[b]Name:[/b] Eli Wayne
[b]Age:[/b] 28
[b]Sex:[/b] Male
[b]Nationality/Homeland:[/b] Land of a Thousand Kings, Kingdom of Wayne.
[b]Appearance/Equipment:[/b] Eli stands taller than most men and has a heavy muscular build. He has medium-length hair that most call blonde, but it is dark enough to be mistaken for brown. His eyes are blue and he has a beard and mustache (same color as his hair) that he keeps neat and trimmed when possible. Eli has a faint scar running diagonally across his forehead above his right eye and a couple more hidden by his facial hair.

Eli's fighting equipment consists of a longsword with a slightly chipped blade and a leather-wrapped handle, a knife that is about half as long as his forearm, a wooden buckler with metal bands running across the face, a set of heavy woolen padding, a chain mail hauberk, chain mail leggings, a steel breastplate, a steel [url=http://www.museumreplicas.com/images/Product/large/34.jpg]great helm[/url] with a chain mail drape to protect the neck, and plate gauntlets and bracers. It's all plain and serviceable, no ornamentation or enamel to color the metal.

Eli also carries a variety of travel essentials: a few sets of clothing, a thick cloak, a bedroll, various foodstuffs, a couple water skins, a set of flint and steel, a fishing hook and some string, rope for setting snares, a roll of cloth to use for bandages, a basic sewing kit with a bone needle and rough thread to maintain his clothing, and a sturdy pack to carry it all in.

[b]Skills:[/b] [u]Sword and Shield Fighting[/u]* - Eli has trained with a sword and shield since he was a young boy, and he has learned to use them very well.

[u]Heavily Armored Combat[/u] - After many years training and fighting wearing a heavy suit of armor, Eli is more mobile and has more stamina than most who don such armor, and he is capable of actually putting it on or taking it off himself without much trouble.

[u]Blacksmithing[/u] - About a decade of informally acting as a blacksmith's part-time apprentice, plus some time spent working a forge later in life, tends to lead to some skill at the task.

[u]Diplomacy[/u] - One born into nobility is usually taught how to speak to others of all standing. The addition of some basic mercantile acumen and some life experience makes for a passable diplomat, when the need arises.

Horse Riding - Though most nobles of the Land of a Thousand Kings learn to ride from a young age, Eli grew up without such training and only learned the basics later in life.

Wilderness Survival - After many years spent traveling hither and thither and meeting with others who do the same, it's hard not to pick up some tricks for finding or catching food and knowing how to make it from one place to another relatively unharmed.

Navigation - Travelers may find guidance from nature itself in the position of landmarks or the stars, or directions by word of mouth or the rare map, and enough exposure to these things mixed with trial and error leads to a decent skill at figuring out which way you're actually supposed to be going to get where you want.

Cooking - Given enough nights spent in the woods with no civilization in sight, learning how to prepare and cook various wildlife is inevitable.

Tending Wounds - It doesn't take much skill to wrap a bandage around a bleeding wound, but few think to carry such supplies and fewer still know they should cleanse it with water or how to seal it with flame or heated metal to ward off corruption; Eli learned these things the hard way.

Sewing - Clothes do not maintain themselves, as any traveler well knows, and the wisest of them learn the rudiments of sewing and mend holes and tears themselves.

Swimming - Many fear water that is too deep to wade through, and with good reason, but Eli has learned how to at least keep his head above the water and move in roughly the direction he wants to go via coordinated flailing.

[b]Personality:[/b] Eli is a reserved man who rebuffs most people with a wall of polite courtesy that holds little warmth. Those who have gotten past that wall or have observed him peeking out of his shell see a nice enough fellow who is introverted and struggles with pervasive sadness; a learned man once described it as melancholy, and that is how Eli himself thinks of it. He does not dislike socializing and being around people, he just has a hard to time opening up to them and letting them see past the pleasant veneer. Eli is well aware of the root cause of his own sad thoughtfulness, and he sees his natural distant attitude as a defense against painful questions, although he was always an introverted person so this explanation is more of an excuse than anything else.

[b]History:[/b] I went a little bit overboard with this, so I'll shove it in a hider to save some space.

[hider=History]Eli hails from the Kingdom of Wayne, one of the many independent city-states that make up the Land of a Thousand Kings. He was the second son of a secondary branch of the royal family, seventeenth in line to inherit the throne at the time of his birth. There were two other offshoot branches of the Wayne family that preceded his in the line of succession, but the one Eli came from was perhaps the most infamous and widely gossiped about. The previous patriarch of the family had ruined their reputation and frittered away most of their wealth through his hedonistic ways, and they were just finally starting to recover from that ugly period in the wake of the man's death when Eli was born. Those of the city called them the Black Waynes, for black was the local color of shame and it suited them well.

Young Eli grew up learning to fight with a sword and shield, taught to him by a knight, Sir Grover, who had been unlucky enough to get himself greatly indebted to the Black Waynes and thus forced into indentured servitude to pay it off. Later on they added "armor" of cloth with rocks in it to simulate moving about in armor without actually needing to pay to create a child-sized suit of the real thing, which Eli learned was essential to training: the knight told him that if one trained free of constraints, they would falter and fail when restricted by armor on the battlefield. Sir Grover eventually decided to stay on with the family after his debt was repaid, and by this point Eli was twelve and his family (or more precisely Edgar Wayne, his father) had restored a small portion of their wealth through wise trade deals and some of their reputation had come with it. His fighting lessons continued, but around this time they took on a more serious tone since the boy had become a young man, thus he could not just play around like a child any longer. Around this same time Eli's parents hired on a blacksmith to see to the needs of their family and guardsmen rather than having to get the work done by an independent smith in the city, and the young man found himself fascinated by the work. The forge had been a dusty and abandoned building for as long as he could remember, but it came to life with fire and fury when Old Bart moved in to make swords and nails and hinges and all the other useful metal things that those of the nobility took for granted. Eli helped in the forge whenever he could, learning a decent amount of the trade and helping to make his own first suit of real armor.

Over the course of the following two years he went from being best described as gangly to being tall and hefty enough to be properly intimidating to those who didn't already know his kind and quiet nature. Those years had been very kind to the Black Waynes, and though they still lacked the respect afforded to other noble families they had at least attained the wealth expected of their class. With good social standing finally within sight, and thanks to his father being very determined to achieve that goal, new expectations and obligations were piled on Eli's shoulders. He was given regular lessons on what Edgar Wayne called diplomacy, which included everything from how to speak to the king to how to talk to a lady of equal social standing to how to address commoners, plus lectures now and then on how to get the best out of deal for yourself while making the other side feel like they'd gotten a good bargain too. Though Eli was not the heir of the family since he had an older brother, he was still expected to marry well and maintain the family's honor (such as it was), and he was told that perhaps he could pursue his love of swordplay and become a knight sworn to King Wayne. Local noble customs dictated that one could not marry until the age of eighteen, but that did not stop Lord Wayne from seeking to arrange a match when his son was only sixteen, and after another very profitable trading season he managed to convince Lord Cavendish, the head of the third most powerful family in the city, to part with his second daughter for the promise of a mutually beneficial trade agreement.

Unfortunately, young Eli found himself uninterested in his familial duty of marrying well. Instead his interest was snared by Mary Carr, a daughter of another noble family who were in a similar situation to that of the Black Waynes a decade past. They had been friends for a short while in their childhood when the social standing of their houses had been roughly equal, the Carrs falling and the Black Waynes climbing, until Eli's parents decided that he shouldn't associate with those so far beneath him. They found each other again when they were sixteen and Eli went out on a solitary walk through the woods outside the city, as he was wont to do, and he found Mary doing the same. The romance that bloomed between them was not the fiery affair many young couples had, but rather a slowly built affection that grew into love. Eli had been with women, mostly dalliances in the brothels that were something of a local rite of passage for noblemen when they turned sixteen, but none had captured his heart the way Mary did. He had to sneak around to be with her, since his family would most certainly not approve, but it was an idyllic time up until love clashed with duty. As his eighteenth birthday approached, Eli defied his father and told him that he would not go along with the arranged marriage, that he loved another and would not forsake her. This caused some problems, of course, and Edgar Wayne tried everything within his power to force his son into compliance; he failed, to everyone's great surprise. Eli, who everyone thought of as an amiable and reserved fellow who would never cause any problems, stood firm in defiance against his family's wishes and informed the father of his betrothed that the marriage would not come to pass so long as he lived; his father was forced to publicly apologize and make monetary amends for his family not keeping the arrangement, which only served to make him more livid at his obstinate son.

Life became rather difficult for Eli in the following years, as he was shunned by the majority of the nobility and mocked by the commoners. Still he persisted in following his heart, and Mary seemed very pleased that he had chosen her over his family. While the Black Waynes grew more and more prosperous, Eli was barely even welcome in their house and at their table. Sir Grover and Old Bart were sympathetic to his woes and did not look down on him for his choice, but they were very much in the minority. He planned to take up work as a blacksmith, with encouragement from his mentor, in order to make a life for himself outside of his family's shadow and thus be able to marry his beloved, which he hadn't done immediately because she told him she couldn't marry a beggar and that's what he would become if they wed. Sadly, though he worked and fought for it, the marriage was not to be. Eli had known his father was a ruthless man, but he hadn't been aware of his vindictiveness. Three years after Edgar Wayne was shamed by his own son, he struck a deal with Lord Carr and the same Lord Cavendish that Eli had insulted by refusing his daughter's hand. The deal was equal parts trade and spite, where Lord Wayne took the short end of the trade stick in order to enact his revenge. Edgar Wayne would provide a sizable dowry for Mary Carr to wed the fifth son of Lord Cavendish, plus the other two families would be brought into the strong and growing trade network of the Black Waynes and acquire some very lucrative deals with the noble families of nearby city-states. The lords were all pleased with the arrangement and the deal was struck. To Eli's dismay, Mary turned out to be far more loyal to her family than he had been, and her worries of marrying a pauper had been more selfish than he'd thought. She left him with an awkward apology and told him not to take it personally, but he failed at that.

Lord Wayne had foolishly hoped that his scheme would bring Eli back into the fold, to make him realize that it was long past time for his selfishness to be put away and that it was time to truly be a man and do his duty for his family. The wounded and betrayed Eli did not back down, again surprising everyone with the depths of his resolve by remaining defiant. Rather than kneeling under his father's yoke, Eli condemned the man as scum in a long tirade with many witnesses, saying that his father cared more for wealth than for his family and that he was the very picture of selfishness. This was the last time he spoke to any member of his family, though they said many things to him in turn as he gathered his few treasured belongings and made to leave. He was stopped by Sir Grover and Old Bart, who had heard enough of the commotion to know what had happened. The rest of the Black Waynes thought this meant they were going to talk some sense into Eli, for who could be better at getting through his thick skull than his two teachers that he viewed as friends, and so they left the knight and the blacksmith to take him to the forge and have a talk. There Sir Grover knighted Eli, which he could indeed do under local customs, and Old Bart served as a witness. The blacksmith provided him with a new sword and shield and let him take away his suit of armor, along with a few other essentials that he'd forgotten in his haste to leave. Eli thanked them for their kindness and left with their blessing, turning his back on the Kingdom of Wayne and his family for good.

Eli traveled south and east, seeking simply to get away from his homeland and the painful memories that lurked there. They stayed with him even as he left the Land of a Thousand Kings and entered The Memphite Empire. He traveled throughout the nation without settling down in any one place for long, often selling his sword to traveling merchants to get from one city to another and get paid for the trouble. During this time he developed a bitter inferiority complex, where the thought of his beloved leaving him for a richer man of higher standing just because it was her duty as a noblewoman ran through his head again and again and he eventually decided that he must not have been good enough for her. If he had been better she would have stayed with him no matter what, but his inherent worthlessness had pushed her away. Eli once nearly succumbed to sweet calls of the Postumites, who said that suicide was a good and holy act, but his eventual rejection of this propelled him to leave their land and head north. As he traveled into the Kingdom of Albany at the age of 23, two years after leaving his home, he'd convinced himself that Mary would want to be with him if he was a great and wealthy man. He was nobody of importance at that time, but he could rise above that and prove to her that he was worthy of her. Eli found himself drawn to conflicts, fighting as a mercenary for one lord or another as the whim took him, and he acquitted himself well in most of these fights. He acquired the title 'the Fearsome' in this time, thanks to a lord's condescending joke that such a quiet and polite fellow must be fearsome to behold in battle as he apologized to those he cut down, but it turn from a mocking jest to a proper respectful title amongst other sellswords after they saw that he really knew how to fight and that he did not in fact stop to apologize to the dead and dying.

Eli learned a lot as he traveled through the Kingdom of Albany, much of it from his fellow mercenaries, some from people in the forts and towns and cities he stopped in. He grew somewhat as a person, enough to manage to stop focusing on his enduring heartbreak all the time, though it was still there whenever he let his mind wander. It no longer stung like a fresh wound as it had for so long, but he never liked to prod it to test the strength of the mental scab covering it. Eli went from being lumped in with the mercenaries to become a true wandering knight thanks to a mix of word of mouth, a few lordly edicts proclaiming him an honorable knight who had performed so-and-so act of valor in a lord's service (these were written messages that Eli could not read, but he treasured them and presented them to lords who questioned his claims), and the acquisition of enough wealth to purchase some new armor and repair and clean the pieces he kept. In the year preceding the impending royal wedding, Eli lived well enough that whenever he wasn't in the middle of nowhere he either had a bed in some lord's manor or could easily afford to stay at an inn or tavern, and that was a lot more than many wanderers could lay claim to. Though he was no grand hero by any means, Sir Eli the Fearsome became a name known here and there with a couple fireside tales to his credit, and that too was more than most others could brag about.

Eli decided to attend the wedding of King Dowager Pompey and his predecessor's daughter mainly because he had nothing better to do while the various lords of the land were gone attending the ceremony themselves rather than picking fights wherein his sword would be useful. If nothing else it would be an amusing diversion for a day, but he held out some hope that it would lead to greater opportunities for him to move up in the world.
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[b]Miscellaneous:[/b] The Kingdom of Wayne was built up from the ruins of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The people who settled there thought the ones who came before had used the place as a true fort, thus the name, so when they became independent and established their own aristocracy they restyled the city into the Kingdom of Wayne. The royal family took the surname Wayne after the city, but after many generations the truth has been obfuscated and locals believe that they are descendents of those who built the grand structures long ago. It is a fairly standard feudal arrangement otherwise, with an aristocratic class ruling above the commoners with very little in between.