Post by CharlieGordon on Aug 14, 2015 17:11:12 GMT
Profile
Name: Gerald 'Ged' Kestrel
Age: over 1000
Gender: Male
Race: Humanoid but with a demonic curse (more to follow)
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 189lb
Rankยป Citizen/ Gardener
Basic Appearance:
Ged has the appearance of a tall and wiry elderly man albeit in his sixties/seventies rather than over a millennium in years. He boasts a shock of tangly grey hair and great bushy iron eyebrows that stand out on a lean, tan face. Sallow of complexion with deep lined wrinkles marking his leathery cheeks, Ged's eyes are an unremarkable hazel and set in middling depth in his narrow head.
A crooked nose belies his placid expression; evidence of historic combat and Ged's great sinewy ears run almost the length of his head. His thin lips overlap his weathered teeth so that you seldom see them, lest you illicit a laugh from him; which is rare but not impossible.
His build is lean and his gait is stooped from centuries of backbreaking labour. Ged wears roughspun garments in browns, beiges and earthy colours- well-suited to his time spent tending the allotment. His boots are boiled-leather and huge, Ged boasting remarkable hands and feet.
Combat Credentials
Ged boasts an uncommon strength that is derived in main from his curse. He has blurring handspeed when called upon but beyond a learned and dangerous proficiency with the pikestaff, he has no specialist powers and is unlikely to seek out a fight. Nonetheless, not a man to be trifled with.
Combat Style:
Patient and calculating really. Ged isn't one to go into the attack. He is a wily competitor when he competes at all and those unremarkable hazel eyes take in height, reach, muscle tone and demeanour of an opponent swiftly. If engaged, he won't back down as his curse keeps him from real harm in any case. He takes victory and defeat in the same leggy stride because at his age they are all one.
His movement is quicker than you'd give credit for and he can strike with his staff from all angles such is his experience and proficiency. His defence is the aforementioned patient waiting game, allow an attack and reverse it where possible. Once on the back foot, Ged can turn the tide in the blink of an eye although his resilience isn't huge. A few well-landed blows will put him down.
Abilities: If Ged can be killed, none have discovered how. He can be 'killed' in the literal sense of the word. Put a sword through his heart and he isn't getting back up- but it isn't a true death as moments later, an hour, a day, Ged will simply reappear in the allotment of the gardens in the rural district and continue to tend his rhubarb patch! This is the legacy of a curse that dooms him to perpetual labour upon his lonely allotment. If he spends longer than a few days away from the site, he will invariably wake up back there again.
Weapon(s): He has a 5ft pikestaff & that's literally it. He has various agricultural tools with sharpish appendages but nothing that boasts a real killing edge! His staff is walnut which he oils infrequently with a small bottle of linseed and a little leather application patch.
Gear: Tough leather gardening gloves, battered from years of use make more than adequate fight-mitts. He also has a faded red ribbon that he keeps in a trouser pocket that can be used to tie his unruly grey hair back from his eyes. He doesn't always use it though.
Background
Over a thousand years ago, Gerald was born much in the vicinity of the Realm's rural district to common parents. His father was a local tanner and massaged excrement into hides ready to be boiled into leather. His mother was married young and worked in the local vineyards, squelching grapes in great vats with her barefeet to be brewed into weak-tasting piss that drunkards and the village idiot might mistake for decent wine.
They were married after a fashion and Ged came along only twenty years later. A miracle. His mother only lived another two years until a Spring fever carried her off and Ged's father raised him alone. The loss of his mother's income meant Ged spent much of his childhood helping tend the gardens whilst his old man worked longer hours to keep up with rent.
Inevitably something had to give and when Ged was just twelve, he was recruited into the service of the local Land Lord to work as his squire in lieu of missing rent. Ged was tall and quiet (still is) but went about his business and became a favourite of the Lord owing to his strength and huge capable hands which were like snowshovels on the ungainly lad.
By Ged's fifteenth birthday, war had come to the county and the Lord recruited him as a man-at-arms as he led his fiefdom across the borders into battle. Ged learned more in the heat of those primitive combats (fought as often with pitchforks as with swords) than he had in three years of infrequent practice in the Lord's armoury and returned a skilled fighter to the news that his Old Man had died. A sudden heart failure whilst elbow deep in bullhide and pigshit was probably how he'd have wanted to go. Ged mourned briefly and returned to the Lord's service.
Wars came and went and fewer and fewer of the original battalion returned each time. Ged rose from Man-at-arms to Master-at-Arms within two short decades and was the Lord's most trusted and long-standing friend by this time. The Lord was over fifty now and had grown fat with age and sore with gout. Ged advised against riding into the Darklands way out West but prophesies in old Taverns and queer dreams had convinced the old Lord that great riches, boundless glory and free Wi-Fi awaited long leagues Westward in the shadowrealm.
By now, Ged's men were honoured soldiers and skilled warriors but of magicks they knew nought or next to nought. After a year of travelling they were ambushed in a gloomy valley and routed. Ged led a party away in retreat to a nearby farmstead but the Lord had already lost his intestines and two of his chins. His dying eyes saw their last as Ged hid his remaining men in haylofts, chicken coops and troughs as the enemy used tracking spells to easily hunt down every last man.
Ged had to listen to every last friend and acquaintance slaughtered by warlocks. He made a move to intervene- to do something but a tiny hand tugged him aside. A little girl. No more than seven. Dirty kneed and pretty in a simplistic way. Her black irises marked her out as a native of these terrible lands and her shock of onyx hair was tied back by a crimson ribbon which stood out so starkly in this gloom (for even the very air seemed greyed) that Ged caught his breath to see it.
She led him out the back of the barn and they streaked across the courtyard in one last desperate retreat. Why would she help him? He would never know as a great bodkin arrow skewered her clean through and sent her brittle body skittering across the dreary cobbles. The ribbon, shaken loose, flapped and danced defiantly in the little breeze. An anguished determination and bitter defiance overwhelmed him.
Grasping the scarlet token in hand, he wheeled on the attackers who were closing in on all sides. The closest, a huge blue-skinned brute at least 7 feet tall spoke through teeth filed into points.
"What have we here? The farmer!?" He jeered to the delight of his company.
Ged was resolute. He said nothing and levelled the pikestaff at the head of his adversary.
"A mute! A mute farmer. Come, your men are dead. At least tell us who you were before you follow them into the dead waste?" He grinned fiendishly.
Ged just glared, willing himself to strike but holding back tears at the same time.
The warlocks had grown bored already and an end was in sight.
"Well, farmer, since you love your land so much, perhaps you can continue it indefinitely... " He began to utter strange syllables in an odd tongue and as his eyes flashed yellow, Ged had time only to tighten his grip on the red ribbon as a scimtar bisected the air and shattered through his skull.
He woke up face-down in the rhubarb patch of the allotment behind his father's house. A red ribbon clenched tightly in his fist and the certain knowledge that this existence was to be his purgatory. He hadn't protected a single man and even the little girl fool enough to try to help him lay dead long leagues West.
In the thousand years since, he has died half a hundred times but each time has simply blinked back into consciousness amongst the vegetables. He appears to have aged some thirty years or so which might suggest he may one day experience some final death but it is madness to hope for such atonement.
Name: Gerald 'Ged' Kestrel
Age: over 1000
Gender: Male
Race: Humanoid but with a demonic curse (more to follow)
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 189lb
Rankยป Citizen/ Gardener
Basic Appearance:
Ged has the appearance of a tall and wiry elderly man albeit in his sixties/seventies rather than over a millennium in years. He boasts a shock of tangly grey hair and great bushy iron eyebrows that stand out on a lean, tan face. Sallow of complexion with deep lined wrinkles marking his leathery cheeks, Ged's eyes are an unremarkable hazel and set in middling depth in his narrow head.
A crooked nose belies his placid expression; evidence of historic combat and Ged's great sinewy ears run almost the length of his head. His thin lips overlap his weathered teeth so that you seldom see them, lest you illicit a laugh from him; which is rare but not impossible.
His build is lean and his gait is stooped from centuries of backbreaking labour. Ged wears roughspun garments in browns, beiges and earthy colours- well-suited to his time spent tending the allotment. His boots are boiled-leather and huge, Ged boasting remarkable hands and feet.
Combat Credentials
Ged boasts an uncommon strength that is derived in main from his curse. He has blurring handspeed when called upon but beyond a learned and dangerous proficiency with the pikestaff, he has no specialist powers and is unlikely to seek out a fight. Nonetheless, not a man to be trifled with.
Combat Style:
Patient and calculating really. Ged isn't one to go into the attack. He is a wily competitor when he competes at all and those unremarkable hazel eyes take in height, reach, muscle tone and demeanour of an opponent swiftly. If engaged, he won't back down as his curse keeps him from real harm in any case. He takes victory and defeat in the same leggy stride because at his age they are all one.
His movement is quicker than you'd give credit for and he can strike with his staff from all angles such is his experience and proficiency. His defence is the aforementioned patient waiting game, allow an attack and reverse it where possible. Once on the back foot, Ged can turn the tide in the blink of an eye although his resilience isn't huge. A few well-landed blows will put him down.
Abilities: If Ged can be killed, none have discovered how. He can be 'killed' in the literal sense of the word. Put a sword through his heart and he isn't getting back up- but it isn't a true death as moments later, an hour, a day, Ged will simply reappear in the allotment of the gardens in the rural district and continue to tend his rhubarb patch! This is the legacy of a curse that dooms him to perpetual labour upon his lonely allotment. If he spends longer than a few days away from the site, he will invariably wake up back there again.
Weapon(s): He has a 5ft pikestaff & that's literally it. He has various agricultural tools with sharpish appendages but nothing that boasts a real killing edge! His staff is walnut which he oils infrequently with a small bottle of linseed and a little leather application patch.
Gear: Tough leather gardening gloves, battered from years of use make more than adequate fight-mitts. He also has a faded red ribbon that he keeps in a trouser pocket that can be used to tie his unruly grey hair back from his eyes. He doesn't always use it though.
Background
Over a thousand years ago, Gerald was born much in the vicinity of the Realm's rural district to common parents. His father was a local tanner and massaged excrement into hides ready to be boiled into leather. His mother was married young and worked in the local vineyards, squelching grapes in great vats with her barefeet to be brewed into weak-tasting piss that drunkards and the village idiot might mistake for decent wine.
They were married after a fashion and Ged came along only twenty years later. A miracle. His mother only lived another two years until a Spring fever carried her off and Ged's father raised him alone. The loss of his mother's income meant Ged spent much of his childhood helping tend the gardens whilst his old man worked longer hours to keep up with rent.
Inevitably something had to give and when Ged was just twelve, he was recruited into the service of the local Land Lord to work as his squire in lieu of missing rent. Ged was tall and quiet (still is) but went about his business and became a favourite of the Lord owing to his strength and huge capable hands which were like snowshovels on the ungainly lad.
By Ged's fifteenth birthday, war had come to the county and the Lord recruited him as a man-at-arms as he led his fiefdom across the borders into battle. Ged learned more in the heat of those primitive combats (fought as often with pitchforks as with swords) than he had in three years of infrequent practice in the Lord's armoury and returned a skilled fighter to the news that his Old Man had died. A sudden heart failure whilst elbow deep in bullhide and pigshit was probably how he'd have wanted to go. Ged mourned briefly and returned to the Lord's service.
Wars came and went and fewer and fewer of the original battalion returned each time. Ged rose from Man-at-arms to Master-at-Arms within two short decades and was the Lord's most trusted and long-standing friend by this time. The Lord was over fifty now and had grown fat with age and sore with gout. Ged advised against riding into the Darklands way out West but prophesies in old Taverns and queer dreams had convinced the old Lord that great riches, boundless glory and free Wi-Fi awaited long leagues Westward in the shadowrealm.
By now, Ged's men were honoured soldiers and skilled warriors but of magicks they knew nought or next to nought. After a year of travelling they were ambushed in a gloomy valley and routed. Ged led a party away in retreat to a nearby farmstead but the Lord had already lost his intestines and two of his chins. His dying eyes saw their last as Ged hid his remaining men in haylofts, chicken coops and troughs as the enemy used tracking spells to easily hunt down every last man.
Ged had to listen to every last friend and acquaintance slaughtered by warlocks. He made a move to intervene- to do something but a tiny hand tugged him aside. A little girl. No more than seven. Dirty kneed and pretty in a simplistic way. Her black irises marked her out as a native of these terrible lands and her shock of onyx hair was tied back by a crimson ribbon which stood out so starkly in this gloom (for even the very air seemed greyed) that Ged caught his breath to see it.
She led him out the back of the barn and they streaked across the courtyard in one last desperate retreat. Why would she help him? He would never know as a great bodkin arrow skewered her clean through and sent her brittle body skittering across the dreary cobbles. The ribbon, shaken loose, flapped and danced defiantly in the little breeze. An anguished determination and bitter defiance overwhelmed him.
Grasping the scarlet token in hand, he wheeled on the attackers who were closing in on all sides. The closest, a huge blue-skinned brute at least 7 feet tall spoke through teeth filed into points.
"What have we here? The farmer!?" He jeered to the delight of his company.
Ged was resolute. He said nothing and levelled the pikestaff at the head of his adversary.
"A mute! A mute farmer. Come, your men are dead. At least tell us who you were before you follow them into the dead waste?" He grinned fiendishly.
Ged just glared, willing himself to strike but holding back tears at the same time.
The warlocks had grown bored already and an end was in sight.
"Well, farmer, since you love your land so much, perhaps you can continue it indefinitely... " He began to utter strange syllables in an odd tongue and as his eyes flashed yellow, Ged had time only to tighten his grip on the red ribbon as a scimtar bisected the air and shattered through his skull.
He woke up face-down in the rhubarb patch of the allotment behind his father's house. A red ribbon clenched tightly in his fist and the certain knowledge that this existence was to be his purgatory. He hadn't protected a single man and even the little girl fool enough to try to help him lay dead long leagues West.
In the thousand years since, he has died half a hundred times but each time has simply blinked back into consciousness amongst the vegetables. He appears to have aged some thirty years or so which might suggest he may one day experience some final death but it is madness to hope for such atonement.