Peik

The Elder Scrolls: Eye of the Hurricane

A Man of Nibenay

Name: Garo Secundus Minassian
Race: Imperial
Age: 32
Birthsign: The Lady
Family Origins: Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil

Appearance:

_{A portrait of Garo upon his return from Elsweyr}

With a somewhat thick figure and a welcoming expression on his face, Garo is about as Imperial as Imperial gets. Standing about 5’9’’, Garo’s silhouette stands rather average, although his large brown eyes, expressive, long eyebrows and thick neck do allow him bear a certain visual presence. His thick nose juts down from between his eyes like a stone pillar, flaring right above his reddish lips, whose vibrant color creates a slight contrast with his fair skin. While a curly reddish beard further accentuates his wide chin, his hairline has not been so lucky and, save a widow’s peak stalwartly hanging on, the remainder of his brown hair has entered a recession.

Garo carries himself with confidence, and though he is not muscular enough to look threatening or bear any martial connotations, his limbs are thick enough to persuade most from challenging his body language. Should he show it, Garo’s presence can be felt even when he is in a large crowd; the man seems certain that he has a right for the attention he attracts, and does not exert any caution in acting like he owns it, either. All this is further reinforced by a strong voice, which Garo holds commendable control over – it is not deep or fundamentally intimidating, but he has a stark voice, and he will make it heard should it be a necessity.

His attire, while not extravagant, also speak of a similar level of confidence; his green coat bears false sleeves, is fastened with silk cords and is trimmed with light embroidery, and his leggings are of a red color. Although he has a dagger tucked into his white, florally patterned waist sash, a sword belt also dangles below it, the weapon’s scabbard decorated with a velvet covering. A camel hair cape acts as his all-purpose insulator, being strong enough to deflect glancing blows, and wonderfully keeping cool in the summer and keeping warm in the winter.

While his physique is devoid of any scar or tattoo or any other kind of marking, Garo’s palms are lightly marred with dark, discolored spots, like faded ink spots; a side effect of the various dyes and alchemical substances that he had to handle in his youth.

---

Personality: Garo is a rational man, awfully rational, maybe one could say – oftentimes finding himself in situations far too irrational for his liking. Of course, he’s not an insufferable genius who is constantly infuriated with the world not playing by his whims, on the contrary, Garo has a strange, almost saintly resignation to the ways of the world, often finding the situations he finds himself in more darkly funny than truly harrowing. He’s come to realize that his plans may not go the way he wants and has become an adaptive creature, trying to present an amiable impression towards anyone he meets, not out of some moral duty, but merely because it is convenient. While he bears no joy in the more disturbing aspects of survival and adult life, he’s accepted them for what they are and, though he does not enjoy it, does not see himself above relying on them as a last resort.

A Nibenese gentleman at heart, Garo can be quite jolly when the opportunity presents himself, and although some may see this as a vice rather than a virtue, does have a streak of greed in his veins, never averse to a little profit. Perhaps the only thing keeping this in check is the well-earned wisdom that sometimes, moral profit outweighs financial profit, and Garo, while not a frivolous spender of money, is not above making ‘moral and social investments’ for his friends and comrades. Garo is often a serious man but can be witty when he needs, or wants to be – and although he hides it well, he can get about as petty as everyone else. Still, even though he is not without his darker side, if things should take a turn for the brutal, Garo does not have it in him to be actively life-threatening. He is a self-defender at best and a passive observer or a runaway at worst.

---

History: Garo has always considered himself a city man, and his story, fittingly, begins in a city – the City of Cheydinhal. Of course, born a Minassian, it would be hard to separate the early chapters of his life from the story of the Minassians – a family of well-known glassmakers, the family profession easily traced all the way back to Vvardenfell in the Third Era, being one of the few families brought along by the East Empire Company to overtake local glass production for the Empire. By the time Garo was born, however, the family was but a vestige of its former days, as with most of the rest of the Empire. Vvardenfell was long gone, with all their holdings and estates there, and the Minassian family had stooped down to the production of common glass. Still, once a craftsman, always a craftsman – even with such great losses, the family business soldiered on, as it had through the centuries.

Garo, named after a long-dead patriarch of the family just like one elder brother, was the eighth of thirteen brothers, all of them toiling in the family workshop. Their father, Aram, was a strict disciplinarian, more a master to his workers than a father to his children. That is not to say that Aram was a cruel, loveless or unfair man; the business had simply occupied too large a part of his life for him to see family outside the business. Schooled at home by his mother, Anush Minassian, until he was old enough to bear the heat of the workshop, Garo found himself handling the warm produces of the workshop to carry to the market at the age of thirteen. Minassian glass was in high demand, even outside Cheydinhal, and Aram’s ties to various wandering merchants meant that they got a cut from sales outside the province, let alone the city. It was not a significant amount of money, for the bulk of the profit still came from personal orders, but the fact that Minassian glass was a thing meant quite a lot to the man.

Of course, this all did not mean much to young. The Minassian family was respected in the city community, but there were greater families than them, Imperial, Breton, even Dunmer – the Indarys family, for one, founders of the Thorn Knights and Heroes of the Oblivion Crisis. Garo knew and appreciated the meager wealth and luxuries that he could only enjoy thanks to being Minassian, and while he did not want to downplay how glad he was for those, couldn’t there be a way to rise above molding and rolling red-hot glass all day? Garo yearned to find out, and in an attempt to do so, began spending more of his free time in the market, befriending traders and investing in safe venues such as antiques. His mother Anush, having been educated in the Synod as a youth, knew of Daedric tongues, and so he could easily verify if the things he bought were fake or not. One Ashlander idol, one fake Akaviri Katana and one giant’s thumb later, Garo finally found something of use – a Dwemer auto-drill, which, with the help of a carpenter and a blacksmith, was converted into a dough kneading machine for his mother.

While Aram was personally cautious about his son’s seemingly meaningless hobby, did not voice any concerns or act to stop him; it was his son’s own money, and he figured his son was old enough to know the value of it. It was a pleasant surprise when he found out that Garo was also selling them and even making a meager profit. What he definitely did not expect, however, was Garo approaching him with a business proposition one day. Still, his son had grown old enough to grow facial hair, and so, recognizing him as a fellow adult than one of his younger sons, he decided to sit down and hear what Garo was to say. It was not about antiques, as he expected, but instead a long and well-framed explanation of how they weren’t making all the money they could from exports; were a member of the Minassian family sell their wares by themselves, instead of selling them to a trader for them to sale wherever, they would be bringing in far more money.

Aram was more a craftsman than a tradesman, but he could tell a profitable deal when he saw it. Garo was far from his best glassworker, and he understood, from the very fact that Garo himself showed the opportunity, that the boy’s aptitude was outside the workshop. And thus, Aram loaned Garo the money necessary to join a trading caravan – were Garo to make a loss, he would have to pay for it; were Aram to make a profit, he would get his fee and the Minassian workshop would get its rightful due. For a true, dyed-in-the-wool tradesman, it wasn’t exactly the best deal, but for Garo, whose primary motivation was to get himself some agency than to get himself some Septims, it was perfectly acceptable. The young Imperial got to work immediately – he bought two small wagons, two horses, the precautions necessary for the glass to not shatter on the way to its destination, and off to Skyrim he was sent.

Garo’s journey towards the cold lands of the North was not a particularly favorable one, for even though he’d sold off half his inventory in Bruma (there was an upcoming wedding and the groom’s father wanted the best of the best), the journey through the Jerall Mountains made it a nerve-wracking endeavor to traverse with a wagon full of glassware. By the time they were down the Pale Pass and in Helgen, Garo had sacrificed one of his horses to save a wagon, and loaned the dogs of a musher in its place. Thankfully, the clientele of Whiterun were affluent enough for Garo to sell some of his remaining stock to make up for his losses during the journey, and from Whiterun on, it was smooth sailing. Plains were crossed, giants were observed from afar, and many an astonishing sight was witnessed on the way to Solitude, as if to strengthen Garo’s desire to stay on the road. It wasn’t without its problems, of course, but what experience was free to man without any toil and suffering?

It was in Solitude where Garo revealed the crown jewels of his wares; flexible glass. Folks first thought of it as Malachite, but Garo was quick to prove the claimants otherwise by help of an alchemist who appraised it. While not as durable as something made of Malachite, it was bona fide glass, as opposed to a material with a glassy look, and more importantly, it was far cheaper. Though he’d only brought one exhibition piece and one dinner set, it was bought for the Blue Palace itself, selling for more than the worth of his entire wagon. While he would later learn that his profit from the dinner set was due to noble families competing for a unique gift for an upcoming wedding, and not because of its actual value, the profit was made, and so was the point – this was all the proof Garo needed for his father to continue this new business venture. In a hurry to bring the good news, Garo even sold the wagons to make for a faster return.

The entrepreneur’s return was much celebrated by the family, and the money he made was well accepted. Turned out that, in Garo’s absence, a fire had broken out in one of the apprentice workshops, and although insured, compensations had to be made for the families of the workers that had lost their lives. While the family was tangled in the ensuing busywork, Garo learned that his father had already paid for preparations for a repeat trip, this time with a much larger stock. Unable to explain the conditions in which he’d made such money, he found himself obliged to make even bigger profits, and with a younger brother in tow, he was sent again to Skyrim. While anxious about the increased responsibilities at first, on the road up to the Jeralls, he found enough time to socialize with his younger brother, Decimus, to realize that others in the family shared his feelings about the business. Perhaps it was brotherly vigor, or perhaps it was the desire to see his desires act further, but Garo managed to put his fears aside and begin considering how they could make a profit from the trip that they had found themselves in.

More knowledgeable about the Pale Pass than the last time, the brothers Minassian were able to pass the border without issue, and although the sights of Skyrim were no less exhilarating to see the second time than the first, foreboding omens clouded the brothers’ journey. Learning that the High King was killed on their way to Solitude, and that Nord separatists, named Stormcloaks, were rebelling throughout the land, Garo and Decimus decided to avoid the possible rumble awaiting them in the city and made their way back to Whiterun to unload their remaining goods, and leave the province for good. However, they ended up finding themselves beset by separatist bandits on the road. Decimus was about to unsheathe his sword when Garo decided to leave one wagon behind as an offering and get away with Decimus on the second. Although the bandits were quick to turn back on their heels once they found that the wagon was full of glassware, the brothers’ wagon had covered enough distance for the bandits to decide the chase was not worth it.

The rest they had in Whiterun was short, and was not exactly filling them with confidence. Glassware was not exactly in high demand during times of civil war, and the brothers had unloaded their wagon for a pittance. Decimus was fearful of looking like a failure upon their return, and Garo was fearful of his venture being shut down. But fear was no cure for fate, and thus, they accepted their lot and decided to return. While passing through Helgen, Decimus remarked of the Colovians’ demand for the beverages of the north, and Garo made his last gamble, buying some barrels of Helgen Juniper Mead before making their way back home. Their wagons filled with booze, their hearts filled with fear, the brothers made their way through the Pale Pass into the Jeralls – and woke in the early day to unearthly roars, bearing witness to a great black dragon laying waste to the town they’d spent the other day in.

Alduin had made the brothers rich.

Descending hurriedly to Bruma with news of the situation, the brothers were first lauded as fearmongers, but when official reports of Helgen’s destruction reached the city, they were promptly summoned to report for the Count of Bruma. For their ‘service to the Empire’, they were given a meager sum of money, but they would later learn that the jackpot lay in their wagons. With the breweries of Helgen burnt to ash, and their workers similarly gone, the brothers Minassian were in all likelihood the owners of the single largest amount of the remaining Juniper Mead on all Tamriel, a vessel with which they could strike deep into the pockets of rich Colovians. Saving a barrel for the family to keep, the brothers began traveling through Colovia, telling tales of how Alduin had laid waste to an entire town before their very eyes, and then selling the heavily impressed, fearful Nords the ‘last bottles of Helgen’s finest’. By the time they returned to Cheydinhal, their purses were full of gold.

Nonetheless, the experience was not without its damage. Garo was somewhat harrowed by their fear of being attacked through the journey, and the apocalyptic sight of an antediluvian monster wiping out a city before his very eyes was not exactly beneficial for his mindset. He quit traveling for a while, leaving it to his more adventurous brother Decimus and whoever Decimus could convince, himself taking to bookkeeping for the family’s trade venture and planning for the future. He began reading up on contemporary accounts of the Dominion, wondering if there was any money to be made in the southern provinces – they would not have the protection of the Empire, but it was not like it had served them any in Skyrim anyway. He figured that Aram would not mind if he spent some time for himself, having created an excellent business opportunity for the family to capitalize upon and bringing in the lion’s share of the profit.

Garo’s next five years were spent at home, refining himself – at first, he joined the town militia in case of the Civil War going awry and reaching south, although the Cheydinhal Trained Band soon proved to be no more than a bunch of grown men dressing and marching like soldiers. Nonetheless, because of his status as a member of a prominent family, and his presence in the militia, he was approached by a Knight of the Thorn to be inducted into their brotherhood. Garo accepted the offer and quickly made use of his newly forged connections to make his family the sole supplier of glassware for the young nobles that were now his brothers-in-arms. From his knighthood onward, Garo spent most of his time joining the Knights in hunting parties, drinking parties and, well, just parties. Not only was it a good time, but it also allowed him to deepen his family’s influence in the city, which never hurt.

It was around this time when Garo, constantly urged by his parents to settle down and start a family of his own, decided to heed their advice. While he’d had a few escapades in his youth, and some short-stint lovers to accompany his partying with the Knights of the Thorn, when he looked back upon it, there was nothing concrete in his personal life. He began accompanying his mother Anush to ladies’ gatherings, and after hours upon hours of listening to the tales of the wives of burghers and stealing glances at their daughters, he eventually found a suitable candidate. Elena Albarnian was her name, a well-built lass about eight years younger than Garo, and even though Anush was concerned about her having Colovian or Nord ancestry, her argument being that no true Nibenese woman could stand at the same height as a man, the Albarnian family was well established for their reputable ancestry as bankers, and more importantly, Garo had found something captivating in the girl’s gaze.

The marriage was arranged quickly, his father and his brothers congratulating Garo on finding a proper girl with a proper family (think of all the investments they could make!), and although Elena was not entirely loveless towards Garo, finding him a decent man, their feelings for each other did not seem to go beyond the initial spark. Along with that came the problem of Elena’s father, Hasphat, dying soon after their marriage – with no living child other than Elena and two other daughters, there was no man left to handle the family business, and the responsibility fell on his sons-in-law, one of them being Garo. Being properly introduced to his in-laws at a rather tense dinner, he found that oversight of the Albarnian banks were divided to three upon Hasphat’s death, with Garo being responsible for the bank’s activity in Elsweyr and Valenwood. While somewhat peeved about his lack of consent to his new responsibilities, Garo was not exactly in a position to refuse and ended up abiding, for the sake of his newly wed wife, if nothing else.

Of course, after some dinners and some time, Garo would receive news that his in-laws had used their position to take considerable loans from the Imperial Treasury, before selling their shares in the bank and running off to parts unknown; last Garo heard, they were in southern Morrowind, supposedly planning an expedition to Akavir. Whatever the plans of the two were, Garo found that he alone was responsible for paying off the in-laws’ loans, as to not get into further legal trouble with the bank’s new shareholders – one fat and quarrelsome Dunmer by the name of Helseth Girano, and one Khajiit whose name he forgets, even fatter than Helseth – and worse, the Imperial Treasury itself. Garo began seeing to the liquidation of the bank, considering it the safest option since he had no knowledge of banking nor any enthusiasm for it, and made his way to Elsweyr with the fat Khajiit to proceed.

And boy, it was a doozy.

Caught up in a chain of events involving a completely emptied bank vault, at least three drug syndicates, an attempted coup, a Daedric cult, a gigantic toad swordmaster and copious amounts of Skooma, Garo found himself returning to Cyrodiil three years later a disheveled, balding mess, and found that he was legally declared dead and that his wife had inherited his share of the Minassian wealth and remarried. While Garo did not hold any contempt against his now ex-wife, since he himself wasn’t sure if the whole ordeal wasn’t a dying dream, the fact that he was alive started a lengthy legal battle, which he was only able to fund thanks to his family. Some years later, the court was settled, with Garo still responsible for liquidating the bank assets in Valenwood, and Elena still a divorcee. In debt to his family both spiritually and financially, and in debt to the Imperial Treasury, Garo ended up journeying to Valenwood to wrap up his business, and had just managed to write off the Albarnian Bank and chase new trade opportunities with the Dominion before finding himself tangled in yet another adventure.

Biggest Regret: While he has since been divorced, Garo considers marrying his ex-wife Elena to be the worst mistake of his life, mostly because of the matters that he found himself having to contend with after marriage. He is still partial to Elena and the two are coolly civil with each other, but nonetheless, having lost nearly three years in Elsweyr, and almost his life, in trying to save his in-laws' debts from taking his family down with them, Garo is understandably not very chill about the matter.

Garo‘s Goal: Garo has a simple goal in life, to be rich enough to not worry about work or debts anymore. While he is not without greed, the goal is fueled more by a desire to settle back down and live his life in peace, rather than a Sisyphean desire to amass more money.

---

Skills:

Expert: Mercantile
Adept: Alchemy, Hand-to-Hand, Speechcraft
Novice: Acrobatics, Athletics, One-Handed Blade

Spells:
None

Equipment:
-A burgher’s outfit
-A sword belt
-A potion satchel
-A Nibenese sword
-A Khajiiti dagger
-A Camel hair cape
-A purse heavy with Septims

Misc. Possessions:
-A quill and inkwell set
-A few wraps of parchment
-A bundle of financial documents
-A ledger of sales
-A personal journal

Fruits of Contention - Wayrest

_{Guest appearance by @Gcold}

---

Morning, Black Seed 18
Black Wastes, High Rock

Oren woke to a knock at the door.

“Yes?”

“Uh, you wanted me to wake you up at this time, sir.”

“Eight already?”

“Yes sir.”

“Mhm.”

The wooden frame of the king-sized bed groaned and creaked underneath as Oren rolled to the side of the bed, only stopping its anguished screaming once Oren put his feet on the ground. Oren had perhaps been its harshest trial as of yet – while he’d heard of cousins having to deal with Orcs making love atop them near the Wrothgarian mountains, the town of Black Wastes wasn’t, despite its name, a place where folks of such savage repute would visit, let alone try copulating in. A freak accident, the bed hoped. Oren was a freak accident the likes of which it would not have to bear again.

Oren himself was not exactly satisfied with the bed’s performance, its constant creaking and less than ideal size proving challenges before him as he attempted to fall asleep. Then again, the town was just not up to his standards in general – the innkeeper’s cooking wasn’t really what it was hyped to be by the townsfolk, his tea too bitter, his duck too dry, his stew too watery, and while the weather was a welcome change from the aridness of the Alik’r desert, it still did not have the refreshing quality of coastal cities. Ah, how he longed for Sentinel…

He got up from bed, got dressed, grabbed his belongings and left the room.

The moment he closed the door, he came face to face (well, face to chest) with the innkeeper, a small man by the name of Regnier. Rubbing his palms against his apron to wipe the sweat off, the man took a breath before speaking.

“Um, I normally don’t bother customers as they are leaving the room, but since you seem to be in a hurry and because of the, um, expenses yesterday, I was thinking perhaps we would have a chat…”

“Naturally. What do I owe you?”

Regnier breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Uh, with the nightly fee of 20 Septims, and the food expenses amounting to about 120, you would have to pay about 140 Septims, sir.”
Oren pouted for a moment, which seemed to scare Regnier.

“I don’t have that kind of money. Did you charge me for the single room, or the couples’ room? You said it would be okay if I took the couples’ room because I don’t fit the other beds.”

“I, well, I’ve already done that…”

“Oh.”

Oren rubbed his chin in contemplation, his face coming to a scowl. Regnier’s hands clenched into trembling fists, but before his fears of the Redguard having breakfast with his limbs came to be, Oren raised a finger in enthusiasm.

“I have an idea.”

---

The gathering in the backyard was composed mostly of children, and mothers nagged into submission by their children – despite the limited clientele, the number of viewers who had been persuaded into paying the 5 Septim entry fee numbered well over thirty. Regnier had done no more than buying the kids’ attention with promise of free sweets being distributed after the event, not an empty promise, considering the amount of dried lemon peels he had gathering dust in his basement. Of course, Oren’s marketing campaign was a bit more in-your-face, with him carrying a fully matured ox on his back. Had this advertisement been for a more sophisticated endeavor, it could’ve been called tasteless, but since when were strongmen shows about nuance?

Oren walked towards center stage with a practiced swagger, with a boulder on his back instead of an ox, and after placing the boulder on the ground, began the show by bringing his hands together with a loud clap. Perhaps it was an insult towards the Iron Palm, making a show of its sacred salute, but he preferred not to think about that too much. The children cheered; the adults seemed curious, and Oren knew this was the time to start. He grasped onto the rock as if clasping his fingers into sackcloth, and then, slowly began rotating around his own axis, dragging the boulder in circles around him. What began as an odd performance proceeded to pick up the pace quick, however.

At a certain point, Oren actually pulled the boulder off the ground, and began whirling around himself like an intoxicated dervish, steadily getting faster and faster, and at the moment his whirling reached its top speed, Oren pulled his arm up and let the boulder fly into the air, far enough that the onlookers had to raise their heads to see where it had gone. Taking a few steps back as a precaution, Oren silently began counting, and at the count of three, the boulder came crashing down into the ground with a loud bang right where Oren had been, shattering to pieces underneath its own weight. While the shockwave sent the already dizzied Redguard down on his rear end, and the amount of dust raised by the slam kept him from seeing anything, he could faintly hear thunderous applause – shaking his head a bit, his vision cleared enough to let him see the onlookers clapping with amazement, and a resourceful Regnier walking by them to collect tips.

“Nice,” he thought to himself, a touch of pride beating within his heart, and promptly fell to his side for a quick nap.

Gustav had watched the whole performance, because he still had an hour to kill before the caravan departed, and he was impressed.
Sadri had watched it too, because Gustav had dragged him along.

“Can't say I was expecting such a gargantuan man.” Gustav noted to Sadri. “Our next opposition wouldn't either, for this Redguard could have stood toe to toe against the Kamal. Failing that, he would be an excellent laborer. And failing labor, he would make a fine arrow sponge.”

“Well, Quartermaster Beleth,” Gustav decided, “your first duty as a company officer will be recruiting this strongman. Make him an offer he can't refuse.”

“You mean an actual offer, or like, an offer you can’t refuse-” Sadri tried to ask, but before he could finish his sentence, he found that his employer had disappeared. He admired the man’s proficiency at being able to disappear whenever he wanted to, but that didn’t make said proficiency any less annoying. “Oh well,” he thought. “I suppose it’s part of the job now. Make of the orders what you will, make the right choice.” Was it a good idea, still being part of this inauspicious crew, with nearly every single one of his fellow veterans dead or gone? “Best not think of it, Beleth. Best not think of it.”

The old Dunmer walked past the dispersing crowd to the midst of the so-called ‘show ring’. For all intents and purposes, he was now in the lion’s den – mess it up and you’ll make a fool of yourself in front of your employer, and that’s at best. Given the size of the absolute unit napping on the ground right in front of him, and given the show he just witnessed, it was not unreasonable to believe that a potential mishap could lead to yet another near-death experience. Or perhaps beyond that? Despite all the dejection inside him, left over from the years, he didn’t want to find out anytime soon. At the very least, not like this. Not so… trivial.

“Hey,” Sadri spoke out, his shadow cast over the Redguard’s face. “Nice show you’ve put on there.”

“Hm?” A groggy Oren grunted, his eyes blinking repeatedly.

“Do you lie down right after the show on purpose, or is it just a heat of the moment thing?”

Oren was not particularly amused with this attempt at camaraderie.

“What’s it to you?”

“Just want to know how much of it is planned, is all,” Sadri replied, having decided to play it unapologetic. “A man dedicated to his craft is one thing; a freak of nature is another.”

Sadri was hitting all the wrong buttons. Oren pushed himself up from the ground with the side of his hand as if he weighed a tenth of what he did, standing to tower over Sadri. “You have a problem with me, ash skin?” He asked, his voice deeper than usual.

The Dunmer knew he had to stay his ground to not fuck things up. “Fortune favors the bold, doesn’t it, Sadri? Play it bold.” He looked up at Oren’s face, seemingly nonplussed. He convinced himself that his courage was not without reason – he’d recently outlived a Sload of legend on the battlefield, and survived a cabal of vampires days ago. If Sadri had reason to fear this Redguard, then the Redguard had reason to fear him, gods be damned.

“The former’s more useful than the latter in my craft, you see. A mer like me has to stay on the lookout for candidates. For strong folks. Dependable folks.”

“Huh.” Oren’s brows rose. “What sort of craft are we speaking of here?”

The Dunmer smiled. “Oh, I’m sure you know. Being a force multiplier for folks who pay. And folks are paying big these days… After all, it’s either their coin or their lives. There’s plenty of trouble coming from the East that don’t take money for an answer.”

“I’ve heard. More trouble than I can handle.”

Sadri chuckled. “You ever see yourself in the mirror, mate?”

Oren’s burrows furrowed, his eyes glinting with malice. “You’ve something to say about it?”

“Yeah, I do. We could use a guy like you. I’ve only one arm and more holes in me than a slice of Eidar, yet I can take them in single combat. It’s not like we’re sitting your ass on a catapult and throwing you at them. You’ll get yourself some fine payment, too. After all, our headman wants you as a bodyguard.”

Oren raised his head, and began rubbing his chin. His eyes went down to meet Sadri’s.

“A bodyguard, eh?”

The Elder Scrolls: Legacy

“I really should’ve gotten a pet, in retrospect. A retriever, maybe. Wouldn’t have to bother with all this... You see it?”

“I saw it, alright. Think it fell over there… See that? On the bush? It’s blood.”

“Hm. Yeah, I’ll go and grab it. You have another sack?”

“Just give me a second...”

While Ioannis’ reluctant hunting partner Polonius fumbled with the knot of sacks hanging off his bandolier, Ioannis himself crouched into the bush, reaching at the roots with his hand to find and grasp their dying quarry. After a few seconds of touching thorny branches, Ioannis’ hand finally made contact with the textured toes of the bird he’d shot – another pheasant. This hunt was shaping up to be a bountiful, if not repetitive one. He pulled the bird from underneath the bush, unsheathed his sword just enough to reveal its cutting edge, then cut the pheasant’s neck open on it. The animal bled out within seconds.

“The sack.”

“There, there,” Polonius said, holding out the sack towards the kneeling Ioannis. “We’re lucky, you know. Neither of us has a trousse. If we’d found any big game, we would’ve had to drag it all the way back to town.”

“I’d watch my tongue if I were you. Speak of the devil, and in he walks. Wouldn’t want to deal with anything of the sort at this point.”

“With all your talk of science, I wouldn’t have expected you to be a superstitious one, Ioannis.”

“I’m not superstitious. I just think that the world has a dark sense of humor.”

“Always the poet, aren’t you,” Polonius said, shrugging. Ioannis, having finished stuffing the pheasant into the sack, tied its mouth shut and offered it back to his aide.

“Here, be of some use,” Ioannis snarked.

“I thought you were carrying them?” Polonius retorted, unexpectedly agitated. The premise of having to carry more than what he was already carrying was one that he had not expected, it seemed.

“I’m already carrying five of them, you dimwit. For Mara’s sake, just take the damn thing.”

“Fine, fine.” Polonius snatched the sack from Ioannis’ hands. “And I’m not a dimwit, you know. I’ve spotted all this game for you-“

Loud rustles shut them both up. Something was making its way through the woods. Something large.

ROOOONK

The rustling got louder. They could hear cracking sounds – from branches caving in underneath their new guest’s legs, no doubt – from the way it sounded, it was coming towards them.

“Ah, Mara have mercy! The spear! Ready your spear!”

Dropping the sack, Polonius braced his spear forward just in time for its tip to pierce into the chest of the charging assailant. This did not stop it, however, and the beast – a large boar, frothing at the mouth – simply pushed itself further into the spear, knocking a screaming Polonius down on his rear. Ioannis drew his sword and struck at the beast’s face, but the frenzied boar simply whacked Ioannis’ hand away with its tusks to deflect the strike and cried again, this time equally in anger and in pain.

RRRROOOOOONNNNNNNNK

“Do something! DO SOMETHING!” Polonius roared, his hands barely keeping the shaft of the spear stable. Despite the lugs on the spearhead made specifically for the purpose of keeping a boar moving in further and goring the wielder, either its flared tip had made a wound too wide for this to apply, or this boar was simply too angry to care.

Ioannis first looked for his sword, but then, deciding it to be useless against this monster, grabbed onto his air bow. Unlatching the tube open with a pull of the forwardmost trigger, his sweaty hands then proceeded to fumble open the satchel of shot on his belt. Grabbing a handful of shot, he dropped some, but then again, he only needed one for this – he likely wouldn’t get another shot anyway. Stuffing the lead ball down the breech of the tube, Ioannis snapped it back shut, and began furiously cranking the spanner backwards to fill the weapon’s mechanism with enough air. The moment the weapon reached maximum pressure, he rushed forward, pressed the muzzle of the bow’s tube right behind the boar’s eye, and pulled the trigger.

The weapon went off with a silent crack, and with it, the boar went silent, leaving only a hyperventilating Polonius as a source of sound in the midst of the clearing.

“…Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

---

The two hunters who were making their way through the city walls seemed to be exhausted, but also proud – in fact, one even could notice a smug sense of superiority on the one who wasn’t pulling the ramshackle sled with a dead boar on it. Then again, despite all the load he was bearing, the one bearing a spear seemed no less happy.

They came to a stop in the midst of the town square, looking at each other. “So, what’ll you do now?” Polonius asked.

“I’ve heard that there’s an ‘Adventurer’s Guild’ or something that’s been recently set up nearby,” Ioannis replied, stretching his arms. “I’m running short on money, and I know I’m not going to find hunting partners every other time. No need to risk finding my own work and running alone in the woods when I can just hole up amongst those boys… So, you agreeing to my offer or what?”

Polonius puffed.

“Oh, fine. Have the damn boar. Not like I want to spend any more time with it anyway,” he said, dropping the piece of rope that he’d been dragging. Ioannis would’ve objected but felt that he would be pushing his luck a bit too far. “I’ll be off from here, then. You take care of yourself, and, uh, thanks for the help out there.”

“Likewise, Polonius. Likewise.”

The spear wielding hunter took off, a bundle of sacked pheasants in hand, and after watching him walk away, Ioannis began pulling at the big haul, intently walking towards his – hopefully – new place of employment.

The Elder Scrolls: Legacy

Ioannis Kyreses

Name: Ioannis Kyreses
Age: 24
Race: Imperial
Class: High Raconteur

Portrait:

_{-A painting of Ioannis at the age of 21}

Sum your life so far into a single paragraph:

I’ve had a fairly privileged life, I would argue. I was born into the cosmopolitan life, been a lad of the Imperial City, born and raised. My parents were in the entertainment business when I was younger – Maria Komena and Michalis Kyreses (Perhaps you’ve heard of them, they’re still quite famous). But I digress. I was born, spent a few years sucking on my mother’s and her friends’ tits. I wanted to join the Theatre Guild and be an actor like my parents, but my father did not want that, so I ended up getting the classical education like all the others in our neighborhood of town – rhetoric, logic, geometry. Frankly, I didn’t like it, but thankfully, before I had to seek alternatives, fortune struck; my uncle got appointed as Imperial Magistrate for the city of Cheydinhal, I convinced my parents to let me join his retinue, and with him I went. He wasn’t particularly concerned with what I was up to, so I just enjoyed the city and my privileges… though then some political matters came up and my uncle got exiled to the Imperial Embassy in Argonia, of all places. I didn’t go back to my parents. Figured I could make do by myself, and so, here I am.

What was the most difficult decision you've ever had to make?:

The answer to that, I guess, would be deciding to join my uncle’s retinue. I’ve come to know myself early on. I lived the cushy life, I loved the cushy life, I still love it. But I figured it just wouldn’t go on. You have to grow up sometime, lest you become a man-child. Staying in the Imperial City, I’d still be Michalis’ boy. I’m too proud for that, I suppose. So I just… went with it. I’ve had difficulties, sure, but so far, I wouldn’t say I’m regretful of leaving.

Tell me how other people would describe you?:

Some would call me posh; some would call me classy. Some would call me handsome I guess that means I’m somewhere in between. I do indeed like the finer things in life; the finer foods, the finer clothes, the finer women… so I don’t exactly blame people for calling me posh or dandy. But I’m not dumb, I know life isn’t all that. I don’t walk around with my nose in the air. I don’t think anybody has the right to call me a dandy just because I treat myself to a gentleman’s privileges when I can, and show a gentleman’s courtesy to others.

What are your outside interests?:

Truthfully, I’m a bit of a dilettante. I’ve got somewhat of an interest in practically every science, and more knowledge than a layman, but the rest of my knowledge relies on educated guesses. Etymology, linguistics, art, even engineering. I didn’t build it myself, but I did come up with the design for the air bow I have. Turns out it’s actually a feasible concept, even made a few demonstrations for nobility. I always wanted to write but I just don’t have the conviction for it. Honestly, I could just list all the things I’ve dabbled in here, but those would just be passing interests. If you ask for my opinion, my only true outside interests are just art, food, drink, and comfort.

What are your greatest strengths?:

Resourcefulness. I will say this without humility, I’m a resourceful man. I’ve an eye for details, an eye for gauging things. Without it I’d just be dead weight on my parents’ shoulders. I believe can read situations easy, find the important things, find ways to deal with them easily. It is like simple physics. If you rush into things head on, you just crack your head open. I mean, I’m not a weakling when push comes to shove, but if I have to deal with something, I’m always going to opt for the path of least resistance.

What are your weaknesses?:

Like every young man I dance on the fine line that separates simple comforts and indulgences from sins. If it were not for my restraint and mindfulness, the degree of hedonism in my life would make Sanguine blush. Not to say that I’m not one; I just try to orientate myself for long-term pleasure. With that said, I suppose I’ve a reluctance for more daring things. To give you an example, I may have been trained with it, but I know I do not have the same enthusiasm with the blade as some other warriors I’ve seen. I don’t like taking risks.

What are your aspirations for the future?:

I would not say that I am a very aspiring man. I only wish for a future where I can indulge in all my pleasures and hobbies without fear of reprieve or financial difficulty.

Why do you want to join this guild?:

I believe martial professions add to a man’s values of self-integrity and willpower. As a plus it will help me experience a lifestyle that I do not have much previous knowledge of. Perhaps it will help me write a big memoir, or perhaps it will help grow my repertoire of stories as a raconteur. Whatever it may be, I don’t think it would be any worse than an alternative.

As an addendum, I seem to have fairly good accuracy with my air bow, I believed it would be of more use if I could make money off it.

What are your expectations of the guild?:

Not much different than why I joined. I hope to learn how to be more comfortable with harsher things in life, meet new people, experience new things. If I can save some coins in the meanwhile, all the better.

Skill Level	Skill
Highly Proficient	Marksman
Moderately Proficient	Speech, One-Handed
Somewhat Proficient	Athletics, Stealth
Novice	Acrobatics, Unarmored

Magic School	None
Destruction	None
Conjuration	None
Restoration	None
Illusion	None
Alteration	None

Equipment Type	Item
Weapon	Air Bow, Hunting Sword
Armour	Jackboots
Food/Provisions	Dried figs, walnuts, olive oil, water, wine
Alchemical Ingredients	Fire salts, pitch
Miscellaneous	Satchels for provisions and ingredients, wads of cloth

Fruits of Contention - Wayrest

Oren Bandeli

	Oren Bandeli 7'2'' | 400 lbs. | 27 Male | Redguard | The Lover STRENGTH | Agility Rihad, Hammerfell

Profile

---

§ Appearance

The first thing that one would notice about Oren is his immense frame. Simply put, Oren is huge – standing a head or two taller than even the average Altmer, with broad shoulders not unlike a troll’s, he is a hulk of a man, and an inevitably conspicuous sight wherever he finds himself. Endowed with beastlike physique as befits his size, Oren’s limbs are unbelievably muscular as well; although despite his immense physique, this is a fact that’s hard to ascertain, thanks to the sheer amount of fat that covers his torso and limbs. Let no description or compliment lie to you – a testament to physical might may lie beneath the adipose tissue that covers Oren’s entirety, yet nonetheless, rippling shoulders and arms aside, to an outsider’s glance, Oren is simply pudgy.

While one would expect a rough, barbarian-like visage to fill this monstrous silhouette, with his plump lips, unblemished, caramel-colored skin, prominent eyelashes and sky-blue eyes, Oren looks disconcertingly refined, and quite feminine, feminine enough to the point that he has been misgendered in the past, in spite of his gargantuan stature – as a precaution to this, and an odd gesture of masculine pride, he’s taken to shaving the top of his head to ascertain his sex to onlookers. Still, even with this show of machismo, his face stands utterly devoid of facial hair, being unable to grow any thanks to hormonal deficiencies, and with his defined nose, rosy cheeks and well-shaped chin, one could say that perhaps he could’ve been a looker, beautiful, even, if he weren’t so tubby.

Despite his frame and occupation, Oren does his best at being fashionable, wearing clothes of the finest colors and fabrics of floral pattern, although with time and experience he’s figured some go-to pieces of attire for himself, opting for voluminous breeches and loosely cut, false-sleeved robes to let his body breathe, a large sash wrapped around his waist to contain his bulging belly and narrow his frame, and a cloak of a faded yellow color, to hide his physique further, and keep him from the rays of the sun, and stronger winds. His lower arms and legs are often left bare regardless of climate, with simple leather slippers being his sole choice of footwear. Still, he carries gaiters with him for occasions where bared legs would be improper.

Oren’s hands and feet are quite delicate looking, despite their huge size, and even though a glance to the back of his hand shows well-maintained knuckles, fingers and nails, the insides of his hands have hardened enough to grow into some sort of organic armor tissue that no amount of scraping seems to get rid of, much to his chagrin.

§ Motivations and Outlook

Oren considers himself to be a simple man, with simple desires and simple views of life. Romance has never appealed to him, and with his nonexistent sexual drive and capacity thanks to his childhood castration, he has no physical pleasure to gain from a lover either. Nor does he have any particular yearning for authority, having had the chance to closely observe, from his employers, how the pursuit of power drains all joy out of one’s life – with no loved ones to speak of, this too seems to him a futile venture. While he’s crossed out certain motivations, Oren does have certain drives that let him suffer through his line of work with his mind unclouded, namely, a love of food and comfort that a different type of earning would not be able to sufficiently provide for, and secondly, the hope of earning enough riches to have a chance of passing on his legacy in different ways. Although he has no genes to pass on for posterity, the idea of being forgotten, of having suffered through life for no particular reason brings fear to him nonetheless, and thus, he hopes to find a way to cement his memory via non-biological means; whether those means be achieving deeds worthy of remembered in the future, or simply paying to create an institution or structure that will outlast the lives of regular mer and men, does not particularly matter.

While he is not an unintelligent man by any margin, Oren is somewhat uneducated about the wider world, and so is somewhat superstitious about people of other cultures. Nonetheless, he is actively aware of the fact that he is an uneducated man, and is not above getting more information about things, whether it be through asking directly or using more underhanded means. As a bodyguard, he’s well educated in the art of poker face – he often uses this to his advantage, to pretend he knows things he does not, or vice versa, to attain information he would not normally get, or to check for inconsistencies in others’ narratives. Similarly, he’s found that sometimes it is necessary to leave a dumber or smarter impression for one’s convenience, and so he’s quite keen on allowing others to underestimate or overestimate him via his nonplussed demeanor. Despite this tendency, Oren is not a particularly treacherous or manipulative man, and tries his best to be a pleasant person, so long as it does not hurt his work reputation, or make him come across as weak or dependent. As slowly as he makes friends, Oren still appreciates wittier colleagues, and will often get them gifts when appropriate, usually in the form of drinks – despite not being a drinker himself.

Thanks to his lack of formal education, Oren’s not very well versed in topics that go beyond the scope of a layman, though he does have a dilettante’s affinity for art, and his decent memory helps him remember certain remarks about things fairly easily. Having been converted to the Imperial Cult fairly recently, Oren is a keen, although not very devout follower of Julianos, though he also casually reveres certain figures from the Yokudan Pantheon such as Satakal, and finds blasphemous talk about any sort of spiritual figure to attract misfortune, avoiding them if necessary. Despite being a practitioner of Alteration himself, Oren outwardly has a distrust of magic and magic users, fearful of the possibilities that dabbling in the unknown can cause. Ironically enough, despite his tough physique and external demeanor, Oren does have a sensitive side in his budding hobbies, being an avid, if not somewhat unskilled woodcarver and aspirant poet, and can become quite intense if his hobbies are made the topic of a conversation. Thanks to his rather dogmatic training in martial arts, Oren has a rather dismissive outlook on arms and armor, believing that a true warrior has no need of such tools, and claiming that the prominence of swords in Redguard culture stem from a misunderstood metaphor for ‘decisiveness’.

Oren, in spite of the fact that his castration and following health issues stem from his past as a slave, has no particularly negative outlook on slavery, thinking that the beast races make too much of a fuss over it. He also has an inherent dislike of Altmer, thanks to everyone blaming the Thalmor for the devastated Hammerfell that he grew up in.

§ Background

Truth be told, Oren’s origins are of no consequence. Having been born into a poor Forebear family whose man was a cripple of the Great War and the following Continuation War, the amount of older siblings he had meant that either he was going to be another mouth to feed on the table, or somehow be sacrificed for the good of the rest of the family. He does not remember these times well, perhaps out of repression, or perhaps because of how brief they were – he remembers his father’s mangled hand, with only a thumb left on it, he remembers his mother’s braids, but not much else. He must’ve been ‘acquired’ as a ‘servant’ fairly early on in life, because unlike his family, he remembers his owner, Mu’ad, quite well. A somewhat short, plump and dark-skinned man, rich enough to buy his slaves at infancy, maintain them, and groom them for whatever role he desired. Because of his young age, and because he needed to be taken care of, he was put amongst the females of the household, the chambermaids substituting for a mother, sometimes even acting as wet nurses and ‘doctors’ in secret, while the younger concubines pretended to be his sisters. Perhaps it was this fondness that the females of the household had for Oren, that led Mu’ad to pay for his castration – this way, Oren could continue to spend time with them well beyond childhood, while also keeping Mu’ad’s honor intact.

Oren remembers the day of his castration – taken from amongst the women by a tall, gangly eunuch, given a nice meal of spiced rice and mutton, alongside a thick, white and sweet drink that numbed the throat as he drank, then laid to sleep for a while. When Oren woke up, he was on a coarse carpet, too numb to move, with Mu’ad supervising as an elderly woman lifted his manhood and, after some handling of his privates, took off his scrotum with a single dagger stroke. It was a clean and relatively painless procedure; Oren would learn later in life that such care would not normally be taken and that the surgeries were often horrifyingly painful and fatal. What came afterwards was a long period of celebration and recuperation, for while some of the touchier chambermaids were saddened about the loss of Oren’s sexual functions, most were happy about the fact that their ‘son’ and ‘brother’ would continue staying with them. And stay he did – for the next few years, most he did was eat, and grow larger and larger, to the point that he was about the size of a well-fed Redguard warrior at the mere age of fourteen. This unprecedented growth led Mu’ad to reconsider the role he had in mind for Oren, and he was sent to Sentinel for training. What sort of training it would be Oren did not know until he was led to the adobe-walled courtyard of the school and beheld, for the first time in his life, the Iron Palms of Sentinel smashing cut rocks with their bare hands.

The following five years of Oren’s life were spent in the Iron Palm School, where he was taught the Art of Hand and Foot. Their master, Khogan, was an extremely elderly man, to the point where he could not walk from one edge of the school courtyard to the other without some sort of aid. Despite this, his utterly dense flesh and mastery over the school allowed him to poke his fingers through flesh, bone and rock in the blink of an eye. For the first time in his life since he’d eaten spiced rice, Oren was amazed, and despite his steadily growing weight made it harder and harder for him to practice, he quickly became one of the most diligent pupils of the school, earning the title of Journeyman Trainer under three years. Although some of the other members of the school looked down on Oren for his unconventional methods of combat, such as simply grabbing his opponents mid-attack and throwing them around instead of dodging and landing his own strikes, these opinions would eventually be silenced by Khogan himself, who said that Oren ‘fought like an infirm master, not a healthy pupil’. While this praise was not without its own reprimand, the teachings of the Iron Palms were quite dogmatic, and gerontocratic – that Oren was likened to a master, even if for his lack of stamina, meant for them that he could no longer be a figure of contention.

By the time Oren returned to Mu’ad’s household, he had become like a small mountain, both in size, density, and strength. Trained to use nothing but his hardened flesh in combat, he thoroughly impressed Mu’ad by showing the capability to grasp onto tempered sabers with his bare hands, and throw his owner’s master bodyguard aside like he was a piece of reed. Much to the chagrin of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’, and the previous bodyguard, Oren was assigned Mu’ad’s personal bodyguard, who had fallen into debt, and worse, sick with a growing lump in his stomach that not even magic could cure. To make up for his exorbitant health costs, Mu’ad had begun delving in the art of politics, ‘selling’ certain loyal slaves, so they could work their way to important positions in other figures’ households and provide information for his own maneuvering. Of course, Oren himself was far too vitally important to be thrown into such games, but in the following four years, Oren watched from behind his master’s back how stress and scheming drained the man further and further, leading him to eventually pale to a sickly yellow, and after a few weeks of bedridden life, die. What followed afterwards was total chaos – Mu’ad’s wives, free concubines, children, bastards, acquaintances and debt collectors all trying to get themselves a piece of the man’s wealth, suing, coercing, seducing and murdering one another to get more for themselves.

Oren himself, being a slave still, was inherited by one of Mu’ad’s sons, a young and ambitious man named Fajr. While he moved to Fajr’s household along with some of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ without making any fuss, Oren found life there to be a far less enjoyable experience, with their new owner too stressed, too greedy, and simply too cruel to internally justify being owned by. This opinion, it seemed, was not his alone; for one night, while patrolling Fajr’s bedchambers, Oren stumbled onto his owner fatally wounded, a fruit knife plunged into his throat by one of his ‘sisters’. While he comforted the bruised, traumatized woman at first, he soon found himself at a quandary – as things stood, the young woman would be executed, Oren himself sold in the public market for the lowest bidder for his incompetence, and the rest of the household scattered, bought or kidnapped. Oren decided to take another option and woke up his fellow slaves, explaining the situation, and then prompting them to take whatever they valuables they could find, buy their freedom from the flesh markets and leave for parts unknown, before someone from outside took notice. Surprisingly, it went without a fuss - the household scattered overnight, and Oren fled to Sentinel, where he used the valuables he’d taken from Fajr’s house to purchase his name off the Slave Register.

Despite being the place where he earned his freedom, Sentinel bore a tragedy of its own as well. The elderly Master Khogan had long passed away by the time Oren came back, murdered by one of his spurned students, and the events that’d followed had led to the Iron Palm School to be shut down. It was here that Oren felt despair for the first time in his life, having been so used to being led or ordered by someone else that finding out he had no masters left nearly broke him. He wandered in Sentinel for a while, trying to contact his fellow students at the Iron Palm, but the attempts turned out to be fruitless, most having either moved on, or not in the mood to make peace with whatever that had transpired. His funds were draining (Sentinel was an expensive city, and Oren had immense appetite), yet he’d made no progress; Oren realized fairly quickly that if he didn’t take action, he would be left on the streets as a gigantic bum. Figuring that he needed a roof over his head before anything else, he joined up with the Imperial Cult, taking residence in the homeless shelter that they’d converted their chapel’s basement into. It was for their mutual benefit – the mission was small and vulnerable, and Oren’s mere presence alongside them made possible harassers stay away. Oren used the chapel’s influx to start a simple self-defense course, teaching a watered-down version of the Iron Palm for those interested, receiving a meager sum in return.

What began as an arrangement of mutual benefit between Oren and the Imperial Mission eventually turned into something further; the priests of the Imperial Cult began to appreciate Oren for his helpful demeanor and the amount of young, enthusiastic people his self-defense course kept bringing in, while Oren himself began seeing actual goodwill in the toils of the Priests of the Eight Divines – led by a thin, bald man named Ionnaninus Bandelis, their Sisyphean attempts to teach Oren’s students how to read made a somewhat heartwarming impression on the gigantic man. In reality, Oren did not know how to read and write either, Mu’ad never having deemed it necessary for him to learn how – it took some time for Oren to grow the confidence inform the priests of this, but when he did it was not received with any surprise. He too became a pupil, like some of his own pupils, and soon enough (it did not take long for him to learn the basics), he could read and write with ease. As an act of gratitude, Oren swore that he would worship and honor the Divines for the rest of his days, and following that, to symbolize him being ‘a new person’, took a surname after the man who taught him how to read, being, from that moment on, Oren Bandeli.

Of course, things would not go happily ever after, and Oren would not really become a new person in the way that he hoped – instead of becoming a content monk, he became a killer, when he accidentally caved a man’s face in while trying to stop him from pissing on the Chapel walls. Word spread, and it evolved, and by the time the mob came knocking on the Chapel, they were demanding justice for the old man whose skull had been crushed by ‘that no-ball monster’ for not paying his respects while passing by the Chapel. While Oren knew that the Imperial Cult had lost its glamorous status in the province since the Great War, he did not expect that folks would come and ask for his head; he had to handle an angry, armed mob by himself for a few hours, preventing from coming in through the Chapel’s gate to hurt the others, an act that only resulted in more deaths. Eventually, the town guard came to the priests’ rescue and disperse the mob, although to placate them, Oren was sentenced to exile from Sentinel. Oren thought of this appropriate and let himself get cuffed and escorted out of the city limits, where he was left, to his surprise, without being unshackled from his iron bindings – Oren had to bash his cuffs against rocks and trees for an entire day to free himself. He followed the Iliac coastline to Lainlyn, where his reputation seemed to have reached before him; honest people would not deal with him, for what business did they have with an indiscriminate murderer?

It turned out that some people did, and soon enough Oren began getting approached by shady men who said they wanted to ‘talk’. He brushed them off the first few times, afraid that they were just muggers or troublemakers, but eventually one spoke to him plainly enough for Oren to realize that practically, he’d been brushing off job offers. There were people for whom having unscrupulous muscle on employ was a benefit, and Oren, the notorious, gargantuan outsider, was a perfect candidate. Thus, Oren found himself the personal bodyguard of a mob leader, a dandy with no teeth on one side of his mouth, aptly named Half-Mouth. Guarding a criminal was much different than guarding Mu’ad, for whom Oren was more a figure of deterrence and prestige, not actual combat; in contrast, Oren often found himself dirtying his hands with blood while keeping Half-Mouth safe, growing more and more used to it. His effectiveness grew on Half-Mouth, who began molding Oren in his shape, giving him dressing and etiquette tips; over time Oren’s reputation overshadowed even Half-Mouth’s, and perhaps this could’ve led to Half-Mouth contemplating on how to get rid of Oren, but the latter’s untimely death from a drug overdose prevented that from happening. With Half-Mouth gone, Oren could’ve inherited his organization, but he chose not to, and left for High Rock, where he made a living as a wandering debt collector until he ended up in the employ of a particular mercenary company.

Capabilities

---

§ Skills

• Expert – Hand to Hand
• Adept – Alteration
• Adept – Unarmored
• Apprentice – Acrobatics
• Apprentice – Healing
• Apprentice – Speech
• Apprentice – Throwing Weapons
• Novice – Athletics

§ Flaws

Warning, Confined Space: Oren’s immense size prohibits him from making a subtle entrance, if he can make one at all. He takes up a large portion of physical space and can have trouble going in through doors, let alone maneuvering through small, cramped areas such as tunnels.

Short, Controlled Bursts: Even with his training and the aid of meditative magic, Oren simply carries too much weight for prolonged activities of exertion – he prefers to make the most with the least amount of physical effort, and extended movement will make him need to rest for a long time.

Extra Topping, Please: While he pays for it wherever he can, Oren consumes an immense amount of food and water even in short amounts of time. His appetite is insatiable, and without it placated, his performance can drop visibly, having to deal with cramps and the psychological urges of hunger.

§ Spells

Alteration: Burden, Equilibrium, Feather, Ironflesh, Jump, Slowfall, Transmute

Healing: Fast Healing, Fast Recovery, Healing Hands

§ Tactics

Oren considers the first line of defense to be deterrence. It’s easier to win fights by convincing your opponent that fighting you will not be to their benefit, Oren thinks, and indeed when confronted with a hostile situation his first attempt will be to convince his opponents to stand down, usually through subtle intimidation. Still, Oren knows that a man needs more than one line of defense, and thankfully, has been taught how to walk the walk as much as he likes to talk the talk.

While Oren’s likely to make an impression of no more than dumb muscle, his way of combat is surprisingly technical and dependent on the subtleties of gravity – while the Iron Palm School taught him to amplify his mass and stand his ground like a rock against his opponents, Oren realized fairly quickly that it’s much more convenient and much less tiresome to simply make his opponent lose his footing, whether that be through the Art of Hand and Foot, or using Alteration to bend the laws of gravity for his convenience. He likes to be unconventional; if attacked in melee, his first response is not to avoid the strike but to actually catch it with his hands and guide it elsewhere, while amplifying the momentum of his opponent’s strike with his grasp to disrupt their balance and fling them away.

When he attacks, he likes to attack quickly and precisely, often using his feet to hook and kick at his foe’s ankles, amplifying the strength of his hits by hardening his flesh right before the moment of impact. He prefers to take the center stage of battle so that he does not exhaust himself trying to circle around opponents, although obviously that does not work against enemies who keep their distance. For them, Oren has a less subtle, more proactive and far more tiresome technique – using Alteration to propel himself towards the opponent as if he were a gigantic frog and smash into them with the strength of a catapulted rock.

Still, sometimes enemies require much less complicated methods to deal with, and Oren is not above simply caving his foes in with his fists and kicks, which would normally be applied as stomping finishers to his grounded opponents. Flattening windpipes and shattering bones may be far simpler when you can put your entire weight into the strike, but when life doesn’t give Oren the opportunity to do that, he can just smash his enemies apart, armored or not, although it’s not an approach he can keep up for long without needing rest for his and exerted muscles and mind.

§ Relations & Affiliations

Ionnaninus Bandelis, once head of the Imperial Mission in Sentinel, now assigned to a post in Cyrodiil
Rest of his relations either lost, dead or unworthy of note

§ Opinions

After introductions.

§ Crimes and Accomplishments

Crimes:

• One count of theft in Rihad, unreported
• One count of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as involuntary manslaughter, sentenced to exile as punishment
• Two counts of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as self-defense
• Two counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, unreported
• Three counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, ruled as self-defense

Accomplishments:

• Certified Journeyman Trainer of the now defunct Sentinel Iron Palm Martial Arts School
• Certified Layman of the Imperial Cult
• Once prominent criminal figure of the Lainlyn underworld

§ Other

Oren is an amateur poet.

Inventory

---

§ Cash & Valuables 74 Septims	§ Keys & Lockpicks None
§ Tools & Crafting Materials None	§ Clothing, Armor & Jewelry A wide-brimmed conical hat, made of straw A faded dark yellow cloak with black trim A brocade robe of a dark green color with yellow trim A yellow sash A pair of dark brown breeches A pair of beige gaiters A pair of yellow leather slippers
§ Weapon & Ammo None	§ Potion & Arcane Supplies Three Potions of Restore Magicka
§ Books & Documents Journeyman Trainer Certificate from the now-defunct Iron Palm Martial Arts School	§ Consumables & Ingredients Two flasks full of water A whole two-pound block of spiced, cured meat A satchel of rice
§ Bags & Containers A sack A satchel of potions A satchel of food Two large flasks made of dried gourd	§ Other A folded piece of paper, containing previously written verses

Fruits of Contention - Wayrest

Oren Bandeli

	Oren Bandeli 7'2'' | 400 lbs. | 27 Male | Redguard | The Lover STRENGTH | Agility Rihad, Hammerfell

Profile

---

§ Appearance

The first thing that one would notice about Oren is his immense frame. Simply put, Oren is huge – standing a head or two taller than even the average Altmer, with broad shoulders not unlike a troll’s, he is a hulk of a man, and an inevitably conspicuous sight wherever he finds himself. Endowed with beastlike physique as befits his size, Oren’s limbs are unbelievably muscular as well; although despite his immense physique, this is a fact that’s hard to ascertain, thanks to the sheer amount of fat that covers his torso and limbs. Let no description or compliment lie to you – a testament to physical might may lie beneath the adipose tissue that covers Oren’s entirety, yet nonetheless, rippling shoulders and arms aside, to an outsider’s glance, Oren is simply pudgy.

While one would expect a rough, barbarian-like visage to fill this monstrous silhouette, with his plump lips, unblemished, caramel-colored skin, prominent eyelashes and sky-blue eyes, Oren looks disconcertingly refined, and quite feminine, feminine enough to the point that he has been misgendered in the past, in spite of his gargantuan stature – as a precaution to this, and an odd gesture of masculine pride, he’s taken to shaving the top of his head to ascertain his sex to onlookers. Still, even with this show of machismo, his face stands utterly devoid of facial hair, being unable to grow any thanks to hormonal deficiencies, and with his defined nose, rosy cheeks and well-shaped chin, one could say that perhaps he could’ve been a looker, beautiful, even, if he weren’t so tubby.

Despite his frame and occupation, Oren does his best at being fashionable, wearing clothes of the finest colors and fabrics of floral pattern, although with time and experience he’s figured some go-to pieces of attire for himself, opting for voluminous breeches and loosely cut, false-sleeved robes to let his body breathe, a large sash wrapped around his waist to contain his bulging belly and narrow his frame, and a cloak of a faded yellow color, to hide his physique further, and keep him from the rays of the sun, and stronger winds. His lower arms and legs are often left bare regardless of climate, with simple leather slippers being his sole choice of footwear. Still, he carries gaiters with him for occasions where bared legs would be improper.

Oren’s hands and feet are quite delicate looking, despite their huge size, and even though a glance to the back of his hand shows well-maintained knuckles, fingers and nails, the insides of his hands have hardened enough to grow into some sort of organic armor tissue that no amount of scraping seems to get rid of, much to his chagrin.

§ Motivations and Outlook

Oren considers himself to be a simple man, with simple desires and simple views of life. Romance has never appealed to him, and with his nonexistent sexual drive and capacity thanks to his childhood castration, he has no physical pleasure to gain from a lover either. Nor does he have any particular yearning for authority, having had the chance to closely observe, from his employers, how the pursuit of power drains all joy out of one’s life – with no loved ones to speak of, this too seems to him a futile venture. While he’s crossed out certain motivations, Oren does have certain drives that let him suffer through his line of work with his mind unclouded, namely, a love of food and comfort that a different type of earning would not be able to sufficiently provide for, and secondly, the hope of earning enough riches to have a chance of passing on his legacy in different ways. Although he has no genes to pass on for posterity, the idea of being forgotten, of having suffered through life for no particular reason brings fear to him nonetheless, and thus, he hopes to find a way to cement his memory via non-biological means; whether those means be achieving deeds worthy of remembered in the future, or simply paying to create an institution or structure that will outlast the lives of regular mer and men, does not particularly matter.

While he is not an unintelligent man by any margin, Oren is somewhat uneducated about the wider world, and so is somewhat superstitious about people of other cultures. Nonetheless, he is actively aware of the fact that he is an uneducated man, and is not above getting more information about things, whether it be through asking directly or using more underhanded means. As a bodyguard, he’s well educated in the art of poker face – he often uses this to his advantage, to pretend he knows things he does not, or vice versa, to attain information he would not normally get, or to check for inconsistencies in others’ narratives. Similarly, he’s found that sometimes it is necessary to leave a dumber or smarter impression for one’s convenience, and so he’s quite keen on allowing others to underestimate or overestimate him via his nonplussed demeanor. Despite this tendency, Oren is not a particularly treacherous or manipulative man, and tries his best to be a pleasant person, so long as it does not hurt his work reputation, or make him come across as weak or dependent. As slowly as he makes friends, Oren still appreciates wittier colleagues, and will often get them gifts when appropriate, usually in the form of drinks – despite not being a drinker himself.

Thanks to his lack of formal education, Oren’s not very well versed in topics that go beyond the scope of a layman, though he does have a dilettante’s affinity for art, and his decent memory helps him remember certain remarks about things fairly easily. Having been converted to the Imperial Cult fairly recently, Oren is a keen, although not very devout follower of Julianos, though he also casually reveres certain figures from the Yokudan Pantheon such as Satakal, and finds blasphemous talk about any sort of spiritual figure to attract misfortune, avoiding them if necessary. Despite being a practitioner of Alteration himself, Oren outwardly has a distrust of magic and magic users, fearful of the possibilities that dabbling in the unknown can cause. Ironically enough, despite his tough physique and external demeanor, Oren does have a sensitive side in his budding hobbies, being an avid, if not somewhat unskilled woodcarver and aspirant poet, and can become quite intense if his hobbies are made the topic of a conversation. Thanks to his rather dogmatic training in martial arts, Oren has a rather dismissive outlook on arms and armor, believing that a true warrior has no need of such tools, and claiming that the prominence of swords in Redguard culture stem from a misunderstood metaphor for ‘decisiveness’.

Oren, in spite of the fact that his castration and following health issues stem from his past as a slave, has no particularly negative outlook on slavery, thinking that the beast races make too much of a fuss over it. He also has an inherent dislike of Altmer, thanks to everyone blaming the Thalmor for the devastated Hammerfell that he grew up in.

§ Background

Truth be told, Oren’s origins are of no consequence. Having been born into a poor Forebear family whose man was a cripple of the Great War and the following Continuation War, the amount of older siblings he had meant that either he was going to be another mouth to feed on the table, or somehow be sacrificed for the good of the rest of the family. He does not remember these times well, perhaps out of repression, or perhaps because of how brief they were – he remembers his father’s mangled hand, with only a thumb left on it, he remembers his mother’s braids, but not much else. He must’ve been ‘acquired’ as a ‘servant’ fairly early on in life, because unlike his family, he remembers his owner, Mu’ad, quite well. A somewhat short, plump and dark-skinned man, rich enough to buy his slaves at infancy, maintain them, and groom them for whatever role he desired. Because of his young age, and because he needed to be taken care of, he was put amongst the females of the household, the chambermaids substituting for a mother, sometimes even acting as wet nurses and ‘doctors’ in secret, while the younger concubines pretended to be his sisters. Perhaps it was this fondness that the females of the household had for Oren, that led Mu’ad to pay for his castration – this way, Oren could continue to spend time with them well beyond childhood, while also keeping Mu’ad’s honor intact.

Oren remembers the day of his castration – taken from amongst the women by a tall, gangly eunuch, given a nice meal of spiced rice and mutton, alongside a thick, white and sweet drink that numbed the throat as he drank, then laid to sleep for a while. When Oren woke up, he was on a coarse carpet, too numb to move, with Mu’ad supervising as an elderly woman lifted his manhood and, after some handling of his privates, took off his scrotum with a single dagger stroke. It was a clean and relatively painless procedure; Oren would learn later in life that such care would not normally be taken and that the surgeries were often horrifyingly painful and fatal. What came afterwards was a long period of celebration and recuperation, for while some of the touchier chambermaids were saddened about the loss of Oren’s sexual functions, most were happy about the fact that their ‘son’ and ‘brother’ would continue staying with them. And stay he did – for the next few years, most he did was eat, and grow larger and larger, to the point that he was about the size of a well-fed Redguard warrior at the mere age of fourteen. This unprecedented growth led Mu’ad to reconsider the role he had in mind for Oren, and he was sent to Sentinel for training. What sort of training it would be Oren did not know until he was led to the adobe-walled courtyard of the school and beheld, for the first time in his life, the Iron Palms of Sentinel smashing cut rocks with their bare hands.

The following five years of Oren’s life were spent in the Iron Palm School, where he was taught the Art of Hand and Foot. Their master, Khogan, was an extremely elderly man, to the point where he could not walk from one edge of the school courtyard to the other without some sort of aid. Despite this, his utterly dense flesh and mastery over the school allowed him to poke his fingers through flesh, bone and rock in the blink of an eye. For the first time in his life since he’d eaten spiced rice, Oren was amazed, and despite his steadily growing weight made it harder and harder for him to practice, he quickly became one of the most diligent pupils of the school, earning the title of Journeyman Trainer under three years. Although some of the other members of the school looked down on Oren for his unconventional methods of combat, such as simply grabbing his opponents mid-attack and throwing them around instead of dodging and landing his own strikes, these opinions would eventually be silenced by Khogan himself, who said that Oren ‘fought like an infirm master, not a healthy pupil’. While this praise was not without its own reprimand, the teachings of the Iron Palms were quite dogmatic, and gerontocratic – that Oren was likened to a master, even if for his lack of stamina, meant for them that he could no longer be a figure of contention.

By the time Oren returned to Mu’ad’s household, he had become like a small mountain, both in size, density, and strength. Trained to use nothing but his hardened flesh in combat, he thoroughly impressed Mu’ad by showing the capability to grasp onto tempered sabers with his bare hands, and throw his owner’s master bodyguard aside like he was a piece of reed. Much to the chagrin of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’, and the previous bodyguard, Oren was assigned Mu’ad’s personal bodyguard, who had fallen into debt, and worse, sick with a growing lump in his stomach that not even magic could cure. To make up for his exorbitant health costs, Mu’ad had begun delving in the art of politics, ‘selling’ certain loyal slaves, so they could work their way to important positions in other figures’ households and provide information for his own maneuvering. Of course, Oren himself was far too vitally important to be thrown into such games, but in the following four years, Oren watched from behind his master’s back how stress and scheming drained the man further and further, leading him to eventually pale to a sickly yellow, and after a few weeks of bedridden life, die. What followed afterwards was total chaos – Mu’ad’s wives, free concubines, children, bastards, acquaintances and debt collectors all trying to get themselves a piece of the man’s wealth, suing, coercing, seducing and murdering one another to get more for themselves.

Oren himself, being a slave still, was inherited by one of Mu’ad’s sons, a young and ambitious man named Fajr. While he moved to Fajr’s household along with some of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ without making any fuss, Oren found life there to be a far less enjoyable experience, with their new owner too stressed, too greedy, and simply too cruel to internally justify being owned by. This opinion, it seemed, was not his alone; for one night, while patrolling Fajr’s bedchambers, Oren stumbled onto his owner fatally wounded, a fruit knife plunged into his throat by one of his ‘sisters’. While he comforted the bruised, traumatized woman at first, he soon found himself at a quandary – as things stood, the young woman would be executed, Oren himself sold in the public market for the lowest bidder for his incompetence, and the rest of the household scattered, bought or kidnapped. Oren decided to take another option and woke up his fellow slaves, explaining the situation, and then prompting them to take whatever they valuables they could find, buy their freedom from the flesh markets and leave for parts unknown, before someone from outside took notice. Surprisingly, it went without a fuss - the household scattered overnight, and Oren fled to Sentinel, where he used the valuables he’d taken from Fajr’s house to purchase his name off the Slave Register.

Despite being the place where he earned his freedom, Sentinel bore a tragedy of its own as well. The elderly Master Khogan had long passed away by the time Oren came back, murdered by one of his spurned students, and the events that’d followed had led to the Iron Palm School to be shut down. It was here that Oren felt despair for the first time in his life, having been so used to being led or ordered by someone else that finding out he had no masters left nearly broke him. He wandered in Sentinel for a while, trying to contact his fellow students at the Iron Palm, but the attempts turned out to be fruitless, most having either moved on, or not in the mood to make peace with whatever that had transpired. His funds were draining (Sentinel was an expensive city, and Oren had immense appetite), yet he’d made no progress; Oren realized fairly quickly that if he didn’t take action, he would be left on the streets as a gigantic bum. Figuring that he needed a roof over his head before anything else, he joined up with the Imperial Cult, taking residence in the homeless shelter that they’d converted their chapel’s basement into. It was for their mutual benefit – the mission was small and vulnerable, and Oren’s mere presence alongside them made possible harassers stay away. Oren used the chapel’s influx to start a simple self-defense course, teaching a watered-down version of the Iron Palm for those interested, receiving a meager sum in return.

What began as an arrangement of mutual benefit between Oren and the Imperial Mission eventually turned into something further; the priests of the Imperial Cult began to appreciate Oren for his helpful demeanor and the amount of young, enthusiastic people his self-defense course kept bringing in, while Oren himself began seeing actual goodwill in the toils of the Priests of the Eight Divines – led by a thin, bald man named Ionnaninus Bandelis, their Sisyphean attempts to teach Oren’s students how to read made a somewhat heartwarming impression on the gigantic man. In reality, Oren did not know how to read and write either, Mu’ad never having deemed it necessary for him to learn how – it took some time for Oren to grow the confidence inform the priests of this, but when he did it was not received with any surprise. He too became a pupil, like some of his own pupils, and soon enough (it did not take long for him to learn the basics), he could read and write with ease. As an act of gratitude, Oren swore that he would worship and honor the Divines for the rest of his days, and following that, to symbolize him being ‘a new person’, took a surname after the man who taught him how to read, being, from that moment on, Oren Bandeli.

Of course, things would not go happily ever after, and Oren would not really become a new person in the way that he hoped – instead of becoming a content monk, he became a killer, when he accidentally caved a man’s face in while trying to stop him from pissing on the Chapel walls. Word spread, and it evolved, and by the time the mob came knocking on the Chapel, they were demanding justice for the old man whose skull had been crushed by ‘that no-ball monster’ for not paying his respects while passing by the Chapel. While Oren knew that the Imperial Cult had lost its glamorous status in the province since the Great War, he did not expect that folks would come and ask for his head; he had to handle an angry, armed mob by himself for a few hours, preventing from coming in through the Chapel’s gate to hurt the others, an act that only resulted in more deaths. Eventually, the town guard came to the priests’ rescue and disperse the mob, although to placate them, Oren was sentenced to exile from Sentinel. Oren thought of this appropriate and let himself get cuffed and escorted out of the city limits, where he was left, to his surprise, without being unshackled from his iron bindings – Oren had to bash his cuffs against rocks and trees for an entire day to free himself. He followed the Iliac coastline to Lainlyn, where his reputation seemed to have reached before him; honest people would not deal with him, for what business did they have with an indiscriminate murderer?

It turned out that some people did, and soon enough Oren began getting approached by shady men who said they wanted to ‘talk’. He brushed them off the first few times, afraid that they were just muggers or troublemakers, but eventually one spoke to him plainly enough for Oren to realize that practically, he’d been brushing off job offers. There were people for whom having unscrupulous muscle on employ was a benefit, and Oren, the notorious, gargantuan outsider, was a perfect candidate. Thus, Oren found himself the personal bodyguard of a mob leader, a dandy with no teeth on one side of his mouth, aptly named Half-Mouth. Guarding a criminal was much different than guarding Mu’ad, for whom Oren was more a figure of deterrence and prestige, not actual combat; in contrast, Oren often found himself dirtying his hands with blood while keeping Half-Mouth safe, growing more and more used to it. His effectiveness grew on Half-Mouth, who began molding Oren in his shape, giving him dressing and etiquette tips; over time Oren’s reputation overshadowed even Half-Mouth’s, and perhaps this could’ve led to Half-Mouth contemplating on how to get rid of Oren, but the latter’s untimely death from a drug overdose prevented that from happening. With Half-Mouth gone, Oren could’ve inherited his organization, but he chose not to, and left for High Rock, where he made a living as a wandering debt collector until he ended up in the employ of a particular mercenary company.

Capabilities

---

§ Skills

• Expert – Hand to Hand
• Adept – Alteration
• Adept – Unarmored
• Apprentice – Acrobatics
• Apprentice – Healing
• Apprentice – Speech
• Apprentice – Throwing Weapons
• Novice – Athletics

§ Flaws

Warning, Confined Space: Oren’s immense size prohibits him from making a subtle entrance, if he can make one at all. He takes up a large portion of physical space and can have trouble going in through doors, let alone maneuvering through small, cramped areas such as tunnels.

Short, Controlled Bursts: Even with his training and the aid of meditative magic, Oren simply carries too much weight for prolonged activities of exertion – he prefers to make the most with the least amount of physical effort, and extended movement will make him need to rest for a long time.

Extra Topping, Please: While he pays for it wherever he can, Oren consumes an immense amount of food and water even in short amounts of time. His appetite is insatiable, and without it placated, his performance can drop visibly, having to deal with cramps and the psychological urges of hunger.

§ Spells

Alteration: Burden, Equilibrium, Feather, Ironflesh, Jump, Slowfall, Transmute

Healing: Fast Healing, Fast Recovery, Healing Hands

§ Tactics

Oren considers the first line of defense to be deterrence. It’s easier to win fights by convincing your opponent that fighting you will not be to their benefit, Oren thinks, and indeed when confronted with a hostile situation his first attempt will be to convince his opponents to stand down, usually through subtle intimidation. Still, Oren knows that a man needs more than one line of defense, and thankfully, has been taught how to walk the walk as much as he likes to talk the talk.

While Oren’s likely to make an impression of no more than dumb muscle, his way of combat is surprisingly technical and dependent on the subtleties of gravity – while the Iron Palm School taught him to amplify his mass and stand his ground like a rock against his opponents, Oren realized fairly quickly that it’s much more convenient and much less tiresome to simply make his opponent lose his footing, whether that be through the Art of Hand and Foot, or using Alteration to bend the laws of gravity for his convenience. He likes to be unconventional; if attacked in melee, his first response is not to avoid the strike but to actually catch it with his hands and guide it elsewhere, while amplifying the momentum of his opponent’s strike with his grasp to disrupt their balance and fling them away.

When he attacks, he likes to attack quickly and precisely, often using his feet to hook and kick at his foe’s ankles, amplifying the strength of his hits by hardening his flesh right before the moment of impact. He prefers to take the center stage of battle so that he does not exhaust himself trying to circle around opponents, although obviously that does not work against enemies who keep their distance. For them, Oren has a less subtle, more proactive and far more tiresome technique – using Alteration to propel himself towards the opponent as if he were a gigantic frog and smash into them with the strength of a catapulted rock.

Still, sometimes enemies require much less complicated methods to deal with, and Oren is not above simply caving his foes in with his fists and kicks, which would normally be applied as stomping finishers to his grounded opponents. Flattening windpipes and shattering bones may be far simpler when you can put your entire weight into the strike, but when life doesn’t give Oren the opportunity to do that, he can just smash his enemies apart, armored or not, although it’s not an approach he can keep up for long without needing rest for his and exerted muscles and mind.

§ Relations & Affiliations

Ionnaninus Bandelis, once head of the Imperial Mission in Sentinel, now assigned to a post in Cyrodiil
Rest of his relations either lost, dead or unworthy of note

§ Opinions

After introductions.

§ Crimes and Accomplishments

Crimes:

• One count of theft in Rihad, unreported
• One count of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as involuntary manslaughter, sentenced to exile as punishment
• Two counts of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as self-defense
• Two counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, unreported
• Three counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, ruled as self-defense

Accomplishments:

• Certified Journeyman Trainer of the now defunct Sentinel Iron Palm Martial Arts School
• Certified Layman of the Imperial Cult
• Once prominent criminal figure of the Lainlyn underworld

§ Other

Oren is an amateur poet.

Inventory

---

§ Cash & Valuables 74 Septims	§ Keys & Lockpicks None
§ Tools & Crafting Materials None	§ Clothing, Armor & Jewelry A wide-brimmed conical hat, made of straw A faded dark yellow cloak with black trim A brocade robe of a dark green color with yellow trim A yellow sash A pair of dark brown breeches A pair of beige gaiters A pair of yellow leather slippers
§ Weapon & Ammo None	§ Potion & Arcane Supplies Three Potions of Restore Magicka
§ Books & Documents Journeyman Trainer Certificate from the now-defunct Iron Palm Martial Arts School	§ Consumables & Ingredients Two flasks full of water A whole two-pound block of spiced, cured meat A satchel of rice
§ Bags & Containers A sack A satchel of potions A satchel of food Two large flasks made of dried gourd	§ Other A folded piece of paper, containing previously written verses

Fallout: Cascadia

Wow, what a fucking nerd

_{◄No no, you see, you have to place the battery the other way in...►}

Sidney Ackerman

^{26 | Arroyo, New California Republic | 5'9/160lb | Human, Caucasian Male}

_{A P P E A R A N C E}

Were one to get a proper glimpse underneath the tinted plexiglass visor of the all-covering radiation suit that he seems to wear 24/7, the first impression would likely not be a horrible one, as would be expected from the man’s attire, but a neutral, or even a rather positive one – in fact, one could say that Sidney is actually a rather handsome young lad, although perhaps not the most stylish. Beneath auburn medium length hair swept aside for convenience, his face stands quite conventional, if not somewhat unblemished compared to the average wastelander; he’s pale skinned, clean shaven, aquiline nosed and slightly droopy eyed. Save for a jaw of ‘Habsburg’ size (in his own terms), his looks are plain, maybe somewhat attractive thanks to his fair complexity, although nonetheless, nothing stunning.

Sidney’s physique is, similarly, nothing stunning – he’s lean, and while he’s not exactly what one would call muscular, he’s just fit enough to endure the physical exertion required by his line of work. He’s accustomed to walking long distances while carrying heavy objects on his back, and is known for his competence at running towards safety in dangerous situations (although that hasn’t exactly done wonders for his reputation). His lack of scarring and deformities alone could count as testament to his danger avoidance skills. Nonetheless, Sidney does not rely solely on pure luck and competence for his safety – his mysophobic tendencies have led him to don a faded, rubber covered radiation suit at all times (bearing the emblem of the Followers of the Apocalypse on the right shoulder), over which he’s recently begun wearing a breastplate, after an incident with raiders in which he was shot at.

_{E Q U I P M E N T}

• A radiation suit with a closed-circuit air system
• A metal breastplate, with a gap cut into its right side to allow proper aiming of a rifle
• A Wattz Pattern laser rifle, old and used, with a wooden replacement stock
• A homemade coil pistol, built out of spare parts from a broken Gauss Rifle
• A doctor’s bag, full of implements, syringes, gauze and rubbing alcohol
• A bottle of iodine tincture
• A bottle of MedX
• A bottle of water purification tablets
• A satchel of five Stimpaks
• A packet of RadAway

_{M I S C E L L A N E O U S G E A R}

• A large rucksack
• A toolbox
• A roll of gaffer tape
• A wrapping of spare cables
• A box of spare electronics
• A handheld vacuum sealer
• A vacuum pack, full of dried meat
• A vacuum pack, full of dried vegetables
• A homemade six-pack of canned food
• A large canteen of water
• A bottle of isotonic drink
• A bag of wet wipes
• A tube of toothpaste
• A toothbrush

_{S K I L L S}

Repair (Core Skill): Having grown up amongst the Followers of the Apocalypse has allowed the mechanic inside Sidney to flourish – the man knows how to make things work.

Medicine (Good Skill): Sidney knows that reassembling people is just as important a skill as reassembling machines – aren’t people just machines of a different make, anyway?

Energy Weapons (Good Skill): If a man in the Wasteland wants to live long, he needs knowledge on how to disassemble things as much as reassembling them; in his case, vaporizing is the easier option.

Science (Average Skill): While he’s not well educated on chemistry or abstract physics, his knowledge of machinery and anatomy lets Sidney take some fine educated guesses about related topics.

Sneak (Average Skill): Discretion is the better part of valor, isn’t it? Sidney doesn’t like high-risk encounters, and would rather take his chances in life without being perceived by possible threats.

Speech (Average Skill): “Good day mate, how’re ya doin’?”

_{H I S T O R Y}

Frankly speaking, compared to most other citizens of the Wasteland, Sidney’s had it pretty good. Born in Arroyo, the resting place of many Wasteland legends such as the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One, by the time of Sidney’s birth it had long become a settled, civilized city, with most of the population having descended from the inhabitants of Vault 13. Sidney suspects possible Vault dweller ancestry thanks to his relatively unblemished body and fair complexion, although he’s never asked his parents about it – for all he knows, he was born to doctors Lauren and Gavin Ackerman in Arroyo, members of the Followers of the Apocalypse, an organization in which he would be raised as well; despite some ideological differences, it’s an identity that he’s accepted without issue.

With his parents constantly overworked and exhausted from tending to unending droves of patients, Sidney was often left alongside a family friend, a budget supervisor named Lilian Modi, whose collection of books and broken tools became companions for the young Sidney in his lonely nights, and sparked an interest in learning and engineering within the boy. Having been born into a scientific organization within a booming town meant that Sidney was able to grow up relatively sheltered from the horrors of the Wasteland – while not obscenely rich or anything of the kind, Sidney nonetheless had access to luxuries such as a proper education, healthy food, and running heated water, to an extent that he was able to take them for granted. Thankfully, the environment in which he raised was not one to tolerate privileged behavior; the Followers were, despite their dreamlike goals, composed mostly of worldly individuals.

Perhaps because of his days spent fixing broken toys and tools, or perhaps because he had not received enough social experience in his youth, he decided to pursue a career primarily in mechanics as he grew older, rather than medicine or education. From what he had observed in his youth, machines were more reliable and predictable than humans, and that was something that appealed his goal-oriented character. By the time he turned 18, Sidney had gotten quite adept at fixing most of the faulty machinery that caused problems in the Followers’ Outpost, even if temporarily. Nonetheless, not satisfied with being a wrench monkey, he eventually took permission from his parents to leave Arroyo, and pursue higher education at the Followers’ University in the Boneyard.

Setting out on the road to the University as part of a trade caravan was the first time Sidney got a taste of what the Wasteland was really like. Preyed on by mutants and raiders, the journey marked the first time in Sidney’s life in which he witnessed combat and death. Sidney suspects that the first time he took another man’s life was at some part of this journey as well – a rather anticlimactic experience, compared to the cathartic and soul-crushing tales he’d often heard. While the journey was not very remarkable, save these skirmishes early on, and an infected foot on one of the caravan guards that he, as the second most medically knowledgeable member in the caravan (the surgeon being amongst the few casualties), had to partially amputate.

By the time the caravan reached the Boneyard, Sidney was more weathered to the realities of the Post-War life, yet interestingly enough, this fueled a drive in him to better himself for the people around him, rather than lead him further down his asocial side. He came to terms with the fact that, while the work the Followers did was perhaps ultimately pointless, it was still the best and noblest goal that people like he and his parents could strive towards. This drive led to him taking extra classes in medicine, although the detailed studies of infected patients gave him a somewhat unhealthy obsession about keeping himself as clean as possible.

Eventually, Sidney returned to Arroyo, having found that not much had changed since his leave. The Followers greeted him warmly when he return, and as he looked around to reorient himself with the place, had responded to his leave with finding another wrench monkey, and pinning a photo of him on the cork pinboard on the wall of their outpost headquarters, alongside a bunch of encouragement notes. He found himself surprisingly content with this legacy, and, after some time, decided to leave once more. While his parents objected at first, they could not argue with his reasoning – the more folks like him were around, the better it was for the inhabitants of the Wasteland.

After preparing himself for the life of wandering, Sidney set out once more, earning his living as a traveling mechanic and doctor. However, the endeavor was nearly stopped dead in its tracks right off the bat, when Sidney found himself ambushed by a bunch of raiders, who’d thought of him to be part of the security detail of the caravan they were planning to hit. Somehow managing to hold his own against the raiders until the target they’d been aiming for ended up coming in as the cavalry, Sidney thought perhaps that this was a sign for him to return to Arroyo, yet, realizing that he’d saved plenty of lives even if by accident, he decided to accompany the caravan to the end of their journey, making money off his professions in the trading posts, and even getting payment by the company once the caravan reached its destination.

Finding caravan work to be a safer and more profitable way of going about his goal of wandering the Wastes and providing aid for those who could not afford to travel, he decided to join the caravan that’d saved his life near Sac-Town – and thus began Sidney’s employment with the Happy Trails Company.

_{P S Y C H E}

Sidney isn’t exactly what one would call gritty. While he doesn’t have the most cheerful disposition, he seems to treat the grim realities of the Wasteland as granted, even if not welcomed. His view of life seems to have a rather cynical undertone to it; it’s not great, it’s not terrible, it’s just what it is, and everyone does what they have to do. Yet despite this rather grounded assessment of life and circumstances, he’s a fairly kind and amicable person, even if that part of him is somewhat muffled by the ever-present plexiglass visor that covers his face when out in the wilderness, and as long as it’s not borderline suicidal, will go to lengths to help people. Still, his selfless side aside, Sidney is not a brave man, let alone one all that used to situations that necessitate bravery, and prefers to avoid dangerous situations to the best of his abilities. He has an inherent fear of mutants and is often on edge around them, and is also heavily anxious in environments that are irradiated, filthy, or just contaminated in any other way. Nonetheless, perhaps his most valuable skill is that, so long as there’s other lives at stake, he does not let his fears take over his actions – how else could one explain such a squeamish man successfully performing field surgery?

_{D R I V E}

As cliché as it sounds, as much as he does not want to admit it, Sidney believes in the sanctity of human life and dignity – maybe not in an individual capacity, for he is of the belief that some people are just not worth the effort to try and save, but as a rule, he tries to see in every hypothetical human being a person worthy of certain basic rights; even ghouls and mutants, as much as they trigger his anxiety via mere presence. He does not like the Wasteland very much, seeing it to be a brutish place, and considers himself, in perhaps a vain way, to be unfortunate for knowing too much about what ‘could have been’, and suffering from the difference between the possibilities and the realities. However, he is also of the opinion that one has to be the change that one wishes to see in the world, and knows that, were he to ignore the call that’s led him to wandering, he would live the rest of his days as an unsatisfied, bitter man. Thus, he goes on, hoping to make some visible difference to the Wasteland, one broken machine at a time.

Fallout: Cascadia

Safe to say I'm interested.

The Elder Scrolls: Days of Night

17th of Sun's Dawn
Daggerfall

---

“First impressions: Disappointing.”

To some, perhaps the sight of a horse suspended above the wide carrack would have been an interesting sight – to others, likely not. While the hooves dangling down from above his eyesight added a quality to the scene almost dreamlike in its bizarreness, the faint smell of foamy horse odor, combined with the foul stench that the heaving sailors emanated, was far too overwhelmingly pungent for Eno’s fragile nostrils to let him find anything worthy of wonder in the mise-en-scene – men, mer, and animals, nothing more, nothing greater… perhaps except the quality of the woodwork all around. The gangplank underneath his sandaled feet did not even let out the slightest creak as he and Llaran walked up towards deck. That was commendable. But the horse being lowered down with ropes, looking him in the eye as it slowly disappeared from sight, was not. That was just absurd.

Just as he did not like men and mer, Eno also did not like animals; not only were they erratic and loud, but also, they were creatures without a sense of proper hygiene. Perhaps except cats, who had a mind to clean up their filth; no wonder some folks treated their more sophisticated subspecies as fellow sapient beings, he mused to himself. Perhaps there was merit in the idea – after all, they were often more hygienic than Nords, although the tall woman who’d just passed by him seemed to prove an exception to the norm. The soft smell she exuded was either perfume or enchantment, but either way, it was not bad taste, just overtly feminine; likely daisy with a small hint of ginger. He thanked the forces of fate for providing someone to shroud his nostrils from the stench of foul sailor.

“Faster, boy,” he urged Llaran as they walked down the main deck towards their room, which, they were told, was to be stationed underneath the quarter deck, thankfully away from the rabble. Finding himself dissatisfied with his spear bearer’s pace, he sped up his steps, moved in front of him, and feeling courteous, opened the door and held it open so that the fatigued boy could move in. “Thank you, master,” the young Dunmer huffed out as he moved in and finally found a chance to put down the two chests on his back. Eno wasn’t very elated about having two chests instead of one or three, but he did not want to strain Llaran further by adding another chest on top of the other two, and, well, they hadn’t been able to find one large enough for both their possessions.

“Well, we’re here, master, aren’t we?” Llaran asked once they entered the room, his eyes glinting with excitement. Dragging the two chests inside, he shut the door afterwards, and set out to reorienting the things in the room in accordance to his master’s wishes while Eno lied on the bed.

“Yes indeed,” Eno replied blandly from his resting spot. He watched Llaran’s movements, trying to see if there were any improvements in his motor skills.

“And, uh, the spear?”

“Put the shaft on the table, leave the tip as it is.”

“If that’s all, can I, uh, walk around the ship a little bit? There’s some interesting folks around, don’t you think?”

“Yes. So no.”

Llaran faced Eno with a quizzed expression.

“Stay put for now.”

The young Dunmer pouted. The fact that his master did not let him sate his curiosity was perhaps the worst thing about him.

“Do as I say, and I will give you another lesson in wrestling when I return.”

“Really?”

“You know it.”

With that, Eno left the room and headed once more towards the deck.

---

Outside, with nothing surrounding him but sails, rigging and clear sky, Eno felt safer than he did below deck, where he was surrounded by thick planks of wood not only below, but also beside and above as well. Normally, he would have chastised himself for feeling ‘safer’, for that would mean that factors aside from himself played a hand in his safety – for Eno, heresy. But perhaps because of the mental toll of their journey, or perhaps because of reasons as of yet unknown to him, he chose not to. He switched expressions to the default ‘disgusted Dunmer’ in case of someone interrupting his solitude, and walked over to the railings on the starboard side, his fingers trying to get a feel for the softness of the wooden railing. There were sailors around still, but on this side of the ship, the salty, almost citric smell of the seawater was dominant enough for him to be able to ignore them, and focus on his eyesight, as irritating as it was underneath the sunlight.

The first subject that was to walk up the gangplank was, given the clothing and the staff, an awfully conventional mage. The woodwork on his staff disappointed Eno to a degree that he did not deem the man worthy of further observation; it wasn’t even lacquered, for Vehk’s sake. Most of these so-called mages were in reality craftsmen’s apprentices, he believed, not actual magicians. They simply replicated whatever was taught to them and sought no more than the technical values of whatever it is that they wished to replicate – it was a true disgrace, sullying the meaning of the word, yet not even adding anything more to it in the process.

Then came up an Argonian so disgustingly weak that Eno could not help but admire its tenacity. With its thin, crooked limbs and skittering gait, it seemed almost insectoid to Eno, not unlike the scribs that populated his once-homeland. He watched it silently disappear down the deck, like a cockroach hiding within gaps between flooring and furniture. This did not bode well to Eno, who was convinced that the ship was carrying its fill of beasts already, be they human, horse, cat, or lizard. Being a Dunmer certainly had its charms – there was no judgement on why you disliked everything and everyone. Eno silently wondered if he was vitriolic by nature of his character, or by nature of his race. Or was his character a product of his race?

“Too much think, load of junk,” he reminded himself, as his childhood tutors used to remind the more questioning students amongst his group. He procured a half-carved Idol of Vigor from his pocket and began whittling on it with his pocketknife, trying to deepen the gap between the idol's head and its shaft.

The Elder Scrolls: Days of Night

Eno Indarys

Name: Eno Indarys, the Rogue Finger
Race: Dunmer
Age: 40
Birthsign: The Serpent
Family Origins: Necrom, Morrowind

Appearance:

---

Standing at an average 5’8’’, at first glance Eno does not make a striking impression. With most of his body hidden underneath baggy robes, and his head clean shaven, he would likely be assumed to be a monk, which, while true, would be a gross understatement. On a closer look, one can realize that despite a strong jaw, an aquiline nose with wide nostrils, and an awfully prominent brow ridge, Eno’s face has been purposefully shaped to be inconspicuous; even the haughty, arrogant look on his face acts as not much more than a distraction for his ritually clipped ears, unnaturally colored eyes, and discolored skin. He is pale for a Dunmer, so off-color that he could pass as a (sickly) man in a passing glance, and his eyes are a cloudy blue, rather than the natural red of his race. There are merely two holes where his ears should be, with barely visible tattoos covering the scar lines. Yet the oddities only start here.

When unclothed, with his disproportionately broad shoulders, long, thick arms, and large, yet graceful, almost feminine hands, Eno sports a build that would not be out of place amongst the most skilled swimmers of Tamriel, or an anatomist’s wettest dreams. His back is well defined, corded with multiple, visible ridges of muscles, and the triangular, flat shape of his torso only lends to size it up further. While he looks less muscular from the front, thanks to a thin layer of fat covering his abs, the shape of his muscles and firmness of his skin still make it obvious that he is in peak physical shape. Were someone to spot him in the nude, they would quickly notice that Eno’s body is entirely absent of physical hair; his arms, legs, eyebrows, and even his crotch are free of even the loneliest tuft. However, thanks to him covering most of his lower torso, arms and lower legs in enchanted bandages, just how unblemished his body is stays unseen to even those who get intimate with him.

Although Eno likes not attracting undue attention, he still considers himself part of the New Temple, and thus has to make himself known, even if only to ‘those in the know’, and dresses so. The hem and sleeves of his robes have a thread of gold embroidered through them, signifying purity and affluence, while a large ritual dagger is stuffed through the sash wrapped around his waist, standing right above his groin with the sheath pointing down, signifying virility, power and prudence. While he claims he wears the white cowl wrapped around his head to signify clearness of mind, this is a lie; it is actually a multipurpose garment, enchanted as to keep magick intrusions into his mind, while also acting as a hood for colder climates, a towel for warmer ones, and, when necessary, a form of concealment for his lack of ears.

Just as he keeps his ‘true personality’ hidden underneath falsifying layers, Eno keeps his vital assets disguised the same way. He wears a chainmail vest underneath his robes, but this piece of protection doubles as a ruse, given that his robes are enchanted as to not yield to blades. He visibly wears many paper charms wrapped around his clothes, yet these are in fact simple disguises compared to the enchanted bandages that cover many portions of his body. The lines around his ears seem like scar tissue, yet they are in fact Daedric charms tattooed to amplify his hearing. He claims his eyes are discolored because of cataracts, yet in fact, they have been injected with an alchemical substance to make him able to see in the dark, like the Khajiit, albeit the permanence of the effect has led to him avoiding bright lights whenever possible, and a trademark squint.

---

Personality: Outwardly, Eno is stereotypical – in typical Dunmer fashion, he’s callous, constantly unimpressed with, and equally dismissive of, others, their concerns, and their customs. While not proud of being Dunmer (for there is nothing to be proud of being superior by birth), he still knows that his race is also a reason for him being above others, and often views other races with pity, a pity which can pave way to slight and (still dismissive) admiration if he ever comes across someone who is capable, but isn’t Dunmer. In fashion typical to Eno, all of this is true, yet also a façade. Eno is not merely dismissive of other races; he is equally dismissive of Dunmer and their accomplishments, and simply shows it in a different fashion. He knows that one of the best ways to know someone is to frustrate them, and hides behind the classic Dunmer stereotypes to get to that point as quickly as possible, after which he rates his subjects.

In truth, Eno is a Mer of contradictions. He views the world as a ladder to climb, and himself as a representation of a force, the Ego, that is making its way to the top. Thanks to this outlook, he is able to harbor two seemingly contradictory feelings towards a subject at the same time, via viewing them through Ego-as-is, and Ego-as-him. Eno can hate and love equally, be most wary of the ones he trusts the most, and lie and believe in his own lies very convincingly. Yet, being aware of the pattern, he often creates false principles for himself as to confuse the idiots who may be close to understanding him. This seemingly impenetrable whirlpool of opinions is not without its flaws, however. Despite one of his core tenets being ‘to be an Agent of Discord’, Eno is a creature of order, and finds it hard to find in himself a lively, individual personality, that can exist outside of his definition of rituals and obligations. Because of this, he constantly categorizes even the most trivial actions and hobbies to self-legitimize them, and seeks to keep himself busy whenever possible because of his dislike of stray thought.

Ironically, his most ‘unique’ quirks seem to be a product of the very same obligations that limits his approach of sociality. He has a fixation with odd numbers, because he thinks they are pure, and prefers to make sure that his belongings stay pure through getting rid of amounts that make them even, often through charity, which is a convenient way of gaining good graces, while also being for him a declaration of superiority. He is an awfully competitive person, but surprisingly, despite the lengths he is willing to go just to ‘win’, he does not bear personal grudges towards those who defeat him, and often stays cordial with those that have bested him – although given his obligation to never concede defeat, he often reignites the conflict when the moment seems opportune (i.e. when he is most likely to win). While he is aware of social norms, they are not an integral part of his character. When busy, he can forget them completely, and be unable to comprehend the reasons laying behind any adverse reaction to his actions.

Despite his detached nature, Eno understands how social creatures work, and has found ways to appeal to them and gain their good graces. Being a proficient dream reader, he offers them to those he finds vulnerable to personal interaction and suggestion. However, he never gives his subjects the true interpretations, instead giving them ones more convenient for himself. A constant judge of character, and most constantly a judge of his own character, Eno is a keen observer of people, and so, knows how to present himself as needed, how to walk and act with certain demeanors when necessary and can impersonate various stereotypes with mathematical precision. When amongst a group of people, he decides on, and hides, a stereotype underneath the outer ‘classic Dunmer’ personality for them to discover over prolonged contact. When necessary he changes the stereotype as befits his needs.

While almost completely a creature of logic, Eno has certain traits that he has earned by circumstance, and some that he has not been able to find any logical explanation for. No matter what, Eno is obsessed with hygiene, most importantly smells, and will seek to clean himself whenever necessary. He despises having a smell, even good ones, and often categorizes people on their odor, and can recognize people by smell alone. He also finds himself prone to episodes of solemn sadness whenever he is not keeping himself ‘busy’, and thus, despises idleness. Thanks to the ritual clipping of his ears, and the charms tattooed on to give him ‘Secret Hearing’, Eno is better at hearing things that are not directed to him, but worse at hearing things directed at him. Thus, he can sometimes unwittingly leave an absent-minded impression. One thing that Eno is prodigal at is physical action, and he finds a strange serenity in his mind whenever he has to rely on muscle memory rather than his smarts. With very strong muscle memory, he’s good at repeating his own exact movements, at the cost of looking uncannily robotic.

---

History: As with most living creatures, Eno’s story begins with his parents. His mother Felara, and his father Daryn, were both artists; Daryn a poet, making a living off writing dirges for the constant funerary processions that gave Necrom its name, whereas Felara was a musician, who composed the poetry written by her husband into songs. However, well into their middle ages, they had been dealing with certain problems of an artistic nature – namely, a crippling lack of inspiration. For the two, who weren’t very financially minded, and were also incredibly passionate about their life’s work, the situation was worse than a death sentence, and that led them to seeking a cure; faith, in their case. Eno would never learn of his parents’ former life as wealthy burghers – for him, just like his parents, family was found somewhere else, and that family was in the Temple.

Felara and Daryn’s relative fame and strong donations to the Temple had already attracted all sorts of positive attention to them in the hierarchy; that their child was born under the sign of the Serpent was lauded as further proof of their righteousness of faith, and there was no objection by anyone when the Temple offered to take their child in amongst their cadre of Fingers. The Fingers were a group of monks of special position within the Temple, raised from birth to replace the old Ordinators of House Indoril. Thus, reborn as a Littlefinger, Eno was baptized in Waxwater to cleanse him of all impurities, a procedure which left him bereft of all body hair and gave his skin its faded color, and marked him as one of the Fingers permanently. As a child, Eno was noted for his very result-oriented demeanor and excellence in sports and handicraft, although, according to his overseer, he was horrible at meditation, and not well liked by his peers.

Eventually, towards the end of his strict education, it was decided that, given his piety, strong adherence to the obligations of the Reclamations, and physical prowess, he would best perform his duties to the Temple as a Longfinger – an inquisitor of the Temple. Eno found this most appropriate, and in fact earned a name for himself as one of the more prominent and capable Longfingers. So seriously he took his occupation, that he would go on to have his ears removed, and his eyes injected with an alchemical Nighteye solution; the first not only allowed him to use prosthetic ears and disguise himself as a man when necessary, but also the ritual cauterizing was done in such a way that enhanced his eavesdropping capabilities via enchanted lettering. While some of his higher ups found his self-modifications unsightly, Eno’s devotion to being a force of the Temple was generally met with praise. It was no surprise when he was ordered to be amongst the Longfingers sent to silence a curious rumor of heresy in Blacklight, the local Fingers having failed.

Disguised as a Breton antique collector, Eno quickly came into contact with the source; a bunch of elderly Dunmer priests, offering him an original copy of the 36 Lessons of Vivec, untouched by the Thumbs of the Temple. He arrested them for the crimes of Possession of Prohibited Artifacts and Intent to Sell Prohibited Artifacts, although curiously, never turned the book in for archival. Having always had sympathy for Saint Vivec, thanks to his proficiency with the spear (Eno’s weapon of choice) and his association with Mephala, he decided to sate his curiosity; while its contents were not a shocking revelation, thanks to how regarding the impulsiveness and fickleness of the Daedra constituted an important part of their worship, it did lead him to rethink his place in the hierarchy. Throughout his life, he’d been a servant to greater powers, with no regard to himself, his Ego. He’d been wasting his life to serve the powers that be; yet the forces that he thought he’d been worshipping were forces of change, forces of Ego, not order. His faith in the Padomaic triumphed over his faith in the Temple, and so, Eno decided to serve his faith better. He would reach Heaven by Violence.

Eno started by disappearing. He falsely reported that he had found an unauthorized cult of Namira but was at risk of compromising himself, and then promptly fell off the grid, expecting his superiors to put two and two together and write him off as deceased. Leaving for Skyrim, at first Eno found himself unsure on what to do; having lived according to ritual throughout his life, he realized he did not know how to lead a life for himself. He found an answer to that quickly, by setting down his own obligations and rituals. This line of thinking would eventually evolve and make him view others’ behavior in the same vein (although obviously of a lesser sort, since theirs was one without higher purpose), and, combined with the education on Daedra he’d received in the Temple, lead to a new occupation; an interpreter of dreams. While the oddly dressed Dunmer was not well received amongst the Nords, he found the minds of the Dunmer refugees in the land very malleable; his disguise as a monk only helped create an even better disposition. He began by interpreting for workers, maids, people who were bereft of their ancestors’ loftier, prouder lives. Their rumors snuck into the minds of their employers, however, and soon enough, Eno was interpreting dreams for Nords of the wealthier classes.

His gig did not go on for very long, however, and he was discovered to be having an affair with the wife and the children of a rather influential court figure in Whiterun. Skipping town with his profits, and a young lad he’d convinced to become his manservant, he fled to Jehanna. There, he led a simpler life, preying on the constantly bickering middle class by pretending to be a writer of charms. Having learned his lesson in Whiterun, he quickly changed occupations before anyone could find out that he was a fraud, and moved to Wayrest, serving as a martial arts instructor, teaching young nobles the way of the Spear. Introducing young men and women to the art of piercing, he earned some renown fairly quick under the name of Indar Serano; although the renown came with a fair amount of infamy, which led to all his property being confiscated and him wanted when he accidentally crushed the windpipe of the Court Wizard’s son during a training session. He fled south, to Hammerfell, taking up the even simpler trade of wood carving. Carving idols, spear shafts, and love spears for those in need, he found the work satisfying, but dulling in the long term for his goal. He had to seek Violence for Heaven, and so, he began searching for great tumult. A search that led him to a ship named Kismet.

---

Biggest Regret: Consciously, leaving the Temple. Eno believes that it has set him back where it could lead to him gaining even more power and influence, and respects this fault for teaching him the lessons of starting over. Subconsciously, however, he's not as above it all as he seems; it's hidden away even from him, but Eno bears resentment for the lack of vision he had as a youth, his past contentment with the positions he was given, and the enthusiasm with which he followed orders. Nothing but a glorified tool for somebody else's purpose.

Eno's Goal: A self-declared pursuer of 'Royalty', Eno claims to have great, world-shaping goals (as vague as they are) – but for that, he has to become strong enough to get to survive that stage. Eno views his body as no more than a vessel that needs to be prepared for the stormy paths he has set in mind, and as such, his current goal is to perfect his being against any sort of harm that he may come across on his journey, be it physical, mental or magical. Having received some amount of permanent body modifications in his earlier days, he may end up looking for similar options to further his prowess and progress.

---

Skills:

Expert:
Spear

Adept:
Speech
Sneak
Hand-to-Hand

Novice:
Athletics
Acrobatics
Illusion

Spells:

Calm, Courage, Fear, Fury

Equipment:

-Often hailing Eno’s arrival from afar is an umbrella carried on a long, dark pole by his spear bearer, Llaran. In truth, this bell is a cover for the thin ebony tip of his spear, the blade meticulously forged from a piece of evidence from an old smuggling case, a piece that Eno kept for himself.

-Pointing down Eno’s waist is a large scabbard, in which is holstered a steel dagger meant for ritual use, with a wavy blade and a conical hilt that ends in two round halves. While useful in a pinch, Eno prefers to keep it solely as a piece of attire, and in truth, has little idea on how to use it, except as a shorter spear.

-Eno likes to show himself as vulnerable, but in truth keeps himself ready for action. He pretends to try to cover the chainmail vest that he wears under his robes, yet these robes, a memento from his days in Whiterun, have been cut from an enchanted cloth that makes it as tough as buff leather when struck.

-A white cowl is usually wrapped around Eno’s head, seemingly to further signify his disguise as a monk. It is actually back from his days in the Temple, a shirt that has been cut to act as a headwrap. It was for wandering priests, enchanted as to resist illusion and temptation; still works the same as a cowl.

-As part of his initiation into the Longfingers, Eno’s limbs were covered with a set of bandages that bear prearranged Daedric lettering, a form of enchanting meant to ease and strengthen his muscles. Oddly, they seem to be so porous that nothing sticks to them; allowing Eno to wear them without care like skin.

Misc. Possessions:

Eno is almost always followed by his manservant, healer and spear bearer, Llaran. A young, lithe lad quite fascinated and enamored with Eno, he’s been with him through thick and thin and carries most of the provisions and comforts required to make long journeys for the both of them.

Information on Llaran

Llaran Maryon, aged 19, is formally Eno Indarys’ spear bearer and apprentice. In practice, however, his duties go little further than being his pack mule, masseuse and bed companion. Having entered Eno’s service in Windhelm, almost at the start of his journey, Llaran admits that Eno is not a gentle master; yet, given his past as a lowly servant in an East Empire Company supplier’s household, he believes that his time spent with the former Longfinger is a more fulfilling and enjoyable one.

An attractive, athletic lad with soft, gentle features despite his laborious past, he is quick to make friends with people, although that may just be his naivety. While he wishes to learn more of the spear arts and magic, as of now he practically has zero experience. Eno believes that he doesn’t have the ‘warrior nature’ to be worth actual teaching, and if someone were to get to know Llaran, they’d probably agree with Eno.

On journeys, aside from Eno’s ‘umbrella’, Llaran carries a large canvas cloth and two sturdy boxes made of lacquered wood, one holding nine potions of health restoration and cure poison, some muscle relaxant lotions, an ample amount of candlewax and three different colors of skin dyes – pale, weathered and tanned, respectively.

In the other box are three packs, one holding a dependable amount of cured meats and rice balls, the other holding clothes, perfume and soap for himself, while Eno’s pack holds spare clothes of both genders, soap, some makeup supplies, a small amount of wigs, and three pairs of ears made of hardened wax; one pair is shaped like a human’s ears, while the other two pairs are shaped like an elf’s ears.

Llaran carries a small knife, a pair of scissors, a piece of flint and a mortar and pestle on his person. While the mortar and pestle may be of use to someone who knows alchemy, Llaran does not know alchemy, and uses it solely for culinary purposes.

On his person, Eno carries a very small carving knife, that he uses to carve idols in his spare time, as well as carrying a satchel of coffee beans that he likes to chew on before going to sleep.