Name: Jaraleet
Age: 32
Sex: Male
Race: Argonian
Birthsign: The Shadow
Family Origins: Born in Helstrom during the 27th of Second Second seed in the year 176 of the Fourth Era.
- Han-Maat; Father, Alive.
- Simeesh; Mother, Deceased.
- Meen-Rei; Training Instructor, Alive,
- Brand-Jei; Fellow trainee and Haj-Eix, Deceased.
- Saliith; An-Xileel representative and head of training facility, Alive.
Appearance:Jaraleet is a somewhat tall individual, standing at 6’3 feet; still, in spite of this, he is not a very broad man, having instead a lithe body-type. This is not to say that he isn’t strong, long years of training have given Jaraleet a well toned body and his work as an assassin, combined with frequent exercise in his free time, has kept him in shape throughout the years. Jaraleet’s scales are naturally of a uniform rusty red throughout his whole body, the only thing breaking this uniformity of color being the numerous scars that dot his body, arms, and legs, a byproduct of the training that turned him into an assassin and his time in captivity. The most prominent features of his face are the dull amber eyes, slitted as is typical for Argonians, and three slash scars that run throughout the length of his face and over his left eye.
Life as a Haj-Eix has left Jaraleet with little free time in general until his assignment to Cyrodiil, and as such he is most comfortable wearing his set of leather armor most of the times. However, when forced to change clothings, he opts for a simple white linen shirt. To go with these, Jaraleet wears a set of dark trousers and a pair of matching boots.
Equipment:- Steel Longsword
- Steel Parrying Dagger (Swordbreaker variant)
- Full set of leather armor with removed pauldrons, further modified to include a leather hood.
- Metal Vambraces
Misc. Possessions:- Travelling rucksack with an assortment of travel supplies such as dried meats
- Small satchel with various alchemical ingredients along with a mortar and pestle
- 100 Septims
- Sleeping sack
- Journal
- Ink bottle
- Quill
- Bottle of Theilul (Argonian rum)
Favoured Skills:- Highly Proficient; 1H Blade (Dual Wield): Jaraleet’s skill with wielding a sword and a dagger at the same time come as a result of his training as a Haj-Eix. Earlier on in the training process, Meen-Rei, one of the trainers, detected that Jaraleet, amongst a few others trainees, showed the potential skill that was necessary to be able to wield two blades effectively. As such, they were grouped together and given extra training so that they could master combat forms that utilised two blades. Of these, Jaraleet showed the most proficiency using a longsword with a dagger and, as such, he specialised in techniques that utilized the full potential of those two weapons when paired.
- Highly Proficient; Sneak: Years of training as a Hidden Scale have allowed Jaraleet to easily slip by enemies. He knows the best way to distribute his weight when walking so as to make the least amount of noise and knows the best ways to bypass an enemies field of view. Despite this, his height is still somewhat of a hindrance in that, should he make a mistake and be spotted, it’s easier to track him down by his now alerted enemies.
- Moderately Proficient; Alchemy: Along with his training in fighting and sneaking techniques, Jaraleet received training as an alchemist as well. This knowledge, however, extends mainly to the ability of making poisons and their antidotes, when it comes to other types of potions, such as healing one's, Jaraleet is bereft of knowledge, at the very best he can make a potion to enhance stamina and, even then, they are of dubious quality when compared to someone who has more knowledge in that particular area of alchemical knowledge.
- Moderately Proficient; Light Armor: Despite being trained in its use, and using it frequently, Jaraleet is not fully accustomed to fighting for long periods in his armor. He is used to scouting out areas or quick confrontations with assassination targets when he makes a mistake, as such his skills in taking advantage of the benefits of light armor in prolonged combat aren’t quite up to par with those of someone who is more accustomed to traditional fights.
- Somewhat Proficient; Speech: While spending time in Cyrodiil gathering information at the behest of the An-Xileel, Jaraleet developed a bit of a skill for convincing people and bringing them up to his side. However, Jaraleet’s skill pale in comparison to other, more manipulative, individuals, he is good at reading individuals but isn’t too good at using the information that he picks from reading said individuals. Along with this, he depends heavily on the fact that other races have trouble reading Argonian expressions as a crutch of a sort, but other people with more skills could easily read him or call him on any bluffs he makes.
History:Born in the city of Helstrom, located in the unassailed heartland of Black Marsh, to Han-Maat and Simeesh, Jaraleet’s early life was shaped by a single life altering event: at the age of 5, Jaraleet was given by his parents to agents of the An-Xileel. The An-Xileel had been gathering Saxhleel youths born under the sign of the Shadow for the purpose of creating a new organization: the Haj-Eix. The Haj-Eix, or Hidden Scales in Cyrodilic, were created by the An-Xileel as a way to fill in the void left by the destruction of the Shadowscales of old, but this new organization differentiated itself from its predecessor in several key ways. For one, the Haj-Eix were part of the An-Xileel’s forces, gone were the days of depending on the, now destroyed, Dark Brotherhood for the training of assassins and, with it, the dual-loyalties of the Shadowscales of the past, the Haj-Eix were first and foremost servants of the An-Xileel and no one else. Furthermore, these new agents also were trained to act as spies rather than merely assassins as had been the case with their predecessors who were expected to perform only the latter task.
These dual tasks meant that the prospective Haj-Eix were subjected to rigorous trainings to prepare them for their future service towards the An-Xileel. For one they were schooled in the histories of other tamrielic nations in preparation for assignments away from Blackmarsh, but this was merely one facet of their training. The prospective agents were also schooled in forms of torture and how to resist it, namely by being subjected to it once they were older and it was deemed that they could resist such punishment without doing any lasting physical damage that could impact their effectiveness as agents and only to, relatively, light degrees as an extra precaution. To keep the youths compliant through this extreme portion of training, the trainers at the facility indoctrinated them with the thought that the pain they went through was a necessary sacrifice for the prosperity and safety of Blackmarsh, that they were being shaped into guardians that would protect innocent Saxhleel and prevent atrocities like the slave raids of the past from repeating themselves.
Along with this, Jaraleet and the other trainees were forced to endure long periods without food or drink if they didn’t perform up to expectation in their exercises against their trainers. The exercises consisted of a series of duels were the young trainees were given weapons that they were unfamiliar with, and ones which the trainer that they were paired with were proficient at, and told to defeat their trainers. At first these practice duels were conducted with the use of dulled weapons but, as the young Argonians got older, the dulled weapons were replaced with real weapons. They were forbidden from outright killing, or maiming, the trainees but, aside from these limitations, the trainers were encouraged to go all out against their charges. The first objective behind this barbarous training regime was that, by teaching them and making them experience pain, the future Haj-Eix would be desensitized to pain, both their own and that of others. The second objective was that, by continuously fighting individuals more skilled than them, the trainees would quickly gain the skills necessary to wield a variety of weapons, skills that would later be honed even further through more conventional means of training.
It was through this training that Jaraleet first discovered his aptitude for wielding two blades when facing Meen-Rei. Meen-Rei was one of the trainers appointed by the An-Xileel to mold the future Haj-Eix, she was an ex-mercenary who had felt the need to return to her homeland but, once she came back, noticed that she didn’t fit in like she thought she would; the An-Xileel approached her and offered her a place in a society where she thought she’d never fit in again. She first met Jaraleet when the boy was 13 years old and they had been pitted against each other in one of the training exercises, there the young Argonian was forced to use a pair of swords as the weapon of choice dictated by the head of the training facility. The young Jaraleet came close to defeating her, and in this Meen-Rei recognised that the boy had a good aptitude for that style of combat and that, with enough training, he could become a master; as such, Meen-Rei took the young Jaraleet under her wings to polish up his natural talents with blades. It was during this time as well that Jaraleet learned about his predisposition towards potion making, although he always excelled in the craft of poisons rather than in the making of more benign alchemical concoctions.
Along with this, the prospective assassins regularly went through team exercises, both in big groups and in pairs. These exercises fomented a spirit of brotherhood between the future assassins, who came to see in each other a foster family of sorts. Amongst the many trainees, Jaraleet was closest to another youth from Helstrom: Brand-Jei. Both had been taken from the city in the same roundup and, sharing this one common element, they had stuck together through the earlier periods of the training before the whole group had bonded, becoming like brothers before they came to see the other members of the group as an extended family.
This training continued until Jaraleet was 20 years old, where it was deemed that he, and the other trainees, were ready to be sent out into the wider world to perform the will of the An-Xileel. The decade and half of brutal exercises, coupled with the propaganda fed to them by the An-Xileel constantly, had turned Jaraleet and the other trainees into merciless killers, wholly devoted to their task as the instruments of the An-Xileel’s will throughout Blackmarsh and, if needed, throughout the rest of Tamriel. Jaraleet himself worked mostly in Blackmarsh, eliminating those individuals that the An-Xileel felt posed a risk to the well being of all Saxhleel. This category included those individuals that the An-Xileel deemed to be subversive towards their rule, such as those few Argonians who had Imperial sympathies or wished the An-Xileel to be gone, along with more common criminals such as thugs and thieves. Along with this, Jaraleet was sometimes called to the areas near the border between Blackmarsh and Morrowind; while the border territories between both nations were firmly held by the Argonians, it wasn’t strange for the occasional skirmish to break out between Dunmer and Argonian forces. Jaraleet’s role when such situations occurred was to interrogate those Dunmers that were captured at the end of a skirmish, brutally torturing them for whatever information they might have before executing them.
These tasks given to Jaraleet meant that he travelled throughout most of Blackmarsh in his role as an instrument of the An-Xileel for a decade. However, it was thanks to these travels that Jaraleet was able to learn what had become of his parents after a decade and a half; he had been sent to Helstrom to investigate rumors of a potential gathering of malcontents, it was through the course of his investigation into these rumors that he learned what had happened to his parents. While examining the information that the local authorities at Helstrom had about their citizens, Jaraleet learned that his mother and father had been assaulted by bandits while returning to Helstrom a few months ago. As the reports said, his parents, who were traders, were returning to Helstrom after selling their wares in a nearby village and, on the trip back, they were assaulted by bandits, who slaughtered his mother and took off with whatever money his parents had made from selling their goods. The only good news that he learned was that his father had survived, albeit crippled as the wounds dealt to him had meant that his arm had to be amputated due to the amount of time that he had went without medical help.
Once Jaraleet was done reading a simple emotion occupied his mind: rage. Jaraleet tried to convince himself that the source of his rage originated from the fact that the brigands were allowed to act with impunity to hurt loyal citizens of Blackmarsh but the truth, even if Jaraleet didn’t admit it to himself, was much simpler, his anger stemmed from s very simple fact: a son enraged at the death of his moth and the maiming of his father. And so, for the first time in his service to the An-Xileel, Jaraleet disobeyed his orders and began tracking down the brigands who had caused his parents so much suffering. It seemed that, in the intervening months, the band of bandits that had assaulted his parents had gone from being a small group to a large one, to the point that it had split off into smaller, but still affiliated, groups for more chances to assault travelers and caravans. So began Jaraleet’s grim task as he began dismantling group after group of bandits in the only way he knew how to: subterfuge. He’d sneak into camp in the middle of the night, slitting the throats of those who slept or poisoning their food supplies with poisons strong enough that even the prodigious resistance of the Saxhleel towards poisons and diseases could not withstand; very occasionally he’d take one of the bandits alive and torture them for information before putting them out of their misery.
However, in his endeavor to eliminate the bandits, Jaraleet had been careless, for as he continued attacking the group of bandits rumors started spreading about him and his crusade against the bandits near Helstrom. These rumors soon reached into the ears of the leader of the original group, who was now the general leader of the bandits around Helstrom, and the next time that Jaraleet attacked one of the camps, he was promptly overwhelmed by bandits laying in wait near the camp he was attacking. Captured, Jaraleet was brought back to the main base of the bandits; an ancient ruin of either Lilmothiith or Kothringi origin. There, he was tortured by weeks upon weeks by the leader of the bandits, who wanted to know why Jaraleet was targeting him and his underlings but the assassin mere laughed at him and spit in his face. Enraged, the leader of the bandits ordered Jaraleet to be executed and, for a second, everything seemed to be lost until a sudden cry of alarm drew attention away from the captured Haj-Eix. Soon, a force of Argonian soldiers broke into the ruins led by a figure that Jaraleet thought he’d never see again...one of his old friends from during his training: Brand-Jei.
Brand-Jei made his way towards Jaraleet, battling the confused bandits in an effort to try and save Jaraleet. However, before Bran-Jei could reach him, the leader of the bandits attacked his friend; what followed was an intense duel as bandit leader and assassin dueled against each other. In the end, both combatants seemed evenly matched but Brand-Jei managed to persevere and defeat the leader of the bandits and, in turn, managed to rescue Jaraleet. What happened next, he doesn’t knows, for Jaraleet soon passed away due to his injuries, however that was not to be the end of the troubles that he’d have to face. When he next woke up, Jaraleet was in a familiar place; the facility where he had trained to become an agent of the An-Xileel, however he didn’t have much time to ponder things for as soon as someone noticed that he was awake he was brought into a room deeper inside the training facility. There stood Saliith, representative of the An-Xileel and head of the facility, along with other individuals unknown to Jaraleet but whom he guessed where other representatives of the An-Xileel. The purpose of the gathering soon became clear to the assassin, as the convened group accused him of abandoning his duty and, worse of all, being the cause of the death of an Haj-Eix and numerous soldiers loyal to the An-Xileel.
The news hit him as if he had been blasted by an atronach...Brand-Jei was dead. The silence stretched for a few seconds as Jaraleet’s shocked mind tried to process the events, taking his silence for confusion one of the representatives explained to him what had happened. As the weeks stretched after his capture the An-Xileel began to fear that he had been killed or that he had deserted, and so Brand-Jei had been sent to t track him down and bring him back to explain himself. As it turned out, while Brand-Jei had managed to locate, and save, him, he had died shortly afterwards they had both been brought to Helstrom, his deceased friend had been given a burial and when the other soldiers were sure that he wouldn’t die during the travel, Jaraleet was brought to the training facility. The silence stretched once more, the mood in the room growing more and more tense, until Jaraleet finally broke out of his stupor and prostrated himself before the gathered representatives. He first begged for forgiveness, both for deserting his mission and for causing the death of a fellow Scale, before he explained himself in full, about how he had learned of the existence of the bandits and how he couldn’t allow them to continue acting unpunished as they had done in the past.
Jaraleet was hushed out of the room and told to wait, and soon enough murmurs could be heard outside of the room. The hours passed by as the representatives debated between themselves and Jaraleet was starting to fear the worst as time went on, until he was called inside the room once more. The council of representatives had decided that, while Jaraleet had betrayed the trust of the An-Xileel by forsaking his mission, an act which led to the death of one of his fellow agents, he was to be granted a second chance due to his years of exemplary service. The mission itself consisted in an assignment in the heartland of the Mede Empire, where Jaraleet was to gather as much information as possible and send it back once every month through another agent who would be sent to monitor his situation and status; this task seemed easy, and clear, enough for him to be able to do without forsaking his duty like it had been the case with his prior mission, at the very least that’s what the council had decided. Jaraleet was given enough time to fully recuperate but, as soon as he was in proper conditions to undertake the travel to the capital of the Cyrodilic Empire he was to leave at once.
One more week passed as he fully recuperated but, once that was over, Jaraleet left Black Marsh, but not before using what little influence he had left after his failure to make sure that his father would be taken care of in his absence. The month long trek was arduous and long, but to Jaraleet it seemed easier and shorter than any other amount of travelling that he had done; the chance of making up for his failure, for the death of his friend, gave him a sort of manic energy. Soon enough he was set in the Imperial City, living by the Waterfront District, and living under the assumed identity of a deserter from the An-Xileel’s army who had deserted after being unable to cope with the stress of the position. Slowly, but surely, Jaraleet began building a small network of informants, obtaining information from corrupt guards or dissatisfied citizens and, sometimes, employing the Thieves Guild to steal important documents from the Imperial Legions.
This information was slowly, but steadily, sent to his superiors through the monthly check-up by the other Haj-Eix, visits that he hided when asked about it by pretending that the other Scales were other deserters that were merely staying for a while before moving further away from the Imperial City. Two years went by and things seemed poised for him to be able to make up for his failures, however things were to take a turn for the worse as, before the monthly check up, the Imperial City was sieged. Putting on his leather armor and taking his sword and dagger, Jaraleet raced out of his home to bear witness to the might of the returned Dwemer. Knowing that he’d be able to do nothing if he died fighting, Jaraleet quickly returned to his home and grabbed what few meager possessions he had before leaving the Waterfront District with a bunch of other scared refugees. The group soon arrived at Skingrad after a few days of travel and, in that time, an idea formed inside Jaraleet’s mind; if he could gather enough intel about the Dwemer, or even better obtain a piece of their esoteric technology, he could finally redeem himself for the failures of his past. However, to do that, he’d need to be part of a group that was likely to come into contact with the returned Mer, an opportunity that would be nonexistent amongst the refugees from the Imperial City. The solution to this conundrum presented as a local from Skingrad, an Imperial man named Brutus Denian, formed a militia called the Colovian Rangers to help the refugees; seeing these Colovian Rangers as his best chance to get close to the Dwemer and be able to obtain intel on them, Jaraleet signed on with the recently formed militia by selling a story about how he was looking for vengeance against the Dwemer.
Personality: Jaraleet is a normal situation is an easy going, friendly, individual. He prefers to avoid conflicts with other people and between other people, due to this last fact he is bound to try and intervene if he sees a situation growing tense if he deems that it's his place to try and stop a fight. However, should he deem that he has no place in an unfolding situation he won’t intervene even if his presence would be of help.
However, despite this easy going, friendly, personality of his, Jaraleet is a man who has been conditioned by the long time he has spent as a Haj-Eix. When in combat his whole demeanor changes, suddenly becoming cold and pragmatic in the extreme and while this change might come as extreme this is the core of Jaraleet’s character as a result of the long time he has spent in service to Argonia. This cold, goal-oriented, attitude can also come out of battle, particularly in serious situations or when Jaraleet deems it’s something that’s related to the interests of Blackmarsh (and the An-Xileel by extension).
A third facet of Jaraleet’s personality is that, to some degree, he is a manipulative individual. He is willing to manipulate someone without a hint of remorse if he believes that it’ll help him in his mission as a Haj-Eix. So far, the only beings that are exempt from this side of him are his father, although Jaraleet himself wouldn’t admit that, and the other members of the Haj-Eix that he trained with; when around them, Jaraleet is a more caring individual and prone to show genuine displays of worry and care. Such bonds are rare for Jaraleet to form, and they usually take time to properly develop, but once they are formed, Jaraleet is a loyal, steadfast, ally and friend for life.
Miscellaneous:- Jaraleet is an usually calm individual who isn’t easily enraged, but there are two particular topics that cause him to visibly lose his temper: slavery and banditry. Both of these acts enrage Jaraleet, and if he comes across someone who performs either of those activities he is bound to end said individuals life, often painfully, more often than not unless he is convinced to the contrary.
- Jaraleet has a great respect for Saxhleel elders and is bound to, more often than not, refer to them by the Jel title of Raj-Deelith (Honored Elder in Cyrodilic).
- Jaraleet isn’t usually rattled by displays of carnage or other gruesome sights. Years of acting as an assassin, and occasional torturer, have left him jaded and unfeeling towards most atrocities. He can pretend to be affected if needed be to gain someone’s trust or sympathy, although if one paid enough attention it could be easily discerned that he is faking any type of shock or any other similar reactions.
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