Auric Sturmsbled
The damned watermark bothers me more than the anime picture. Not a real critique, just a complaint >:[Male
Age:25
Race:Human
Profession: Auric is a blacksmith by way of trade, a mercenary by way of necessity, and a wanderer by preference.
Detailed Appearance: Auric is a sturdy young man just under six feet tall, he gets plenty of comments to the effect of being built like the door of a building. What he has taken people to mean is that he is broad of shoulder and with a square frame, meaning he has little in the way of what on a woman might be called an hourglass figure. With arms and legs proportional to his torso he is well built for physical combat, and his prowess has marked his body with both lithe and rigid muscle.
Despite his shape and size, Auric carries himself with a degree of natural grace not often seen in untrained fighters, he is therefore often mistaken for a professional soldier. The fact that he is often found with fresh from the road grime and stubble upon his face does not deter people from that impression of him. Scars mar his face, his arms, and his torso, though most are not from teaching himself blade work, rather they are memories of his life as a blacksmith of his apprenticeship.
Deep blue eyes tinted with gradients of emerald green hide beneath his oft furrowed brow, the scars crossing his face and his perpetual fight with his emotion etching deep scowl lines into his otherwise young face. Scraggly hair of medium length sometimes hides the war within his eyes, when it is not tucked behind his ears or tied back. That hair long ago was bled of color a consequence of the seeds of magic, which haven't tainted his life for all these long years, when not stained black by road grime, he actively dies his hair a dark blue-green a mix of dyes he has long since mastered the recipe for.
The most telling mark on Auric’s body, what you might call an identifying mark, is a criminals brand on his right shoulder twice struck through by scars and ink. The mark is both a telling sign of magical crime and a reminder to the young man of the life he lost to the curse of his emotions. The mark for all its stigma is worn openly, the right arm of his leather armored coat since removed, his forearm wrapped in thick strips of leather with small metal plates to defend his blade arm below the elbow. His hand covered in fingerless leather gloves reveal the scars of trade and war. The armored leather coat has been bleached and re-bleached until it is snow white, the strips of leather and his pants a matching jet black, and his boots white leather calf boots padded for protection and comfort.
Detailed Backstory: Auric was born in a small town, Terrik's Ford in the kingdom of Baldock. The town which rests on the edge of a medium-sized creek was once a reasonably active crossing point for the creek, especially in the rainy season. It has since grown disused, falling out of favor compared to other crossings. The town was impoverished by comparison to a city, but it was capable of providing all its residents with what they might need should they only work for it. Though it still receives the occasional trader's visit, and of course the coming of the taxman every season, the lack of real trade limits the wealth of the village to subsistence.
Auric's father Lutheric was a carpenter by trade, and his mother Amalia tended the family plot of vegetables and herbs and traded her knowledge of herbs and remedies for small luxuries. As soon as he was old enough he was taken among the tradesmen, and when one finally sparked the boy's interests and apprenticeship was arranged, the fees paid through a combination of his father's trade and his mother's talent. Auric's eyes had lighted at the heat of the forges, and the sparking of hammered metal, responding to the booming instruction of Gregor the towns senior smith.
For many years the boy, had an uneventful apprenticeship he found joy in the forges, working the billows and even during the early days when he first was allowed to begin working with metals. Things slowly begin to shift when he started puberty, at first it was a strand of hair, then two and three, until all of his bangs which hung over his right eye turned white. The odd changes to the color of his hair lead to teasing, combined with his ever so slightly odd mannerisms. The teasing though lead to frustration, and anger, petty cruelty from the other children along with his feelings would boil over, but unlike other children who might experience an outburst or acting out, Auric instead began to experience things happening around him when his emotions got out of control. Fires would burn too bright when his anger flared up, ingots of metal still cooling from the fires would shatter when his frustration reached a breaking point, and all of it would leave him exhausted and drained of emotion.
As is often the way with such things, the other apprentices noticed, and took it up as ammunition to use against him. This slowly simmered building for years, and as he worked through his apprenticeship he accumulated scars and injuries never fully able to explain them or the occurrences leading to them. In the year of his eighteenth birthday he completed his apprenticeship, ten years of working the forge and continuing despite the setbacks and still he completed his graduation project, he created for his father and part of his final test a set of exquisite woodworkers tools, a sign of what he had learned despite his inconsistency.
For all the joy that day started with, it ended in tragedy, when another journeyman disdainful of his progress and that he had succeeded despite the taunting and the sabotage of the other apprentices tasked with returning the tools from the master to Auric, decided that he would return them destroyed. This action stoked a fury within Auric, unlike anything he had ever felt before, a rage like the burning heat of the bellows, and from that anger, the seed of his magic once again bloomed into life. Fire and heat whipped around the freshly graduated blacksmith, burning at his arms even as shards of metal caught in the spell storm cut at him searing closed as quickly as they sliced the flesh. Unfocused rage burnt around the boy as his anger and an innate talent for magic unrealized tried to consume him, and then the other young man, the one who had set this in motion acted, a sound of disgust and distress and turning to flee.
At that moment Auric’s anger crystallized in focus and all the rage snapped, and with that shift of focus and fury, the pain the young man had put Auric through, emotional and physical was manifested upon him by magic all at once, even as Auric relived every moment of it revisited upon him by the magic as it burnt itself out. Both young men would survive, one by a miracle, the other Auric in this case, by what he felt had been a curse. The truth was much simpler, Auric simply had run out of fuel for his magic, it had consumed his rage and died down, leaving both boys forever scarred by the incident, and Auric’s life forever changed.
With that incident came the brand, and exile from his village, though he was allowed one single mercy, three days in the forge to shape himself a chance at a new life. He had not killed with magic, and so he would not be put to death. Especially since it came out what had been being done to him for his whole apprenticeship. For those three days, he worked the forges alone, responsible for keeping the fires stoked as he worked upon the tools which would hopefully be his salvation.
He crafted for himself two implements each rough wrought, but each of a single ingot of steel, one a medium length sword with a single-bladed edge and a thick heavy spine, no guard to speak of but a hilt of double the length and a pommel left empty but with room for a stone. He chose this design for the weapon out of respect for his lack of experience with a sword, believing that by removing the edge closes to him, he would protect himself from some of the injuries he might have caused himself otherwise. With this blade, he would defend himself, and with the other implement he would feed himself and eke out a living. His second tool would be a spear, unlike many such tools that blended the boons of wood and metal he chose to make his from solid steel, a heavy tool that would force him to become stronger and faster to survive and make use of it. It was near identical in design to any similar wooden tool, except he made of its blade a wedge-like triangular blade brutally sharp along its twin edges and at the other end a ball like protrusion of concentrated weight.
His mercy ended, Auric’s exile began, and with it his new life. The first months were a struggle, he killed nothing by his hand and lived off the lore he had been learning at his mother's knee since he was a small child, and on the kills which he could steal from other predators. Auric did not settle for that though, he practiced even when he otherwise failed by stalking animals he came across and learning to read the signs of the land. it was months of trial and error before he made his first kill, and even that was what some might call luck. As a tradesman, Auric knew that the deer he had killed would have many uses beyond its meat, so he did his best to skin the beast. No professional hunter or leatherworker would have looked on his efforts and given them a passing grade, but he managed to do well enough to make use of the skin, repairing his boots with a needle roughly fashioned from one of the deers antlers, and wrapping the forearm of his right arm to pad it against impact with the weight of the spear. His stitching was rough, but passable a skill picked up working on the sheathes of knives and the wrappings of hafted weapons.
From that initial success, Auric continued to grow his skill making better and better use of each kill and having an easier time tracking and hunting with each additional creature he pursued. He continued in this way, subsisting through the first year, gathering furs and pelts to turn into a roughly made cloak, and as wrappings to wear under his clothing and to work on making new clothing from. He ate conservatively, though he had never been particularly plump, his new lifestyle trimmed much of the remaining fat from his body, his muscles honed at the forge had now shifted altering to the properties of the hunter, longer leaner muscles with less bulk. He struggled through the leanest months of winter as you might expect, fighting for the meals necessary to survive as an extension of necessity.
During the next year, he refined his skills hunting boar and deer with a spear. He also began to harbor a desire for things he could not attain from the wilderness so he moved further away from his village situated towards the western edge of the country, and into the heartland favoring the wilderness and wooded areas until he found a village where his crime might not be known. There he brought a collection of skins and furs to trade, though the quality was lower than the traders preferred, Auric displayed a willingness to learn best practices and to trade to them at a discount for the specifics of what he wanted. Over time this relationship grew, and so did Auric's ability to provide quality items.
For the next few years, Auric moved around trading with the villages for whom he had something of worth, often trading for materials and forge time to keep his skills honed, or for quality goods like his white leather armored coat, or the pair of padded leather boots he got himself. In this way, Auric developed and improved his life along with his skills. He also developed a small quantity of coin to trade for services, such as leatherworking, and luxuries.
During this period Auric began to crave more challenges in his life and took up the hunting of dangerous predators, wolves and bears to name a few. It helped to protect the villagers he had developed working relationships with, as well as providing a much more challenging hunt and valuable commodity. It would be some years before Auric perfected the art of hunting predators but he would, in the end, do so before his life changed yet again.
Auric lived as isolated a life as he could, his experience with the apprentices having jaded his perspective. He came into town only when it was practical to do so due to the accumulations of furs and skins and before any of his supplies might go bad from lack of treatment. Still, his life was not without its conflicts, the occasional fights stemming from his origin as an outsider, and his tendency towards isolation arose during his occasional meals at the public house. Auric found he had a talent for if not an instinct for physical conflict, at least in part honed from the instincts developed hunting predators with a spear rather than a bow. He was gifted at luring enemies into committing themselves, before meeting them with a readied blow, as one might spear a bouncing cat, baited by having your back turned to it and manipulating its predatory instincts. He also found he had a talent for striking at foes armed or unarmed in ways meant to disable them and weaken vital functions. This talent too had been honed while hunting predators. It would turn out that these talents honed in the hunt would one day be refined on the battlefield.
Peace as always is a fleeting state in the affairs of man, and so in time skirmishes along the border had drawn in the citizens of the villages around where he hunted. Auric, feeling bad for those with families took his hunting towards the battles to be fought, he might not imagine himself a warrior but he could provide those who were fighting with real food and supplies. His life might have continued uneventfully as a hunter, but poor luck or maybe fate would lead him to the battlefield.
The hunt was as ever his daily task on the day he found himself embroiled in the war. He had been pursuing a pack of wolves, they threatened the injured and promised the dying a fate of pain and suffering. So he had set about eliminating this pack, and perhaps the furs from their carcasses would serve as bedding in the infirmary or as extra padding against the cold ground at night. The wolves though were being lured onto the battlefield with a scent to both incite their hunger and their aggressiveness. So as he tracked them loping along in their tracks picking off stragglers he was himself being lured onto the battlefield.
The first man he killed had watched him kill a wolf, before trying to dispose of the threat to their carefully laid plan. his approach triggered the same instincts which warned the hunter when he was being stalked by a cat, and as the man charged sword raised high to strike down upon his back, Auric spun the spear around his waist as he pivoted to meet the unknown threat, the spear came up high, as though to intercept a leaping wolf, or cat, and caught the soldier clean in the throat puncturing straight through and snapping the mans head back. The weight of the man's body and the spray of his hot blood slammed into Auric, even as Auric pivoted too clear the spear of its entanglement his eyes searching to ensure no other threat had tried to corner him.
As the danger waned the impact of his actions began to sink in. A man had died, in less time than it had taken Auric to put down the wolf but a moment before. Cold efficiency had been the armor of the moment, but now as it fell away he began to feel a tear well in his eyes. He had never desired another man's death. Nor had he in all his years envisioned that he might become a killer. As he stood there taking in the moment he did not realize he was being observed, a soldier, one he knew had been scouting, watching as he killed the wolf, and the enemy soldier.
He would trudge away from that battlefield his feet, and his heart heavy as he removed the skins he had been seeking from the field and returned with them to the camp. There he would offer the skins to the healers after all the wounded could always use more warmth and comfort, the meat he would take to the cooks, protein is protein once cleaned and prepared it would fill the belly as surely as any grazing animals meet might. It was while he was attending to these mundane tasks that the scout was reporting, and the commander was scheming to see if he could not make use of the spearman.
After his tasks, Auric was approached by the commander who asked him for a meeting. Auric did not know it as he went to that meeting but he had been recognized in the camp as well as by the scout. The scout had sung his praises as a reliable hunter and then extolled his apparent skill in dispatching the enemy scout. The other who knew of him had been the quartermaster, who from the description of his hair, and his eyes and his equipment had marked him as the boy from the village who had been exiled for a magical assault on another apprentice. From these two reports, the captain developed a plan to press Auric into some form of service. Choosing to offer the carrot first, the officer laid out an offer, for each enemy officer that Auric could slay fifty gold coins would be paid in bounty and would authorize an additional payment of ten gold coins for each skin or fur that Auric provided up to ten skins per officer. In short, for ten skins, and an officers head he would earn 150 gold coins.
Auric, however, was confused still reeling from the emotional impact of killing a man, and slightly taken aback by the offer, as politely as he could he declined, explaining that he was here as a hunter offering his services as a charity. It was at this moment that the officer exposed the stick revealing knowledge about Auric's childhood, and threatening him with imprisonment or worse if he failed to comply. Auric found himself stunned into silence, he was shaking his head in disbelief, when the captain revealed his final play, if Auric served as a mercenary for the remainder of the border skirmish, he would receive a pardon from the military and possibly the crown for his crimes as a child. To say that Auric felt trapped and resigned to his new fate would be an understatement, but as he had so far his whole life, he would persevere. So, in the end, Auric agreed, he did not know how he would do it, but he would.
For the next six months, Auric would serve, his first two kills were done as he might hunt a wild beast, stealth and stalking, and death in a single moment of surprise. Auric, however, found he had no taste for assassinations. Instead, he began to single out and bait duels with enemy soldiers and officers preferring to give the men a chance to fight for their lives, the first few times he was badly beaten as he began to develop skill with both the sword and the spear against other men. After a few months of life or death trials by the sword, Auric proved himself frightfully proficient. His unique style of fighting and the way he held himself as a hunter rather than as a warrior helped him develop a reputation.
His tour of service ended, Auric was rewarded as promised and a tattoo was given through his brand indicating his past crimes had been pardoned, another was given to mark his status as a mercenary and he was paid, a total of 750 gold coins. He also earned a letter of introduction due to the quality of the service he had given. That would turn out to be a fortuitous prize as he would begin receiving letters requesting services, at the villages he was known to frequent. The letters described him only as the mercenary in the white leather jacket marked with the broken brand and requested that the villagers pass on the letter if they knew of the man it referred too.
So that became his life, hunting in his downtime and persuing any challenge that came his way be it work or duel. Which brings us to the story of how he came to be a noted mercenary employed occasionally by the Lochborne family. As it happens, they say good help is hard to find, and men willing to kill and fight for the sake of it are a breed all their own, so when you required one such man, you made a point of seeking out someone reliable. Auric has developed a reputation for being reliable, and for not asking questions if he decides to take the job. That is a valuable pair of traits, add on that he hunts, and will pursue monsters if the price is right and you have a go-to name when you need a job done.
Auric's first job for the Lochborne's was a hunting job, removing a particularly forward predatory cat from the familial hunting grounds before it could hurt a member of the family. Sure they might have tried hunting it themselves, but who knows, that might be how you end up needing a new family heir. So they went looking for a mercenary with experience as a big game hunter and Auric's name and description came up. A letter was sent and he arrived promptly willing to begin his hunt even fresh from the road. After all, a ferocious big cat daring enough to stalk in the lords hunting grounds would be a fine bit of challenge for the bored spearman. He made quick work of the job, though it turned out that the beast had been a mother seeing to yearlings, so he took the cubs far afield after turning in the skin and left them where they were unlikely to wander back to the hunting grounds or be hunted by other predators.
After that, his skill was tested on other jobs, he did not accept every job, but every job he accepted he succeeded at, even where others had failed. Auric didn't take every job the family offered, but he responded to those with a sense of urgency, as he did to any request for his services prioritizing those he deemed most urgent or constrained by a factor of time. Having never made qualms about taking on challenging jobs or those that others might balk at it seemed only natural that they request him for their newest venture.
Weapons: A single-edged broad sword wrought of a single piece of steel forged by his hand, its hilt of unusual length and wrapped in the strips of leather and fur gathered from his hunting conquests, the pommel stone eventually filled with a blue Lapis Lazuli.
A spear wrought blade and shaft of one piece of worked steel rolled and twisted despite its added weight, the weapon resembles a common hunting spear but for its singular construction and material. The wedge-like blade is slightly broader and longer and its blades are kept wickedly sharp. The weight at the far end is polished to a high shine and it is often employed as a skull cracker as readily as a counterweight. The haft has several punched holes to facilitate the wrapping of two sections in soft leather and hide to ensure his grip should not slip.
Armor:A snow-white coat of armored leather, the right sleeve is missing, the metal plates which reinforce the otherwise flimsy protection of the leather designed for easy replacement should they be sundered, and for maintained flexibility at the cost of some possible protection. Additionally, padded leather pants gloves and armored leather boots make up the ensemble. He lacks the protection of heavy infantry such as plate, or light infantry such as chain, and opts for scouts or vanguard armor choices fitting his style of movement and combat.
General Provisions: In terms of food the hunter is well off, having pouches of freshly roasted meats, the morning of, or the night before, as well as some of the smoked trail rations. He carries little coinage, spending what he gets and bartering for what he needs when he doesn't have it. He carries a sack with a hammock and fire-starting tools, as well as a hammer a blacksmiths tool well worn by the years a memento of his past but also a tool as he often barters for time with the forges to repair his gear.
Magical Items: (leave this blank at the start)
Magical Affinity: Auric has a strong affinity for or gift of magic, though he has no control and no particular desire to learn. He considers the gift an actual curse upon his emotions. His talent produces effects derived from his emotion and proportional to what he feels, with the normal repercussions. Additionally, outbursts of magic result in emotional exhaustion as the gift consumes the emotion which triggered it in addition to whatever damage it does to Auric and the person his emotions were directed at.
Spells: Minor Outburst - This corresponds to an outburst of Auric’s emotions, such as a fit of frustration, or an angry response to a snide comment, as the emotional response if not particularly severe the effect of the magic is fairly minor, such as if he is angry something on his person or the other person catching fire,or if he is frustrated something breaking normally something of his since frustration is normally internalized, but it has been known to be aimed at other people. For whatever effect his magic causes, it is revisited upon him proportionally if something catches fire he is burnt regardless of who it belonged to if something breaks he suffers minor fractures or dislocations.
Major Outburst - These are rare and correspond to the types of emotions you experience during life-altering situations, the pain of traumatic injury, the fear of death, the anger at witnessing true horror, frustration born of true impotence, and grief born of the loss of a loved one or companion. Auric has only ever experienced a small number of these events, the first of which saw him cast out of his village on the eve of his ascent into adulthood and success as a blacksmith, and result was a storm of fire and steel wrought of years of repressed anger and frustration, and for the one moment his emotion crystallized around another it nearly killed them both. These effects are unpredictable and severe, correspond to the emotion he is feeling and each has a good chance of killing him depending on how his emotions are spent and whether the spell wrought of those emotions comes to fruition.