[b]Name: [/b]Hraf Raven-Eye, “Blackbird”

[b]Age: [/b] 36

[b]Gender: [/b] Male

[b]Race: [/b] Nord

[b]Appearance: [/b] Hraf can be seen in several ways as having the appearance of the typical Nord man; tall and stout in build, with a wide jaw and strong, broad features. His hair is very dark brown, nearly black, worn to shoulder-length, carefully combed and woven into thick braids. His beard, while thick and coarse, is kept short and neatly trimmed. Hraf’s most notable features are his dark, hollow eyes. Deeply-set with dark sockets, his brown eyes at times seem as dark as the sea on a moonless night. His gaze holds both worldly weariness and tenacity like a starving predator.

Taking pride in his appearance, Hraf makes efforts to keep himself well-groomed and smartly dressed. Fine furs, wools and leathers are his usual attire when not at sea, and he has a fondness for fancy brooches and necklaces. His attire at sea is more utilitarian, consisting of durable a black surcoat and boots, strongly-woven cotton clothes and a beaver-pelt cloak. Beneath his clothes, though, his body is covered by telltale marks from his escapades. Hraf's body is like a living scrapbook, with hands worn rough by ropes and oars, scars from skirmishes and bar fights, prison and maritime tattoos, and a pirate branding on his forearm (courtesy of the East Empire Trading Company).

[b]Personality: [/b] For a hardy sailor and known privateer, Hraf is a surprisingly personable fellow. Charming and silver-tongued, most find Hraf to be a man both easy to like as well as trust. However, his affable persona can be quickly shut off and replaced with the cold, ruthless pragmatism that one would expect from a veteran smuggler and mercenary. Hraf is an opportunist at heart, always on the lookout for the next chance to advance himself or his goals. While he acknowledges its strength, Hraf does not care for social standing as much as he values cold, hard cash. The power money brings is of supreme value to him, and Hraf is no miser; he lives quite comfortably off of his pilfered fortunes, and hopes to eventually retire on his accumulated wealth. While he is not completely without empathy, Hraf is rather stone-hearted, and cares little for those that he misuses or kills in pursuit of riches. The most consideration one would earn would usually be either their usefulness to him in the future, or the potency of any enemies that he would make by abusing or killing someone. Not that he fears reprisals greatly, as Hraf is a cool and level-headed fellow, and is quite confident in his skills and experience to keep himself alive and prosperous.

[b]History: [/b] The clan Raven-Eye is an old and well-respected merchant house in Skyrim, claiming that their roots extend to the Atmoran sailors who brought Ysgramor’s Companions to Tamriel. Hraf was born a distant scion to the house, the second son of a second son. Even so, he was raised comfortably among his siblings and cousins, schooled in the arts of sailing and mercantilism, and when he became of age, he was given his own ship to command. He rounded the ports of Tamriel, trading and selling common goods in every province of the Empire. However, he quickly learned that there were greater profits to be made in the business of goods made illegal by the Empire.

Be it slaves from Black Marsh or moon sugar from Elsweyr, Hraf managed to put a finger in nearly every pot of Tamriel’s seedy black market. However, competition in the smuggling business was fierce, and Hraf quickly learned that one either needed to get good fast, or be killed faster. His skills in battle and manipulation were forged on the razor’s edge of criminality, from repelling rival smugglers off the deck of his ship, to sweet-talking Imperial customs agents. Even so, Hraf was still a young sailor, and was not infallible. An Imperial galleon intercepted a shipment of Hist saplings, and engaged Hraf’s smaller trade ship in battle. Much of his crew was killed, his ship was destroyed, and Hraf himself was captured by the Imperial authorities. His family’s connections were able to ease his sentence to a mere seven years in the Imperial Prison, but with that he was disowned from house Raven-Eye, never again welcome in his ancestral halls.

Hraf’s imprisonment was not his first turn in the clink (nor would it be his last), and it was not the end of his career. Once released, he recovered a cask of gold that he had buried in the sands of Stros M’Kai, having planned for just such an emergency. With this, he commissioned a new ship from the shipwrights of Windhelm, dubbed “Blood Eagle,” and hired a reliable, yet suitable unsavory crew from the city’s slums. With a more battle-worthy ship and crew, Hraf took on more dangerous work that he was previously hesitant to engage in, including piracy, raids on coastal towns and mercenary work. With the onset of the Civil War in Skyrim, Hraf returned home as a privateer. Not that he truly chose a side; the Blood Eagle merely sacked whatever ships seemed most vulnerable, and he had acquired papers to prove that he was allied with either side as needed.

The calm following the defeat of the Stormcloak rebels and the return of Imperial law to Skyrim was disappointing to Hraf. Opportunity for his brand of work has died down in these peaceful times, and as such he has been forced further inland to put his particular set of skills to use.

[b]Skills: [/b] First and foremost, Hraf is an inheritor of the long tradition of Nord sailors. Able to command a ship just as well as he can work as a deckhand on one, Hraf’s years at sea have made him just as comfortable in the open ocean as he is on land (perhaps even more so).  He knows the coastal waters of Tamriel like they were his hometown, and he is intimately familiar with the numerous byways and coves used by smugglers such as himself. Storms and icy waters mean little to a Nord sailor, and Hraf sails through such obstacles fearlessly.

As reliable a warrior as he is a captain, Hraf is an experienced swashbuckler, more than able to hold his own in a close-quarters battle. Short swords and scimitars are his forte, especially when fighting with a shield, but he is competent with axes or mauls as well. Fighting in a cramped space with little room to maneuver is second nature to Hraf, and in this way the corridor of crypt is much like the underdecks of a ship. In more open spaces, Hraf is a crack shot with a crossbow, his sharp “raven’s eyes” aiding his aim.

In more subtle matters, Hraf is a skilled haggler and negotiator, and is surprisingly knowledgeable in matters of trade and economics. Over the years, Hraf has established a network of contacts throughout the Empire, both reputable and otherwise, from which he frequently calls in favors and blackmail. While his charisma mostly lends itself to establishing deals, trades and other such short-term agreements, Hraf is never the less a dangerously smooth talker, and has a penchant for manipulation in certain circumstances. Some say that the “raven eyes” allow a man to see the desires of others, but Hraf attributes this talent to experience and practice. Once he knows what someone wants, bending them to his will is usually just a matter of time.

[b]Equipment: [/b] Hraf’s most prized possession is his ship, the Blood Eagle. A Nord longboat, the Blood eagle has a sturdy, oak hull and mast (both reinforced with iron), twenty rowing benches, and a black sail emblazoned with the silhouette of a red eagle. Modified to fit Hraf’s specifications, the Blood Eagle’s bow and stern are fitted with steel beaks, designed to ram into and pierce the hulls of other ships. Below decks are many secret storage compartments for smuggled goods built into the hull. The deck is kept well-waxed, allowing spilled blood to be quickly and easily cleaned away.

In battle, Hraf prefers functionality far over form, and prefers his equipment to be easily replicable in the event it is dropped into the sea or broken. When preparing for combat, he equips armored plates to his boots and bracers, dons a simple steel helmet, and wears a mail shirt between his surcoat and fur cloak. He carries a sturdy shield, made mostly of steel for strength, but with a layer of wood to catch blades and axes. His weapons of choice are a simple, curved sword of castle-forged steel, and a long, straight knife of similar construction. When preparing for enemies afar, he wields a steel-spring crossbow and a quarrel of iron-tipped bolts.

[b]Birthsign: [/b] The Serpent

[b]Miscellaneous: [/b] Hraf keeps with him a trained raven, which he calls Muni. It usually perches on his wrist or shoulder, and Hraf feeds it small corns or scraps of meat. It has taken to imitating death-cries that it hears in Hraf’s presence, or calling out “Blood! Blood!” at random intervals. Hraf finds this behavior inexplicably amusing.

[b]First Impressions:[/b] Given his line of work, Hraf has become a sharp judge of character, and has practiced the skill of cold reading. Based purely on first impressions, the Blackbird has made snap-decisions that have led him to fortune a handful of times, and saved his skin on innumerable other occasions.

The retired Legionnaire, Hector Sibassius, is not someone that Hraf thinks much of. While his skills would certainly be useful, the pirate instinctually distrusts those associated with the Empire. Hraf has spent too much of his life looking over his shoulder in anticipation of an Imperial galleon or an agent of the Pentius Oculatus to trust an Imperial soldier, even a retired one. Even so, Hraf is not outwardly hostile towards the man, and refrains from mentioning his days spent raiding Imperial frigates during the Civil War.

Balen Oril is an odd figure in Hraf’s eyes. He strikes the Blackbird as more of a wandering scholar than an adventurer or tomb raider, and he doubts that the Dark Elf would be of much use on their expedition. While scholarly pursuits have their place, that place is far away from the profits sought by Hraf, and so Balen earns little respect from the Nord on that point. If anything, he figures that Balen could serve as a shield or a pack mule in a pinch, but not much beyond that.

Angelique Something-Something… [i]Merci[/i], as she calls herself, is a familiar figure to Hraf. While he has personally never met the woman before, he recognizes her lifestyle, having seen it many times. The hedge witch is merely a peasant far from home, in over her head, but still scraping by. One resting on the shore of the underworld, but yet to tread its waters. In his early days, Hraf hired many people in similar situations to crew his ship after his more principled hands left him. These days he is more discriminating, valuing effectiveness over desperation. That said, Hraf figures that the Breton girl will be fairly easy to manipulate, should he need to. A little money goes a long way for some people.

Ashing is a familiar name to Hraf, as merchant families such as his own often knew others throughout Tamriel. While Hraf had not met the only daughter of the bereaved family before this expedition, he had met her father when the Blackbird was just a young lad. The man had died and Elayne had taken up the business while Hraf was doing time in the Imperial Prison, and as such had no dealings with her family’s company after Uthard’s death. Regarding Elayne herself, Hraf sees her as a simple sort of girl, smart enough to get herself in trouble, but not enough to get her back out of it.

The Dark Elven sellsword, Azriel Telvayn, is the sort of person that Hraf most prefers to deal with. The Blackbird puts great value on the mercenary’s one-track mind, lack of ambitions, marketable skills and manageable amount of intelligence. Hraf looks forward to working with him.

Meanwhile, the High Elven witch Aenyarin is precisely the type of person that Hraf most loathes to deal with. While the Blackbird himself was born much too late to fight in the Great War, in those times his father and uncle sold ships to the Empire and Imperial privateers alike, and suffered considerable losses when the Empire could not repay their bonds. As such, Hraf has a distinct distrust of High Elves, perhaps greater than his distrust of the Empire. Too smart to fool, and too haughty to charm, the Blackbird usually resorts to the last skill in his repertoire for High Elves: steel.  Hraf has decided to keep his eyes peeled for any convenient opportunities to rid their expedition of her.

Similar to the High Elf, Hraf does not care for the trickery of the Telvanni wizard Baladas Venym. Wizards are an unpredictable sort, and the Blackbird tries to keep his dealings with them to a minimum. Their motivations, Hraf finds, are usually strange, and their behavior stranger. Even so, the Dark Elf has enough of an ego that Hraf is still confident that he can be suitably manipulated, if need be.

Lastly, the Wood Elf Ungimros serves for Hraf as an example of why he doesn’t like or trust any sort of elf. Even the seemingly most reasonable and predictable of them, the Wood Elves of Valenwood, are inhuman degenerates without any sense of common decency. Not to say that Hraf prides himself on his own moral behavior; he merely laments that their deviation from the societal norms that he was raised to expect makes them all the more unpredictable and difficult to work with.