[b]Name:[/b] Brynn Tiptoe, Blood-Red Brynn, Whiskey Brynn, Brynnen-i-Cael

[b]Race:[/b] Breton, Reachman

[b]Family Origins:[/b] Born to a whore in Northpoint, given an Eastern Reach name and then dumped off in Morthal surrounded by nothing but Nords, he understandably never bought into the whole Forsworn business, mainly because he was busy trying to feed himself from the scraps in the gutter and make a living digging peat out of the mires after he was given away by the whore that birthed him. Roving with a fighting band come to Morthal out of Falkreath when they came around looking for fresh blood, he’s only ever known Nords and Bretons and the occasional Orc. A worldly man and the best scout in Skyrim, far as his crew was concerned, his crew was his only family in the world and one he was fiercely loyal to. 

[img]http://i.imgur.com/CFiEh8g.jpg[/img]

[b]Appearance:[/b] A very intense man, he looks mean as a troll in heat, though many are surprised by his singing voice and his ready smile. The first scars one notices are the two crossing eachother on his face, framing his blue eyes. His long hair is only controlled by his cloth cap and his beard is half-assedly maintained, the mustache gathered and braided, blue beads at the ends. He is a thick built man but only stands at a fine 5 feet and 10 inches but can move unnervingly quiet for his bulk. He has thick fingers with nails bitten to the quick, knuckles scabbed and fingers scuffed, his palms are well-callused from hard use.

[b]Age: [/b]43, ages like an elf.

[b]Equipment:[/b] He wears a gambeson of padded cloth and a large cloth cap. He also wears a leather band around his head to keep his hair from his eyes. He has trousers of doe-skin, with leather boots.

An impressive collection of six knives about his person. The smallest is a little whittler with a blade no bigger than a man’s thumb and only growing up until the last, a big bone-handle chopper, blade 14 inches long and thick with it on his hip, next to a hatchet. His bow was lost when he was left for dead.

[b]Miscellaneous:[/b] None. His pack was on his horse and his crew took it with them. 

[b]Favored Skills:[/b] Highly Proficient (Sneak, Marksman), Moderately Proficient (One-Handed, Hand-to-Hand), Somewhat Proficient (Lockpicking) 

[b]Crime Committed:[/b] Several counts of poaching, robbery and murder. The sacking of a small hamlet called Greenwood as well as the sacking of a neighboring farmstead, inhabitants all killed or sold into slavery to Hammerfell pirates.

[b]Character Background:[/b] “I don’t sing my own songs. I let these other bastards do it, cheerin’ my name and I’ll laugh along long after they’ve buried you, lad. Why don’t you go back to fucking pigs and I won’t have to put holes in the lot of you.” – Brynn’s words to Frithjolf the Furious, Siege of Greenwall, 4e201

Brynnen was given away nameless by his whore mother to the fur trader from Sharnhelm who fucked her. It was no more than six days out of the womb when he left his mother in that dockside whorehouse. His was a short time with the fur trader, the Bosmer only keeping him around for a few months, long enough to give him the name Brynnen-i-Cael. The name was made up on the spot by the Sharnhelm trader coming out of the Eastern Reach, and it was the name used for him by the peat digger that raised him most his life. Brynnen grew up wild, never listening to his Nord “father” or “mother”, and getting into fights with the local Nord lads who called him Knife-Ear Brynn, pummeling enough of the lads to warrant him a reputation in the village. He stayed around for three more years until he fell in with a fighting band looking for volunteers. Knowing he wouldn't have a life he wanted and with no shortage of enemies in the village, he was eager to see something of the world and he promised his mother that he would bring back enough gold and silver to make sure she or his sister never had to break their backs digging up shit with the thralls.

He took up the spear, having no training with any other weapon before signing on with the band. His first friend that he made was a Nord man named Karling, who would rise to become leader of their band of Housecarls, and one of the best shots with a bow and the greatest fighter he’d ever seen. Karling agreed to teach him how to use a bow for a good price of two silver pieces a week. Each day, Karling would teach him how to nock his arrow, how to draw, how to sight and after a year of nothing but practice, Brynn had become one of the best shots in his seven-man band. Almost as good as Karling, but every time Brynn did something that could best what Karling had shown off, Karling would do something even more amazing. Karling reckoned that Brynn was so damn good with a bow because of he shared blood with the Bosmer savages from way down South who ate nothing but meat and even each other. He and Karling and the rest of the lads wasted no time in using Brynn and his Reachman and Bosmer ancestry to spread fear amongst their enemies and attract lads looking to put some brawn in their chests and thicken up their arms. Soon, their band under Karling would swell to a good number of three score fighting men.

Brynn had barely even gotten into a scrape yet but every time they came up against another band or some brigands on the road, they’d always get them to stand down by saying they had Blood-Red Brynn with them, a Reachman crossed with a Bosmer, who’d eat his enemies alive and dead and use their hearts for evil spells just like them Forsworn folk. None of it was true, Brynn thought the idea of eating people was right disgusting and he knew fuck-all about Reachman tradition, but so long as it earned him a name, that was fine. As the years went on, more and more folk in the killing business had heard of Blood-Red Brynn, and at the age of twenty-six, his legend had grown to be up there with some of the hardest names in Skyrim. Men had it that on the day of his birth, a thunderstorm had gathered overhead, where it had no place to be and that he took his first life when he was no older than eight. It was told that he’d hunted the Sybulfrykte through the mountains for seven days and speared the big frost troll in his cave on the eighth, among many other stories.

When others began asking him about it and treating him like a hero on one stay in Rorikstead, Brynn was called out by the warrior Ingvar Ironhead, a berserker in Rorik Four-Faces’ own fighting band. Ingvar challenged Brynn to a duel in the circle, just like the old days and vowed to “slay this Reach-Mer savage and prove his exploits were naught but dust and shit.” Brynn wanted nothing to do with it, but as the crowd cheered him on, and as Karling and his band cheered him on, Brynn felt his heart beating fast and the hot fire in his belly. He accepted Ingvar’s challenge and was given three days to prepare. He spent his three days holed up in his room in the tavern, refusing to leave and blaming his vomiting on too much drink. On the third day, the circle was drawn in the dirt and Karling and the five others from his band held their shields for him while Ingvar’s eight held shields for him. Brynn felt himself on the verge of pissing as it came time for the warriors to tell their names and list their exploits. Ingvar listed off man after man killed and battle after battle fought. All Brynn listed were lies that tasted bitter in his mouth. They spun a shield to choose weapons, painted side for Brynn’s spear or strap side for Ingvar’s axe. As the challenged, Brynn had to pick, and it landed strap side up. Brynn had never fought with an axe, but he reckoned Ingvar knew his way around a weapon like a spear.

Ingvar and Brynn came together in the circle and fought for ten minutes straight. In the fight, Brynn had been cut twice and poked something fierce in his leg. He knew those would be his last moments, fighting to the music of throaty cheers and grumbling boos. Maybe his exploits were naught but dust and shit and Ingvar Ironhead could add his name to the list of men he’s killed next duel he fights in. In the last seconds of the fight, though, Karling managed to trip Ingvar up, sending him stumbling. Seizing the moment, Brynn planted his axe between Ingvar’s eyes, splitting his face and ending the fight. Karling cheered Brynn’s name along with all the people of Rorikstead. All the ones who’d won their bets, anyway. Brynn was a smiling mess, loving the attention of the farmers’ daughters in the village doting upon him and his wounds, singing at the top of his lungs to the songs of the Dragonborn, of Hoag Merkiller, of Jorunn the Skald-King, and all the heroes long dead. Brynn kept Ingvar’s axe and was given his bone-handle chopper by a farmer. The one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do is look at Ingvar’s grave, knowing he won only because of Karling. They left Rorikstead soon after and Brynn took to the drink and took to handling his new role as Karling's Second with a hard, rough hand and a drive to never have to rely on Karling again to win his name, born of equal parts machismo and shame.

Karling and the others noticed that where Brynn had once drank with them and laughed along with their songs, he now drank alone and seemed angry at their singing of heroes both old and new. Truth be told, the reputation that Karling had heaped onto him was a godsend. But Ingvar was only the first, he knew, and he'd have to fight far more battles to defend an honor he'd never earned himself. Where Karling had been a beloved mentor, he soon became a lying braggart in Brynn's eyes, and one that he hated.

As the years went on, Brynn only got more practice killing, and where he used to tremble, he now held fast. He’d earned himself a name with some real deeds, whiskey by how much he could drink of the stuff and he earned his name Tiptoe when they took Fort Greenwall from Ulfric. He climbed the walls and opened the gate for Karling's Housecarls, securing a swift victory that was largely bloodless. The fighting only worked to swell Brynn’s name, as he held Greenwall too, where he and none but his fellow hundred Housecarls made sure their banner stood defiantly as wave after wave of Ulfric's boys fought to take back their fort for ten days as they waited on the Imperial reinforcements. Ten days of fighting both served to harden him up and to cement his place as a soldier in Karling’s band. The camaraderie of a fighting band helped take the stresses of war off of him the longer the time he spent with them, and he’d spent a long time building a name and fighting shoulder to shoulder with the boys. Overall, him and the rest of Karling’s band came out the other side of the Siege of Greenwall new men, brothers all and Brynn wouldn’t trade the warrior’s life for anything.

After the Siege and the battle for Riften, he entered into the blasted Ruin with the Empire and fought two days over the Jagged Crown and held off Ulfric’s men while the Imperials withdrew with it in their possession. A deed that still has his and Karling’s names toasted to by every legionnaire they fought beside. After the end of the war, Karling decided it was time for him to retire. After a long life of fighting, he passed the band onto Brynn. Brynn had never wanted to lead, he barely wanted to be Karling's Second, but he was pushed to the front of the band. On the night of Karling's leaving, Brynn took him aside and they talked of old battles and even just good moments they'd shared. But Brynn still had that niggling need to take Karling by his collar and shake him dizzy, ask him why he'd chosen him to be his puppet. He now viewed the fear in men's glances as a curse, and every time he had to keep up the lie.  He never did. He knew the only reason he was the feared and respected man he was now, the only reason he was even alive to this day was Karling's cheat in the circle.

Blood-Red Brynn though, that’s a name he views as both a powerful tool and a bloody curse, as some men will only challenge the name while others back down in the face of it. But he knows how many duels he no longer has to fight to prove himself now that folk know that name and what that bloody bastard can do, and so he figures he can put the face on and act like a bloody Reachman if he has to. Deep down though, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the respect the name got him all these years. Although his mind has put the past in the past, and he’s always ready to stand and fight and kill without batting an eye, he still knows that most of his exploits are naught but dust and shit at their core.

Of course, there's a fine line between a soldier and a bandit. A soldier burns villages and sacks towns the same as a bandit, but the soldier has the excuse of war on his side. Get rid of a war, the soldier's a bandit and a murderer. Brynn found out too well that once you set to killing, there's hardly a place you can find to stop. During the wars, he'd become blood-drunk and glory-hungry, and after ending all the feuds he'd accrued over the years fighting for the Empire against the Stormcloaks, he'd only made more. When the war with the Dominion came, he instead went to High Rock, knowing there'd be easy business. Easy business turned into the same old thing. He'd caught himself up in feuds again. The feuds of nobles were well-paying ordeals it seemed. He'd thrown his lot in with a son of a noble house next in line for his family's holdings. He did everything between stand next to him and look dangerous to collecting taxes with the Lord's men, and even provoking the other houses in many ways both petty and bloody.

His men grew unhappy with the work, though it was good pay. Many of his men signed on looking for glory and hard names. There was only one way he knew how to deal with that, and the meanness he'd always had, the same meanness he'd used being Karling's Second came back again. So did the drinking. The men tired of having their brothers trussed up and left hanging or being beaten for insubordination. His Second, a man with the band for a year now, Hvitserk began arguing with Brynn more and more. It was one day, after the job that the young lord-to-be had them out on that saw Greenwood made ash and corpses, that he woke to Hvitserk's sword pointed to his throat. He was betrayed by his best friend, stabbed in the gut and then left to die. When the riders looking for the bottom of the pillar of smoke he'd made of Greenwood found him, they took him straight to Meir Thorvale to answer for his crimes.

[b]Fighting Style:[/b] eing one of the best scouts this side of the Dragontail mountains, he prefers to stay in the shadows or be some distance away from the thick of it to make the most out of his impressive skill at archery. If he doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be before he’s chopped your throat out, and he can put a bodkin through a fly’s arse at 80 strides, if you ask him. Maybe he can’t do quite as much as that, but a man’s a fair easier target than a fly’s arse, and he hasn’t gotten his reputation by not being a damn good archer.


[b]Personality:[/b] Brynn Tiptoe is a trustworthy man. Trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, to come out of a knife fight with another man's blood on his hands.  Trust him to take a man at his back rather than his front, trust him to be a right black bastard, you'll never be let down. Brynn was never one to back down, those that turned the other cheek in the mires of Morthal got beat to shit for being weak. That mindset is still with him, so he'll hold where the better man will buckle. Tough like old leather, given over to dark moods and prone to violence, a man is still made of contradictions. He smiles, he laughs, he doubts and he has his regrets.

So long as a man is one of the pack and holds his own, Brynn will die for that man. Brynn Tiptoe, or Blood-Red Brynn, is a trustworthy man. Honest about his evils, made of contradictions, if the world is all lying snakes the exception is him.

Or so he says.

[b]Font Colour:[/b] None