Name:
Fernando Benedicto Scordato
Age:
43
Gender:
Male
Appearance:
Proud, stately, and rugged: these words are defined by Fernando Scordato. He is an aging man, and perhaps he is not the tallest of warriors one might find, but the way he stands and the way he looks at others tells them he is no mere soldier. He is a leader. He is a legend.
Fernando barely reaches the height of 5'8", but most seem to think he stands closer to six feet. His mustache is full and thick but carefully groomed and swept off to the sides. The general's brown hair comes down in waves, and he keeps it at a little less than neck length. He remains handsome despite his age - a dignified sort of handsome - and has a certain hardness of expression. His skin is no stranger to war, and he has the body of a seasoned soldier, albeit an aging one. His hazel eyes have a sort of gleam to them.
Fernando's armor is impressively crafted and ornate in a practical fashion. His clothes well-kept, and he is all-in-all a very clean, very respectable looking individual. He may not look like a knight, but he does look like be belongs in command.
Personality:
Most who know him would call Fernando "austere" or "cold." They'd call him "serious" at the least. They'd call him "blunt" or "honest to the point of rudeness." The general is all of those things: a man who maintains a sombre, steely air. He speaks his mind openly and frankly, leaving no doubt as to what his beliefs are, and makes commands rather than requests.
This is not to say that Ferdinand wears a perpetual mask of iron. When among people he truly trusts, he is known to lower that shield of coldness he maintains. But even then his gestures and expressions seem to lack passion. He most often expresses weariness or determination, and his anger is a silent anger. His pleasure is a muted sort: a small, soft smile or a quiet chuckle is far more common than any true show of mirth for him. With Fernando, it is the small gestures - the rap of his knuckles upon wood, or the clenching of his fist, the closing of his eyes, or simply a cocked eyebrow - that reveal most about his mood.
The general is an idealist turned pragmatist, a knight in sour armor. He sees the world as a doomed place, yet does not stop trying to fight to make it better. He sees people as callous beings, yet he'll do all in his power to preserve their lives. Perhaps that is why Fernando has earned the trust of his troops. He will not waste the lives of his warriors under any circumstances, and he holds himself to strict a strict moral code. He holds his troops answerable to the same code.
And in the end, Fernando is a man that leads by example. He eschews a great deal of luxuries he might otherwise have so that he can show his men how he expects them to behave. He scoffs at the nobility and their great feasts and ostentatious clothes. Perhaps that is why they hate him so much.
But Fernando's greatest strength mentally is his organization. He is an intelligent man to be sure, but he is also exacting, calculating, and incredibly talented in logistics and numbers. The general's mind is very orderly. His orderliness has served him well.
History:
The Years of Dusk saw the fall of Thule and its grand armies. The knights, the nobility, the king: their power was ruined by the plague. Centuries of kingdom-building were thrown away in the span of ten years. It was the end of one age and the beginning of something new.
But those Years of Dusk were hardest on the poor. Peasants, serfs, merchants: those are the people who suffered most from the disease. Those are the people who starved. So it should not come as a surprise that one man was able to rally the common people together for a rebellion: a prophet named Horatio Acciai. He said that there was a God, Vespos, who loved the people and took pity in their suffering. Horatio would lead them in a bloody revolution, stealing away a large chunk of the kingdom of Thule from the nobles-turned-warlords and creating his own realm: the Holy Republic of Vespania.
The birth of the Vespanian people was not a welcome one in the Iron Kingdoms. Such a realm - one where the
peasants had risen up, murdered their lieges, and dared to call it a holy deed - was a threat to their own stability, and it surely would inspire others to try their own hands at rebellion if it was not quashed.
So the kingdoms of the land saw fit to wage war against the Republic of Vespania. And though it had been a great and powerful realm at its inception, its neighbors whittled away at it until it was but a husk of what it had been at its birth. The kings of what was once Thule were in a state of peace with Vespania, but they plotted to sweep into the nation and redistribute its territory between themselves. They were merely waiting for the right moment to strike.
And then came Fernando.
Fernando was a young man of twenty years of ago. He was nobody important: a merchant's son, a boy who was schooled in economics and cartography and navigation. He had no formal military education, having taught himself everything he knew about swordplay and strategy. Yet he wanted to be a soldier, and so his father bought him a position in the Vespanian Army as a lieutenant. He quickly proved to have a canny mind and moved up to the rank of captain. The young captain was given command of a small outpost near the southern border of Vespania, one which was in a poor condition with demoralized soldiers.
Fernando transformed that outpost into a small fortress and drilled his men into respectable troops. He reorganized the supply lines to the fort, introduced an improved system of salvo fire to his men, and made sure their equipment was kept in good condition.
When war finally came, Fernando was more than ready. He held off multiple attacks at his fort, using his soldiers and local support effectively to keep the enemy at bay, and soon was promoted and given command of more men. And then he was promoted again and again as his successes mounted, and soon enough Fernando was the foremost general in the army of Vespania.
What should have been a conquered realm expanded. The Holy Republic of Vespania grew in size, power, and influence thanks to Fernando's cunning and courage. Peace was signed. He had saved Vespania.
Since then, Fernando has been the republic's chief bulwark against outside forces, even as factions inside the republic vie for power and even try to limit the general's influence. He is a polarizing force, with some people lauding him as a hero and others viewing him as an upstart. Nevertheless, he is generally well respected, even by his enemies in the neighboring kingdoms, for his cunning, his well-trained troops, and his valor.
But there is something happening in the capital. As magic returns to the world, so too does the power of Vespos become more evident. And yet as loyal as Fernando is to his Doge, he finds the growing power of the Prophet of Vespos to be... disconcerting.
Fernando cannot quite say why.
Journey:
General Fernando has three principal goals: first, to protect his nation from outside threats; second, to secure the borders and bring about a lasting peace to the region; and thirdly, to put an end to the threat of the Beastmen once and for all. The twisted abominations that came about from the Nemedian Scourge are a threat to all people of the Iron Kingdoms, and they more than anything else must be rid of.
But there is another goal that Fernando has, though he does not make it public: keeping the power of the Prophet of Vespos in check. The Prophet has acted more and more strangely in recent years, arousing suspicions in Fernando. While the general is as devout a man as any and praises Vespos between battles, something about the Prophet unnerves him. He cannot say what.
Ideals:
Order - Fernando defines organization. He is timely, orderly, always preparing contingencies for whatever trouble he foresees, and keeps both himself and his soldiers highly disciplined.
Honor - Those who have served under the general or fought against him know very well just how honorable a man he is. The tactics he employs may be tricky, to be sure, and he may be a crafty old fox. But let it be known that Fernando is an honest man, an oathkeeper, a man who would sooner die than betray his morals.
Loyalty - None can doubt that Fernando is a loyal man. He could have taken control of the government of Vespania if he had so chosen. He commands the army, and he has just enough political clout to maintain the throne were he to take it. But he has no desire to rule Vespania: he means only to serve it.
Strategy - Fernando does not win battles with brute force. He wins by cunning and wit, by maintaining good supply lines and spotting weaknesses to be exploited. He wins by drilling his men very hard and transforming them into truly professional fighters. He is a strategist and a tactician.
Holdings:
Fernando commands an army, perhaps the finest in all of Thule. If it is not the finest, it is at least the most well-trained and disciplined. He commands mixed formations of pikemen and musketeers called
Tercanos, the lot of them equipped with breastplates and morions for protection. Some halberdiers are counted among those units as well. The general fields lines of musket-toting skirmishers, and he has been known to pick out his strongest soldiers to serve as grenadiers in those skirmishing lines. Other units in Fernando's army include mounted crossbowmen and heavy cavalry wielding battle axes or horseman's picks with lances.
Of course, it should be remembered that while Fernando commands this army, its loyalty is meant to be to Vespania, not to him. Still, a majority of his soldiers have greater faith in him than in the leaders of their nation.
The general has fewer personal belongings than one might expect. He has no family (sans his father and cousins) and lives alone in a small "manor" inside the confines of the fort he uses as his base of operations. The General's Manor, as it is called, is not much larger than the next officer's quarters, though he has taken some time to try and make the rather bare place look livable.
Fernando has his own horse, a mare named
Belle, and has the equipment one would suspect of a general. A well-made sword, an impressive breastplate that marks him as the leader, a war banner, a musket, a sturdy buckler... It may not sound like much, but when he sits astride that horse and stares over the battlefield, there is no doubt who is in command. He may not be an incredibly wealthy man, but his equipment and clothing mark him as a man of high rank and stature.
Little Bill
