of him now, y’hear?”
A nod, and Kondrat was gone, and with him Aidann.
Aidann only vaguely remembers the faces of Bronagh and Oisin. Kondrat was more of a parent to him than either, in his own strict way. Haern Cadwch was a hard place to grow up, and for the first year or so, he desperately missed both his mother and father. But he grew past it, and trained hard. The Trial of Grasses, so often lethal, refused to let him die, and he emerged from it with the necessary mutations to be a Witcher. And so began his training in earnest, and he took up the silver sword.
For many years, he traveled as an itinerant monster hunter, the Path of a Witcher, hunting any monster that dare show its face: a higher vampire in Novigrad, a swarm of the normally-solitary royal griffins terrorizing the east of Temeria, a slithering horde of lamiae in the deep Nilfgaardian south that had lured many men to their envenomed doom...the contracts were as varied as they were numerous, and his purse grew heavy with coin. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the world changed. Monsters grew less common. Coin grew shorter. And most of all, people grew harder. Aidann had always thrived off of the gratitude given to him by those that he’d helped, even more than he’d thrived off of their coin. Sometimes, he would simply let them keep the money in the past, as long as he had enough. No more. Times grew scarce, and contracts became fewer and farther between, and smaller. A rogue forktail here, a dawnwraith there...
And then everything came to a head as the riots began. In just a day, Haern Cadwch was gone. So was his surrogate father, Kondrat. Perhaps seventy years old at the time, Aidann fled his decades-long home, the place he’d returned to time and time again, the place where he’d been mutated and seen mutation happen, the place he’d grown into the man that he’d become. And everywhere he went, he saw the same, decade by decade. The pogrom of the Wolves. The steady dying-off of the Cats and Vipers. Witchers were slowly, surely, going extinct.
But what was he to do? Though he’d learned the way to make boys to Witcher--the mutagens were etched into his mind--what would he do with the knowledge? His school was gone. So few left, only occasionally passed on the road. As were the supplies to make the mutagens for the Trial of the Grasses. So what was a Witcher to do, when there is no home left to return to? The only thing left was to make his home on the road.
So, for many years hence, he’s been wandering. A contract here, a contract there. Even smaller than before, no more than a few wraiths, or perhaps a group of drowners stopping fishermen from getting to their boats. A far cry from the grand challenges that he once faced. He overwinters wherever he can. Increasingly often, he spends time in Skellige, finding the climate there to his liking, and it's perhaps more wild--with more contracts to be found--than most of the Continent. One day, he has promised himself, he will return to Haern Cadwch. One day, the Witcher School of Bears will be restored. And then, perhaps, he will be able to rest from his Path.
But for now? The road awaits.
Skills: Unsurprisingly, Aidann is by far the most adept as swordplay out of all the Witcher's arts. Never a great hand at signs, he relies on his armor instead of Quen to get him out of a jam (that’s not to say he doesn’t use Quen or other Signs at all, but he hasn’t put much time into training them in comparison to his more martial skill sets). He’s an exceptionally aggressive fighter, surprising some who expect a man in heavy armor to play more defensively; he advances relentlessly, striking as hard as he can as often as he can.
That said, he’s a man who’s experienced much in his life, and he knows when he’s outmatched by something. When he is, he’s much more careful, staying back and using his crossbow to slowly whittle foes down before moving in for the kill once they’re weakened.
A very important thing to mention: he has great difficulty with highly mobile adversaries. While he can hold them down with Axii or blast them down with Aard, neither of these signs is very developed in him, and so they often dodge away, or retake the skies, before he can actually strike them after disabling them. It becomes a frustrating, monotonous fight, plinking away with crossbow bolts until one of them finally hits something important, or simply waiting for them to come too close and then lash out with a sword.
And finally, something that people don’t usually expect out of him, perhaps because of how little he touches on Signs: he is quite skilled at Witcher alchemy. He’s an old, old Witcher, and he’s had many years to practice and perfect some of his potions. While eschewing some of the recipes that he finds more niche (‘I can already see in the dark very well. What need have I for the Cat potion?’), he always carries with him the ingredients to make most of the useful potions that he might need in a situation, as well as a variety of oils. While he doesn’t actually carry the potions themselves, he’s always ready to prepare for a contract.
Specialty:Aidann’s specialty is martial combat. While he’s fairly skilled at alchemy and rather weak at Signing--only using signs if doing so is pretty much necessary for success--he’s a paragon of martial skill, moving far more quickly than such a bulky man ordinarily could and striking like a lightning bolt.
Equipment:
Weapons:
Armor:
Misc:
He carries little else; much of the space in his pouches is filled by the alchemy supplies and tinderbox, so he has little other room since he refuses to carry a haversack or knapsack. He sleeps under the stars quite often, and when he does so, he continues to wear his armor.
Age: 174
Gender: Male
Birthplace: The fortress of Kaer Muire on Ard Skellig, Skellige
Profession: Witcher (Bear-school)
Appearance:
Aidann is a big, burly man, standing at nearly 6’3”, and as age has not dulled his instincts and skills, so too has it yet to touch his build. Despite how many winters he’s seen, he is covered with rippling, corded muscle; very little of his 230-pound mass is fat. His fair skin, leathered from long exposure to sun, sea, and snow, is festooned with crisscrossing scars earned over the course of a Witcher’s long and dangerous life. His hair is still thick, and relatively coarse; while there are streaks of gray shot through it now, most of it remains the flaming red that he’s so proud of. He keeps his beard long, but doesn’t style it as he used to, decrying such things with a laugh as the vain playacting of a younger, more foolhardy Witcher. He does, however, sweep his hair back over his high forehead, wrinkled with sun, age, laughter, and worry, so as to keep it out of his eyes during combat.
Speaking of his eyes, they are, as with most, his most distinguishing trait as a Witcher: brilliant gold, with pupils that snap open into catlike slits at his command, or when it’s too dark for him to otherwise see. They are set deep into his face, and surmounted with a pair of bushy red brows. The skin around them, just as his forehead, is deeply creased, as are the corners of his mouth. He has thin lips that are quite brightly colored, though it can be hard to see them past his bushy facial glory. He has the high cheekbones of one with good breeding, but again--these are swallowed by the beard. His face is crowned by a large, bulbous nose.
When not in armor, he prefers rich, dark colors; burgundy, chocolate, black. His choice articles of clothing are heavy tunics and long, fur-trimmed cloaks, as they feed a sense of luxury that he is seldom able to explore. But they are just that, for him: rare. He seldom removes his armor, only doffing it to sleep much of the time. A relic of a time when monsters lurked around every rock in Amell and every one of Skellige’s trees, he is determined to always be prepared to fight. Said armor is very, very precious to him. It’s a hauberk of heavy steel rings backed with brown leather--straps buckled with steel--and worn over a brown linen gambeson. A shoulderbelt of pouches--potions, tools, supplies--run across his chest, affording more protection if needed. His arms are protected by heavy plate gauntlets, and a similar situation--greaves and sabatons of unyielding steel--holds for his legs. All of it is covered in marks where it’s been hacked or smashed or torn, but lovingly repaired every time. Aidann is very attached to his armor.
Finally, we come to his tools of the trade: the swords, and the slightly unique property that his have. The typical-sized blades of most Witchers felt just a touch too small for him; with his larger frame and bulkier build, they felt more like broadswords than longswords. And so he custom-commissioned a pair of Witcher’s blades with blades perhaps four to five inches longer than are found on most of his school. They are, in the way of Witchers, slung over his shoulder, the hilts bound in leather. Each has an artfully-worked bear’s head, perpetually snarling, carved into the pommel. And as a Witcher of the Bear school, Aidann makes additional use, near-unique to his school, of a light crossbow strapped to his back next to his swords. It is a utilitarian construction, but grants a certain completeness to his appearance: armed to the teeth (one of which has been replaced with a replica carved of silver, after being knocked out in a brawl decades ago).
Personality: Aidann has a complicated personality that stems from one of the more important ways he views the world: he’s old. A relic from a time where Witchers were viewed less as a menace and more as a terrifying but necessary evil, he has a hopeless streak of...well, hope. He wants to see the best in people. He really does. He still remembers when he would return from a hunt, a wyvern’s head slung over his broad shoulder, and people would thank him profusely, pay him his due, and see him out of town. Never really offer him a place--a Witcher is always a Witcher--but perhaps not throw him out simply for being one. Never see him step into an inn, and decide that despite being largely vacant, they had no space for the night. And so every time he finishes a hunt--fewer and farther between now, so different from when he left the then-thriving fortress of Haern Cadwch--he nurses a desperate hope that they’ll thank him the way they used to. And every time he finishes a hunt, his hope gets kicked down again as doors slam and all-too-often, he goes without his pay.
He’s never angry over it, though. Not really. Rarely bitter. No, beyond his personable (for a Witcher) exterior, Aidann is desperately sad. But more than that; he’s...misplaced. His time has passed, and he knows it. There is a lesser need in the world for a Witcher now, and even room for one.
Yet despite that bitterness, that feeling of disjunction, he can’t completely suppress his care for people. He’s seen so much heartache, so much pain, both his own and others, that every time he enters a village in search of a contract, he tells himself that he’s only there for that contract. If there’s one to be had, great, he’s in luck. He’ll hunt the monster down, kill it, collect his reward, and leave. If not, then it’s as he expected anyway, and he’ll move on to the next village, or town, or city. And yet...as much as he tells himself that, as much as he knows it’ll lead to disappointment and pain more often than not, whenever someone on the corner begs for help--cattle taken, purse stolen, house robbed or burned to the ground--he stops, listens, and does his damndest to help them. Perhaps when he stops, they won’t listen to him. They’ll shy away, make signs of good luck or warding of evil, or attack him. But there’s always that chance that perhaps, they’ll tell him what’s wrong. And when he returns the cows, or brings back the money and thieves and arsonists...he almost feels like a Witcher again.
There is lesser need for a Witcher now, it’s true. And yet here he stands.
History: Nearly two centuries ago, a Skellige man named Oisin na Diarmaid was trekking along a lonely island road on Ard Skellig. His wife, a lovely lass named Bronagh, had been on the island instead of their home for many months, and now was heavy with child and almost to bear. He was in high spirits heading to his home on Hindarsfjall: He’d stayed a bit longer to speak with some old friends, and now was returning home.
Then he froze on hearing a high-pitched screaming, and threw himself to the ground as a massive griffin’s talons scythed the air where he’d been standing a moment before.
He scrambled to his feet and ran, screaming for help and putting every ounce of his energy into dodging the monster. And then, just as it looked as though Oisin’s time had come, the creature screamed in pain as a flash of pale metal sheared into its wing-joint from behind. He could only watch as the strange young man circled the griffin, darting in and out with what seemed impossible speed, crippling its wings before finally dealing a death-blow to the neck. Stunned, disbelieving, impossibly relieved, when the man sheathed his sword--why did he have two?--Oisin could only gabble out a vague promise for...well, anything at all. A life saved? No price was too high. And so the young man--a Witcher--invoked upon Oisin the Law of Surprise. The next gift he received--no matter whether it was a lamb, or a fortune’s worth of diamonds--would belong to the Witcher, who Oisin later learned was named Kondrat, in five years’ time. Nod, nod, nod, agreement. A life saved. No price too high, and certainly not that. And with that, Kondrat vanished into the mists of Skellige.
Oisin hastened back to Kaer Muire: he wanted, more than anything, to embrace his wife Bronagh, and to celebrate the fact that he was alive. So imagine his surprise when he stumbled into the healers’ hut to find Bronagh holding out to him an infant. “Look, Oisin,” she sobbed, beaming, “a gift from Freya herself.”
And with that, Oisin’s face grew ashen, and his heart fell.
Five years later, when he awoke to milk his cattle, he found Kondrat outside of his house, and worldless, he carefully carried out the sleeping child, named Aidann. In his gruff voice, he whispered to the Witcher: “you take care of him now, y’hear?”
A nod, and Kondrat was gone, and with him Aidann.
Aidann only vaguely remembers the faces of Bronagh and Oisin. Kondrat was more of a parent to him than either, in his own strict way. Haern Cadwch was a hard place to grow up, and for the first year or so, he desperately missed both his mother and father. But he grew past it, and trained hard. The Trial of Grasses, so often lethal, refused to let him die, and he emerged from it with the necessary mutations to be a Witcher. And so began his training in earnest, and he took up the silver sword.
For many years, he traveled as an itinerant monster hunter, the Path of a Witcher, hunting any monster that dare show its face: a higher vampire in Novigrad, a swarm of the normally-solitary royal griffins terrorizing the east of Temeria, a slithering horde of lamiae in the deep Nilfgaardian south that had lured many men to their envenomed doom...the contracts were as varied as they were numerous, and his purse grew heavy with coin. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the world changed. Monsters grew less common. Coin grew shorter. And most of all, people grew harder. Aidann had always thrived off of the gratitude given to him by those that he’d helped, even more than he’d thrived off of their coin. Sometimes, he would simply let them keep the money in the past, as long as he had enough. No more. Times grew scarce, and contracts became fewer and farther between, and smaller. A rogue forktail here, a dawnwraith there...
And then everything came to a head as the riots began. In just a day, Haern Cadwch was gone. So was his surrogate father, Kondrat. Perhaps seventy years old at the time, Aidann fled his decades-long home, the place he’d returned to time and time again, the place where he’d been mutated and seen mutation happen, the place he’d grown into the man that he’d become. And everywhere he went, he saw the same, decade by decade. The pogrom of the Wolves. The steady dying-off of the Cats and Vipers. Witchers were slowly, surely, going extinct.
But what was he to do? Though he’d learned the way to make boys to Witcher--the mutagens were etched into his mind--what would he do with the knowledge? His school was gone. So few left, only occasionally passed on the road. As were the supplies to make the mutagens for the Trial of the Grasses. So what was a Witcher to do, when there is no home left to return to? The only thing left was to make his home on the road.
So, for many years hence, he’s been wandering. A contract here, a contract there. Even smaller than before, no more than a few wraiths, or perhaps a group of drowners stopping fishermen from getting to their boats. A far cry from the grand challenges that he once faced. He overwinters wherever he can. Increasingly often, he spends time in Skellige, finding the climate there to his liking, and it's perhaps more wild--with more contracts to be found--than most of the Continent. One day, he has promised himself, he will return to Haern Cadwch. One day, the Witcher School of Bears will be restored. And then, perhaps, he will be able to rest from his Path.
But for now? The road awaits.
Skills: Unsurprisingly, Aidann is by far the most adept as swordplay out of all the Witcher's arts. Never a great hand at signs, he relies on his armor instead of Quen to get him out of a jam (that’s not to say he doesn’t use Quen or other Signs at all, but he hasn’t put much time into training them in comparison to his more martial skill sets). He’s an exceptionally aggressive fighter, surprising some who expect a man in heavy armor to play more defensively; he advances relentlessly, striking as hard as he can as often as he can.
That said, he’s a man who’s experienced much in his life, and he knows when he’s outmatched by something. When he is, he’s much more careful, staying back and using his crossbow to slowly whittle foes down before moving in for the kill once they’re weakened.
A very important thing to mention: he has great difficulty with highly mobile adversaries. While he can hold them down with Axii or blast them down with Aard, neither of these signs is very developed in him, and so they often dodge away, or retake the skies, before he can actually strike them after disabling them. It becomes a frustrating, monotonous fight, plinking away with crossbow bolts until one of them finally hits something important, or simply waiting for them to come too close and then lash out with a sword.
And finally, something that people don’t usually expect out of him, perhaps because of how little he touches on Signs: he is quite skilled at Witcher alchemy. He’s an old, old Witcher, and he’s had many years to practice and perfect some of his potions. While eschewing some of the recipes that he finds more niche (‘I can already see in the dark very well. What need have I for the Cat potion?’), he always carries with him the ingredients to make most of the useful potions that he might need in a situation, as well as a variety of oils. While he doesn’t actually carry the potions themselves, he’s always ready to prepare for a contract.
Specialty:Aidann’s specialty is martial combat. While he’s fairly skilled at alchemy and rather weak at Signing--only using signs if doing so is pretty much necessary for success--he’s a paragon of martial skill, moving far more quickly than such a bulky man ordinarily could and striking like a lightning bolt.
Equipment:
- Alchemy supplies: herbs, monster parts, alcohol, and of course, a small mortar and pestle, spread out in pouches on his shoulderbelt and his regular belt, all across his big body.
- A whetstone and a small skin of oil; need to keep the blades sharp, after all.
- And what would a Witcher be without his Witcher medallion? It is the medallion of the Bear school, carved in an artful depiction of a snarling bear.
Weapons:
- A large steel longsword with a cruciform hilt. It has a 45-inch blade and a proportionally-sized grip wrapped in dark brown leather with a ring about the middle to assist in two-handing. Nothing about it is particularly fancy, but he’s taken care of it well, and so it’s polished brightly and very sharp. The pommel is carved with a snarling bear’s face, very similar to that of his medallion.
- A silver longsword, about the same length as the steel. It has a cruciform hilt as well; in fact,, the hilt looks almost exactly the same as the steel’s including the bear’s face on the pommel, but for the fact that the leather wrapping it is black instead of brown and the guard is angled slightly towards the blade.
- A small handheld crossbow made of wood and steel, and a quiver strapped to his waist filled with various bolts; broadheads, bodkins, and bludgeons, all made up in both steel and silver versions. There are perhaps five of each type, for a total of thirty.
Armor:
- The previously-mentioned armor: heavy chainmail backed with scarred, scuffed brown leather worn over a brown linen gambeson to cushion blows from maces, hammers, and other weapons that chainmail wouldn’t do much to stop, as well as heavy plates worn both on the legs and on the arms.
Misc:
- A tinderbox containing flint, steel, and charcloth.
- A letter from a young lady that he was once a lover to, nearly a century ago. She’s long-dead now.
- Enough rations, mostly dried meats and hard breads, for a conservative week.
He carries little else; much of the space in his pouches is filled by the alchemy supplies and tinderbox, so he has little other room since he refuses to carry a haversack or knapsack. He sleeps under the stars quite often, and when he does so, he continues to wear his armor.
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NecroKnight Elite Death Knight of Decay
Member
Seen
16 days ago
Name: Lady Alicia Fairbright
Race: Human
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Birthplace: Redania
Profession: Lecturer for the Department of Chemistry of the Oxenfurt Academy
Appearance:
Personality: Alicia is the rare combination of being both inquisitive, smart and most importantly, lucky. The woman has a thousand questions for the world, even when her life is in danger - she has an attitude of being both afraid and later eager to study said creature, if she survived.
This has made her more both more approachable and super-talkative whenever she gets going on a subject or topic. Nevertheless, that doesn't diminish her honest desire to study and either help solve the ailments or mysteries that may plague people. Even if some of them, may not be able to be solved with a potion or ointment.
History: The scion and prodigy of House Fairbright, was in truth, growing up rather lonely and lacking any social contact with others. Both because, her mother had died in childbirth and her father was far too busy managing to finances and political necessities of their House. Her only brother was groomed to take over and thus, attention for her was limited or non-existent.
As Alicia mostly grew up reading books and old scrolls - a product of her great-grandfather whom had a large collection of tomes in their Estate. What interested her most was alchemy, the mixing of various plants, herbs and flowers and watching the colorful liquids that were formed. Granted, she was lucky and someways smart enough not to drink any - whenever she created something toxic or deadly.
Though, that didn't mean some of the pets and animals kept in the Fairbright Estate didn't accidentally get too close for her. One such situation ended with her father' horse, drinking a concoction she had made and farting for several weeks straight. After such an incident, her father had shipped her off to Oxenfurt Academy - to get her out, before she burned something down or injured someone important with her 'experiments'.
Granted, instead of changing Alicia embraced her new life in Oxenfurt even more eagerly. As the woman in question, had a very deep love for alchemy and especially the many reagents that made them. In a sense, she had several degrees in herbology and chemistry - choosing to become a lecturer in the Academy when she was old enough and 'safe' enough by the deans. Nevertheless, Alicia remained a free spirit - though many of things she used were either home-grown or contracted via specialized merchants - there was still a nagging feeling in her mind, that there may be other sources, other recipes that she hadn't discovered and other plants waiting for someone to discover them.
Eventually, she would be given the opportunity of a lifetime to go and explore the lands southward with a gang of other like-minded individuals.
Skills:
Specialty: Alicia is a skilled alchemist, able to make potions, poultices, concoctions, poisons even bombs of various use and size.
Weapons: Being a woman of the mind and a noblewoman as well, Alicia doesn't have many weapons on her or much skill in them. Granted, like many others - she has been taught how to use a dagger to defend herself and has plenty of them on her for a variety of reasons. (Most of them for foraging)
Armor: Alicia doesn't wear much or any armor, preferring to wear her traveling uniform - which is tough and hard, yet not much against a bow or sword.
Misc:
Race: Human
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Birthplace: Redania
Profession: Lecturer for the Department of Chemistry of the Oxenfurt Academy
Appearance:
Personality: Alicia is the rare combination of being both inquisitive, smart and most importantly, lucky. The woman has a thousand questions for the world, even when her life is in danger - she has an attitude of being both afraid and later eager to study said creature, if she survived.
This has made her more both more approachable and super-talkative whenever she gets going on a subject or topic. Nevertheless, that doesn't diminish her honest desire to study and either help solve the ailments or mysteries that may plague people. Even if some of them, may not be able to be solved with a potion or ointment.
History: The scion and prodigy of House Fairbright, was in truth, growing up rather lonely and lacking any social contact with others. Both because, her mother had died in childbirth and her father was far too busy managing to finances and political necessities of their House. Her only brother was groomed to take over and thus, attention for her was limited or non-existent.
As Alicia mostly grew up reading books and old scrolls - a product of her great-grandfather whom had a large collection of tomes in their Estate. What interested her most was alchemy, the mixing of various plants, herbs and flowers and watching the colorful liquids that were formed. Granted, she was lucky and someways smart enough not to drink any - whenever she created something toxic or deadly.
Though, that didn't mean some of the pets and animals kept in the Fairbright Estate didn't accidentally get too close for her. One such situation ended with her father' horse, drinking a concoction she had made and farting for several weeks straight. After such an incident, her father had shipped her off to Oxenfurt Academy - to get her out, before she burned something down or injured someone important with her 'experiments'.
Granted, instead of changing Alicia embraced her new life in Oxenfurt even more eagerly. As the woman in question, had a very deep love for alchemy and especially the many reagents that made them. In a sense, she had several degrees in herbology and chemistry - choosing to become a lecturer in the Academy when she was old enough and 'safe' enough by the deans. Nevertheless, Alicia remained a free spirit - though many of things she used were either home-grown or contracted via specialized merchants - there was still a nagging feeling in her mind, that there may be other sources, other recipes that she hadn't discovered and other plants waiting for someone to discover them.
Eventually, she would be given the opportunity of a lifetime to go and explore the lands southward with a gang of other like-minded individuals.
Skills:
- Expert herbologist
- Expert alchemist
- Modest healer (mostly utilizing flora as a substitute and aid in healing, than actual understanding of human anatomy)
- Skilled explorer
Specialty: Alicia is a skilled alchemist, able to make potions, poultices, concoctions, poisons even bombs of various use and size.
Weapons: Being a woman of the mind and a noblewoman as well, Alicia doesn't have many weapons on her or much skill in them. Granted, like many others - she has been taught how to use a dagger to defend herself and has plenty of them on her for a variety of reasons. (Most of them for foraging)
Armor: Alicia doesn't wear much or any armor, preferring to wear her traveling uniform - which is tough and hard, yet not much against a bow or sword.
Misc:
- White mule; Snowberry
- Book of Herbs and Plants of the World
- Alchemist Kit (pestle/mortar, glass vials, magnifying glass, five different silver spoons)
- Herbology Kit (tweezers, harvesting knife, several dried herbs and plants, flint/steel)
- Repair Kit (needles/thread, scissors, leather, cloth)
- Backpack (waterskin, bedroll, hook, rod)
Jarl Coolgruuf The Mellower
Member
Seen
1 yr ago
Race: Human
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Birthplace: The woods just south of Dol Blathanna
Profession: Spy/Scout
A man of moderate height with little fat but a great deal of lean muscle from a life spent in the wilderness and eating only what he can find or kill. Although he hasn't begun to gray yet, his face betrays his age with clear lines and weathering. As a measure to cut down on parasites, he tries to keep his face as clean shaven as his travels will allow. This often leaves him with varying states of beard length that can vary wildly within the space of only a few months. His are a deep, dark green much like his hooded cloak was many years ago, and set in a face of sharp, angular features. Cheekbones that jut out from his face like sheer cliffs and a nose that comes to a blunt point fit well with his angular jaw and gives him a countenance of roughly carved stone.
Renar selects his clothing from a balance of durability and cost. Leather boots, rough spun pants and shirt, and a plain hooded cloak would not make him stand out too terribly in any given crowd you'd find in the cities. What gives him away are his mannerisms. He doesn't speak very much and is prone to answering questions with nods or hand gestures if the question isn't complex. This quiet extends to his feet as well. He walks in near silence wherever he goes as his modus operandi and is prone to accidentally sneaking up on people who aren't paying attention. Another of his off putting habits is his complete lack of understanding for many societal norms. He's often impolite without malice, tactless without ill will, and lacks any form of subtly in conversation. He'll often avoid eye contact even when speaking directly to someone.
Reserved and blunt but surprisingly friendly... in his own way. Renar has a certain method of going about things and it's worked so far and he likes the way he does things. He is rather curious about many things and the ways of others, he just doesn't feel comfortable doing things the way other people do them. He enjoys the company of others, but you could be easily be forgiven for thinking the opposite. He's just not well versed in manners and more complex social interaction and isn't a fan of crowded or loud spaces. That being said, he tries his best. He even procured a Gwent deck. He's terrible at the game but he finds that opening with an offer of a card game helps break the ice even if the other person doesn't own a single Gwent card. On the job, Renar is dependable and incredibly thorough, often exceeding expectations. Nothing distracts him when he has a task ahead of him and he never relents until he finishes what he set out to do.
The Wild Man has a great affinity for the animal kingdom and is said to be able to call animals to his aid or tame a bear with a look. In reality, he just knows how to interact with most animals in a way to put them at ease, or at the very least not cause them to attack him. He has a great respect for nature and the creatures of the world and has spent many, many years learning how they live and interact.
Despite being almost illiterate, he's very clever and is almost always thinking about one thing or another. In addition, he's very perceptive and notices small details. Together, these two facets of his personality lend him to think remarkably quick on his feet. He may not be a classically learned man, but he's creative in his own way and often thinks outside the box and finds rather unorthodox ways of solving problems.
Renar was born in a shaded clearing miles from the nearest settlement to a traveling hermit and an unknown father. The young boy showed none of the same talent as his mother, but he learned quickly the ways of the forest and how to survive far from luxuries such as oil lanterns and agriculture. She taught him how to hunt and forage and even the art of falconry, a skill usually reserved for nobility. They traveled together for several years, enjoying no company but that of the animals and each other. Eventually, his mother grew sick and died. Renar misses her to this day, but it was her time. For years after, he traveled the lands from the Dragon Mountains to the southern tip of Nilfgaard and back. He mostly kept to himself, only stopping by towns to buy extra provisions with labor for especially long journeys. It wasn't hard for folks to pick up on how odd the man is, but he didn't bother anyone and worked honestly for what little he bought so that was enough for most to leave him be. In this solitude he gradually perfected the arts of animal handling and learned the ways of the wild creatures as he slowly migrated south over many years.
He always preferred the quiet and stillness of the forest to the noise and crowds of the cities. All the hustle and bustle of civilization can easily overwhelm him. It was by his 30th year that he decided to settle down in one spot and found a section of forest to his liking just north of the Nilfgaard empire in the shadow of Tir Tochair. Unbeknownst to Renar, this area would soon become a hotspot for military movements. Tir Tochair provided a perfect landmark for navigation in the same way one can follow a river, units could simply keep the mountains to their right and make progress. Renar quickly found himself helping mercenary companies and dignified knights alike move up and down the continent purely out of a desire to get them out of his home. The faster they moved, the less time they spent making noise and trampling all over the nice, soft fields. He just wanted to be left alone, but he would soon find himself suffering from success.
His natural talents for scouting and navigation soon spread by word of mouth and Renar's little corner of the world became an increasingly popular highway up until the Northern War. It seemed every week some Nilfgaard company would come stomping through his home and making a ruckus. He did whatever they wanted him to from scouting to the occasional act of espionage and even outright sabotage just to make them leave. If one good thing came out of the constant parade of sensory overload was the compulsion of some of the officers to give him coins. Renar never understood money or why people valued it so much, but he knew enough that if he gathered enough of these coins and gave them to a blacksmith, he'd give him very nice tools in exchange. A stone axe is all well and good, but it can't compare to the ease of using an iron hatchet.
These monetary goods only offset the annoyance of dealing with soldiers for a few more years before Renar had enough and fled north to escape. Much to his dismay, his reputation precedes him and it was mere months before his services were "requested" by none other than King Foltest. In exchange for a pardon for the crime of aiding Nilfgaard and committing treason against a kingdom he barely knew existed, Renar was ordered to accompany the expedition or lose his head. The Wildman isn't afraid of death, but he'd much rather die from old age than a headsman's axe.
⯇ Animal Handling ⯈
⯇ Bareback Horse Riding ⯈
⯇ Falconry ⯈
⯇ Navigation ⯈
⯇ Being Terrible at Gwent ⯈
⯇ Wilderness Survival ⯈
⯇ Stealth, Sabotage, and Skulduggery ⯈
⯇ Game Hunting ⯈
⯇ Tracking ⯈
⯇ Trapping ⯈
⯇ Sling Use ⯈
Specialty: His skills as a forward scout are supreme. Terrain and weather seem to hold no sway over him as he moves across the land like a shadow and disappearing just as quickly. Some believe him to be a sorcerer or even a ghost, but he is only a man with a finely tuned set of skills.
Weapons:
⯈ Sling
Armor:
⯈ Gambeson Shirt
Utility:
⯈ Hunting Knife
⯈ Dried provisions (7 days)
⯈ Cord (50 ft)
⯈ Falconry Glove (right handed)
⯈ Hatchet
⯈ Whetstone
⯈ Various pouches and pockets
⯈ Water Skin
⯈ Gwent Deck
Other
⯈ A mare with a chestnut coat and no name
⯈ A young hawk he simply refers to as "Hawk"
⯈ He's not a fighter and would much rather flee than face someone in a direct fight.
⯈ Provided he's not working, Renar rises with the sun and sleeps when it falls. Early to bed and early to rise.
⯈ He's not a picky eater by any means and readily eats overcooked, burnt, unseasoned, and down right bland food with gratitude.
⯈ It's hard to tell because he never writes anything, but Renar is ambidextrous.
⯈ He refuses to touch things without wearing gloves unless it has to do with animals
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Birthplace: The woods just south of Dol Blathanna
Profession: Spy/Scout
Appearance
A man of moderate height with little fat but a great deal of lean muscle from a life spent in the wilderness and eating only what he can find or kill. Although he hasn't begun to gray yet, his face betrays his age with clear lines and weathering. As a measure to cut down on parasites, he tries to keep his face as clean shaven as his travels will allow. This often leaves him with varying states of beard length that can vary wildly within the space of only a few months. His are a deep, dark green much like his hooded cloak was many years ago, and set in a face of sharp, angular features. Cheekbones that jut out from his face like sheer cliffs and a nose that comes to a blunt point fit well with his angular jaw and gives him a countenance of roughly carved stone.
Renar selects his clothing from a balance of durability and cost. Leather boots, rough spun pants and shirt, and a plain hooded cloak would not make him stand out too terribly in any given crowd you'd find in the cities. What gives him away are his mannerisms. He doesn't speak very much and is prone to answering questions with nods or hand gestures if the question isn't complex. This quiet extends to his feet as well. He walks in near silence wherever he goes as his modus operandi and is prone to accidentally sneaking up on people who aren't paying attention. Another of his off putting habits is his complete lack of understanding for many societal norms. He's often impolite without malice, tactless without ill will, and lacks any form of subtly in conversation. He'll often avoid eye contact even when speaking directly to someone.
Personality
Reserved and blunt but surprisingly friendly... in his own way. Renar has a certain method of going about things and it's worked so far and he likes the way he does things. He is rather curious about many things and the ways of others, he just doesn't feel comfortable doing things the way other people do them. He enjoys the company of others, but you could be easily be forgiven for thinking the opposite. He's just not well versed in manners and more complex social interaction and isn't a fan of crowded or loud spaces. That being said, he tries his best. He even procured a Gwent deck. He's terrible at the game but he finds that opening with an offer of a card game helps break the ice even if the other person doesn't own a single Gwent card. On the job, Renar is dependable and incredibly thorough, often exceeding expectations. Nothing distracts him when he has a task ahead of him and he never relents until he finishes what he set out to do.
The Wild Man has a great affinity for the animal kingdom and is said to be able to call animals to his aid or tame a bear with a look. In reality, he just knows how to interact with most animals in a way to put them at ease, or at the very least not cause them to attack him. He has a great respect for nature and the creatures of the world and has spent many, many years learning how they live and interact.
Despite being almost illiterate, he's very clever and is almost always thinking about one thing or another. In addition, he's very perceptive and notices small details. Together, these two facets of his personality lend him to think remarkably quick on his feet. He may not be a classically learned man, but he's creative in his own way and often thinks outside the box and finds rather unorthodox ways of solving problems.
History
Renar was born in a shaded clearing miles from the nearest settlement to a traveling hermit and an unknown father. The young boy showed none of the same talent as his mother, but he learned quickly the ways of the forest and how to survive far from luxuries such as oil lanterns and agriculture. She taught him how to hunt and forage and even the art of falconry, a skill usually reserved for nobility. They traveled together for several years, enjoying no company but that of the animals and each other. Eventually, his mother grew sick and died. Renar misses her to this day, but it was her time. For years after, he traveled the lands from the Dragon Mountains to the southern tip of Nilfgaard and back. He mostly kept to himself, only stopping by towns to buy extra provisions with labor for especially long journeys. It wasn't hard for folks to pick up on how odd the man is, but he didn't bother anyone and worked honestly for what little he bought so that was enough for most to leave him be. In this solitude he gradually perfected the arts of animal handling and learned the ways of the wild creatures as he slowly migrated south over many years.
He always preferred the quiet and stillness of the forest to the noise and crowds of the cities. All the hustle and bustle of civilization can easily overwhelm him. It was by his 30th year that he decided to settle down in one spot and found a section of forest to his liking just north of the Nilfgaard empire in the shadow of Tir Tochair. Unbeknownst to Renar, this area would soon become a hotspot for military movements. Tir Tochair provided a perfect landmark for navigation in the same way one can follow a river, units could simply keep the mountains to their right and make progress. Renar quickly found himself helping mercenary companies and dignified knights alike move up and down the continent purely out of a desire to get them out of his home. The faster they moved, the less time they spent making noise and trampling all over the nice, soft fields. He just wanted to be left alone, but he would soon find himself suffering from success.
His natural talents for scouting and navigation soon spread by word of mouth and Renar's little corner of the world became an increasingly popular highway up until the Northern War. It seemed every week some Nilfgaard company would come stomping through his home and making a ruckus. He did whatever they wanted him to from scouting to the occasional act of espionage and even outright sabotage just to make them leave. If one good thing came out of the constant parade of sensory overload was the compulsion of some of the officers to give him coins. Renar never understood money or why people valued it so much, but he knew enough that if he gathered enough of these coins and gave them to a blacksmith, he'd give him very nice tools in exchange. A stone axe is all well and good, but it can't compare to the ease of using an iron hatchet.
These monetary goods only offset the annoyance of dealing with soldiers for a few more years before Renar had enough and fled north to escape. Much to his dismay, his reputation precedes him and it was mere months before his services were "requested" by none other than King Foltest. In exchange for a pardon for the crime of aiding Nilfgaard and committing treason against a kingdom he barely knew existed, Renar was ordered to accompany the expedition or lose his head. The Wildman isn't afraid of death, but he'd much rather die from old age than a headsman's axe.
Skills
⯇ Animal Handling ⯈
⯇ Bareback Horse Riding ⯈
⯇ Falconry ⯈
⯇ Navigation ⯈
⯇ Being Terrible at Gwent ⯈
⯇ Wilderness Survival ⯈
⯇ Stealth, Sabotage, and Skulduggery ⯈
⯇ Game Hunting ⯈
⯇ Tracking ⯈
⯇ Trapping ⯈
⯇ Sling Use ⯈
Specialty: His skills as a forward scout are supreme. Terrain and weather seem to hold no sway over him as he moves across the land like a shadow and disappearing just as quickly. Some believe him to be a sorcerer or even a ghost, but he is only a man with a finely tuned set of skills.
Equipment
Weapons:
⯈ Sling
Armor:
⯈ Gambeson Shirt
Utility:
⯈ Hunting Knife
⯈ Dried provisions (7 days)
⯈ Cord (50 ft)
⯈ Falconry Glove (right handed)
⯈ Hatchet
⯈ Whetstone
⯈ Various pouches and pockets
⯈ Water Skin
⯈ Gwent Deck
Other
⯈ A mare with a chestnut coat and no name
⯈ A young hawk he simply refers to as "Hawk"
Misc
⯈ He's not a fighter and would much rather flee than face someone in a direct fight.
⯈ Provided he's not working, Renar rises with the sun and sleeps when it falls. Early to bed and early to rise.
⯈ He's not a picky eater by any means and readily eats overcooked, burnt, unseasoned, and down right bland food with gratitude.
⯈ It's hard to tell because he never writes anything, but Renar is ambidextrous.
⯈ He refuses to touch things without wearing gloves unless it has to do with animals
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Bazmund Not a Doctor
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Alan Enfys
Name: Alan ‘Karl’ Enfys
Race: Human - Half-Skelligan Temerian
Age: 40-45, approximately.
Gender: Male
Birthplace: Somewhere pleasant along the banks of the Pontar, in a rural nowhere between Novigrad and Oxenfurt.
Profession: Intelligence Officer, Temerian Intelligence. Second in Command, Fifth Platoon Blue Stripes Commandos (Formerly).
Appearance: Alan Enfys is of medium height and build, with thick, versatile brown hair and a fast growing beard of a gradually greying colour. His eyes are almost paradoxically soft, intelligent and incredibly perceptive. He’s best described as having a very flexible appearance, but dresses to avoid drawing attention, and to conceal both his form and his scars - though they look like nothing more than the result of careless farm work. He has no particular inherent mannerisms, he’s not memorable, and he smells like whatever he’s wearing. Occasionally, but only occasionally, he has trouble looking people in the eye.
Personality: Alan Enfys is a highly intelligent, deeply perceptive, thoughtful man, whose thoughts are very rarely betrayed by his outwards actions. He is constantly thinking, always assessing the situation, and exhibits a tremendous tendency towards analytical, logical patterns of thought. Despite this he is also quite sensitive, able to pick up intuitively on minute details and social cues, making him reasonably good company and generally quite engaging in conversation - although he is normally reasonably quiet, becoming loud only when drunk, which he is not frequently but enjoys being. He prefers ale from Temeria - more for the memories than for the actual taste, which has occasionally been described as lacking - or wine to drink, and he doesn't smoke as he finds tobacco distasteful and uncomfortable to inhale. It is easy to mistake him for being shy or nervous, as while he does have an attractive smile he seems to use it only very rarely, and he will sometimes have trouble making regular eye contact with people in conversation - though this last part is an identifying behaviour he has taken care to disguise and mitigate. He does enjoy his time alone.
In a professional capacity, he is well demarked by his ability to adapt creatively to stress and new or unforeseen problems, and he does very well under pressure. He enjoys being able to focus on his work, and prefers to give as much of himself to a given job as he has left to give. Alan finds incompetence frustrating, but tries to be patient with people who need to learn, and does his best to be understanding of failures.
Beyond all this, however - or perhaps running below it like a river below a bridge - there is Patriotism. Alan is a nationalist, and has been since he was recruited as a Blue Stripe many years ago, although the sheer intensity of it has waned with time, experience, and trauma. There was truly once an Alan that would have done anything, happily and gladly, for King Foltest; now... well, now he still would.
He was younger back then. Less thoughtful - if not any less smart. He still loves Temeria, and like the rest of his old comrades he still loves the King - but it’s a cynical, hurt kind of love, now. The kind of love you might deny on a bad day. Alan is still loyal, and he still serves his country, and he will until he dies - but sometimes, just sometimes, it is a struggle.
History:
Alan was born a fair while ago. There are no records of when, precisely, but he knows that his birthday was in summer. It is said to have been a beautiful day, one of the rare ones where it seems like the world is finally at peace - well, but for the screaming of his mother, and even that did not last so many hours. His mother was Ola, a young woman whose lot in life had been to accompany her husband on his travels with a trading company as a caravan guard - whose name was Ruaridh, and who came from An Skellige.
It goes without saying that her becoming pregnant on the road had not been something they had planned for, but when the company leader tried to force his father to leave her at the ignominious little backwater village they’d just passed through, his father had threatened to: beat the man half to death, steal his goods, and leave the caravan with her. With the caravan master sufficiently cowed - and with the quality of his work as a Skelliger mercenary to support his father - it seemed as though the company could expect a baby amongst them soon. He was a comparatively easy birth, if not so easy to raise, always getting into trouble and causing mischief - early on in his life it was clear that he was a bright boy, taking things apart to see how they worked, breaking his toys to get a look at their insides and figure out what made them tick. Once, he was given a clockwork soldier as a present - it swung its sword and acted like it was marching, when you wound it up - and it took him about three days to deconstruct the thing.
His childhood was happy, and loving. He remembers relatively little of it.
He stayed with the caravan until he was 7. You see, after a while, having a precocious child in a trading caravan becomes an endeavour too risky to justify.
Alan himself still doesn’t know precisely what happened. The traders had decided to make a stop near Vizima to pick up some of the more intricate artisan’s goods from the capital - stuff like forged weapon parts, machine bits, and whatnot. Perhaps they decided that it would be better for him to stay there, where he could find… an education? A living? Abject poverty and exploitation by criminals?
No. More likely the caravan master had finally decided that Alan’s father’s strongarming was outweighing his use as a guardsman, and hired on replacements - whose first task had been to take care of their predecessor. Or he was killed by a robber in the city. Or by disease.
One way or another, Alan woke up one morning to find that the caravan had left, and that he was on his own in the capital. He has even less idea what could have happened to his mother.
For the next five years he lived in squalor, flitting from squat to squat, avoiding the King’s men and picking pockets. When he was big enough, he and two others would corner inattentive merchants or workers and use knives to pry their coin from them. It wasn’t what he had dreamed of doing, as a child, but it was a living. He tried to get along with the others - Georg and Nils - and largely succeeded. He stole, and fought, and drank, and stole, and fought, and drank.
His life quickly became a peculiar kind of anxious, horrible boring. He was never safe, never satisfied, and only rarely sorry for the things he was doing.
Eventually they joined a gang together.
It was the natural conclusion of the life he was living. The two others he had been living with quickly took to the gang’s shared culture, getting their symbol as a tattoo and donning the rough leathers of the group - who called themselves the Riverdogs, for their engaging in their crimes along the roads near the Pontar, and then using it as an escape route. They loved it. The life of the brigand was somehow glamourous to them, like a big stupid adventure. The leader of the gang - who called himself King, and spoke at length about the virtue of liberty - endorsed this behaviour thoroughly. He gladly put his own shares in the spoils of the jobs they did towards gang nights in brothels and taverns; more than once was the entire group blackout drunk on his coin.
More than once too did they all wake up spread out across the streets of Vizima, just barely in time to escape the morning guard patrols. It was a fun life - if a life that couldn’t possibly have lasted forever - and both Georg and Nils were thoroughly taken with it.
Alan saw wiser.
He knew how these kinds of things ended - with the gang being rounded up and killed, or turning on their junior members - and he was, for the first time, determined not to fall victim to it. His violent apathy was turned into sharp determination when the gang lost three members to an overprepared party of highway guardsmen, and he started taking a more active role in the planning of their heists. Under the charismatic, generous leadership of King, and with the fast mind of the newly committed Alan, their criminal habits only escalated. Rather than simply identify a merchant and pounce all at once, Alan had the smaller members of the gang act as scouts and stalkers, following larger caravans and discreetly observing their habits and security measures with Alan in tow to take notes - as he was one of the few literate members of the party. While the scouts followed their targets, the others practiced the art of combat from horseback, with archers perching on the backs of their brothers’ horses to fire while moving and the horsemen themselves adopting new weapons - even makeshift ones - to replace the repurposed tools and farming equipment they’d been using before.
Alan’s sudden involvement, and his responsibility for their success, meant that he came to the personal attention of the magnetic King. King, whose real name Alan never learned, would take Alan aside during the parties and drunken feasts the gang held after their many new victories. They spoke about philosophy, about faith and religion, and about politics. King was an educated, intelligent man, and it is from him that Alan drew most of his own education during this time - including a very basic understanding of the Elder tongue.
More than that though, it was as though he knew what Alan preferred to do and rather than forcing him to engage with the gang in a way he hated, let him do it. He gave Alan gifts of books and plays, he spoke about them with him, he made him feel like he belonged. For a time Alan even felt like he could identify with the libertine ideology his leader espoused. He still owes his erudition and his creativity to him - it was, after all, King who helped him learn to think outside of the box, to break from routine, to appreciate the value of being unpredictable.
However, this shift in tactics, this twist of fortune, this alteration of the proverbial battlefield - it was a double edged sword. Alan knew they would come, and he took measures - often effective ones - to mislead their pursuers when they did, but he was well aware that as the Riverdogs became a more and more credible threat to larger traders, they would come more and more into the notice of the Crown. More worryingly, their unique adaptations of classical small unit tactics meant that with every convoy they raided they were leaving unique clues and hints behind, for their pursuers to trace them with. The usual model of banditry is not sustainable, and allows for very little growth, but it’s commonplace enough that tracking one particular group becomes very difficult until they develop particular behaviours or appetites - but they weren’t just bandits any more, they weren’t following the usual model.
Unbeknownst to the gang, a platoon from the Temerian standing army, composed of experienced, professional soldiers under the command of Captain Markus Novak, had been tracking them for months.
It would eventually turn out that the Riverdogs had managed to kill a minor nobleman during a raid some months ago, and while he had not been politically important in the wider scheme of things, his death was still notable. That had been their death warrant, the event responsible for marking them as a target not only worth pursuing, but one that needed pursuing.
Captain Novak had studied their tactics, mapped their normal range of activities, and deduced that they were using the Pontar to flee the scene of their crimes once they were done. He had already known that the Dogs were using primitive cavalry in their attacks, so he knew too that the boat or boats they escaped on would need to be large enough to take horses - up to ten of them, in fact - as well as the men. It was a simple matter to chart an area of the Pontar that was likely to conceal a dock or pontoon, then send his scouts to identify the bandit camp.
On the 4th of January in the year 1245, after three years of violence and flight from prosecution, the story of the Riverdogs was brought to a swift and final close. At 4am, with most of the gang still asleep and drunk from the night before when the had been celebrating another successful robbery, the troops struck.
Alan woke up abruptly, having been a light sleeper anyway, to an infantry charge from two separate angles. The Temerians had been given ample time to prepare, they were better trained and equipped, and they had the element of surprise from two fronts. The fighting was over before it began, a foregone conclusion for the ages. About half the gang were killed then and there, the other half was taken prisoner with Alan among them.
Once the prisoners were taken back to Vizima it seemed for all the world like they were due a public hanging - and indeed, that is what happened to some of them - but before they met the garroter they met the Sheriff.
With the annexation of Ebbing some years earlier by the insidious forces of the Nilfgaardian Empire, all the nordling peoples were beginning to ramp up recruitment for the armies, pressing peasants to train for war and expanding the standing retinues. The faintest of rumours already existed that, in the years to come, King Foltest would call upon his vassals and raise an army to meet Nilfgaard.
To that end, petty and dangerous criminals alike were - when the circumstances were right - being given a choice; die at the rope, or live in the army.
Alan could not understand why the others chose death - especially King.
The last words that the gang leader ever said to Alan were on the day of his execution, from the gallows platform;
“I was never meant for chains. If that’s the only way to live, then I just won’t live. It’s better by far to die free.”
Then he threw his head back and laughed at the crowd.
“King is dead. Long live King”
Of course, it was easy for Alan to disagree with that sentiment - especially from the distance away he was stood, still bound and under guard with the others who had chosen life as their leader’s body dropped, stopped, and jerked - but he had to admit, there was something to be said for dying as yourself.
Still. Better to keep breathing.
War school was rough, given that they were in training as conscripts for a prototypical Poor Fucking Infantry, the ultimate shitlords of the melee, screwed by destiny and fate from both ends. Of all the men in this unit about half were criminals, the others were desperate peasants who had been told there would be bread. Even the criminals were mostly nonviolent.
It was him, Georg, and two others named Keillor and Jan. Georg was tempered now by his brush with death, and slept only very poorly if at all. Keillor and Jan were brave and serious men, older than either Georg or Alan - they had been Riverdogs for a long time, and had taken the death of the gang hard. During the proceedings that led to their conscription Alan had openly been given half the credit for their success, which both brought him to the attention of the Sergeant Major and made him their de facto clique leader. Together, the four of them were the most experienced fighters and best team workers in the entire Public Provisional Corps.
The Sgt Major in charge of their training was a gruff and unpleasant man named Peters. He smelt bizarre and bitter at almost all times - in a way that was not entirely unlike pipe smoke, but which didn’t carry its taste so much on the wind. He described himself as a veteran of some such war or other, but was always reluctant to actually give any details or proof - the gang pretty quickly pegged him as exaggerating his achievements for impact, even if he was still clearly experienced. It was a ruse that worked on most of the peasants, and he commanded at least their obedience if not truly their respect.
Alan and the others made it their personal mission to press him as far as they could without their sentence being revoked to hanging. They needed something to do, and it was precisely the ideal combination of funny and easy to trip the other recruits up onto the Major’s table during mess, or leave dog crap outside his tent in the night, or steal his ale and replace it with… well, worse quality ale. When Peters’ suspicion of active interference was raised at long last, Alan even made sure to plant what little evidence they hadn’t already drank in another squad’s tent - he even dabbed a little of the beer onto their clothes, to make them smell like they’d been drinking it.
It was a far cry from their previous pastimes, and they were still miserable, but the thin, watery joy they got out of it was enough to keep them going during boot camp.
Their discretion, their cunning, and their brutal dirty fighting; it was what eventually got them noticed by a more discreet kind of watcher, after almost a full year of training and garrison duty.
By the time a week had passed, all four of the last River Dogs had been transferred out of there supposedly to another unit, and the limited-but-extant paperwork regarding that transfer had been lost in a terrible, highly specific fire, which had managed to burn nothing else at all. Functionally, all four of them no longer existed. If anyone asked questions, then whoever they were asking had never met them before, didn’t know who they were, and - if pressed - shrugged, and suggested that they must have deserted.
They had not deserted.
Instead, late one night in the dead of winter, at the end of their training, they were approached.
A fairly unassuming man with grey stubble and no uniform cornered them as the evening wound down, and offered quite sternly to buy them some decent ale if they’d only accompany him for a conversation. The other three were initially reluctant, but Alan knew what opportunity looked like, and it looked like a way off the camp for some beer.
On the way to the tavern Alan busied himself concocting a plan to overpower their escort and escape; after all, one man could only do so much against four experienced assailants, right? But he never got the chance to put it into action - for one thing, it quickly became obvious that the man leading them was not alone, and that he had friends in the streets around them.
For another thing, both the beer and the offer they ended up getting were a lot better than any of them had been expecting.
In the smoky, humid, darkness of the snug, a man was waiting for them. His name was Vernon, and he only very rarely smiled.
The Blue Stripes were an elite unit of Temeria’s most dangerous and most diehard fighting patriots. They were entrusted with the most difficult tasks, often given to them personally by the King, often to be conducted with the absolute bare minimum of resources. Or less.
The work was brutal, risky, and often unrewarding; but it meant a bizarre sort of relative security, away from the meat grinder of the standard infantry, and it certainly suited the type of work the boys were familiar with. Though they had initially gone along with it out of a desire to find opportunities to escape, the sheer intensity of the training left them without the time to find one - and by the time they had liberty enough to find one, they’d gotten too far stuck into the Blue Stripes mentality to seriously consider backing out. It helped that Roche took good care to separate them across different squads for their training; you can’t make an escape plan if you can’t talk to eachother, after all.
It was like being back in the Riverdogs again. All for one, one for all. The Blue Stripes were truly brothers - only even better, it wasn’t motivated by greed or lust or teeth clenched teamwork for a mercenary end; these men and women loved Temeria, and they adored the King. They still got drunk together, they still fought together, they still earned a bad reputation - to those few who still knew they existed - together, but now they were serving something greater than themselves. It wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d thought it would be. Sometimes, on the really good days, they forgot about being criminals a little bit; the Blue Stripes made them feel like they actually belonged.
None of them, least of all Alan - as wise and sharp and intelligent as he was - realised how much they’d been missing that.
After six months they were given the opportunity to be together again for the rest of their training, and they took it without question. They were given more free time, they weren’t watched as closely by their comrades during the downtime they got, and they were given the uniform and weapons to carry with them permanently - at long last.
Alan had figured that it would be a test of sorts, to see if they would try to make a break for it once they were in a position to. He wasn’t sure what would happen if they tried to. Logically, you’d want to cut the escapees down before they could go and wreak havoc with their specialist training and experience. Logically, you’d want to keep the knowledge of your secret training camp just that; secret. Logically, you wouldn’t let them walk out.
But Alan couldn’t see anything set up to catch them if they tried. He was a smart, analytical, perceptive soldier, well suited to this kind of work - or indeed, this kind of escape attempt. No eyes followed them when they walked about in the evening. None of their comrades looked twice when one of them turned towards the gates. Nobody questioned where they were if they spent too long out of view, in the latrine, or simply hiding.
Alan even had his brothers make preparations to leave. He had them steal food and water, cut a hole in the fence, watch the guard shifts for weaknesses. They were ready to escape, and still, nothing.
Roche would have let them go.
Alan could not recall a time in his life when he had been trusted by anyone who wasn’t going to hang with him if they were caught. It was a surprising, pleasant, obliging feeling. They weren’t conscripts any more, they weren’t being forced into this life, they were finally being given a choice. Legally speaking, the choice might have been illegal, but it was one they could make freely.
The Blue Stripes saw them as equals. The Blue Stripes saw them as Blue Stripes.
Which meant that the King did too.
So they stayed.
Alan went to Vernon Roche’s quarters personally to inform him that they were thankful for the freedom they’d been given, and that they’d considered the alternative, but found loyalty more worth their while. It was one of the only times Alan ever saw him smile during their training.
From then onwards, their schooling focused on the military theory behind guerilla warfare, the finer points of covert operations, and the use of improvised weaponry in the field of war. They learnt to work seamlessly as a team in order to destroy infrastructure, neutralise key enemy support staff and officers, and confront threats militarily their superior in a pattern of assymetrical warfare that enabled the overcoming of targets many times their own strength by use of guile and deception as well as straight violence. All members of the unit were trained in both a variety of close quarters fighting techniques, and with a number of ranged weapons, from the utilitarian and deadly sling to the mighty longbow. A general education in civilian subjects was supplied on the sides, with each squad member receiving a different apprenticeship in a different trade, to provide them with the background knowledge of civilian life that many lacked, as well as valuable accessory skill sets.
Which is the point at which Alan Enfys met Alara Wystwyth.
She was a sorceress, on assignment from the research chapter of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers to a hospital in Novigrad, performing medical duties and looking into the origins of an unusually nasty strain of an otherwise normal illness.
He was, to most people, apprenticed to an engineer. The hospital was undergoing some renovations, and his ‘master’ wanted the Sorceress’s keen opinion on the designs they had. The pair of them were quite immediately taken with eachother, although Alan certainly tried to hide it. They would have several more professional conversations in the weeks to come, supposedly at the behest of his architect teacher, until the man made it clear that he was trying to give Alan an opportunity with her more than he really needed exact clarifications on chamberpot drains and their required diameters.
He asked her to join him for a…
He faltered, when he asked her to join him for a drink. Do sorceresses drink ale, usually? Do they prefer wine? Would they be happiest drinking whiskey? Do they need it to be as old as they might be? Should it be sweet, or bitter, or warm, or cold? Do they drink the same stuff as sorcerers, or are they somehow different? Was she allergic to anything?
Oh, what if she didn’t drink alcohol?
She replied that she would love for him to join her in the sharing of a bottle of Schnapps. She would even buy it herself.
Once the job he was doing was done, that is.
She was not the first woman Alan had ever had feelings for, or even the first woman he’d had strong feelings for - but she was probably the first woman he would ever come to love. She was intelligent and engaging in conversation, she spoke at length and with passion about niche subjects and bizarre things that she found interesting, she shared with him the things that she loved, like she was eager to impart some of herself to him. Alara was an academic, a scholar, a genius. She was a doctor, a healer, a compassionate carer. She enjoyed speaking - but she loved to hear him talk, too.
Alan enjoyed listening. Very much. Talking? He enjoyed less. He listened to the magic of her voice for maybe five years.
They went for walks along the river, they went to libraries and looked at old books, they worked together where their skillsets permitted it. They were not always on good terms, of course - she seemed disapproving of his growing patriotism, and upset by how ready he was to do violence for something as small as nationalism, and he in turn was frustrated by her for it. She would come and go, especially once her formal assignment to Temeria was over, and even when he had the good luck to be residing within Vizima again she was not always there - sometimes even when she was, they did not see each other; she told him he was too good natured for the work he was doing, that he should leave the Stripes if he wanted to be with her. It never held up for long, but she did keep coming back to it. She seemed convinced that he was going to get himself killed for nothing - and he could never understand how something as great as Temeria could seem like nothing to her, no matter how long lived she was.
Nonetheless, he was careful not to seem like he was acting differently in front of the other Blue Stripes, and he kept his joy to himself for the most part - but Gods, Vernon absolutely knew.
If he had been born a sorcerer, he’d have asked her to marry him. If he’d been born a sorcerer, gone to Ban Ard, the question of his loyalties would never have been asked. He’d have been free to be all hers - which, perhaps, he did not realise was what he truly wanted.
But he was a soldier instead, glad to serve, happy to fight.
Deployment became the interim for periods of on and off courtship. When he had leave he would visit her, or catch glimpses of her in the crowded tavern his brothers frequented, and follow; but after his training was over he was sent out as a scout and a soldier more often than he wasn’t.
Alan couldn’t help but think he must be the luckiest man in the world. He’d gone from being a two bit criminal with a head for tactics to a member of one of Temeria’s most valuable combat ready units. He’d gone from comparative loneliness and a dependency on debauchery for his social life to a young man involved with one of the most wise, intelligent, charming, beautiful women in existence - at least as far as he was concerned, the other sorcerers’ opinions of Miss Wystwyth didn’t matter a damn to him.
He’d gone from nothing, to something. He had even almost forgotten King, the first man who ever understood him.
No major conflicts, no great wars, not until the time came when Nilfgaard marched on Cintra - but enough busy work and special interests for the Blue Stripes to stay needed. Anything for Temeria, anything to keep the kingdom safe, anything to permit the continued work of the sorceress. With great purpose and skill did Alan Enfys earn his stripes on the tasks his squad was given by Vernon Roche - although Georg had been assigned to another team, Keillor and Jan had remained with Alan, and earned their place on the field too. Things were good, and looking better by the day.
Like all upward trends, it was never to last.
As War, clad in black and gold, marched towards the North, the King made the decision to deploy the Blue Stripes - at least in part - toward the South. Though the armies of Temeria were not yet ready for deployment, and much debate was still to be had as to just how far North the Nilfgaardians were intent on coming, the Temerian Intelligence Service were speculating that it would fit the pattern already shown for Nilfgaard to rush Sodden and secure it as an advancing point to take the rest of the North; the role of the Blue Stripes from 1661 onwards would be to travel discreetly south of Sodden and use whatever means necessary to delay the advancement of the black and gold banners.
The news of their deployment came abruptly, but in the month before it did, Alara took him aside whenever she could; not for loving, or for comfort, but for teaching.
To this day he doesn’t know how she felt it coming, or if she’d somehow known where he was going before he did, or what must have been going through her head - especially since he would always have been doomed to die before her anyway. But she did.
He was a quick student, with a powerful mind and an intuitive grasp of abstract things, and a gifted and dedicated tutor - but even he took most of that month to learn even one sign.
The Blue Stripes departed for the South in the week after that. Four platoons made they way down to Sodden in 1262, splitting up and traveling to Cintra, Hochenbuz, with the remaining two staying in the area around Sodden hill. Alan was placed as a First Officer in the Fifth Platoon, whose posting was in Cintra. They arrived shortly before Nilfgaard did, but hadn’t expected a significant Imperial presence in Cintra - everyone who’d thought Nilfgaard would try to take the North had thought they would rush Sodden, so the bulk of the Blue Stripes had gone to lay preparations around it rather than divide themselves around the rest of the south.
Needless to say, things did not go very well.
The detachment sent to Sodden were forced to abandon their traps and hides in order to reinforce the vastly outdone 5th Platoon, once it became clear that Nilfgaard wasn’t coming their way for a while - but in the mean time, the 5th Platoon were getting stuck in to the Nilfgaardian army.
While a commando platoon of twenty men is not necessarily enough weight to turn the tables of a great battle, such as at Marnadal - and once the depletion of the Cintran forces was complete there was surely no way to save the country overall - there was still plenty to be done in the way of disruption an destruction. Siege equipment was sabotaged, supplies were burned, officers were found with their throats cut come morning. Alan was the eyes of the company, identifying ideal spots for ambushes against supply trains and planning for the inevitable Nilfgaardian retaliations. They were even present during the Massacre of Cintra itself, albeit not for very long and not to any great change in outcome.
As the massacre in Cintra drew to a close and the brutal occupation began, their role shifted once again, and their time was divided between finding opportunities to free the few prisoners of war Nilfgaard had taken, engaging Nilfgaardian patrol units to stop them finding refugee convoys, and desperately trying to identify their brothers from the reinforcement companies.
Reinforcements would not come.
The other platoons had been recalled to Sodden Hill after Cintra fell so quickly. Alan would later discover that two of them had carried on to rejoin King Foltest’s army directly, while the Fourth Platoon had stayed to leave traps for the advancing Nilfgaardians - and that they were bound to the same destiny awaiting Alan’s own team.
The Vrihedd Brigade was that destiny.
Elven cavalry experts, the Vrihedd brigade were a radical group of war criminals whose sole purpose was to bring suffering to the Nordlings, and they were good at their jobs; when Nilfgaardian Command tasked them with hunting down the freshly identified Blue Stripes 5 Platoon, they accepted the task with outright glee. It would be a game of cat and mouse for the ages, the results of which would play into the beginnings of the bitter enmity between Vernon Roche and the Scoia’tael in years to come. For three long months, the light cavalry of the elves and the specialist infantry of the Blue Stripes were engaged in a duel of wits; the Vrihedd would set up a target, something attractive and poorly defended, but something subtle enough to escape notice for what it really was; the Blue Stripes would either identify and ignore it, or hit it from an unpredictable angle and escape through rough terrain cavalry couldn’t easily follow them over. The Vrihedd Brigade would search the woodlands for wherever the Blue Stripes had made camp; the Blue Stripes would camp in caves or seek refuge in small towns instead.
But the game went both ways.
The Blue Stripes would keep making holes for refugees to get through, and the Vrihedd Brigade would run the civilians down from horseback. The Blue Stripes would assassinate one officer, and two more would step forward to take his place. The Blue Stripes would destroy one caravan of supplies sent to relieve an occupying outpost, and the elves would go hunting on horseback, using the spoils to make up for the losses.
Things were evenly enough balanced, for a little while - but anyone can be outsmarted.
By the time three months was up, the captain of the Vrihedd detachment that had been assigned to pursue the 5th Platoon had finished analysing their ambush tactics, and made a decision on how to engage them. He requisitioned the use of the 104th Black Infantry Division, had them hide inside the cargo crates on a fake supply train, and then followed with his cavalry dressed up as standard Nilfgaardian mounted guards about twice the normal distance behind.
The Blue Stripes launched their attack on a narrow road in a dense wood, striking the men attached to the caravan with a volley from the banks alongside the road, then advancing on foot; the woods were successful in preventing a cavalry charge, but the Vrihedd brigade advanced nonetheless and were able to catch the commandos in the middle of unloading the crates. When the Vrihedd captain sounded his horn, the Black Infantry burst out of the crates before the Blue Stripes had a chance to react, and the fighting began.
Over the course of the next ten minutes a series of skirmishes with the Vrihedd Brigade would half their remaining numbers, and separate most of the remaining survivors, but they would nonetheless escape.
In the days to come, some of the Blue Stripes were caught and killed, some of them were able to reunite and escape together, and some of them tried to make their way back to Temeria on their own. Alan spent almost a week hiding alone in the freezing forests of Cintra, dodging Nilfgaardian patrols and running from the elves, before he was eventually found - not by the Stripes, not by a patrol, but by a lone rider.
It goes without saying that her becoming pregnant on the road had not been something they had planned for, but when the company leader tried to force his father to leave her at the ignominious little backwater village they’d just passed through, his father had threatened to: beat the man half to death, steal his goods, and leave the caravan with her. With the caravan master sufficiently cowed - and with the quality of his work as a Skelliger mercenary to support his father - it seemed as though the company could expect a baby amongst them soon. He was a comparatively easy birth, if not so easy to raise, always getting into trouble and causing mischief - early on in his life it was clear that he was a bright boy, taking things apart to see how they worked, breaking his toys to get a look at their insides and figure out what made them tick. Once, he was given a clockwork soldier as a present - it swung its sword and acted like it was marching, when you wound it up - and it took him about three days to deconstruct the thing.
His childhood was happy, and loving. He remembers relatively little of it.
He stayed with the caravan until he was 7. You see, after a while, having a precocious child in a trading caravan becomes an endeavour too risky to justify.
Alan himself still doesn’t know precisely what happened. The traders had decided to make a stop near Vizima to pick up some of the more intricate artisan’s goods from the capital - stuff like forged weapon parts, machine bits, and whatnot. Perhaps they decided that it would be better for him to stay there, where he could find… an education? A living? Abject poverty and exploitation by criminals?
No. More likely the caravan master had finally decided that Alan’s father’s strongarming was outweighing his use as a guardsman, and hired on replacements - whose first task had been to take care of their predecessor. Or he was killed by a robber in the city. Or by disease.
One way or another, Alan woke up one morning to find that the caravan had left, and that he was on his own in the capital. He has even less idea what could have happened to his mother.
For the next five years he lived in squalor, flitting from squat to squat, avoiding the King’s men and picking pockets. When he was big enough, he and two others would corner inattentive merchants or workers and use knives to pry their coin from them. It wasn’t what he had dreamed of doing, as a child, but it was a living. He tried to get along with the others - Georg and Nils - and largely succeeded. He stole, and fought, and drank, and stole, and fought, and drank.
His life quickly became a peculiar kind of anxious, horrible boring. He was never safe, never satisfied, and only rarely sorry for the things he was doing.
Eventually they joined a gang together.
It was the natural conclusion of the life he was living. The two others he had been living with quickly took to the gang’s shared culture, getting their symbol as a tattoo and donning the rough leathers of the group - who called themselves the Riverdogs, for their engaging in their crimes along the roads near the Pontar, and then using it as an escape route. They loved it. The life of the brigand was somehow glamourous to them, like a big stupid adventure. The leader of the gang - who called himself King, and spoke at length about the virtue of liberty - endorsed this behaviour thoroughly. He gladly put his own shares in the spoils of the jobs they did towards gang nights in brothels and taverns; more than once was the entire group blackout drunk on his coin.
More than once too did they all wake up spread out across the streets of Vizima, just barely in time to escape the morning guard patrols. It was a fun life - if a life that couldn’t possibly have lasted forever - and both Georg and Nils were thoroughly taken with it.
Alan saw wiser.
He knew how these kinds of things ended - with the gang being rounded up and killed, or turning on their junior members - and he was, for the first time, determined not to fall victim to it. His violent apathy was turned into sharp determination when the gang lost three members to an overprepared party of highway guardsmen, and he started taking a more active role in the planning of their heists. Under the charismatic, generous leadership of King, and with the fast mind of the newly committed Alan, their criminal habits only escalated. Rather than simply identify a merchant and pounce all at once, Alan had the smaller members of the gang act as scouts and stalkers, following larger caravans and discreetly observing their habits and security measures with Alan in tow to take notes - as he was one of the few literate members of the party. While the scouts followed their targets, the others practiced the art of combat from horseback, with archers perching on the backs of their brothers’ horses to fire while moving and the horsemen themselves adopting new weapons - even makeshift ones - to replace the repurposed tools and farming equipment they’d been using before.
Alan’s sudden involvement, and his responsibility for their success, meant that he came to the personal attention of the magnetic King. King, whose real name Alan never learned, would take Alan aside during the parties and drunken feasts the gang held after their many new victories. They spoke about philosophy, about faith and religion, and about politics. King was an educated, intelligent man, and it is from him that Alan drew most of his own education during this time - including a very basic understanding of the Elder tongue.
More than that though, it was as though he knew what Alan preferred to do and rather than forcing him to engage with the gang in a way he hated, let him do it. He gave Alan gifts of books and plays, he spoke about them with him, he made him feel like he belonged. For a time Alan even felt like he could identify with the libertine ideology his leader espoused. He still owes his erudition and his creativity to him - it was, after all, King who helped him learn to think outside of the box, to break from routine, to appreciate the value of being unpredictable.
However, this shift in tactics, this twist of fortune, this alteration of the proverbial battlefield - it was a double edged sword. Alan knew they would come, and he took measures - often effective ones - to mislead their pursuers when they did, but he was well aware that as the Riverdogs became a more and more credible threat to larger traders, they would come more and more into the notice of the Crown. More worryingly, their unique adaptations of classical small unit tactics meant that with every convoy they raided they were leaving unique clues and hints behind, for their pursuers to trace them with. The usual model of banditry is not sustainable, and allows for very little growth, but it’s commonplace enough that tracking one particular group becomes very difficult until they develop particular behaviours or appetites - but they weren’t just bandits any more, they weren’t following the usual model.
Unbeknownst to the gang, a platoon from the Temerian standing army, composed of experienced, professional soldiers under the command of Captain Markus Novak, had been tracking them for months.
It would eventually turn out that the Riverdogs had managed to kill a minor nobleman during a raid some months ago, and while he had not been politically important in the wider scheme of things, his death was still notable. That had been their death warrant, the event responsible for marking them as a target not only worth pursuing, but one that needed pursuing.
Captain Novak had studied their tactics, mapped their normal range of activities, and deduced that they were using the Pontar to flee the scene of their crimes once they were done. He had already known that the Dogs were using primitive cavalry in their attacks, so he knew too that the boat or boats they escaped on would need to be large enough to take horses - up to ten of them, in fact - as well as the men. It was a simple matter to chart an area of the Pontar that was likely to conceal a dock or pontoon, then send his scouts to identify the bandit camp.
On the 4th of January in the year 1245, after three years of violence and flight from prosecution, the story of the Riverdogs was brought to a swift and final close. At 4am, with most of the gang still asleep and drunk from the night before when the had been celebrating another successful robbery, the troops struck.
Alan woke up abruptly, having been a light sleeper anyway, to an infantry charge from two separate angles. The Temerians had been given ample time to prepare, they were better trained and equipped, and they had the element of surprise from two fronts. The fighting was over before it began, a foregone conclusion for the ages. About half the gang were killed then and there, the other half was taken prisoner with Alan among them.
Once the prisoners were taken back to Vizima it seemed for all the world like they were due a public hanging - and indeed, that is what happened to some of them - but before they met the garroter they met the Sheriff.
With the annexation of Ebbing some years earlier by the insidious forces of the Nilfgaardian Empire, all the nordling peoples were beginning to ramp up recruitment for the armies, pressing peasants to train for war and expanding the standing retinues. The faintest of rumours already existed that, in the years to come, King Foltest would call upon his vassals and raise an army to meet Nilfgaard.
To that end, petty and dangerous criminals alike were - when the circumstances were right - being given a choice; die at the rope, or live in the army.
Alan could not understand why the others chose death - especially King.
The last words that the gang leader ever said to Alan were on the day of his execution, from the gallows platform;
“I was never meant for chains. If that’s the only way to live, then I just won’t live. It’s better by far to die free.”
Then he threw his head back and laughed at the crowd.
“King is dead. Long live King”
Of course, it was easy for Alan to disagree with that sentiment - especially from the distance away he was stood, still bound and under guard with the others who had chosen life as their leader’s body dropped, stopped, and jerked - but he had to admit, there was something to be said for dying as yourself.
Still. Better to keep breathing.
War school was rough, given that they were in training as conscripts for a prototypical Poor Fucking Infantry, the ultimate shitlords of the melee, screwed by destiny and fate from both ends. Of all the men in this unit about half were criminals, the others were desperate peasants who had been told there would be bread. Even the criminals were mostly nonviolent.
It was him, Georg, and two others named Keillor and Jan. Georg was tempered now by his brush with death, and slept only very poorly if at all. Keillor and Jan were brave and serious men, older than either Georg or Alan - they had been Riverdogs for a long time, and had taken the death of the gang hard. During the proceedings that led to their conscription Alan had openly been given half the credit for their success, which both brought him to the attention of the Sergeant Major and made him their de facto clique leader. Together, the four of them were the most experienced fighters and best team workers in the entire Public Provisional Corps.
The Sgt Major in charge of their training was a gruff and unpleasant man named Peters. He smelt bizarre and bitter at almost all times - in a way that was not entirely unlike pipe smoke, but which didn’t carry its taste so much on the wind. He described himself as a veteran of some such war or other, but was always reluctant to actually give any details or proof - the gang pretty quickly pegged him as exaggerating his achievements for impact, even if he was still clearly experienced. It was a ruse that worked on most of the peasants, and he commanded at least their obedience if not truly their respect.
Alan and the others made it their personal mission to press him as far as they could without their sentence being revoked to hanging. They needed something to do, and it was precisely the ideal combination of funny and easy to trip the other recruits up onto the Major’s table during mess, or leave dog crap outside his tent in the night, or steal his ale and replace it with… well, worse quality ale. When Peters’ suspicion of active interference was raised at long last, Alan even made sure to plant what little evidence they hadn’t already drank in another squad’s tent - he even dabbed a little of the beer onto their clothes, to make them smell like they’d been drinking it.
It was a far cry from their previous pastimes, and they were still miserable, but the thin, watery joy they got out of it was enough to keep them going during boot camp.
Their discretion, their cunning, and their brutal dirty fighting; it was what eventually got them noticed by a more discreet kind of watcher, after almost a full year of training and garrison duty.
By the time a week had passed, all four of the last River Dogs had been transferred out of there supposedly to another unit, and the limited-but-extant paperwork regarding that transfer had been lost in a terrible, highly specific fire, which had managed to burn nothing else at all. Functionally, all four of them no longer existed. If anyone asked questions, then whoever they were asking had never met them before, didn’t know who they were, and - if pressed - shrugged, and suggested that they must have deserted.
They had not deserted.
Instead, late one night in the dead of winter, at the end of their training, they were approached.
A fairly unassuming man with grey stubble and no uniform cornered them as the evening wound down, and offered quite sternly to buy them some decent ale if they’d only accompany him for a conversation. The other three were initially reluctant, but Alan knew what opportunity looked like, and it looked like a way off the camp for some beer.
On the way to the tavern Alan busied himself concocting a plan to overpower their escort and escape; after all, one man could only do so much against four experienced assailants, right? But he never got the chance to put it into action - for one thing, it quickly became obvious that the man leading them was not alone, and that he had friends in the streets around them.
For another thing, both the beer and the offer they ended up getting were a lot better than any of them had been expecting.
In the smoky, humid, darkness of the snug, a man was waiting for them. His name was Vernon, and he only very rarely smiled.
The Blue Stripes were an elite unit of Temeria’s most dangerous and most diehard fighting patriots. They were entrusted with the most difficult tasks, often given to them personally by the King, often to be conducted with the absolute bare minimum of resources. Or less.
The work was brutal, risky, and often unrewarding; but it meant a bizarre sort of relative security, away from the meat grinder of the standard infantry, and it certainly suited the type of work the boys were familiar with. Though they had initially gone along with it out of a desire to find opportunities to escape, the sheer intensity of the training left them without the time to find one - and by the time they had liberty enough to find one, they’d gotten too far stuck into the Blue Stripes mentality to seriously consider backing out. It helped that Roche took good care to separate them across different squads for their training; you can’t make an escape plan if you can’t talk to eachother, after all.
It was like being back in the Riverdogs again. All for one, one for all. The Blue Stripes were truly brothers - only even better, it wasn’t motivated by greed or lust or teeth clenched teamwork for a mercenary end; these men and women loved Temeria, and they adored the King. They still got drunk together, they still fought together, they still earned a bad reputation - to those few who still knew they existed - together, but now they were serving something greater than themselves. It wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d thought it would be. Sometimes, on the really good days, they forgot about being criminals a little bit; the Blue Stripes made them feel like they actually belonged.
None of them, least of all Alan - as wise and sharp and intelligent as he was - realised how much they’d been missing that.
After six months they were given the opportunity to be together again for the rest of their training, and they took it without question. They were given more free time, they weren’t watched as closely by their comrades during the downtime they got, and they were given the uniform and weapons to carry with them permanently - at long last.
Alan had figured that it would be a test of sorts, to see if they would try to make a break for it once they were in a position to. He wasn’t sure what would happen if they tried to. Logically, you’d want to cut the escapees down before they could go and wreak havoc with their specialist training and experience. Logically, you’d want to keep the knowledge of your secret training camp just that; secret. Logically, you wouldn’t let them walk out.
But Alan couldn’t see anything set up to catch them if they tried. He was a smart, analytical, perceptive soldier, well suited to this kind of work - or indeed, this kind of escape attempt. No eyes followed them when they walked about in the evening. None of their comrades looked twice when one of them turned towards the gates. Nobody questioned where they were if they spent too long out of view, in the latrine, or simply hiding.
Alan even had his brothers make preparations to leave. He had them steal food and water, cut a hole in the fence, watch the guard shifts for weaknesses. They were ready to escape, and still, nothing.
Roche would have let them go.
Alan could not recall a time in his life when he had been trusted by anyone who wasn’t going to hang with him if they were caught. It was a surprising, pleasant, obliging feeling. They weren’t conscripts any more, they weren’t being forced into this life, they were finally being given a choice. Legally speaking, the choice might have been illegal, but it was one they could make freely.
The Blue Stripes saw them as equals. The Blue Stripes saw them as Blue Stripes.
Which meant that the King did too.
So they stayed.
Alan went to Vernon Roche’s quarters personally to inform him that they were thankful for the freedom they’d been given, and that they’d considered the alternative, but found loyalty more worth their while. It was one of the only times Alan ever saw him smile during their training.
From then onwards, their schooling focused on the military theory behind guerilla warfare, the finer points of covert operations, and the use of improvised weaponry in the field of war. They learnt to work seamlessly as a team in order to destroy infrastructure, neutralise key enemy support staff and officers, and confront threats militarily their superior in a pattern of assymetrical warfare that enabled the overcoming of targets many times their own strength by use of guile and deception as well as straight violence. All members of the unit were trained in both a variety of close quarters fighting techniques, and with a number of ranged weapons, from the utilitarian and deadly sling to the mighty longbow. A general education in civilian subjects was supplied on the sides, with each squad member receiving a different apprenticeship in a different trade, to provide them with the background knowledge of civilian life that many lacked, as well as valuable accessory skill sets.
Which is the point at which Alan Enfys met Alara Wystwyth.
She was a sorceress, on assignment from the research chapter of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers to a hospital in Novigrad, performing medical duties and looking into the origins of an unusually nasty strain of an otherwise normal illness.
He was, to most people, apprenticed to an engineer. The hospital was undergoing some renovations, and his ‘master’ wanted the Sorceress’s keen opinion on the designs they had. The pair of them were quite immediately taken with eachother, although Alan certainly tried to hide it. They would have several more professional conversations in the weeks to come, supposedly at the behest of his architect teacher, until the man made it clear that he was trying to give Alan an opportunity with her more than he really needed exact clarifications on chamberpot drains and their required diameters.
He asked her to join him for a…
He faltered, when he asked her to join him for a drink. Do sorceresses drink ale, usually? Do they prefer wine? Would they be happiest drinking whiskey? Do they need it to be as old as they might be? Should it be sweet, or bitter, or warm, or cold? Do they drink the same stuff as sorcerers, or are they somehow different? Was she allergic to anything?
Oh, what if she didn’t drink alcohol?
She replied that she would love for him to join her in the sharing of a bottle of Schnapps. She would even buy it herself.
Once the job he was doing was done, that is.
She was not the first woman Alan had ever had feelings for, or even the first woman he’d had strong feelings for - but she was probably the first woman he would ever come to love. She was intelligent and engaging in conversation, she spoke at length and with passion about niche subjects and bizarre things that she found interesting, she shared with him the things that she loved, like she was eager to impart some of herself to him. Alara was an academic, a scholar, a genius. She was a doctor, a healer, a compassionate carer. She enjoyed speaking - but she loved to hear him talk, too.
Alan enjoyed listening. Very much. Talking? He enjoyed less. He listened to the magic of her voice for maybe five years.
They went for walks along the river, they went to libraries and looked at old books, they worked together where their skillsets permitted it. They were not always on good terms, of course - she seemed disapproving of his growing patriotism, and upset by how ready he was to do violence for something as small as nationalism, and he in turn was frustrated by her for it. She would come and go, especially once her formal assignment to Temeria was over, and even when he had the good luck to be residing within Vizima again she was not always there - sometimes even when she was, they did not see each other; she told him he was too good natured for the work he was doing, that he should leave the Stripes if he wanted to be with her. It never held up for long, but she did keep coming back to it. She seemed convinced that he was going to get himself killed for nothing - and he could never understand how something as great as Temeria could seem like nothing to her, no matter how long lived she was.
Nonetheless, he was careful not to seem like he was acting differently in front of the other Blue Stripes, and he kept his joy to himself for the most part - but Gods, Vernon absolutely knew.
If he had been born a sorcerer, he’d have asked her to marry him. If he’d been born a sorcerer, gone to Ban Ard, the question of his loyalties would never have been asked. He’d have been free to be all hers - which, perhaps, he did not realise was what he truly wanted.
But he was a soldier instead, glad to serve, happy to fight.
Deployment became the interim for periods of on and off courtship. When he had leave he would visit her, or catch glimpses of her in the crowded tavern his brothers frequented, and follow; but after his training was over he was sent out as a scout and a soldier more often than he wasn’t.
Alan couldn’t help but think he must be the luckiest man in the world. He’d gone from being a two bit criminal with a head for tactics to a member of one of Temeria’s most valuable combat ready units. He’d gone from comparative loneliness and a dependency on debauchery for his social life to a young man involved with one of the most wise, intelligent, charming, beautiful women in existence - at least as far as he was concerned, the other sorcerers’ opinions of Miss Wystwyth didn’t matter a damn to him.
He’d gone from nothing, to something. He had even almost forgotten King, the first man who ever understood him.
No major conflicts, no great wars, not until the time came when Nilfgaard marched on Cintra - but enough busy work and special interests for the Blue Stripes to stay needed. Anything for Temeria, anything to keep the kingdom safe, anything to permit the continued work of the sorceress. With great purpose and skill did Alan Enfys earn his stripes on the tasks his squad was given by Vernon Roche - although Georg had been assigned to another team, Keillor and Jan had remained with Alan, and earned their place on the field too. Things were good, and looking better by the day.
Like all upward trends, it was never to last.
As War, clad in black and gold, marched towards the North, the King made the decision to deploy the Blue Stripes - at least in part - toward the South. Though the armies of Temeria were not yet ready for deployment, and much debate was still to be had as to just how far North the Nilfgaardians were intent on coming, the Temerian Intelligence Service were speculating that it would fit the pattern already shown for Nilfgaard to rush Sodden and secure it as an advancing point to take the rest of the North; the role of the Blue Stripes from 1661 onwards would be to travel discreetly south of Sodden and use whatever means necessary to delay the advancement of the black and gold banners.
The news of their deployment came abruptly, but in the month before it did, Alara took him aside whenever she could; not for loving, or for comfort, but for teaching.
To this day he doesn’t know how she felt it coming, or if she’d somehow known where he was going before he did, or what must have been going through her head - especially since he would always have been doomed to die before her anyway. But she did.
He was a quick student, with a powerful mind and an intuitive grasp of abstract things, and a gifted and dedicated tutor - but even he took most of that month to learn even one sign.
“Again. Cross your arms above your head, like swords bracing against a powerful blow. In your mind, picture a great shield, invisible and impenetrable, ahead of the point where they meet.”
She threw a rock at him, and he grunted as he slammed his hands together at the wrist to meet it.
“Fuck!” He yelped as the stone met the top of his head. Alara winced too - if a little less than he did. “This isn’t helping. I’m no wizard, I can’t do magic, especially not when I’ve got fuckin’ stones being chucked at me.” He snapped, as he sank to the floor and ran a hand through his hair to check the point of impact.
Yes. He was bleeding.
More than that, his body ached and burned with strain. His mind was wilding at him, turning over itself with incoherent thought and turbulent imagery; he saw the sun, he saw the walls of the castle, he saw Alara, he saw the wilds and the rivers and the trees and the woods, and violet-purple blossoms on the forest floor. He could taste wine.
No, he could taste blood.
He pressed his hands against his eyes, as if it could block out the things he was seeing.
Alan knew he was neither, not Witcher nor Mage. Magic was not meant for him, not in any form.
“Alan.” Came her voice, as her hand came to rest on his neck.
He paused.
He moved his hand to rest atop hers, grasping gently for the soft contact.
For ten minutes they sat in silence, waiting for the racing damage in his head to subside, or at least to quiet.
“I… I don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry.” He muttered softly, turning away from her.
She reached out with her free hand, pulled his gaze back to her with her fingertips against his cheek, and looked him in his weary bloodshot eyes.
“Most people have no stomach for magic, most of them not even for the Signs used by Witchers. It drains them, it takes up too much of their mind. You aren’t those people.”
He shook his head.
“If I weren’t, I’d have done it by now.” it came almost more as a sigh than as words.
It was her turn to pause.
“I can’t let you go out there with nothing.” She said at long last.
“I don’t have nothing, Alara. I have brothers. We have armour, swords and shields, axes and bows. We have teamwork, coordination, we have our perception, we have the element of surprise. It’s all we need - all we’ve ever needed. It’s not exactly safe work, I’ll grant you, but,” he chuffed, “neither is living in the city.”
With that, Alara Wystwyth stood again, and turned away from him, her dress flowing as she moved across the room.
“I can’t let you go out there with nothing from me. For me, people like you come by once in a lifetime. If you won’t step back from this barbaric war, I want you to at least let me do this for you.”
With a groan, and a lurch, he stood up. His knees felt weak, his head was pounding again, and he felt like he might be sick.
But if it was really that important to her…
“Ok. Fine. Again.”
Heliotrope was a slightly rarer sign, more situationally useful than most of the others, and difficult to use. When it was successful it was a powerful but incredibly draining defensive technique, and it had other applications beyond simple combat, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of thing a normal person could use regularly.
When Alara let loose her stone at Alan, his arms met in front of him in a cross, and his mind roared with the heat of the sun. They had been trying for hours, almost daily for a full month, with no success.
Until now.
For a brief instant, a beautiful half second, the space before Alan’s eyes was full of light.
When it faded, as quickly as it’d come, the thrown stone had struck the wall on the far side of the room.
And Alara was smiling.
She threw a rock at him, and he grunted as he slammed his hands together at the wrist to meet it.
“Fuck!” He yelped as the stone met the top of his head. Alara winced too - if a little less than he did. “This isn’t helping. I’m no wizard, I can’t do magic, especially not when I’ve got fuckin’ stones being chucked at me.” He snapped, as he sank to the floor and ran a hand through his hair to check the point of impact.
Yes. He was bleeding.
More than that, his body ached and burned with strain. His mind was wilding at him, turning over itself with incoherent thought and turbulent imagery; he saw the sun, he saw the walls of the castle, he saw Alara, he saw the wilds and the rivers and the trees and the woods, and violet-purple blossoms on the forest floor. He could taste wine.
No, he could taste blood.
He pressed his hands against his eyes, as if it could block out the things he was seeing.
Alan knew he was neither, not Witcher nor Mage. Magic was not meant for him, not in any form.
“Alan.” Came her voice, as her hand came to rest on his neck.
He paused.
He moved his hand to rest atop hers, grasping gently for the soft contact.
For ten minutes they sat in silence, waiting for the racing damage in his head to subside, or at least to quiet.
“I… I don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry.” He muttered softly, turning away from her.
She reached out with her free hand, pulled his gaze back to her with her fingertips against his cheek, and looked him in his weary bloodshot eyes.
“Most people have no stomach for magic, most of them not even for the Signs used by Witchers. It drains them, it takes up too much of their mind. You aren’t those people.”
He shook his head.
“If I weren’t, I’d have done it by now.” it came almost more as a sigh than as words.
It was her turn to pause.
“I can’t let you go out there with nothing.” She said at long last.
“I don’t have nothing, Alara. I have brothers. We have armour, swords and shields, axes and bows. We have teamwork, coordination, we have our perception, we have the element of surprise. It’s all we need - all we’ve ever needed. It’s not exactly safe work, I’ll grant you, but,” he chuffed, “neither is living in the city.”
With that, Alara Wystwyth stood again, and turned away from him, her dress flowing as she moved across the room.
“I can’t let you go out there with nothing from me. For me, people like you come by once in a lifetime. If you won’t step back from this barbaric war, I want you to at least let me do this for you.”
With a groan, and a lurch, he stood up. His knees felt weak, his head was pounding again, and he felt like he might be sick.
But if it was really that important to her…
“Ok. Fine. Again.”
Heliotrope was a slightly rarer sign, more situationally useful than most of the others, and difficult to use. When it was successful it was a powerful but incredibly draining defensive technique, and it had other applications beyond simple combat, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of thing a normal person could use regularly.
When Alara let loose her stone at Alan, his arms met in front of him in a cross, and his mind roared with the heat of the sun. They had been trying for hours, almost daily for a full month, with no success.
Until now.
For a brief instant, a beautiful half second, the space before Alan’s eyes was full of light.
When it faded, as quickly as it’d come, the thrown stone had struck the wall on the far side of the room.
And Alara was smiling.
The Blue Stripes departed for the South in the week after that. Four platoons made they way down to Sodden in 1262, splitting up and traveling to Cintra, Hochenbuz, with the remaining two staying in the area around Sodden hill. Alan was placed as a First Officer in the Fifth Platoon, whose posting was in Cintra. They arrived shortly before Nilfgaard did, but hadn’t expected a significant Imperial presence in Cintra - everyone who’d thought Nilfgaard would try to take the North had thought they would rush Sodden, so the bulk of the Blue Stripes had gone to lay preparations around it rather than divide themselves around the rest of the south.
Needless to say, things did not go very well.
The detachment sent to Sodden were forced to abandon their traps and hides in order to reinforce the vastly outdone 5th Platoon, once it became clear that Nilfgaard wasn’t coming their way for a while - but in the mean time, the 5th Platoon were getting stuck in to the Nilfgaardian army.
While a commando platoon of twenty men is not necessarily enough weight to turn the tables of a great battle, such as at Marnadal - and once the depletion of the Cintran forces was complete there was surely no way to save the country overall - there was still plenty to be done in the way of disruption an destruction. Siege equipment was sabotaged, supplies were burned, officers were found with their throats cut come morning. Alan was the eyes of the company, identifying ideal spots for ambushes against supply trains and planning for the inevitable Nilfgaardian retaliations. They were even present during the Massacre of Cintra itself, albeit not for very long and not to any great change in outcome.
As the massacre in Cintra drew to a close and the brutal occupation began, their role shifted once again, and their time was divided between finding opportunities to free the few prisoners of war Nilfgaard had taken, engaging Nilfgaardian patrol units to stop them finding refugee convoys, and desperately trying to identify their brothers from the reinforcement companies.
Reinforcements would not come.
The other platoons had been recalled to Sodden Hill after Cintra fell so quickly. Alan would later discover that two of them had carried on to rejoin King Foltest’s army directly, while the Fourth Platoon had stayed to leave traps for the advancing Nilfgaardians - and that they were bound to the same destiny awaiting Alan’s own team.
The Vrihedd Brigade was that destiny.
Elven cavalry experts, the Vrihedd brigade were a radical group of war criminals whose sole purpose was to bring suffering to the Nordlings, and they were good at their jobs; when Nilfgaardian Command tasked them with hunting down the freshly identified Blue Stripes 5 Platoon, they accepted the task with outright glee. It would be a game of cat and mouse for the ages, the results of which would play into the beginnings of the bitter enmity between Vernon Roche and the Scoia’tael in years to come. For three long months, the light cavalry of the elves and the specialist infantry of the Blue Stripes were engaged in a duel of wits; the Vrihedd would set up a target, something attractive and poorly defended, but something subtle enough to escape notice for what it really was; the Blue Stripes would either identify and ignore it, or hit it from an unpredictable angle and escape through rough terrain cavalry couldn’t easily follow them over. The Vrihedd Brigade would search the woodlands for wherever the Blue Stripes had made camp; the Blue Stripes would camp in caves or seek refuge in small towns instead.
But the game went both ways.
The Blue Stripes would keep making holes for refugees to get through, and the Vrihedd Brigade would run the civilians down from horseback. The Blue Stripes would assassinate one officer, and two more would step forward to take his place. The Blue Stripes would destroy one caravan of supplies sent to relieve an occupying outpost, and the elves would go hunting on horseback, using the spoils to make up for the losses.
Things were evenly enough balanced, for a little while - but anyone can be outsmarted.
By the time three months was up, the captain of the Vrihedd detachment that had been assigned to pursue the 5th Platoon had finished analysing their ambush tactics, and made a decision on how to engage them. He requisitioned the use of the 104th Black Infantry Division, had them hide inside the cargo crates on a fake supply train, and then followed with his cavalry dressed up as standard Nilfgaardian mounted guards about twice the normal distance behind.
The Blue Stripes launched their attack on a narrow road in a dense wood, striking the men attached to the caravan with a volley from the banks alongside the road, then advancing on foot; the woods were successful in preventing a cavalry charge, but the Vrihedd brigade advanced nonetheless and were able to catch the commandos in the middle of unloading the crates. When the Vrihedd captain sounded his horn, the Black Infantry burst out of the crates before the Blue Stripes had a chance to react, and the fighting began.
There was a roar and a rush of hot air as the barrel of lantern oil they’d nearly liberated went up in flames. Alan wasn’t sure who, or what, had set the damn thing on fire, but it didn’t matter. They were being advanced on by a pack of rabid elves in black armour from one direction, and the Black Infantry had just thrown themselves out of crates like some sort of horrific, demented jack in the box.
He took a step back and braced himself against his back leg as an elf swung a blade at him, then kicked off with a thrust of his own and caught the beast in the stomach with his dagger. Alan didn’t wait to see the results, he pulled the knife back and thrust again, this time for its throat. He felt the body seize, then start to weaken, and pushed it away from him as he turned just in time to meet the next attacker.
As the Black Infantry swordsman swung a combat axe at him, he ducked, and moved inside the arc of his swing like a wolf leaping at an injured beast.
The other man took an alarmed step back and raised the wooden handle of his axe to block the well-telegraphed slash from the sword in Alan’s offhand, and then promptly tripped and fell backwards when he realised Alan had stepped on his foot. Alan dipped down, almost onto one knee, and put the dagger through the eyeslits in his opponent’s helmet. When his movements faded from struggle to twitch, and thick red started to leak out of the metal frame surrounding his head into the dark, rich soil below them, Alan got up and looked around once again.
The men were engaged with the Black Infantry already, and the first few of the Vrihedd had already made their way into the battle; if they didn’t pull back and keep the enemy on one side at the very least, they’d all be cut down before they could do anything at all. A forest of leafless birch surrounded them, dense enough to make mounted combat unfeasible but loose enough to run through on foot, a field of white standing on muddy, bloody earth.
“Blue Stripes! With me!” He roared above the noise of the flames and steel, planting one boot in front of the other and breaking into a run along the road. Of the 20 they’d started with, 14 now remained, and their captain had been amongst those killed first in the initial wave of surprise attackers. Men began to break away from their fights and flee up the road, leaving bodies and weapons in their wake - for as numerous and as professional as the Black Infantry may be, they were attacking from a disadvantage, and they were no match man-for-man for the Blue Stripes Commandos.
The black and gold of the Nilfgaardian general infantry were just about depleted as the footbound elven cavaliers caught up, moving fast and light, about a hundred feet down the road. Killing men who were tumbling out of wooden boxes wearing unwieldy armour and carrying heavy weapons was one thing, dealing with the fanatics now chasing them was something else.
Spots of red spattered across Alan’s face as the man next to him turned to look behind them at the wrong moment, and caught an arrow in the throat. Alan knew better, and kept running. The burning wrecks of the wagons and carts behind them would keep pursuit from horseback at bay for a while, but if they couldn’t catch their prey on foot then the elves would circle back and get their horses nonethless - and then there would be little hope of escape, for the beastly Aen Seidhe were adept and uncanny trackers on top of their skill as soldiers.
He took a step back and braced himself against his back leg as an elf swung a blade at him, then kicked off with a thrust of his own and caught the beast in the stomach with his dagger. Alan didn’t wait to see the results, he pulled the knife back and thrust again, this time for its throat. He felt the body seize, then start to weaken, and pushed it away from him as he turned just in time to meet the next attacker.
As the Black Infantry swordsman swung a combat axe at him, he ducked, and moved inside the arc of his swing like a wolf leaping at an injured beast.
The other man took an alarmed step back and raised the wooden handle of his axe to block the well-telegraphed slash from the sword in Alan’s offhand, and then promptly tripped and fell backwards when he realised Alan had stepped on his foot. Alan dipped down, almost onto one knee, and put the dagger through the eyeslits in his opponent’s helmet. When his movements faded from struggle to twitch, and thick red started to leak out of the metal frame surrounding his head into the dark, rich soil below them, Alan got up and looked around once again.
The men were engaged with the Black Infantry already, and the first few of the Vrihedd had already made their way into the battle; if they didn’t pull back and keep the enemy on one side at the very least, they’d all be cut down before they could do anything at all. A forest of leafless birch surrounded them, dense enough to make mounted combat unfeasible but loose enough to run through on foot, a field of white standing on muddy, bloody earth.
“Blue Stripes! With me!” He roared above the noise of the flames and steel, planting one boot in front of the other and breaking into a run along the road. Of the 20 they’d started with, 14 now remained, and their captain had been amongst those killed first in the initial wave of surprise attackers. Men began to break away from their fights and flee up the road, leaving bodies and weapons in their wake - for as numerous and as professional as the Black Infantry may be, they were attacking from a disadvantage, and they were no match man-for-man for the Blue Stripes Commandos.
The black and gold of the Nilfgaardian general infantry were just about depleted as the footbound elven cavaliers caught up, moving fast and light, about a hundred feet down the road. Killing men who were tumbling out of wooden boxes wearing unwieldy armour and carrying heavy weapons was one thing, dealing with the fanatics now chasing them was something else.
Spots of red spattered across Alan’s face as the man next to him turned to look behind them at the wrong moment, and caught an arrow in the throat. Alan knew better, and kept running. The burning wrecks of the wagons and carts behind them would keep pursuit from horseback at bay for a while, but if they couldn’t catch their prey on foot then the elves would circle back and get their horses nonethless - and then there would be little hope of escape, for the beastly Aen Seidhe were adept and uncanny trackers on top of their skill as soldiers.
Over the course of the next ten minutes a series of skirmishes with the Vrihedd Brigade would half their remaining numbers, and separate most of the remaining survivors, but they would nonetheless escape.
In the days to come, some of the Blue Stripes were caught and killed, some of them were able to reunite and escape together, and some of them tried to make their way back to Temeria on their own. Alan spent almost a week hiding alone in the freezing forests of Cintra, dodging Nilfgaardian patrols and running from the elves, before he was eventually found - not by the Stripes, not by a patrol, but by a lone rider.
A young elf, face fixed with a maniacal grin, atop a horse. Alan wasn’t sure how she’d snuck up on him like that, but it didn’t really matter any more. He hadn’t eaten in days, he’d taken to melting snow in his mouth to quench his thirst, he was beginning to waver. Jan and Keillor were both dead, Georg may well have followed.
She was just the latest thing to go wrong for him, and if he really thought about it, she wasn’t even the worst..
Alan looked up at her with dismay - he’d been trying to make his way further north, and the forest here was sparser and clearer. Clear enough for a charge.
“Temerian dog.” The elf woman growled in elder speech, spitting at the ground and gripping harder at the spear hanging by her side as her horse cantered about itself, pacing anxiously.
Alan’s hand came to the hilt of his sword, his ears pricked.
“I speak Elder too.” He said in slow, faltering elder speech. He had learned a little from books, from King, long ago - and had it consolidated with a certain sorceress, not so long ago. If he could keep her talking-
“Good dog. Clever, aren’t you?” She threw her head back and laughed at him as he replied. “Smart, to speak like that. Smart enough to know you’re going to die, then?” Her eyes lit up with hatred and her horse took a step forward.
“Smart enough to fight back.” Alan growled halfheartedly back at her.
Her laugh faded, her face grew hard, her body tensed.
“Good.” She said in common, and charged.
She levelled her spear at him like a lance as she kicked the sides of her horse and built up speed, but Alan was fast too, even on a bad day, and threw himself to the side to dodge it. Her horse kept going, circling around through the trees, as Alan rolled onto his feet and stood up.
The elf came at him again, dipping the lance a little lower, leaning down a little further, frustrated that she hadn’t simply speared him the first time - or, indeed, that he hadn’t turned and run.
Alan hit the ground again, the spear just brushing his back as he planting himself against the snow, and the elf screamed at him in rage.
She circled back again, leaning lower and lower, bracing the spear under her arm in a crude mimickry of a real knight. Her eyes were burning like coals as she practically dangled off the side of the saddle, holding on only by one hand, and she made her final mistake.
This time, as the speartip reached him, Alan steadied himself and braced-
And then his arms met eachother in front of him, in a cross, and his mind roared with the strain of primitive magic and intense focus.
Heliotrope.
The elf registered a moment of confusion as her spear pushed up against the instantaneous golden shield of Heliotrope, and then panic as the force of the collision threw her from her horse, and shattered her spear.
Alan’s vision blurred as the effort of heliotrope staggered him - but he could see well enough to know that the elf was already trying to scrabble up from the snow and draw her knife. Her bravado and hatred was gone, replaced by fear and anxiety and panic. He saw through her, now, saw that she only wanted to live.
“Stay back!” She cried out, in common.
“So you can get your friends to come back and cut my head off?” Alan retorted as he staggered towards her, gaining on her as she slid back onto her arse in the mud and show.
“Stay back, I said!” She finally produced a knife and pointed it at him - but it was clear she was much better on horseback than on foot, and Alan’s head was already beginning to clear.
Alan’s face hardened further. Grim determination set into his heels. He knew what had to be done.
“What would you tell them I’d done to you? What lies would you spin?” He forced through clenched teeth. He’d thought he’d had enough of killing for one war, enough of loss and pain. He’d thought it was over.
Her jaw dropped, she shook her head, tears welled up in her eyes.
Alan averted his gaze for a moment, and he swallowed hard. It tasted like bile when he did.
“Doesn’t matter.” He spat.
He lashed out with his sword, sending her dagger spinning away into the snow. She tried to crawl backwards, her legs kicking in the snow, but he was already atop her with sword in hand. The struggle was wild, but brief, for he was stronger than her.
He hesitated only an instant when the second came - and her death came even quicker than that.
His location remained hidden, his path out of Cintra stayed clear.
He buried her in a shallow grave, seeing as he had the spare time to. Then he stole her horse and went home.
Fake names, cover stories, clever lies. The Nilfgaardian occupation had started to take hold in almost all the territory he trekked through, and he eventually had to set the horse free for fear that someone would recognise its tackle and gear, but his progress was at least steady. Alan had never seen himself as an especially talented liar, or a master of intrigue - and indeed none of his behaviour on the journey home was necessarily evidence to that effect - but it was at this point that he first used the name Karl.
He took great care and especial pains to avoid being seen as anything more than a traveler, and that included acting in a manner that an experienced soldier hiding out in enemy territory simply never would. Alan would be lying if he said that he didn’t enjoy his drink, but it wasn’t necessarily because he enjoyed being drunk that he did - Karl on the other hand would drink anything, and was perfectly happy to drink alone.
Nobody wants to deal with a grumpy drunk vagrant. Not until they start pissing on the floor.
It was rudimentary and crude, as far as cover stories go - that he was Karl, from Kaedwen, who used to farm sugarbeet but took a gamble on selling and breeding horses instead, and who lost his farm doing so - but because anyone who was still looking for him was looking for a vicious guerilla fighter and not a spy, it worked.
Alan made it back to Temeria about six months before the battle of Sodden Hill, and the war’s ending. He found out that his comrades had rejoined the army and gone on to fight, and that he had basically just missed them. Georg had actually survived, stunningly, although he had also rejoined the regular army.
Alan didn’t mind not being there. Not at all. He wasn’t happy about any of it, but he wasn’t sad for having gotten away from it. Alara had been at least partially right - although he’d always known she was. Special forces have bad survival rates.
He knew that when he signed up.
He was sitting alone in the pub the Blue Stripes had always gone to, with a tall cup of strong wine and a sinking heart, when his destiny threw him another twist.
It was more complicated than just that, of course. A generic fake name and a story about horse related bankruptcy are not the kinds of things that guarantee competence as a spy - but the ability to come up with those things while running from Nilfgaard, half starved, and freezing to death… that’s the sign of at least an apt mind. There were other things too, like his history of playing mind games with his superiors before joining the Blue Stripes, and his flexibility as a bandit before that.
The work was interesting, it was a valuable and versatile skill set, and it was another way to serve his country; but really, Alan couldn’t stand the idea of just walking away from the war completely. Not while his brothers were still out there. Not while he had a chance to help.
He was waiting for Thaler, stone sober, when the bald, shrewd man got back.
Training took 6 months, and it came more naturally to him than sword fighting ever did. The arts of blending in, of slipping below notice, of muffling your footsteps and disguising your face; it was something he had already known parts of, like a painting he had started working on years ago, and was just applying colour to now. He struggled for a while with making contacts and recruiting agents of his own - but he was smart, and adaptable.
He was deployed shortly after the battle of Sodden Hill, down into what was left of the Nilfgaardian occupation in the south. His duties were initially simple, reporting on Nilfgaard’s industrialisation efforts and agricultural capacity while posing as an innkeeper - until about seven months into the deployment itself, when he received orders to manoeuvre himself into a position where he could interact with the nobility.
Using some of the funds he’d been able to raise as an innkeeper, he sponsored a group of stonemasons who had been contracted by the local Lord to furnish his castle - itself a poor affair that he had simply been bequeathed after the war - with an extension. He asked to join in the effort, as he’d had some experience as an engineer’s apprentice some time ago, and given his generous donations the masons were happy to have him.
For three months he laboured with them, taking notes on the layout of the keep’s interior, observing the behaviour of the Lord himself. Lord Falhoorn was an arrogant and disinvolved man, who looked down on the lower classes and had an unjustified fear of betrayal. There was no way Alan, posing as Karl, would get in with him.
His son, however…
Friedrich Falhoorn, son of Lord Josef Falhoorn, was an adventurous, roguish, foolhardy young man. He was more than slightly charming, enjoyed taking risks, and had a particular fondness for cheaper spirits than his station should really have been able to afford.
So, one day, Alan brought a flask of whisky with him to work. He was careful to conceal it from the Lord, and careful not to conceal it from the Lord’s son. Quickly enough, Friedrich joined in with the drinking, and shortly thereafter was drunk enough to be suggestible.
Alan invited him to come back to the inn he ran in the evening, and from that point onwards the noble incognito was a semi regular customer. He would bring some of his friends, they would get drunk, and they would talk about all sorts of nonsense most of the time - but the more comfortable they got, the more sensitive the topics they spoke of became. Matters of finance, land, politics, and loyalty.
And war.
Eventually they would invite their good friend Karl to their fathers’ parties. He had proven himself friendly, useful, and fun, and so he was welcome to come and drink with them in their own homes - so long as he brought the wine with him, and dressed well enough to not embarrass them.
Over the next few months, Alan was able to gain access to some of the most sensitive parts of this noble family’s lives, as well as make friends with many of their peers. He was usually introduced as a merchant or an entrepreneur rather than a simple tavern keeper, placing him in a safe spot where he was considered acceptable social company for his supposed wealth, but not competition or a threat due to his status as a commoner. He would find the vulnerable in this class, the people who felt isolated or threatened, the people who weren’t suited to their lifestyle, and he would become their relief. Sons who didn’t want the responsibility of their position, daughters who didn’t want to be married off like cattle sold, grandmothers scared of their growing irrelevance, and servants - oh, especially servants - who knew they could be replaced.
From this position he cultivated a small network of agents, many of whom never truly knew who they were working for, whose ultimate purpose was to feed information back to Temeria. He would still get involved in the field work, he kept his skills sharp, and he learned the benefits of theft and forgery nonetheless - but his principal purpose was to be the heart of the web he had spun.
Even when the call finally came for him to go home, that web was still solidly in place.
And when the call *did* come, it was for a most unusual assignment indeed, with one of Foltest’s bastards.
But then he had certainly been missing home.
She was just the latest thing to go wrong for him, and if he really thought about it, she wasn’t even the worst..
Alan looked up at her with dismay - he’d been trying to make his way further north, and the forest here was sparser and clearer. Clear enough for a charge.
“Temerian dog.” The elf woman growled in elder speech, spitting at the ground and gripping harder at the spear hanging by her side as her horse cantered about itself, pacing anxiously.
Alan’s hand came to the hilt of his sword, his ears pricked.
“I speak Elder too.” He said in slow, faltering elder speech. He had learned a little from books, from King, long ago - and had it consolidated with a certain sorceress, not so long ago. If he could keep her talking-
“Good dog. Clever, aren’t you?” She threw her head back and laughed at him as he replied. “Smart, to speak like that. Smart enough to know you’re going to die, then?” Her eyes lit up with hatred and her horse took a step forward.
“Smart enough to fight back.” Alan growled halfheartedly back at her.
Her laugh faded, her face grew hard, her body tensed.
“Good.” She said in common, and charged.
She levelled her spear at him like a lance as she kicked the sides of her horse and built up speed, but Alan was fast too, even on a bad day, and threw himself to the side to dodge it. Her horse kept going, circling around through the trees, as Alan rolled onto his feet and stood up.
The elf came at him again, dipping the lance a little lower, leaning down a little further, frustrated that she hadn’t simply speared him the first time - or, indeed, that he hadn’t turned and run.
Alan hit the ground again, the spear just brushing his back as he planting himself against the snow, and the elf screamed at him in rage.
She circled back again, leaning lower and lower, bracing the spear under her arm in a crude mimickry of a real knight. Her eyes were burning like coals as she practically dangled off the side of the saddle, holding on only by one hand, and she made her final mistake.
This time, as the speartip reached him, Alan steadied himself and braced-
And then his arms met eachother in front of him, in a cross, and his mind roared with the strain of primitive magic and intense focus.
Heliotrope.
The elf registered a moment of confusion as her spear pushed up against the instantaneous golden shield of Heliotrope, and then panic as the force of the collision threw her from her horse, and shattered her spear.
Alan’s vision blurred as the effort of heliotrope staggered him - but he could see well enough to know that the elf was already trying to scrabble up from the snow and draw her knife. Her bravado and hatred was gone, replaced by fear and anxiety and panic. He saw through her, now, saw that she only wanted to live.
“Stay back!” She cried out, in common.
“So you can get your friends to come back and cut my head off?” Alan retorted as he staggered towards her, gaining on her as she slid back onto her arse in the mud and show.
“Stay back, I said!” She finally produced a knife and pointed it at him - but it was clear she was much better on horseback than on foot, and Alan’s head was already beginning to clear.
Alan’s face hardened further. Grim determination set into his heels. He knew what had to be done.
“What would you tell them I’d done to you? What lies would you spin?” He forced through clenched teeth. He’d thought he’d had enough of killing for one war, enough of loss and pain. He’d thought it was over.
Her jaw dropped, she shook her head, tears welled up in her eyes.
Alan averted his gaze for a moment, and he swallowed hard. It tasted like bile when he did.
“Doesn’t matter.” He spat.
He lashed out with his sword, sending her dagger spinning away into the snow. She tried to crawl backwards, her legs kicking in the snow, but he was already atop her with sword in hand. The struggle was wild, but brief, for he was stronger than her.
He hesitated only an instant when the second came - and her death came even quicker than that.
His location remained hidden, his path out of Cintra stayed clear.
He buried her in a shallow grave, seeing as he had the spare time to. Then he stole her horse and went home.
Fake names, cover stories, clever lies. The Nilfgaardian occupation had started to take hold in almost all the territory he trekked through, and he eventually had to set the horse free for fear that someone would recognise its tackle and gear, but his progress was at least steady. Alan had never seen himself as an especially talented liar, or a master of intrigue - and indeed none of his behaviour on the journey home was necessarily evidence to that effect - but it was at this point that he first used the name Karl.
He took great care and especial pains to avoid being seen as anything more than a traveler, and that included acting in a manner that an experienced soldier hiding out in enemy territory simply never would. Alan would be lying if he said that he didn’t enjoy his drink, but it wasn’t necessarily because he enjoyed being drunk that he did - Karl on the other hand would drink anything, and was perfectly happy to drink alone.
Nobody wants to deal with a grumpy drunk vagrant. Not until they start pissing on the floor.
It was rudimentary and crude, as far as cover stories go - that he was Karl, from Kaedwen, who used to farm sugarbeet but took a gamble on selling and breeding horses instead, and who lost his farm doing so - but because anyone who was still looking for him was looking for a vicious guerilla fighter and not a spy, it worked.
Alan made it back to Temeria about six months before the battle of Sodden Hill, and the war’s ending. He found out that his comrades had rejoined the army and gone on to fight, and that he had basically just missed them. Georg had actually survived, stunningly, although he had also rejoined the regular army.
Alan didn’t mind not being there. Not at all. He wasn’t happy about any of it, but he wasn’t sad for having gotten away from it. Alara had been at least partially right - although he’d always known she was. Special forces have bad survival rates.
He knew that when he signed up.
He was sitting alone in the pub the Blue Stripes had always gone to, with a tall cup of strong wine and a sinking heart, when his destiny threw him another twist.
“If you don’t stop for breath, you’ll drown.”
Alan didn’t bother looking up. He didn’t know who it was and he didn’t want to. He stuck his nose back into the cup and finished the wine instead, before standing up to go and get another.
As he pushed his way towards the bar, the voice followed him.
“Alan. I know who you are.”
“Course you do. Fucking wonder that anyone doesn’t.”
A hand on his shoulder.
Alan turned around and put himself right in the other man’s personal space. He was thin, weaselly, with a knowing smirk and a shiny bald head.
“Don’t touch me.”
The other man retracted his hand.
“I’ve read your reports. I know what happened in Cintra. I know what you were doing down there.”
Alan’s face contorted unhandsomely into a vicious snarl as he stabbed his finger drunkenly into the other man’s chest.
“You don’t know shit.”
“I do! I’ve done similar work myself.”
“How the fuck did you-“
“- get the reports? Information is my job. It was my department that gave your group the intelligence to go down there with in the first place.”
Alan stopped, the snarl on his lips dropping away to confusion.
Then to a grimace.
“So it was your fault?”
“That you were probably responsible for setting back Nilfgaard’s schedule by a whole day and a half between the lot of you? That you killed or were responsible for killing well over a thousand of their men, per platoon? Or that you kept the notorious Vrihedd Brigade out of the fighting for three months?”
“That we all fucking died.”
The other man stopped, and paused. His smirk faded.
“Yes. That’s our fault too.”
Alan stopped too.
He turned and put his cup down at the bar, and the innkeeper refilled it.
“Why are you here.”
Not a question. A statement, carrying weight, like an ultimatum. Speak up or fuck off.
“My name is Thaler. I represent Temerian Intelligence. I’ve been advised that you would be an asset to my organisation, as it were. Maybe you could have a hand in helping us keep your friends out of trouble next time. Maybe get the chance to serve Temeria in a different sort of way.”
Alan raised his refilled cup to his lips. Before he drank, he spoke, keeping eye contact with Thaler.
“Go on.”
Thaler nodded, and the smirk came back.
“The Blue Stripes Commando 5th Platoon have already been registered as recombined with the remnants of the 4th and 3rd Platoons, after all three suffered significant losses during the war. You in particular are not listed amongst the survivors in any platoon.” Thaler sidled up to the bar himself, and was promptly handed another cup of wine by the oddly compliant barman. “I’ve got the blessing of Vernon Roche in this. You’re down as killed in action.”
Alan slowly turned back to his drink, and then nodded.
“I’ll have to think about it.” He slurred a little.
Thaler nodded in return.
“Course you do. I’ll come back in a few days.”
Thaler drained his cup, and turned to leave.
“Wait. Thaler.”
“Hm?”
Alan swallowed.
“Why me?”
Thaler shrugged.
“You tell me, Karl.”
Alan didn’t bother looking up. He didn’t know who it was and he didn’t want to. He stuck his nose back into the cup and finished the wine instead, before standing up to go and get another.
As he pushed his way towards the bar, the voice followed him.
“Alan. I know who you are.”
“Course you do. Fucking wonder that anyone doesn’t.”
A hand on his shoulder.
Alan turned around and put himself right in the other man’s personal space. He was thin, weaselly, with a knowing smirk and a shiny bald head.
“Don’t touch me.”
The other man retracted his hand.
“I’ve read your reports. I know what happened in Cintra. I know what you were doing down there.”
Alan’s face contorted unhandsomely into a vicious snarl as he stabbed his finger drunkenly into the other man’s chest.
“You don’t know shit.”
“I do! I’ve done similar work myself.”
“How the fuck did you-“
“- get the reports? Information is my job. It was my department that gave your group the intelligence to go down there with in the first place.”
Alan stopped, the snarl on his lips dropping away to confusion.
Then to a grimace.
“So it was your fault?”
“That you were probably responsible for setting back Nilfgaard’s schedule by a whole day and a half between the lot of you? That you killed or were responsible for killing well over a thousand of their men, per platoon? Or that you kept the notorious Vrihedd Brigade out of the fighting for three months?”
“That we all fucking died.”
The other man stopped, and paused. His smirk faded.
“Yes. That’s our fault too.”
Alan stopped too.
He turned and put his cup down at the bar, and the innkeeper refilled it.
“Why are you here.”
Not a question. A statement, carrying weight, like an ultimatum. Speak up or fuck off.
“My name is Thaler. I represent Temerian Intelligence. I’ve been advised that you would be an asset to my organisation, as it were. Maybe you could have a hand in helping us keep your friends out of trouble next time. Maybe get the chance to serve Temeria in a different sort of way.”
Alan raised his refilled cup to his lips. Before he drank, he spoke, keeping eye contact with Thaler.
“Go on.”
Thaler nodded, and the smirk came back.
“The Blue Stripes Commando 5th Platoon have already been registered as recombined with the remnants of the 4th and 3rd Platoons, after all three suffered significant losses during the war. You in particular are not listed amongst the survivors in any platoon.” Thaler sidled up to the bar himself, and was promptly handed another cup of wine by the oddly compliant barman. “I’ve got the blessing of Vernon Roche in this. You’re down as killed in action.”
Alan slowly turned back to his drink, and then nodded.
“I’ll have to think about it.” He slurred a little.
Thaler nodded in return.
“Course you do. I’ll come back in a few days.”
Thaler drained his cup, and turned to leave.
“Wait. Thaler.”
“Hm?”
Alan swallowed.
“Why me?”
Thaler shrugged.
“You tell me, Karl.”
It was more complicated than just that, of course. A generic fake name and a story about horse related bankruptcy are not the kinds of things that guarantee competence as a spy - but the ability to come up with those things while running from Nilfgaard, half starved, and freezing to death… that’s the sign of at least an apt mind. There were other things too, like his history of playing mind games with his superiors before joining the Blue Stripes, and his flexibility as a bandit before that.
The work was interesting, it was a valuable and versatile skill set, and it was another way to serve his country; but really, Alan couldn’t stand the idea of just walking away from the war completely. Not while his brothers were still out there. Not while he had a chance to help.
He was waiting for Thaler, stone sober, when the bald, shrewd man got back.
Training took 6 months, and it came more naturally to him than sword fighting ever did. The arts of blending in, of slipping below notice, of muffling your footsteps and disguising your face; it was something he had already known parts of, like a painting he had started working on years ago, and was just applying colour to now. He struggled for a while with making contacts and recruiting agents of his own - but he was smart, and adaptable.
He was deployed shortly after the battle of Sodden Hill, down into what was left of the Nilfgaardian occupation in the south. His duties were initially simple, reporting on Nilfgaard’s industrialisation efforts and agricultural capacity while posing as an innkeeper - until about seven months into the deployment itself, when he received orders to manoeuvre himself into a position where he could interact with the nobility.
Using some of the funds he’d been able to raise as an innkeeper, he sponsored a group of stonemasons who had been contracted by the local Lord to furnish his castle - itself a poor affair that he had simply been bequeathed after the war - with an extension. He asked to join in the effort, as he’d had some experience as an engineer’s apprentice some time ago, and given his generous donations the masons were happy to have him.
For three months he laboured with them, taking notes on the layout of the keep’s interior, observing the behaviour of the Lord himself. Lord Falhoorn was an arrogant and disinvolved man, who looked down on the lower classes and had an unjustified fear of betrayal. There was no way Alan, posing as Karl, would get in with him.
His son, however…
Friedrich Falhoorn, son of Lord Josef Falhoorn, was an adventurous, roguish, foolhardy young man. He was more than slightly charming, enjoyed taking risks, and had a particular fondness for cheaper spirits than his station should really have been able to afford.
So, one day, Alan brought a flask of whisky with him to work. He was careful to conceal it from the Lord, and careful not to conceal it from the Lord’s son. Quickly enough, Friedrich joined in with the drinking, and shortly thereafter was drunk enough to be suggestible.
Alan invited him to come back to the inn he ran in the evening, and from that point onwards the noble incognito was a semi regular customer. He would bring some of his friends, they would get drunk, and they would talk about all sorts of nonsense most of the time - but the more comfortable they got, the more sensitive the topics they spoke of became. Matters of finance, land, politics, and loyalty.
And war.
Eventually they would invite their good friend Karl to their fathers’ parties. He had proven himself friendly, useful, and fun, and so he was welcome to come and drink with them in their own homes - so long as he brought the wine with him, and dressed well enough to not embarrass them.
Over the next few months, Alan was able to gain access to some of the most sensitive parts of this noble family’s lives, as well as make friends with many of their peers. He was usually introduced as a merchant or an entrepreneur rather than a simple tavern keeper, placing him in a safe spot where he was considered acceptable social company for his supposed wealth, but not competition or a threat due to his status as a commoner. He would find the vulnerable in this class, the people who felt isolated or threatened, the people who weren’t suited to their lifestyle, and he would become their relief. Sons who didn’t want the responsibility of their position, daughters who didn’t want to be married off like cattle sold, grandmothers scared of their growing irrelevance, and servants - oh, especially servants - who knew they could be replaced.
From this position he cultivated a small network of agents, many of whom never truly knew who they were working for, whose ultimate purpose was to feed information back to Temeria. He would still get involved in the field work, he kept his skills sharp, and he learned the benefits of theft and forgery nonetheless - but his principal purpose was to be the heart of the web he had spun.
Even when the call finally came for him to go home, that web was still solidly in place.
And when the call *did* come, it was for a most unusual assignment indeed, with one of Foltest’s bastards.
But then he had certainly been missing home.
Skills:
- Close Combat; The Blue Stripes Commandos were and are the masters of asymmetrical warfare, striking unexpectedly and rapidly, fighting viciously and unconventionally - and as a son of their ranks, Alan remains adept in the art of unceremonious murder. His preferred weapon is a longsword, but he is flexible.
- Stealth and Discretion; Always the better part of valour, this skillset is the result of his training as a soldier and his life as a spy. When appropriately attired and equipped he can pass unseen by most, and unrecognised by almost all. He moves quietly almost by default.
- Engineering, Mechanics, and Mathematics; Mostly a holdover from his days as an apprentice during the flexibility portion of his Blue Stripes training, but something he has used recently enough nonetheless, Alan has an education in the design and construction of both civilian and military structures. He can deduce some of the basics about their designs from an external view, recognise the more distinctive types of architecture and techniques used to build them, and most importantly he can analyse and exploit weaknesses therein. He makes for a commendable saboteur.
- Lingustics and Languages; The proud result of his informal and unstructured, but rigorous, thorough, and deeply interested education when he was younger - this is a skill that he has always been encouraged to develop. He is naturally fluent in the Common tongue, functionally fluent in the Nilfgaardian language, and at least conversational in the Elder Speech and in Ofiri - even if the topics of those conversations might be a bit odd. Language comes very naturally to Alan, and he enjoys learning new vocabulary immensely - he has begun his education on Dwarvish recently, even though it is oft considered a dead language and thus of very limited use.
- Intelligence; Possibly his greatest asset, Alan Enfys is a tremendously bright man. His mind takes to new things like fire to dry kindling - only quicker, and brighter - and he retains information excellently even with limited exposure. He is a superb student who learns quickly and attains well when doing so, being highly introspective and making changes to his behaviour based on the developments around him. This is also where most of his skill with people comes from; although he is a perfectly personable individual, and a well articulated speaker, he relies more on analysis of behaviour and psychology to affect people than on his own charisma - though he remains an adept manipulator and superb liar.
- Additional Skills;
- Marksmanship; Like all Blue Stripes, he was trained with the bow and the sling as well as with the sword and the axe - but his skill is nothing supernatural, being about average for his background.
- Survival; Another generic sort of skill, the usual for someone from his background, but he is a skilled survivalist and can sustain himself reasonably in most non-extreme environments.
- Heliotrope; His ace in the hole, a solitary magical sign, taught to him by the lover he still misses and hasn't seen for years.
- Riding; The final part of the Blue Stripes training, and a valuable component of the mobility that underlies their success with hit and run tactics. He's good enough to fight competently from horseback, though he's still working on using a bow like that.
Specialty: Alan Enfys fills a multiplicate role, serving well in a fight, functioning serviceably in harsh conditions, and enjoying a surprisingly deep education - though he truly shines in information gathering. If a thing exists to be learned in a city, he can learn it.
Equipment:
- Flint and steel
- Tinderbox
- Coin Purse - 50 Nilfgaardian Florens
- Coin Purse - 50 Temerian Orens
- A good quality traveler's backpack
- A bedroll and a small tent
- A bottle of strong alcohol, lacking any particular taste.
- A waterskin, full
- A deck of Gwent Cards
- A sewing kit
- About 30m of thin rope
Weapons:
- A well made, reliable, three-foot steel arming sword.
- A sturdy and utilitarian survival knife, with a serrated reverse side.
- Two lapel daggers, one hidden beneath the back of his belt, one hidden in the base of his cloak's hood.
- An oak longbow, with a quiver of 30 barbed arrows.
Armor: Alan wears a brigandine over a gambeson, which itself has bands of iron sewn across the backs and ulnar surfaces of the arms for additional protection. He wears whatever helmet he can get his hands on that offers the best protection, knowing the importance of the head in remaining alive, but regularly carries a lighter sallet helm with a coif of chain to protect his neck and shoulders. His lower legs are protected reinforced boots with partial iron sabatons. He's big enough that he can remain mobile with this set up, though obviously not necessarily as agile as someone wearing much lighter armour.
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