“Everyone gets their’s... sooner or later.”Janus Kresimir Ex Pallido
Aka Big Jan
Nomme de Guerre: Havel
Race:Colovian Imperial
Sex: Male
Age:42
Family Origins: Barony of Sutch/Stonehaven, Eastern Hammerfell, Kingdom of Rihad
Birth Sign: The Steed
Preferred Attributes: Major - Willpower
Minor - Intelligence
Appearance:
When one looks at Jan, there’s no doubt why he was called Big Jan, or Havel, which means Ox in Old Waldic-Colovian. His muscles are well-developed despite his age and though he moves slow and keeps an aloof look to him, one finds that he can explode to violence at the snap of a finger as a well-trained war hound. Even so, he only shows it in moments where he’s cornered and forced to take matters into his hands.
He was the main laborer and weapons instructor of Captain Killian’s Company, colloquially called Killian’s Cutthroats for their deeds during the Three Banners War, entangling the Daggerfall Covenant’s Hammerfell forces in unconventional warfare behind their lines. Because of his station, he made his days building fences and patching up things, as well as a little maintenance for tools and the like when not teaching pig farmers how to kill. This has kept him healthy and strong, sinewy cords of old muscle, broad shoulders and thick forearms. His blonde hair has started graying in strands from the stresses of his life and the abuse of alcohol. Somehow, though, he’s managed to keep a more youthful visage. Janus blames it on his stress-free lifestyle.
He stays to himself mostly, never doing too much work lest it be expected of him, and never too little lest he be chided. For his intimidating breadth, he keeps a lazy smile on his face for whoever chances a talk with him on a fine day. Although he cuts the image of a brute, or a do-nothing, those who have experienced the things Janus has can see it in his eyes. A sharpness there, a thing as sharp as blades, and as watchful as a hawk. A warning, or a threat. But Janus smiles, and shares a joke or two, laughing from the belly, content with a spot under a tree and some wine.
If anyone has been to Eastern Hammerfell before and seen some of the Colovians that call it home, they’ll instantly recognize the tattoos he keeps on him and he takes great pains to keep them hidden. A menagerie of different pictures and sayings, all dedicated to the patriotism the Colovians of Sutch Barony and Stonehaven keep for the Empire. Whether a permanent message of patriotism and solidarity with the downtrodden Imperials of Rihad’s far-flung Colovian minority or a brash taunt to his old enemies, the Crowns, he wears them with fondness as a former Stonehaven Irregular.
He hides these tattoos under loose-fitting garments, the most infamous ones on his palms, a drop of blood on each fingertip and a larger one on his palms. A fingertip for one kill each, a drop on his palm when the bodies he’s left outnumber ten. On the back of his right hand is a Ladderman’s tattoo, first up the ladder during a siege and five stars encircling the ladder to signify he’s survived it five times. A long-sleeved linen shirt of a neutral color is usually the order of the day, and from the rest of his ensemble, one could think he was trying to look as unremarkable as he could. Even his six-foot-six frame is shrunken down to a slightly shorter six-four by his slouch.
Equipment:
Armor and Weapons: When the time comes to defend himself, Janus only has his dirty but meticulously maintained arming coat and lamellar to rely on, always keeping back from the fight until it gets dire enough. He takes his moment and lends overwatch, a scout and skirmisher armed to the teeth with a menagerie of short blades. His legs are protected only from the elements by Redguard Hakama pants with leg wraps from below his knees into simple leather shoes.
When he must leave a man leaking, he takes to his knives and hatchet. A collection of blades long and short, six in total, growing from a whittling blade with a cutting edge no bigger than his forefinger to a heavy chopping knife with a blade length of fifteen inches. His hatchet has a gull wing style head of steel, simple, but deadly. A good match for Janus.
Kept sheathed and hidden away in his belongings, and probably forgotten, is his old curved sword. A Hammerfell style weapon, adopted from and evolving alongside the Ra Gada blades the Colovians first crossed steel with, and made more heavy and straight by the Colovians that settled in Eastern Hammerfell, resulting in a hand-and-half length hilt with a gently curved single-edge blade. He is, or at least used to be, a terrifying sight with it, the curved blade always on the move as he cut through foes on foot or slicing through them on horseback.
Clothing:
When not in combat, and he tries to stay away from needless violence if he can help it, he walks camp with a long sleeve shirt to cover his heavily tattooed body, thick leather gloves that have seen their share of work on his hands to cover the ones his shirt does not. He always has at least one of his smaller knives on him should the need arise that he needs to cut a rope or somesuch task that needs a sharp blade. The knife is usually tucked and hidden underneath his red sash, now playing belt, one of the few leftovers from his old life. The longcoat he only dons when it gets cold enough.
Misc. Possessions:
His horse, Vodevic, a heavy soldier’s draft that’s as fast he is strong and loyal as he is old.
Family and Associates:Viktor, Father, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate.
Hilde, Mother, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate.
Niklaus, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate.
Boian, Childhood Best Friend and Brother-in-Arms, killed at a siege during the latter part of the Stonehaven Rebellions. Or so Janus says...
Favoured Skills:
Highly Proficient: One-Handed; Janus worked tirelessly to master the art of fighting with the sword both on horseback and on foot. Should the situation arise that he has it in hand, he is more than capable of showing his opponent(s) the mistake of standing against him. Likewise, he has no fear of a sharp blade and has quick hands with his knives, and is able to fight with them just as well. The preferred mounted warfare style did not favor shields, and so he has learned to rely on speed, evasion, and skill.
Moderately Proficient: Hand-to-Hand; Someone as big as Janus hardly needs finesse to bludgeon someone with his fists, but years of bare knuckle fighting in bars and the ring to earn money or respect has taught him some dirty tricks through hard-earned trial and error. Grappling is enhanced by his size and strength, learned from necessity from the lighter armored irregular forces against the heavily armored Redguard foe.
Marksman; You can trust him to make a long shot with a short bow, hold under pressure and drop men like flies in the heat of battle with them shooting back. He’s a good enough shot.
Sneak; Whether cold camping in the mountains or laying low in towns, Janus knows how to wage a guerrilla war. The tricks of rangers in the mountains and the forests were taught to him at a young age and he knows how to stay unseen in crowds just as well.
Restoration; As all the Priesthood of Stendarr, Janus used to freely offer healing services to the people of Bell’s Gate. When he became an Irregular, his talents were of much use and he never fell out of practice.
Somewhat Proficient: Destruction; On the same note, small but useful tricks were taught to him by battlemages he’d meet on campaign.
Spell List
(Note: Mages only, up to 7 spells)
Flames
Firebolt
Frostbite
Ice Spike
Healing
Fast Healing
Heal Other
History: For a veteran of a lost and hopeless war, one could say Janus has taken it relatively well. Born among the rabble in the Dock District of the Imperial City, where he fell in with street urchins stealing for meals and fun, he and his Legionnaire father were at constant odds. His father, a low-ranking Legion man, couldn’t keep his son in line and fulfill his duties to the Legion at the same time. They lived almost entirely on his father’s wages, as his mother couldn’t find work in the city. Too little jobs, and too many asking for one. He was six when the Simulacrum pulled his father away from home. Before the armies could lay siege to White-Gold, Janus, Niklaus, and their mother fled the city with a stream of other refugees.
His family moved to the mountain pines in the high country of Eastern Hammerfell where a diaspora of Colovians lived in the High Country of Rihad Kingdom, spending their days in the mines for pay. There he made his days tending the sheep and goats on the family farm when he was old enough. As young men do before they have an idea of the realities of war, he fantasized about it. He’d daydream at his father’s swords on the mantle, wondering what it would be like to take up a weapon and go off to fight.
The world he lived in had been embroiled in war from the time he’d been a toddler. It had never touched him, but when he’d visit town, he could sometimes see the pillars of black smoke far off on the horizon. He heard the songs in the taverns, about brave men dying in the fields and just how manly an occupation was the soldier’s. Niklaus, his younger brother, wanted to be just like father. No one could blame him for wanting that life. Adventure, travel, a righteous cause. His father and many younger men just like Janus and Niklaus had taken up a weapon for the Stonehaven Irregulars, a ragtag people’s army of farmers, tradesmen, miners, and bandits that stood against the Crowns ever since the first skirmishes over the lands of Stonehaven and Sutch.
He didn’t understand the history behind the fight, just that it was happening and had taken his father’s love away from him. At the young age of ten, he and his best friend Boian had been clacking sticks together like swords when one of the Redguard children in Bell’s Gate had begun pestering them. The Redguards had no love for the Imperials. The long memory of the Redguard remembered the days when Yokudans and Colovians would shed each other’s blood, and the hatred had been renewed after the Empire collapsed under the weight of Reachman rule.
When the young Redguard Hazmid and his friends pinned Boian to a tree, Janus bit the ear off one and took a rock to Hazmid’s head. Hazmid fell into a coma and never woke. Janus was taken under the wing of Father Valdir of Stendarr’s church there in the Colovian town of Bell’s Gate. It was an arrangement his father had with Father Valdir to keep Janus’s nose clean. Valdir had told him it was the only way to repent for his sins and find forgiveness in Stendarr’s light, and so Janus begrudgingly gave as little effort to the priesthood as he could.
Janus was called a killer, hissed at. Fighting and war had lost its gleam then. It was with the priesthood that he learned to heal the sick and preach to the congregation. As he grew a few years older, his eyes roamed for more things than the clergy. As boys do at that age, they’d chase girls and get in trouble for drinking. He and his best friend Boian would do both with each other, though Boian was always the more handsome of the two. With better looks came bigger ways to get into trouble, and Janus followed after without a thought spared to regret.
As the years went on, the pillars of black smoke grew closer. You could smell the burning farms on a breeze some days. Boian had left town at the age of seventeen to join the Irregulars, leaving Janus to preach alone. At times, the wounded would come to town and ask for his and Father Valdir’s healing and prayers. They would give them freely, but Janus always dreaded the day he would see Boian or his father coming back home with the wounded. Or the dead.
When the day came that his father rode home with his Company, mother wept and scolded him for his lost arm. His father had earned a promotion for his heroism, but a position at the rear at Bell’s Gate for his debilitating wound. And for his trouble? A great many bottles and anger that spilled over too often. His father grew more distant, and the times he came close would be thunderous with yelling. Janus and Niklaus would spend more time away in town with Father Valdir, seeking shelter from their father’s tyranny. Soon enough, Janus found a girl. Although he had never wanted to be a farmer, he figured he could endure it with Nika. They moved to a farm a few miles down the road from Bell’s Gate.
When the wars grew more ravenous, they crept close and closer still to Bell’s Gate. Janus and Nika were awaiting their child and young Janus soon was cradling a bundle of screaming beauty. With the birth of his child came the renewal of his faith in the Nine. But to see innocence made flesh in that baby squirming in his hands made him feel like a hypocrite for the wrongs he’d done long ago. If the pain reached his face, it did not bother his wife much. Life went on, Janus sowing and reaping the seeds of his labor. Nika raising their child all the while. The seasons came and went, and tiny Ilda had learned to crawl and then to walk.
As much as he should’ve been happy, should’ve been content, he’d always felt different from the rest. His life not one he’d ever aspired to, but perhaps resigned himself to. It was the life a good man wanted, wasn’t it? One evening, the smell of burning timber seemed too close as he tended the fields a ways away from his farm. That day, the pillars of black smoke were too close. Timber burning filled his nostrils and the screams of his wife cut through the otherwise still air. When he made it to the farmhouse to find it wreathed in flame, he knew his fears were as real as the house the inferno ate. No tears came, no painful sobs wracked his body. Only a subtle realization. He grabbed his knife and hatchet and left his farm. His home, his family, his town, all of it gone. Eaten by flames.
He made it to his childhood home to find his parents and his brother had met the same fate. His father had made a last stand before he was felled, six corpses for his one. And that old saber still clutched in a stiff fist. He took it, rummaged through his ransacked childhood home and left that place in a longcoat and sash, saber on his hip. He looked every bit the thing he had tried to avoid all his life. A Stonehaven Irregular, a soldier, a killer.
He met the Irregulars along the road out from Bell’s Gate, their response too late to help anyone. Boian was with them, and that night, Janus wept into his best friend’s arms that he had not been able to save his family. The Stonehaven Irregulars of Bell’s Gate marched on, Janus the most ready to repay a debt of blood. Years passed, men died, and Janus had not been among them. They campaigned for years, but only choosing to fight small skirmishes and strategic night raids. There was no lack of killing for Janus, but every one corpse walked away from was the same lesson until it became less about revenge and more just a routine. No amount of death would make his life whole again.
It would be late into his career as an Irregular, working his way up from Private to Lieutenant when Baron Boleslaw Szizjek of Sutch approached the Stonehaven Irregulars, a proud Colovian of old blood himself was the Baron. Janus heard about the meetings between the Baron and the Irregulars’ highest officers only though rumors, but their strategies and objectives seemed to change. More brutal, more wanton. Janus came to feel that they were becoming what they were fighting against. They cascaded from Patriotism into an ultranationalist fervor not against only the Crowns, but Hammerfell as a whole. It would be one of Janus’ greatest failures that he did not protest more vocally, or simply sheathe his sword forever and walk away from it all. Word came down through the ranks of their big objective. They were to take Rihad. The Companies of the Irregulars were recalled to southern Hammerfell for the effort and an army proper was made of them.
A series of raids and skirmishes, burning the fields that supplied Rihad’s food stores. Soon enough, the Baron of Sutch had seen they were capable soldiers and added his own men to the Irregulars’ forces. Supplied with better troops and equipment, as well as siege equipment, they went on to capture and hold five of Rihad’s forts and castles. It was during these months on campaign that Janus would earn his Ladderman’s tattoo. By the end of that long campaign, Rihad was in sight.
High time that the Stonehaven Irregulars marched on Rihad, but were utterly defeated and broken there during the siege of one of Rihad’s forts. Janus hid among the dead for hours until the Redguards went back to their cities. Slinking away covered in the blood of other men, he hid in farmhouses and barns, drifting from tavern to tavern until he eventually made it to Cyrodiil proper. It was there he knew the war that had been so important to him and his people meant fuck all to anyone outside of Rihad. He wasn’t hoisted up and carried by crowds as a true patriot and champion of Colovian strife, but pushed to the gutter to eke out a most modest living. His tattoos meant nothing here in Cyrodiil, the red sash of the glorious ranks of the Stonehaven Irregulars and peculiar curved sword at his hip were symbols of nothing. He took whatever work he could, his sense of pride and honor drowned in ale and whiskey.
It was on a fateful night where he drifted off to a drunken sleep like he’d done so many nights before that he was taken…
...Or that is what he tells of his escape from Rihad and his capture by the Praetorians...
Personality: Unflinchingly polite.
Capably violent.
Janus may be a simple wanderer, but there was once a preacher that walked in the footprints he’s left from Hammerfell to here. That priest of Stendarr would shake his head and offer absolution to the man he’d become, bottle in bloodied hands. A fall from faith had seen the naïveté of the young priest clipped away like angel’s wings and put a sword in his hand and vengeance in his heart.
For what more reason should a man have a loss of his faith than the loss of his home.
The years have worn away at him, and now all the faith in the good of the world he once had was a casualty of a war that took everything from him. Prone to sardonic quips and scathing remarks, it is as if the whole of the world was naught but a cruel joke. He makes for a steadfast companion and a good friend to those who’ve sought out and chosen him, for the seeking and choosing of friends is something he has no want for these days. He just settles for whoever stays.
Any humor out of him is sardonic, and not really for anybody else but for him. A way to deal with stress and what life offers, but he maintains an aloof and care-free image despite. Like the man, all his weapons are utilitarian. Even his sword, old and storied as it is, holds no runes carved in it and is set with no jewels. As simple and forward as his fighting style. He holds no qualms with killing, and holds only to two rules- quick hands and long patience. Even with such a seemingly passive demeanor, ask some of the shallow graves from Stonehaven to Rihad if he’s willing to die for someone else’s convenience. A survivor, a killer; patient and strong-willed.
A functioning alcoholic, quiet, and polite despite it all, there are flashes here and there of the old Janus. The man who wanted for nothing more but crops to sow and reap, a wife, and a daughter. One just needs to keep a watchful eye and open ears for him. He may say he’s washed his hands of the blood now, but he knows as well as anyone; he is what he is.
