AGE: 43
RACE: Breton (Reachman)
BIRTHSIGN: The Warrior
APPEARANCE: Much like the rest of his ilk, Ducorach's features strike a weathered, wilder line than those of his High-Rock cousins. Where a Breton from the west might be carved of aquiline nose and ears that threaten on the elven, Ducorach's facial extremities droop and come to rounded and more wind-beaten tissue. His face wears the marks of a life spent on the trail, or on the brine of the Abecean and the Ghost, discoloured some in splodges that swivel around sunken eyes, ridged by calloused wrinkles yet, half-covered with his wet-mopped black hair, Ducorach cuts just south of handsome. From the lofty perch of 5'11", Ducorach stands quite-the height for a Breton, too, and coupled with the practiced arms of a sea-hand, you could be forgiven for thinking that he was the runt of Nordic stock.
PERSONALITY: For most of his adult life, Ducorach has found himself amiable, almost chirpy. Perhaps spending 10 years on an Imperial galley engenders a certain socialised demeanour, but Ducorach has always been the first to gather around the hearth, or the campfire, or simply a good cup of mead (some of the Nord-culture has rubbed off on him), eagre to swap meaningless, and all-too-often fictional tales of, in equal measures, valour and heriroic, and self-deprecating hilarity, with all company present.
However, he is not without his scars. Having grown up a Reachman in Nordic Markarth, Ducorach clangs with the paranoia that he is an outcast, without a home, destined to peek into the lives and dwellings of other peoples only to wander on again after his welcome has passed. Perhaps it is this sense that has driven him to wandering, first in his life as a sailor, and then as a petty-merchant peddling wares to skip-borders with as much haste as possible.
Over his travels, Ducorach has found music to be an excellent leveller, and as such, has taught himself to play the lute, cataloging all sorts of regional tunes.
BACKSTORY: Ducorach was born in 4E158 to a Bretic serving-class family, his father a cook in the Jarl's kitchens, and his mother a bookkeeper for the Silver-Blood family and their eponymous identured prison-mine. Owing to his mother's position, a cataloguer of a prison-population that, essentially, comprised the indebted, downtrodden Reachmen to whom their family belonged, Ducorach found scant friends among those of his kin who could afford to remain free. To the mind of a child, arbitrary notions of race mattered little, and, pragmatically, he began to draw his friends almost entirely from Nords.
From his youth, all the way up until he entered his eighteenth year, Ducorach scarcely noticed the shackles that bound people like he, even as all the skilled traders selected their aprentices solely of the Nordic stock of Ducorach's friends, or as the Warrens swelled with displaced Reachmen taxed, selectively, by a Nordic collector seeking favour with his friends and he himself was left to scrape pans in the house of the Jarl. These injustices seemed to pass him by - he was a model of integration, his nord-friends saw Ducorach, and not some wild-Bretic-youth here to cause trouble, and any misfortune on his part was put down just to that - fortune.
That was until the Great War, when soldiers filled out by their thousands, and within two years, some mad-men from the hills had overthrown the Jarl, and anyone with even a hint of Breton, in the end, became lamented and despised.
For two years, Ducorach lived under the rule of his own people, and it was a peaceful one, not in the least because his mother, as someone with extensive knowledge of the city's life-blood, Cidnha-Mine, was given care of its upkeep, along with a tidy commission which saw their coffers fill. The family ate at tables the father had once catered for, and though some Nord's seemed displaced, even as downtrodden as the Reachmen once were, Ducorach could not help but turn a blind eye, especially in the face of their new-found riches.
However, it was not to last. In 4E 176, Ulfric Stormcloak came riding into the city, swept away two years of industry by Ducorach's people, and exacted terrible venus cd for their "crimes". Out of nothing more meaningful than fear, many of Ducorach's former friends headed Ulfric's call-to-arms, and when they were through, turned Ducorach and his family over to the Nordic authorities. It was in Ulfric's mass killings that Ducorach lost his mother, along with a host of Nords too moral to participate in such an act.
Following the Markarth incident, Ducorach felt the need to flee Markarth, the petty dichtonomy of Nord and Reachman, one which never ought to have existed, as he was proof to. Heading for Dawnstar, Ducorach signed on with the Imperial Navy. For two years, he worked as a petty laborer, but the vacuum left by the Great War soon became his boon, and Ducorach was afforded every opportunity for improvement. Owing to his race, he was given basic-battlemage training, and within 5 years could conjure a healing-spell poweful enough to save a life endangered, a firebolt to help raise a galley or a ice-blast to make-brittle even the best of Legion steel. Swordwork, too, he learned, though he was no natural fencer, his magical skills gave him enough to compensate. Ducorach loved the Navy - patrols, after the war, were quiet, uneventful, save a handful of pirates in the calm of the Abecean, and each many and woman on the crew had a different story, a different tale, fundamentally far-flung from any told around them. Somewhere he could blend in.
But then, after 17 years of sailing, at 35, Ducorach was dumped with a pension, in some pissant port near the Imperial city, bristling with skills he no longer had a use for. There was mercernary work, sure, but the thought of a band of fighters camped out in the hills stoked too many memories of his losses in Markarth. So, instead, Ducorach threw in with an enterprising Khajiti friend, eagre to start a trade route, and pretty soon he was traipsing all across Tamriel, half-heartedly peddling trinkets in return for a chance to glimpse the wondrous provinces of the continent. It was in these days he became quite the adept wordsmith, to talk his way around checkpoint and guard and toll.
After eight years of wandering, the hollowness of his journey was made manifest when a letter arrived, dated and signed by the steward of Markarth himself. Ducorach's father, whom he had kept from the Warrens with coin from the legion, but scarce seen in all the years, had passed away. Ducorach realised it was time to return to Markarth, to make his peace with his past.
ARMOUR: Mismatch, patchwork leather plates stretched over slight-rusted legion chain mail. Fur lined boots, and thin fur-gloves for dexterity.
WEAPONS: Steel Shortsword, Fire and Ice Magic, Restoration and magelight
SKILLS: One Handed, Destruction, Restoration, Speech, Light Armour
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