[center][h1]CS PGS 1-40[/h1][/center] [center][img]http://oi62.tinypic.com/2ujte9x.jpg[/img] [hider=This] Of course, he would be wearing medieval-style clothes rather than modern [/hider] [/center] [center][b]Crow Lockton[/b] Age: 21 Short Bio: Crow had made himself known all throughout the kingdom of Brerra with his thievery. His face was the one everyone saw plastered on wanted posters, and his name was the one whispered across the regions by peoples of every status. He had become thoroughly infamous as ‘the thief who could steal anything.’ He was a phantom in the night, gone before the king’s men even knew he was there. He was so elusive, it seemed like no one could catch him. The only problem was that Crow was a braggart. To hasten the spread of his name, he boasted of his achievements in taverns, showing off his stolen prizes to the commoners who frequented them. In the end, it was this pride that turned out to be his downfall. In an especially daring —or quite possibly [i]foolish[/i]— move, Crow told the people that he was going to steal the king’s crown. It just so happened that one of the king’s informants was a frequent visitor of that particular tavern. He wasted no time in relaying the thief’s plan to the knights. So, on the night Crow made his attempt, they were ready and waiting for him. He spent the following year in prison, until one day he received a message that the king himself wanted to speak with him… personally.[/center] [center][h1]Time Skip[/h1][/center] [hider=Year One] - After Penelope doesn’t show up to the meeting spot they had arranged, Crow begins to worry for her safety. He returns to the tavern every night for a week until finally, he overhears a patrol of knights talking about how the mission had been a failure and the king never received the staff. He comes to the natural conclusion that Penelope must have gotten attacked and killed, which was why she never came back to him - He spends the following two months mourning his loss. His grief changes him deeply during this time, and he ends up spending most of his days in and out of taverns, getting drunk to cope with losing Penelope. During this time, he has a few close run-ins with the local knights, but still manages to not to get caught because of Evelyn’s efforts. The tavern owner keeps him safe while he’s in no state to take care of himself. - After the period of mourning, Crow finally accepts that he will have to abandon his plans to be with Penelope since she’s gone, and will have to move on with his life. He quits drinking and goes back to stealing. He initially just goes after local knights to ease himself back into it before he moves on to hitting bigger targets as he used to. - With time, word gets out that ‘the most infamous thief’ is back, and his reputation spreads throughout the kingdom again. - As winter approaches, Crow begins to realize that his life feels incomplete. He finds that he misses having the company of other people around him and that he no longer enjoys living alone as he used to. It is around this time that he runs into a rogue band of thieves near the inner kingdom. - The leader of the thieves, a man named Jaxon, recognizes Crow immediately and propositions him to join the group, hungry to add his skill and reputation to their mix. Blinded by his desperate search for a community, Crow agrees to join them. - He spends the following winter traveling and living amongst the other thieves. At first, he finds their company enjoyable because they all come from similar backgrounds and experiences. He even manages to rise up amongst them as something of a leader because of his skills and charisma, though he never officially takes on such a title. - They operate out of the inner kingdom, using their combined skills to steal almost exclusively from wealthy noble families. Because of this, they make a reputation for themselves and the local knights learn to keep a lookout for them. The thieves end up losing a few members as the knights begin to better predict where the group is going to strike next. - As he continues to live amongst them, Crow begins to see the thieves’ true colors. He begins to notice that some of them steal from other members within the group, some take more than their share of loot when it’s divided from group raids, and many of them lie and spread rumors behind each other’s backs. He starts to feel less comfortable being among them, but he doesn’t want to be on his own again, so he continues to stick it out in spite of his concerns. - One of the other reasons why he stays for so long is because of his affinity for a few thieves in particular: Simon, Alistair, Charles, and Rikki. They aren’t quite as greedy as the other thieves in the group, and Crow gets along with them quite well. He even considers them to be friends, despite his hesitations about getting close to other people. - The four work well with him in group heists, usually following his plans while adding some of their own input to improve on his ideas. He comes to respect their individual talents and thoroughly enjoys stealing with them. - Crow’s relationship to Rikki is a bit different from the male thieves. He views her in a similar way as the others, respecting her ideas and skills, but they also share a mutual physical attraction to each other that leads them to have a ‘friends with benefits’ type of relationship. They are by no means exclusive with each other—both would still have other flings with other people whenever the opportunity arose—but neither one is bothered by this. - Crow’s inevitable breaking point with the group comes in the following spring. One day, a young boy happens upon the thieves’ hideout in the woods. Jaxon captures him before he can get away and rallies many of the other thieves to kill him. Crow is appalled that they would take the life of an innocent child who had stumbled upon them by accident and confronts the leader about it. Jaxon merely brushes him off as soft and kills the boy anyway. His actions open Crow’s eyes to the kind of people he’s been associating with and he leaves the same day. - While most of the thieves in the group were rotten to the core, there were a few others who shared in Crow’s disgust for the way Jaxon handled the situation (Simon, Alistair, and Rikki—Charles had been killed by a knight), and they leave the group with him in the hopes that he will make a better leader than their last. Together, they form their own little band of thieves and continue stealing from the knights and nobles in the inner kingdom. [/hider] [hider=Year Two] - The next summer, Crow finds himself getting a bit homesick after being away from the outer villages for so long, so he and the other thieves travel to the village of Aramoor near the border. When they arrive, he finds that the war with Younis had just begun in his absence. - With a bleeding heart for the peasants who were inevitably going to be ravaged by the battles, Crow tells the other thieves that he plans to stay and do what he can to help them. To his surprise, they find his decision honorable and choose to remain in the village with him. Together, they do their best to assist the villagers of Aramoor in the midst of the war. - During this time, Crow discovers an unpleasant, personal side effect of being so close to the fighting. He gets unintentionally caught up in the middle of a number of battles in the village. Each time, the fighting triggers his PTSD from his childhood experience with the tax collectors, and he’s rendered unable to move. One of the other thieves, Rikki, notices his handicap the second time it happens and helps him get to safety. From then on, she stays close to his side whenever they get caught up in battles and helps him when his episodes occur. Her actions forge a close friendship between them that would have possibly turned into a romance, but after losing Penelope, Crow is afraid to get as close to anyone else as he had been with her for fear of losing them too. - Over the course of the next few months, Crow’s PTSD fades of its own accord as his instincts to survive take over, until he eventually overcomes it for the most part (It still occurs on occasion, but he functions much better overall). A particular time that caused him to get over his episodes was when he was caught up in a battle and got run through with a sword in his left shoulder. Wounded and vulnerable on the battlefield, he had to fight past his panic to get away so he wouldn’t be killed by the knights. Ever since that accomplishment, his flashbacks and panic attacks came to him less powerfully, and he was able to work through them on his own. - Finally able to fight without freezing up in battle, Crow steals a set of daggers from a Brerratic knight—he had sold all of his old weapons long ago to pay for food—and builds his skill with the blades until he is talented enough with them to hold his own against most opponents. - As he starts to put himself in a position to fight more often and witnesses more of the destruction caused by war, he begins to develop a deep-rooted hatred for knights. He can’t stand to see the way they only care about winning each battle and don’t seem to pay any attention to the bystanders who are falling dead around them. So, no longer afraid to kill to defend the people he came to save, he uses his weapons to protect himself as well as the other peasants in Aramoor, fighting off any of the knights who threaten the safety of the villagers, no matter which kingdom they came from. - By the time fall comes around, Crow and the other thieves realize there is no longer anything they can do to save the villagers of Aramoor from the war. The battles have grown too intense, and they don’t have the skills or resources to protect anyone. So, with heavy hearts, they leave to save themselves and move on to the village of Silverpool, where they take refuge with Evelyn and Hazel Ansgot. - While he is there, Evelyn reveals to Crow that she had received a letter from the king of Brerra addressed to him. Crow is initially disinterested, until she tells him the name of the current king: Albin Mannering. Crow is shocked to learn that the previous king had been assassinated and his own father had usurped the throne. Still, the new information does nothing to change his answer. He accepts the letter from her, but refuses to open it. - Also during his stay, Crow has his first run-in with Hazel in years. Having just come home from traveling around the outer villages, she isn’t happy to see him, but with some prodding from Evelyn, she reluctantly agrees to treat the wounds he had sustained from fighting in Aramoor. - While they are together, Hazel admits to him that she had felt used when he merely slept with her and left without even a goodbye, and he apologizes for hurting her. After this, they manage to get along at least somewhat tolerably, though it is clear to Crow that she doesn’t intend to let go of her grudge against him just because he said he was sorry. In the interest of avoiding conflict, he tends to avoid her unless they have to be around each other. - After hiding out with the Ansgot family for a couple months, Crow and the other thieves move on to the village of Myrefall because Crow is concerned about the people in his home town. When they arrive, they find the people in bad shape, so they decide to stay and do what they can to help the villagers survive both the war and the cold winter. - Even after winter ends, Crow and the others continue to stay put in Myrefall because Crow is reluctant to leave the people behind in the middle of the war. However, as spring rolls around, he begins to notice that he’s developed a small cough—one of the first symptoms of the illness that took his mother’s life. He starts to fear that he contracted the disease that so many villagers in Myrefall end up dying to, but not wanting to worry the others, he keeps it a secret and tells no one. [/hider] [center][h1]Two Years Later[/h1][/center] [center][img]http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16700000/Marco-Polo-ian-somerhalder-16714832-399-266.jpg[/img] [b]Crow Lockton[/b] Age: 23 Short Bio: WIP [/center]