Ack! At least one more hopeful, actually! So here's my hat in the ring – I'm new to this forum (I think this may be my first post?) but not new to forum RPs; hoping there won't be much culture shock. If I am approaching this wrong please let me know and I'll be happy to adjust or re-write. I erred on the side of vagueness in the history section figuring much of it could be filled in as we go along, but if it needs to be reworked I can do so.

Also, I love the Black Company aesthetic you have going on here! Haha. 

****
[H3]Basic Information[/H3]
[i]It is as it is said to be: The past is prologue. All else is wind, and that which is borne on it. Fleeting and impossible to capture once it's fled our grasp. Did we not feel righteous, once? We who were scorned? We who felt the world was owed us, and that those who stood in our way did so only to meet our swords with their flesh? What seems so bright and clear in the heat of morning is but a puzzling ember in the twilight hours, a distant dying light at the edge of a day bleeding swiftly into night.[/i]

[b]Name:[/b] Kaerun Eschala.
[b]Race:[/b] Elf.
[b]Age:[/b] 706.
[B]Magic Potency:[/b] Yes.

[b]Physical Description[/b] 
In defiance of the common ideal of elven grace and beauty, Kaerun is a beast of sinew and corded muscle with all the grace of a rock tumbling down a mountain. His long brown hair is ragged and self-cut, threaded through with streaks of mottled grey that belie the strength of his bearing. At some point he might have been handsome but the years have stripped away the fineness of his features, burying whatever glimmer of allure he once possessed beneath a veil of scars and broken bones.

The only real element he has that still marks him as a member of his race – beyond the pointed ears – are the piercing eyes of his bloodline. A pair of emeralds set beyond a flat, broken nose and scarred cheeks … a strange paradox that tries unsuccessfully to redeem him in the eyes of women anywhere. He is tall but scarcely taller than the average human. Should he wish it he might even pass for one of them (though only in darkness, or with a hood drawn up).

Tattoos cover most of his upper body (from mid-neck down to his waist), a myriad of colors and intensity. Curved lines and strange sigils that bear no clear meaning, patterns of vines and leaves and serpents. Some are ancient and others have yet to begin fading; they flow out from the first that he bears upon his back. It is as if he means to hide it, or to bury it in the centuries of ink and hours that followed. As he usually eschews clothes that would cover his arms these tattoos may be his most notable feature.

The gods only know that the rest is forgettable.

He usually wears whatever clothes are at hand, and his armor is basically just a thickly padded shirt and occasionally a studded leather vest thrown atop it, all of these designed to keep his muscular arms free and his body mobile. Old boots and weathered leggings accompany his usual attire, along with a thick belt and a number of trinkets and fetishes he's accumulated over the years. Five small strips of leather decked with red and topaz beads always adorn him in some fashion, often attached to his belt or to a leather cord around his neck. He bears his blade upon his back.
[h3]Military Background[/h3]
[b]Years Spent in Service:[/b] Kaerun has served the Company for about ten years now.

[b]Equipment:[/b] (What are they carrying on their person?)
[list]
[*] A long, thin sword of sturdy steel. Akin to a bastard sword in versatility, though of clear elven origin.
[*] A canteen older than the Vorstag Empire, a gift from an old employer.
[*] Various fetishes from all corners of the continent; feathers, metal leaves, beads, etc.
[*] Five leather strips adorned with blood-red and topaz-colored stones, usually affixed to his belt.
[*] Small book of elven wisdom literature, the ink nearly faded away.
[/list]
[b]Skills:[/b] (List from most potent to least)
[list]
[*] [b][i]Sword Dancer:[/i][/b] Little else defines Kaerun the way his skill with the sword does; when he does not bear his blade he moves as a man without purpose, plodding and clumsy. But with his blade in hand he becomes a man possessed. The style of swordsmanship he carries was taught to him in his early days and has been refined and altered by his centuries of life. It is doubtful that his original master would even recognize it … but none could deny that he is more deadly now than he was in his youth.
[*] [b][i]Cheater:[/i][/b] Kaerun is quite skilled at the sleight of hand required to cheat at cards and dice. The only saving grace in this is his openness about the skill, and how easy it is to bribe him into playing fair. A bottle of rum usually suffices.
[*] [b][i]Amateur Herbalist:[/i][/b] Most plants and their properties are familiar to Kaerun. He knows a number of great concoctions for remedying a hangover … or worse. Practice makes perfect.
[*] [b][i]Hedge Mage:[/i][/b] Though he has never been properly instructed, Kaerun has developed some skill in the use of magic to keep himself alive over the years. Alas, he will never be recognized as a master of the craft.[/list]
[h3]The Mind[/h3]
[b]Psych Profile[/b] 
Easygoing, friendly, often uninterested but rarely cruel about it, and extremely reticent when it comes to his personal history. More likely to bow out of a fight than to join in, though no stranger to adversity or conflict. He is not shy on the battlefield and fights as bravely as most … but it feels as if that bravery is a mask, and what it covers is something far less zealous if no less powerful. Much has happened in his life and it has dulled him to many of the experiences he now weathers. Most of his days are eaten up by the rituals he's accumulated – including his dedication to the blade and his meditations on the scant arcane arts he possesses.

[b]History[/b]
Kaerun was born in 466 IC. He took his first life moments later and found himself left in the care of an uncle who had no time for him, save to preach and to shape him into something he never wanted to be. Hate took root early and didn't let go of Kaerun until he'd lost everyone he'd ever cared about and burned everything else down around him. The world and Kaerun warred for nearly two centuries, but the world eventually won.

In some ways he considered that the first day of his second life. A clear line between the past and the present – though he would never lie to himself to say that the present held anything for him but memories of the past. Free of what bound him he wandered for a long time, avoiding as much of civilization as he could. Without the burden of duty (self-imposed or otherwise) he grew to disdain attachment. Even the name he wears now is not the one he was born to; he abandoned all he could of what once was. As time rolled on past him he shrugged off the tides of history and played no part in them.

Until he was compelled at last to return to the cities and their people nearly a century later. It took the death of a stranger on the road to impart upon him some last echoing call to rejoin the world, one more mission to take a dying man's final words back to those who cared for him and loved him. Kaerun did as he was asked, and found himself unable to leave. He remained with the family until the last of them died away, working in and around the city to stay close to them until their bloodline ceased to be. A patron from the shadows … and a curse upon their house, for bad luck haunted them until their final day.

Cast adrift again, Kaerun attempted to turn his hand to a number of trades. But with each failed venture he grew less interested in remaining above the surface of society. When at last he lost hope of becoming that which he was not, he fell into the work of mercenaries, haunting battlefield after battlefield for the coin he needed to drink away the world. When he could bear it no longer he would retreat for decades into the wilds before returning, but even those were stripped away as the industry of man claimed what they'd long desired despite the objections of those who would resist them.

It was a fight Kaerun had no intention of rejoining, so he did nothing to stop it. And so the trap closed around him and he found himself locked into a life of war for lack of alternatives. Gradually the tales of his centuries of drifting blurred and lost cohesion, replaced by new memories little different from the old. Who he was and who he'd been were constant; all else was smoke and ashes. Where other elves of long life clung to their history and the ways of their dying culture, Kaerun had no part of it nor care for the preservation of his memories, and so even his own kind turned away from him.

Ten years ago he found himself on the field of battle against the Company of the Wolf during the Wars in the North, a group of warriors long feared by those with any sense about them. He found himself engaged in a brutal fight against overwhelming odds, and despite his skill he was overcome. But rather than take his life, an officer of the Company extended a hand and an offer of employment. 

Without anything holding him to his slaughtered companions and defeated employer, he accepted the deal and hasn't found any cause to leave yet.
[h3]Denouement[/h3]
[b]Character Motivation[/b] 
Much the same as the title of this section, Kaerun seeks little in life beyond passing the last stretch of his life's denouement without causing too much trouble for others. He's lived long and seen much, made mistakes and counts few victories to his name, and the weight of it bears down as the twilight of his life approaches. 

He fights because he has failed at all else; no art has ever left his pen nor come to life beneath the stroke of his brush. He cannot sing, cannot play an instrument, cannot tell tales, and offers no comfort to others. He lives on because the only thing that seems darker than a few more centuries of life is the abyss that waits beyond it.

[b]Significant Relations[/b] 
Kaerun has a lifetime of associates and acquaintances but none he would call upon in times of need. Some days it feels as if the only companions who've stuck by him over the centuries of his life are those who mean him harm or harbor festering wounds he's inflicted upon them. In wilder days he could not count his children on two hands and could never remember all the names of their mothers … but if any yet live he's long since lost track of them.

[B]Opinions on Others:[/b] (this space intentionally left blank)