Character SheetName: Kanros the Raven
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Physical Description:His hair, dark and shaggy, is worn long and stubbornly resistant of ever being neatened, except that he has a tendency to wear it pulled back in a severe fashion to reveal a high forehead and a long-ish jaw. He has a straight nose and deep-set blue eyes, which, along with the pale skin, mark him as an outlander. The man himself is large and well-made, his physical shape his pride and joy. He wears a lot of wealth on his arms, fingers, and belt buckle, and around his neck, feeling, as a sellsword often does, that it is best to carry the wealth on one's person as the most simple but effective security system devised – a thief looks for easier pickings and a robber has to contend with the man's swordarm. He has surprisingly few scars for a man in his line of work -- and that is something of a statement for those who use their eyes to see. He has kept his physical condition, though he has to work at it more and more. When going to war, or into a situation where it has advantages socially, he marks his face in the way of his people with ash across the eyepits and the brodge of the nose in a thick, dark line, giving rise to the term, 'black-eyed barbarian.'
Skillset:A swordsman, a former pirate, gladiator and leader of men; despite his barbaric ancestry, he is a cunning strategist with a strong interest in masonry-- as a child, he learned from the thralls that did the masonry for the local lord. He can tie a knot and weave a rope if he wishes, though it's been a long time since he's had to. In matters of violence, he is an authority, from how to fight a single man to how to recruit, provisionm, train, organize and lead men in the field. Siegecraft is something he has had the time and leisure to study and practice -- he doesn't always show his mind off, because he likes to hide behind the impression of a barbarian, but he is a sharp negotiator.
Far Ancestry:In the dim, distant past, a spirit of the seas, of storm and wave wooed the daughter of a thane, but her jealous betrothed found out about this budding romance and threw the girl from a cliff into the cold, grey waters. From this union sprung a daughter as dark and furious as the stormclouds, whose eyes were as gray as the waves of the northern seas who became a notorious raider and pillager of the lands her mother's betrothed once held, and it is said that when the Lord would not take the field against this daughter that he was cursed to the form of a weasel. This weasel was pandered to as if he remained the Lord of the land, and yet people laughed and his rivals closed in to tear apart his lands among themselves.
The career of Brynja Stormurdottir, sorceress, thief and pirate, was long and varied; the myth has it that she took a prince hostage for ransom, but loved him and bore his bastard despite this. In the years to follow, this young man, Brynjar Svartson, grew to adulthood and became as renowned as his mother, though perhaps not quite as soft a touch. Ambition burned darkly in his bastard breast and when his mother passed on, he sailed forth to pillage the lands of his father, untouched since the days of his mother's liasons with their lord. He slew his own father in battle and destroyed his half-siblings. The gods struck down Brynjar Svartson for his monstrous crime, though they took mercy upon his infant son and stole him away to be raised by the grieving widow of one of his half-brothers...
Character History:The son of a passing sailor and the daughter of a fisherman, a netweaver and ropemaker by trade. For a few glorious summers she was darkly beautiful, then she became gray and used, bowed by the contempt of the village's moralists, the drunken abuse of her husband and the cares of the world. He never knew his father, of course, but he knew his stepfather all too well.
He was born to a married woman, the daughter of fishermen who married another fisherman only reluctantly...he was the result of a passing hunter and sailor aboard a longship sailing down the coast to trade seal furs where they'd fetch a good price. His father was never to be seen again, but he left his reminder of the visit. Kanros was raised in an abusive household, with a father that liked to take it out on him and his mother; he fell in the water one day and turned to ice in the winter, and while he greeted the news cheerfully, the rest of the village thought he'd done the man in. His bastardy meant that no fishermen would take him as an apprentice, though he knew ropes, and he instead labored as a mason and a builder with thralls, learning something of how stone is cut and wood is hewn from these men. He grew strong, and learned how to fight with the young men of the village, the ones that presumed to teach him his place.
His mother died after she no longer had the will to live, when her son was old enough and strong enough to feed himself; her passing was greeted with little comment from the rest of the village, who made her a pariah through a combination of her infidelity as a young woman and her marriage to a loutish drunkard.
He left his village whilst still a lad when a passing ship came through bound for southern lands. Of course, it was a pillager and a pirate, and its crew corsairs. He was big but fast, strong and unrelenting, and, of course, very angry; thus began a career of varied fighting for pay, raiding and piracy at various times. Eventually, he found himself in a falling out with others of the crew over shares, and the dispute turned bloody as he was intent on taking the share he considered his; when the killing was over, he was left on his own in the city of Baruk...where he was lured in with drink and the flesh of a woman and captured when he was vulnerable. He was sold on the block as a gladiator.
Despite the success and opulence of his life as a slave gladiator, he wanted his freedom. He managed to break free of his captivity, in a bloody fashion, during travel between cities and found his way to Dara, where there were no slaves. After a few months of minor adventures with the group he fell in with, they found themselves fighting for Dara against King Pykas of Selander and his many soldiers. Then, of course, they raided on Melazus, hoping to end the Sorceror's fell influence over the King. That story, is of course, well known.
After the encounter with Pykas and Cyrabassis in Melazus, he found his calling as a sellsword under the command of the mercenary captain Jalal, the Prince of Killers, and became a favored right hand man to him -- and eventually, as Jalal became older and Kanros matured, his equal partner, using the wealth plundered from Melazus as his stake. As the years passed, it became apparent that Jalal would have no son, and that Kanros was being groomed to take the fiefdom of the old man, including the hand of his daughter, Amira, in marriage. It was a strange sort of mating, but Jalal was the son of a desert nomad, and Kanros the bastard of a barbarian people -- and in perhaps, they saw things similarly.
The old Prince of Killers passed on, but by then Kanros, wealthy in his own right, was the most influential mercenary in the city. His wife, regrettably, died in childbirth.
Psychological Profile:Kanros has a sullen aspect betimes, but is a man of flashes of dark humor and barbaric gaiety in the face of danger. He drinks deeply from life, knowing that it may end abruptly and harshly some day without being forseen. That fatalism drives his lust for life. Since seeing the magic of Cyrabassis in Melazus, he has had an inordinate fear of it and takes superstitious measures against things, though he knows little of magic -- it is considered a quirk of his that he will pay charlatans for icons and exorcisms, blessings and curse removal -- all mummery, none of it powerful. Kanros knows that much of this is bunk, and yet he keeps buying, seeking the one remedy that will work and bring actual luck and power and protection to him.
He enjoys his drink and his wenches, but he brooks little insult to his person -- there have been some that thought the big man might seem an easy one to dance around, only to find that the conditioning of the fighting pits of Baruk remains -- he is deceptively fast. He is surprisingly sharp in commercial matters, though he finds mercantilism for its own sake boring -- his commerce involves swords and fighting men, and he likes it that way.
In terms of how he makes decisions, he is a pragmatist that leans toward the amoral -- he has a bit of a distaste for the moral hand-wringing some people do; he prefers to do what has to be done. He is less concerned about methods than results. He does not believe in fighting fair, because fair is an abstraction, but he also has a distaste for overly elaborate plots or things that he considers indecent, like poison and other dark arts. If he wants a man dead, he'll do it with a knife, not with some damned powder.
It's best not to mistake Kanros' interest in Dara as a concern for the welfare of its people out of moral reasons -- he tends to think the Daran nobility are effete and too long decadent and 'civilized' and that many of the citizens are too weak to properly protect themselves -- a very barbaric attitude. He comes from a place where all men have steel and fight to defend their villages, and the cities still bemuse him. At the same time, he's carved out a niche as a sometime protector, albeit a very self interested one. The plight of the suffering don't move him as much as the opportunity for his own selfish reasons. Luckily, he can be dragged into trouble for love of action and a fight.
Equipment: Vindurfang -- a sword his mother had and told tales of, though it is merely a sword. It is a good sword, with runes, two edges and very fine steel, so he's managed to retain it all through the years.
Armor as he wants. Clothing as he sees fit. Typically, the clothing is silk, but he leaves the arms bare for a variety of reasons. He likes bracers and torc bracelets, thick accessories.
In battle, he goes with a lamellar scale hauberk that is surprisingly light (because he is strong) and a good helmet with a plate over the eyes and nose to help protect from a slash to the eyes in a fight. He's not much for shields, but he's also highly pragmatic in these situations. He thinks of mobility as better than any shield, which is a barbarian's way of thinking about a fight.
Titles/Holdings/Power Base:Kanros takes residence in Shield Hall, built from the stones of ruins on the eastern side of Dara, facing the Great Spice Road. When Dara sought to rebuild its moldering defenses, Kanros and Jalal volunteered their expertise and some investment on the part of the fortifications around the city, which means that Shield Hall is built into the city's defenses; it is indeed defensible, though Kanros keeps enough men to keep watch and staff the place, so it's a mixed force of his most trusted men and servants, who tend to be retired mercenaries, rather than keep a standing army of sellswords within the walls (expensive.) The place is well set up to host a large number of men, with a large hall in the center for feasting. The Shield Hall is set near the entrance to the Great Spice Road and is positioned well to defend it should war come to Dara again.
While the Shield Hall's garrison is dwarfed by the Khavi guard, Kanros the ability to recruit far more sellswords with a degree of notice -- it depends on the time and place, but Kanros and Jalal have spent decades building the trust and reputation that Kanros now uses to his advantage. He is for sale -- there is no doubt about that -- but he is loyal to Dara. His activities as a mercenary captain are often questionable, as he happily practices a type of warfare that involves looting and pillaging, raiding commerce and otherwise eroding other competitor cities and their ability to guard their roads and caravans. In a sense, Kanros guarantees Dara's caravans -- he won't raid the Great Spice Road, after all. He has allies who are invested in the prosperity of that route; he helps secure the Great Spice Road and raids the others. Some look down on these depredations and the more pragmatic appreciate that Kanros is carrying out a policy that Dara's more reputable notables can't readily admit to even as they desire it -- he undermines the competition.
In diplomacy, Kanros is considered a good choice of emissary when a certain sort of message needs to be sent. He is affable enough, but he is dangerous and has a reputation -- Dara's Guardians would request his services as such when it came time to deliver a veiled threat of force to come, and sometimes it was heeded. And if it wasn't, they would hire him to captain a significant portion of their forces in the field. When Dara wants to indirectly support another city or faction without overtly aligning itself, it cuts a deal with Kanros, who fields a mercenary force that, coincidentally, advances the interests of Dara. Kanros has made himself wealthy off this ambiguity.
RelationshipsRickas (if Byrd throws in) - Kanros honestly liked Rickas better when he was a thief rather than a retired thief that plays the politics game, though he can appreciate the cynicism with which he plays it. They're both mercenaries in a sense, but Kanros sometimes wonders if Rickas' house of cards will ever come tumbling down or not. He regards tracks Rickas' movements, neither friend nor foe necessarily -- there have been times when Rickas has worked the other side of Kanros.
Nasharia - Kanros knows that the Green Woman is grit underneath the silk and he treads carefully. Because her mercantile interests align with his own, they find themselves often partnered on the same ventures in trade. Kanros has deliberately left himself as a man of the people in the sense that he has limited patience for the Nyati district's denizens and little interest in official title but that hardly means he isn't aware of the currents -- his trade depends on such. It's safe to say they keep each other's backs.
Erwun - The Undertaker has assumed the mantle of an avenger of sorts and a vigilante, and is otherwise a good man to know if wounded, but Kanros also knows that the man has little taste for the uglier side of Dara, or the harsh realities of rulership. What happened in Malezus affected them all, but it seems like Erwun was more profoundly affected in the sense that he has limited himself. Kanros considers that a waste of a man's ability, to have so much to grasp but to turn it down. He's not sure what to make of the man's motivations anymore. There was a time when Kanros tried to take Erwun with him on campaign with Jalal, only to be turned abruptly on. A man is free to make his own choices, but Erwun's are not Kanros' and they both know it.
Haljon - Haljon and Kanros were like blood brothers once, but the camraderie wore thin after Melazus when they took two very divergent paths. Forced betimes by circumstances to work together, there is nonetheless a mistrust for one another. Kanros fights for coin and self-advancement, and Haljon fights for duty. So long as the Khavi are not breathing down his neck, Kanros tries to maintain a neutral relationship -- he prefers the city's guards at an arm's length, but also tries to keep the mercenaries he betimes hires to swell Dara's ranks from being overly boisterous or getting into the sort of brawling that would sour matters. Jalal's arrangements with Haljon's predecessor are still in force -- an understanding that the Shield Hall is garrisoned by enough men to hold it in peacetime, but not to disrupt the power balance within the city with an armed camp of warriors. Kanros is generally alright with that -- because it's expensive to keep a standing army and such would probably invite the city to view Kanros as a danger rather than as a benevolent rogue.
Landar - If Landar went back to working as a mercenary, he would have been a rival for Kanros, but he decided to leave the game, possibly around the time Jalal was looking to consolidate Dara's mercenaries into something more guildlike and structured, and now Landar is a good source of information, contracts and recruits, not to mention a man who profits off the lusts of temporarily rich mercenaries looking to spend their gold on extravagances. Does Kanros trust the Blood Rider? Not very much unless there is a mutual benefit to any given arrangement. Kanros knows that the man is not much of a sentimentalist, but is probably an ally for now.
Leytan - Of all the survivors of Melazus, Cxin is the one that seems to have embraced what he saw as some sort of proof that the magic of legends actually exists, somewhere at least. Kanros shies away from this subconsciously, but Cxin does not. There is a degree of fear and resentment there, and Kanros is not sure how far to trust the monk when it comes down to it. Something possessed Pykas and his guards, and what is to say that it cannot possess other dabblers? That is why Kanros looks for ways to proof himself against such a thing. On the other hand, the discipline of the monk is possibly proof against that, but how would Kanros know? In their adventuring days, Leytan was a comrade, though they had distinctly different outlooks on life, but this man is a stranger.
Alaric - Still a thief, still short. Kanros has no issues with the halfling, so long as he's not trying to break into his place. Alaric is a good place to fence the unusual or to find the unusual -- Kanros is a frequent customer at the shop of his old comrade, and indulges in his bauble buying there, but it's not a close relationship.
Ephraim - Ephraim's response to Malezus was to confront it and fight it, whereas Kanros' was to avoid it. Now it seems like Leytan and Ephraim are right and Malezus was more than simply an anomaly-- the old Guardians are dead and now the two men most suited to deal with that issue are at odds. Ephraim's methods are bloodier than Kanros might advocate, in the sense that he feels there is a difference between a fool occultist and a real sorcerer -- see the difference between Alaric and Cyrabassis -- and that Ephraim's zeal needs to be focused. If engaged in his crusade, Ephraim is a player but as a Guardian he has only one focus, and that is to leverage his power into a witch hunt, which is useful enough -- Kanros can trade concessions to get Ephraim's support, or so he figures.
