Nevix

Via Stellarum

Edwyn had learned the poor bastard's name. Goddamnit, he'd learned his name. His last name, anyway. Daly. Shorter guy, young. Really young. Couldn't have been older than nineteen or so. The boy had talked almost the entire hike to the crash site, and Edwyn had sort-of half listened, just managing to catch his name. He'd had a kind of monotone, faux-low voice that made it clear he was trying to sound older than he was.

And now he was in two pieces, and very dead.

"RUN!"

Someone had shouted, he wasn't sure who. Whoever it was had the right idea, though. The sustained fire from the vehicle across the way was tearing them apart. After the shots sank into the dropship and after Daly got sawed in half, one of his other men, one of the ones whose name he didn't know caught a shot to the face. The others started running, and Edwyn held his rifle in one hand and grabbed one of Kyra's arms with his other.

"We need to fuckin' go!" And he started running after the others, heavy rounds slapping into the dead soil around them. He fully expected the shooter to get lucky, for a stray round to catch him in the leg or the chest, but it didn't happen. Not this time. Not today.

---

By the time they'd gotten far enough away to no longer hear the gunshots, they'd lost another. Of the five men Reyes had ordered him to take, three were dead. There were four of them, now, including himself and the survivor from the dropship. He took a seat, hard, on a dead tree trunk. There were lots of dead trees, here, some fallen and others still mournfully upright. This place must have been a forest, once. Edwyn allowed himself a brief moment of self-pity as he examined his situation. So far as he was concerned, he'd gotten three people killed. They had a bit of a hike to get back to where Reyes and the others, were, too. He put his head in his hands, silently counted to twenty, and then forced himself to stand.

There wasn't terribly much that Edwyn O'Byrne was good at, but lately he'd become quite adept at forcing himself to keep moving. He knew that if he stopped for very long at all, he'd never get moving again. It was true of his thoughts, his memories, and it was true of sitting there on that trunk.

"Right, then, everyone's weapons unlocked?" He looked around at his companions. "Mine are fine, but I don't have the authority to unlock anyone else's, someone can have my sidearm if they need it." He sighed, and decided then that he was going to commit himself to keeping at least these three people alive. "Oh, and, uh, names. We can drop the sir and ma'am shit, now. You can call me Ed, Edwyn, or O'Byrne. I don't much care." He scratched the back of his neck, trying to see a way forward in his head. "I figure we can take another two or three minutes here, catch our breath, and then we need to book it back to the main landing site. I think it's, ah, due northwest."

The World of Aerion

Drostan Welm/"Osmund Griff" - Dalenham, Ethora

---

Sunlight streamed through the window and directly into Drostan's eyes, as he groaned into hesitant consciousness. His head hurt, his throat felt dry. He hadn't even thought he'd drank that much the previous night, but his body begged to differ. He was glad that he'd managed to drag himself back to his room at some point, though the rented bed hadn't done much to ease the various aches and brusies from the last job. And, as he thought about jobs, he remembered with a subdued despair that he had another one to do that morning. He weighed his options. It would be oh-so-easy to remain in bed, sleep for another few hours, and then hightail it out of Ethora before any of his more responsible comrades could confront him.

Or, he could wake up and do what he said he'd do.

He sat upright, rubbed his eyes and was up for the day. He splashed some water from the room's washpan in his face and then began the long process of armoring himself. A process, to be sure. He didn't wear full plate, couldn't afford it even if he wanted to, instead opting for a hodgepodge of leather, chain, and the odd bit of solid metal. It was the result of many repairs, by many blacksmiths of various skill. It didn't look terrible, he supposed, but he'd still wear it even if it did. After all, he hadn't gotten killed yet. Once his armor was dealt with, all that was left was to strap his shield and spear to his back and his sword to his waist.

About ten minutes later, he found his companions, stepping into their midst squinting against the sunlight.

"I'm not late, am I?" He looked around, nodded at Edon and Varian. As he looked at the highman, his eyes widened as though remembering something, followed by a small, knowing smile. "Ah, Varian, I think I lost track of you last night. What happened to your head?" He wanted to ask about the girl that he vaguely remembered seeing him with, but he supposed it wasn't his business. He wanted to say something to Edon, but he wasn't sure what. The man hadn't joined in with his and Varian's carousing. Well, Drostan hadn't done much carousing, unless that definition included sitting in the same spot and drinking for a few hours. The way he felt, though, he had to admit that Edon might have had the right idea.

The World of Aerion

Will be posting here in a few. Tonight for sure.

The World of Aerion

Drostan Welm / "Osmund Griff" - Dalenham, Ethora

---

Drostan didn't acknowledge Edon beyond a grunt. He didn't have a terribly strong opinion of the man, but there was something about him. Drostan could almost smell the high society on him, as far as his mannerisms went. If he wasn't blue-blooded, as Drostan had the feeling he was, then he was sure that Edon wished he was. His stiffness and formality when talking to Varian and his lack of a greeting for Drostan didn't much help his distaste. But at the moment, it was just that, distaste. He couldn't bring himself to hate him, certainly not yet. At least the man had proved himself a capable warrior. He'd never turn up his nose at the prospect of a skilled halberdier on his flank.

He raised an eyebrow as Edon took the money without counting it. Odd, but he understood. When he first started taking jobs on his own, a few years ago in Falke, he had never wanted to count his money in front of his clients. It felt rude, but after the second time, he'd been cheated he'd made it a habit. As such he made sure to count this, too. But he did it sort of lazily, just opening the bag and doing a quick count with his eyes, shifting the coins around to be sure it looked right. If he was dealing with a contractor, he'd have dumped it out on the table and made a show of counting each coin, but Varian had shown himself a decent sort so far and, besides, company commanders, in general, were good about this sort of thing. Most realized it wasn't wise to cheat the people who traveled, slept, and ate with you, all while armed.

He frowned as the short man found them and started speaking to Varian. Jobs for anonymous clients were always on the shadier side. He had his doubts that the brigands were actually brigands and that the man's daughter was actually his daughter, but there was no way to know for sure unless they did the mission. The way he figured, either they were hired and they did the job themselves, or they turned it down and the man found some even nastier bunch of bastards to do it.

"Could always do with a bit more silver." Drostan said, without much expression. He took a drink of his ale, but kept his eyes on the man. He was rich, plainly. If the robe and the garb concealed beneath didn't give that away, the payment he was offering did. He didn't trust the man, didn't trust the job, didn't trust the money. "Your daughter, sir. What's her name?" He locked eyes with the man, trying to read him. "It's just, the way I figure, might be hard to find her if we don't even know her name."

The World of Aerion

@TheLazarus

You can go ahead and move forward, don't know if Drostan has anything else interesting to add at the moment.

What Are You Listening To?

Okay, so a bit of context here. Pat the Bunny is a retired musician who mostly did folk-punk stuff about how much he hates himself, rich people, the government, and cops. That's a gross oversimplification, he's an incredible songwriter, but that's sort of a crash course. Anyway, I just found about a side-project of his called Playtime Posse where he raps about Breakfast.

The World of Aerion

Drostan Welm / "Osmund Griff" - Dalenham, Ethora

---

Drostan didn't particularly like being back in Ethora. He supposed he didn't have much reason to be afraid. They were well away from the lands of House Welm, well away from anyone who might have seriously recognized him. And it wasn't as though his name was being spoken much, anymore. Doubtless, it had been months, even years since anyone had thought of Drostan Welm. But it wasn't just fear that had kept him out of Ethora for so long. The place was his homeland, and for all its flaws and depravity, it was a part of him. When he was away, he could pretend as though he'd always been Osmund Griff, as though he'd never before visited Dalenham with his uncle and his sister when he was a boy. But staying here, amongst the people who were once his own, brought back all kinds of memories.

"I'm getting to be too damn old for this, Varian." He said, mostly in jest as he took a seat next to his fellow mercenary. He said something to that effect after almost every job. It was funny, because he was only thirty-one and because Varian was barely younger than him. But, then again, he was sore and tired more often than not and sometimes his back popped when he sat down. He raised a hand and looked at the bartender. "Barkeep! I'll have some of that Raelus Ale you were whining about." Truth be told, he normally ordered Ethoran drinks in Ethora, just because they were a bit cheaper. They weren't as good, but he didn't mind. Alcohol was a means to an end so far as he was concerned. But he'd heard the barkeep groan about it and couldn't resist. Besides, after this job, he could afford to splurge a bit on some finer brew. It wasn't like he was saving for anything.

He'd changed out of his battle wear, trading his light armor for simple travel clothes and stashing away his shield and spear. His sword was still buckled on his hip, as it always was. The blade had a name once, not that it mattered much anymore. He'd worn down the identifying inscriptions on the blade and replaced its ornate scabbard and belt with simpler fare a long time ago.

"I'm never quite prepared for how... monstrous Orcs can be." He shook his head, taking a long draught from the tankard that the barkeep had brought him. "It's as though every time I see one, I forget about the last however-many times I've seen them." When he was a boy, he'd read 'Treatise on the Orc Dilemma,' by some Falkian philosopher he'd forgotten the name of. It was a long-winded essay that basically said that orcs were just of a different culture and that it was the responsibility of the other intelligent races to educate them, or something to that effect. Having never seen an orc before, he'd brought the paper to his father, interested to see what he thought. Robert Welm had torn it in half, and had the eleven-year-old Drostan fitted with armor and attached to a group of soldiers that were hunting an orc raiding party. What he'd seen had made him seriously question whether that philosopher had ever met an orc. Drostan wanted to believe there was good in the Orcs, as there was in all the other races, but he didn't want to be the poor bastard whose job it was to educate them.

The World of Aerion

Sorry for being so slow. Will have a post up within the next twelve hours.

Via Stellarum

Alekhine IV had been a beautiful planet, once, he was told. A wide variety of ecosystems, thriving plant and animal life, the whole nine yards. But, it had tons of mineral wealth below its surface and it became little more than a mining node to the various galactic empires and corporate conglomerates. Edwyn wasn't sure if the planet looked torched on account of the many battles over the years that had been waged for rights to the planet's resources, or if the extraction of those resources was what had done it. Either way, what was once healthy and normal had been made bare, stark, and ugly.

Where they were, anyway. Supposedly there were areas, in Alekhine's southern hemisphere where you could trick yourself into thinking that the rock was hospitable. Not here. Here, on some nameless continent where the 121st had been ordered to assault a well-defended drilling station, the soil had been made tough, sandy, and infertile. A number of trees still stood and even more lied flatly on the ground, toppled from their stumps, but they were dry and bare. The earth was jagged and broken in many places, as though the ground itself was out to get you. No signs of life beyond the 121st, the well-lit metallic drilling station in the distance, and the pockets of soldiers and anti-aircraft guns that were scattered on the ground between the two.

The typical per-mission casualty rate of the 121st hovered just around 20%, normally. Of course, that was an average. He could remember times where they had lost only a handful of people out of the whole division. He could also remember missions like this one. Eight dropships had carted them to the surface. Two had been blasted out of the sky, leaving no survivors, and two or three more had been damaged and crash landed. This was bad, but probably was a part of the plan. The mercenary company that owned the 121st, and all the soldiers in it, knew that they were cheap and expendable. Quite probably, they'd been sent ahead just to soften the defenses so that legions of better-trained, better-equipped, actual volunteers could finish the job. This was unfair, of course, the sort of robotic utilitarianism and profit-oriented policy that he'd fought a war against, once. Taking a stand against the injustice had just exposed him to more of it, and so he'd learned to keep his head down.

"O'Byrne!" A harsh, sharp shout snapped Edwyn out of his thoughts. He turned to look, and saw Sergeant Reyes waving viciously at him. Maria Reyes was in her later thirties and tough as nails, one of only a handful of people he really recognized from when he'd been forced to enlist, a little more than a year back. He'd heard she was a cop once, and that she'd beat a suspect to death with her bare hands. It might have been total horseshit, but he believed it. "Get your ass over here!" Edwyn raced over from where he'd been, just outside of the dropship's interior, past some makeshift tables where people were busy setting up comms equipment and the like.

"What do you need, Reyes?"

"I need you to take five people and go check for survivors at the south-west crash site, corporal." She said, turning around and not waiting for a response. Edwyn cocked an eyebrow.

"Er, Sarge, I'm not a-"

"You are now. Felix caught some shrapnel to the jaw when we took that AA round in the air. If you're that terrified of a little fuckin' responsibility we can make it temporary, but you're a big kid now, O'Byrne. Get a move on." She walked away before he could protest. He swore under his breath and ran to grab five people. New one's, people he didn't know. He wasn't expecting trouble, but he wasn't going to be responsible for getting a buddy killed.

As they hustled to the crash site, he caught a glimpse of himself in the small part of his rifle's metal reciever that was still clean enough to be reflective. Tired green eyes, and dark hair and stubble that were both long enough to get him reprimanded if there was an inspection soon, but there was never an inspection. He stood at least a couple of inches taller than even the tallest of his five companions, his fatigues just a little too short in the sleeves on account of the length of his arms. His attention was pulled away from himself, however, as they approached the smoking wreckage. He grimaced, the outlook for anyone who was inside wasn't terribly promising.

He ran over as he saw someone crawling from the wreckage. A soldier, a woman, one of their own. He helped her up and gave her a quick glance over to make sure that she wasn't bleeding profusely or that a bone wasn't sticking out somewhere, not that he was qualified to help if that had been the case. He didn't recognize her, but whether she was new or whether they had just never ran into each other, he couldn't be sure.

"I'm pri- er, Corporal O'Byrne, from Dropship 3. Are you okay?" He said, slowly, maybe a little too loud for how close they were standing. "Do you know if there are any other survivors in there?" He pointed toward the wreckage. He wasn't super confident that there would be, but if she'd made it out, maybe others had, too.

The World of Aerion

Drostan Welm, Kinslayer

Name: Drostan Welm (Under an assumed name, "Osmund Griff")

Age: 31

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Country of Origin: Ethora (Claims Falke)

Appearance:

image

Personality: A sort of burnt-out idealist, his former devotion to egalitarianism has been tempered by time into aimless hate of hierarchy,
class, and authority. However, this hate is kept in check by a sense of cynicism and resignation (as well as a touch of alcholism), that way things are is the way they will probably always be. This manifests in a feeling of weariness that almost radiates off of him.

But, there are moments when his former self peaks through. Get him talking about his beliefs, and you may not get him to stop. He can manage some dry wit, when he bothers to try. He has a sort of default respect for most people, regardless of race, sex, or class, but it doesn't seem to extend to the wealthy or the noble.

Once very confident in himself and his abilities, staggering defeat has humbled him greatly. He's cautious, doubly so when he's responsible for other people. He has deep-seated self-doubt, though he usually tries to swallow it. No one wants to hire an insecure mercenary.

History: The second son of Lord Robert Welm, Drostan led an incredibly privileged childhood. Free from the burden of inheriting his father's title, since his older brother would be heir, he was free to more or less do as a pleased. He learned a few things about himself early-on. He liked to fight (with both blades and words), he liked to read, and he really liked to travel. Beginning at age twelve Drostan accompanied his uncle on economic and diplomatic journeys to the surrounding nations. Falke was his favorite, and there he got his hands on the writings of Elven and early Falkian thinkers. This, combined with the things he saw in his travels, left him with the vague sense that something was wrong. He couldn't quite put his finger on why, or how he would go about fixing it, but the way things were didn't sit quite right. When he was eighteen, his uncle died, and his travels were suspended for the time being. He stayed once more in his family's home, developing his martial skills with his brothers and reading everything he could get his hands on.

When he was twenty-one he began writing things of his own. A sort of synthesis of all he'd read, combined with his own observations, Drostan's brand of social and economic egalitarianism was entirely too radical for much of the nation, though it did find some purchase among the very lowest rungs of society. Realizing his work was sort of seditious, he sent it around anonymously. He let only one person know that he was the one writing it, his childhood friend, Sir Garren Curtis, a knight sworn to his house.

He tried to live a more typical Ethoran noble life, participating in a number of tournaments over the next few years. Though he often did quite well, he was never able to win one. He courted Alys Curtis, a cousin of Garren's, and was engaged to be married. At twenty-six, however, just a few weeks prior to his wedding date, Drostan had a crisis of conscience. Surrounded by wealth and privilege, he couldn't escape a lingering sense of guilt, that people suffered while he lived so comfortably.

So, Drostan and Garren slipped out one night with a handful of soldiers who bought into his ideas. They carried with them copies of Drostan's earlier writing, and rode to rally townsfolk and farmers to his cause, with limited success. After a week, he had gathered about two dozen people. Against Garren's advice, the small group of radicals decided to mount a poorly planned coup. After some successful raids on merchant caravans and the such, Drostan decided that he was going to try and kill the king. This failed spectacularly. Their attempt to ambush a carriage that was supposed to be carrying the king went awry as the carriage's guards put up a much better fight than expected. Drostan's forces were more or less dismantled. Garren was captured, and Drostan was forced to flee. The king wasn't even in the carriage.

In hiding, all but a handful of his followers deserted him. Eventually, he was found. Sir Garren Curtis had been tortured into revealing the location of Drostan's hideout, and then was promptly executed. A manhunt, led by Drostan's own father, came upon them in the night. Drostan's few remaining allies were slain and he was cornered. Fully expecting to die, Drostan put up the best fight he could, and in the process killed his father. But Drostan wasn't killed, he was taken away in chains.

His older brother made a show of stripping Drostan of his lands, titles, and nobility, erasing his name from House Welm's lineage. He was guilty of treason, and to be hanged like a commoner. However, hours before his execution, his younger sister, Amelia, visited him in his cell. She hated him for killing their father, but she had been in love with Sir Garren, and couldn't forgive the kingdom for torturing him. She bribed a guard to free him, and secured him passage to Falke, but left him with a warning. If he ever came back to Ethora, she'd kill him herself. Drostan believed her.

In Falke, he created a new identity. He became Osmund "Oz" Griff, a Falkian mercenary. He lived in Falke for a couple years, studying the spear and trying unsuccessfully to learn archery. Work was scarce, however, and so at twenty-nine he left for Miraheim in search of opportunity. There, he worked independently for some time before falling in with Varian's group.

Weapon Preference: Drostan wields an unremarkable, circular wooden shield in his offhand, and a Falkian short-spear in the dominant hand. He keeps a more traditionally Ethoran one-handed sword on his hip, but he hasn't used it in quite some time.

Side: Mercenaries