Edgar Sarohardt

Captain Sarohardt

1/1

25 years

Male

Bisexual - 80-20, favouring women

Single

Publicly, he is fully Thelannian.

The great nation of Thelan.

Joe Dempsie

Edgar is an attractive, rugged man, his body hardened by the strict regimens of Thelannian officership training. He stands at almost 6"2 in height, weighing approximately 80kg, most of which is muscle. He is broadly and solidly built, his ascent to leadership lined with the rigors and strains of the life of the common man - his commission was earnt, not bought. His skin is fair and his hair is dark - both with the exception of his hands and forearms, where the natural color of his skin is disrupted by obvious and unnatural looking burn scars, patchy white and pink scar tissue shot through with irregular black marks where, as he says, "... the soot stayed with me, an even grimmer reminder of my folly that day." Aside from these, he also bears the scars of a man who has survived more than most - from a faint line on his throat where a criminal acted too slowly and too imprecisely, to fading slashes across his chest and arms where his opponent in training matches drew blood first. As for his usual style, he is most commonly seen wearing the armor and uniform of Thelannian captains, as he is on duty more often than not. When in civilian clothes, however, he wears loose cotton shirts and cheap leather jerkins and vests - he has no great love of finery, and little more than bemused disapproval for those who revel in decadence. If pressed by circumstance, though, he does look good in it. If you can get him to sit still long enough for measurements. Additionally, he has taken to wearing a pair of custom made leather gloves to hide his scars. He figures he doesn't need to upset passing children with them, when he walks down the street.

- Fighting - Edgar is as at home in the pit as any of his men, possibly more. He trains as often as he can with sword, bow, and fist - especially if it means he can avoid his more arrogant superiors.
- Games and drinking - More because he loves his men than anything else, Edgar enjoys sitting with his brothers in arms, drinking good beer, and playing games with them. No matter what anyone says, it has nothing to do with how he usually wins, and he does not cheat at cards. Chess is probably his favourite, both in terms of games, and ales - though why the brewer named it that is anyone's guess.
- Drills - This is the part the men in his charge hate. Drills. Training. He takes to it with a strange kind of contented happiness, the patterns and practicality of it pleasing him in ways most people simply don't understand. He understands it, though - when you don't have to think, and you just follow orders, you don't risk freezing up and giving sharpshooters free kills. He won't have any of his company end up like that. Not while he still breathes.
- Sketching, and singing - He's sheepish to admit to the latter, and proud of the former. He's got a natural artist's ambidexterity, and can draw things as near to their living image as anything you've ever seen. Got a nice singing voice, too - but he doesn't let on about that.
- Reading - It ranges from lengthy, stale, obnoxiously worded military historical texts, to risque gothic romances, to... less acceptable nonfiction, about less decent topics. The practice of magic, for example. Nonetheless, if it's got words, he'll read it. In fact, he hopes to live long enough to write his own.
- Politics // Arguing - This one he won't ever admit, not even to himself. Though he dislikes most of the nobility, and he's got no love of pointless intrigue, he does have a lot to say, when he chooses to say it - and it always starts arguments. Even when he doesn't win, he has a hell of a time.

- Beer, spirits, and wine - He knows his limits, and tries to keep relatively sober when he does drink, but he's got a hell of a taste for the stuff, and a high tolerance for it too.
- Women - Men too, technically, but really mostly women. He is sometimes derided by the noblemen in the military aristocracy for his 'commoner's' appetites. It is one of the few areas he allows himself to be a little hedonistic - his little measure of pleasure, if you will.
- Lilacs - He likes flowers more than some people expect, but lilacs particularly. He actually has a small vial of cologne made with the essence of lilac, and gooseberry extract. He doesn't wear it very often.
- Fiction - He has a particular soft spot for speculative fiction, but as aforementioned he really will read anything.
- Fighting - No, really. It's not a hobby just for practicality, he gets a unique sort of thrill from trading blows with an evenly matched opponent. It's very satisfying to have someone try to hit you and fail.
- Riding - He rides as an officer of the military more than he gets the chance to for pleasure, but he's always been good with horses, and if he had the time he would do it more often for leisure.
- Swimming - And being in water, generally. He's a stronger swimmer than most people have reason to be, and bathes or showers frequently - when and if his posting permits it.
- Fulfillment of Duty - He was a volunteer, not a conscript. The feeling of fulfilling his duty - whatever it might be - is immensely pleasing to him.

- Witches - And warlocks. Magic is unnatural. Magic is evil. His hatred and fear of magic and otherworldly forces is trumped by no other hatred he might hold. Supposedly.
- The Nantego - His dislike and wariness of the Nantego tribe is matched by his respect for them. Historically, their tactics and modes of combat have been hard to predict, hard to counter, and quite frankly genius. As a precautionary measure, he distrusts them by nature.
- Nepotism - He worked hard for his position, and works hard in it every day. Edgar has no time nor respect for those whose positions and commissions are based more on the merit of their names than the merit of their character.
- Nobility - Hand in hand with his dislike of nepotism, in his experience nobles are often arrogant and dismissive of those they see as below them. There are exceptions to this, and once a man has proven his prejudice wrong Edgar will treat him like anyone else - but that's the rule, they receive the same treatment as anyone else. He has seen some criticism for this, but believes that the respect and morale it inspires in his own men - all commoners - is more than enough to justify it.
- Honey - It's a valuable source of energy. It's good for you. Hell, it's actually quite nice mixed with something else, or in a drink. Doesn't change the fact that he doesn't like the taste, generally.
- Oysters - Fuck no. They're slimy, and taste more like mucus than food. Something else, please.
- Doubt - If you have reasons, he supposes that's fair enough - but the reasons have to be good. He knows himself well, and in particular knows that he deserves his commission. People who doubt him, who belittle his input, who mock him? He'll want to see their proof that he's not as good as he says.

Edgar Sarohardt is a courageous man, and he is no more scared of anything in particular than anyone else is.

With the exception of magic.

Witches are capable of feats that, to rights, shouldn't be possible. Their very existence is a serious flaw in any logical outlook on the world, it's a blip in the pattern, it doesn't make sense. Their practices are not only undoubtedly dark and disgusting, but their militarily dishonest; Edgar actually has no hate for Alovians, if anything he respects their tactical ingenuity, and he appreciates their general willingness to fight a gentleman's war - but these witches? Sometimes, they don't even turn up to the battle, they just kill from behind their cloak of mist, with a dagger of- of... something! Something horrible!

It is Edgar's one stain on his honour that he would not have any problem burning the lot of them for their crimes. Not that people don't want them dead, of course, it's just the look in his eyes when - and if - he talks about it. Like he would enjoy it.

Edgar Sarohardt is courageous, disciplined, and intelligent - a model officer for the Thelannian military. He does not hide his low birth, and holds no shame that his surname is of his own choosing with none to inherit from his parents, and his men adore him for it. One of the few commoners chosen to lead commoners, their devotion to him is matched only by his devotion to them in return. He is widely known to be kind and approachable - not just among the military, for he has many friends who don't wear the colours as he does - and above all, trustworthy. He's a measured man, who is not usually prone to acting rashly or in anger, and he has mediated many disagreements and disputes in the city over the years - between siblings in feud, families torn by hatred, lovers mutually spurned, and even once a pair of young men who meant to duel to the death over... something stupid. He can't actually remember why they hated eachother, but it was dumb.

Beyond this, he is also a charismatic and strong leader. It's helped by the common ground between him and his company of men, and his fair treatment of them all, but when an order is given it is damn well followed. He is charming - though, more so to other commoners and soldiers than to any finer folk - and a talented negotiator. His tendency to start arguments is sometimes looked at as petty, or annoying, but it's usually at least entertaining to watch so people don't often mind that either.

But then there is the other side to him. Only on the topic of witchery and magic is he ever violent in his speech- only then is he ever truly hateful, but even despite this he has a perverse curiosity for the stuff and a slight hedonistic streak besides. In private, he reads from the same books he wishes to see burned, in private he considers the nature of the unnatural, the stuff of his nightmares. Magic aside, his appetites and lustful nature are also the subject of a taboo in society; he has only rarely frequented brothels, and only with his closest friends and comrades if anyone at all - but he still is something of a womaniser, and there are still inelegant rumours about him amongst the people who choose to see past his value in the army and his qualities as a person, that he has slept with men too. This is a lesser side of him, most people don't care about it if they can see it at all, but there's definitely a degree of temptation in his personality.

Lastly, and possibly most significantly, he hates lying - in fact he abhors it. He also knows that he is fundamentally living a lie, and eventually he will be unable to hide his guilt.

- Fighting - It's a big part of what he does, and who he is. There are flaws to his swordsmanship, bad habits as ingrained in him as his name - but they're small, hard to spot, and even harder to exploit. Worse still, his ability is augmented by the more advanced technology of Thelan - high quality steel, barbed daggers and arrows, bows made of compound materials, he is intimately acquainted with it and very much willing to use it.

- Anti-magic - He has taken it upon himself to further his education in counterspellcraft and contramagical theory. He wears an amulet meant to protect him from the worst effects of most spells, and he knows more about the witches - his most hated enemy - than most other members of the Thelannian army. In a pinch, he would be more likely to survive an encounter with one than most - in fact, he has before. This extends beyond combat alone, he is versed in as many ways to counter curses as the Thelannians have managed to devise - largely due to his deathly fear of ever being the subject of one.

- Leadership - A brilliant combination of long term strategy, short term tactics, and strong, winning charisma, Edgar is a hell of a leader. He rose through the ranks of the Thelannian military on merit alone, he had all the problems with authority that an apt officer might, and he still earned the rank of captain. If there's ever trouble, his men know he'll have a way out.

- Singing - It's... well, it doesn't really matter. It won't impact anything, and he doesn't like singing for people, and he's not even really all that good, and he doesn't like it when they ask about it, and- Edgar Sarohardt has a beautiful baritone voice. If hot cocoa had a sound or a music, this would be it.

- Bigotry - He hates magic, because it scares him. He wants witches dead, because they scare him. No matter what lengths this hatred might send him to, it remains that it is rooted in fear, and that fear can blind men when they most need sight. Any skill he has, barring countermagic and possibly his ability to kill things, is likely to be quite severely limited by encounters with witches and warlocks.

- Leadership - Not so much a limitation on his ability to lead and command as it is a limitation on what lengths they would go to on his orders alone, his company do not share his absolute hatred of witches. They don't trust them, they don't like them, but under no circumstances will they outright commit murder for him. Not that he would ask them to. Probably.

- Prejudice - Aside from his obvious bigotry towards witches, he is also prejudiced against nobles, the privileged, and the ruling classes. His loyalty to Thelan is borne more from loyalty to his fellow man than to the rulers individually. This has led him to some trouble in the army before, and has possibly stopped his career short of where it might have been. It's a shame, really. He's not normally one to be so close minded.

- I have my orders - Edgar is a soldier at heart. There might some day be a reason good enough for him to disobey his orders - but it would have to be a truly exceptional reason. Despite his prejudice against the nobility, this generally includes orders from his noble superiors as well.

- Jack of all trades - As far as fighting goes, he is genuinely an excellent combatant. His mastery of swordwork and his accuracy with bows is the envy of his peers, and he's got enough dirty tricks to employ that he actually does have a chance of beating an Alovian in single combat... but his bowmanship isn't quite as good as the Nantegos', and his swordsmanship falls just short of a dedicated Alovian knight. In such a fight, he would indeed have to rely on tricks more than skill to win - and tricks rarely work more than once.

Edgar was born on the 1st day of the Month of January, in a part of Thelan north enough for you to really feel the cold, in a town just big enough for scandal and taboo to be missed, but just small enough that what rumour there was wouldn't go far - if it went anywhere at all. It was just as well, too, because Edgar's parents - a pair who didn't stay in his life for long after his admittance to military academy - weren't the sorts most people would want to be tied to. His father was a former soldier, dishonourably discharged for misconduct in the line of duty, and his mother was... well, someone he met while he was on tour. Technically. The affair was solid, their attraction genuine and their love real, but that didn't mean people approved. After Edgar was born - and Edgar is the name they gave him - they knew that staying around would be more trouble for him than they ever wanted to cause, and they left as soon as they could. Edgar half understood why, but it didn't stop a deep resentment from brewing in his heart as he grew up. He dropped his former surname as soon as he could, and took up Sarohardt instead - he barely remembers what it was before that today.

In part due to the strength of his anger, in part due to his devotion to Thelan in place of his family, and in part due to the kinship he had with the other bastards in the common ranks, he excelled in war school. At first he was violent and poorly controlled, restraint all but unknown to him - but, over years, through combat experience in the small skirmishes that sometimes lit up the border, even in times of peace, he learned discipline. He learned to beat his anger into punching bags at the crack of dawn, he began to turn his devotion into power, and he grew to see the other troops not just as comrades but as brothers - and occasionally sisters. As he grew, he matured, and slowly became a soldier - and as a soldier, he shone.

He graduated with flying colours, and was given a middling rank in one of the few remaining active battalions. His job involved more shouting and repeating a real officer's orders than doing any actual mind work, but he belonged to something at least; and naturally, when he was on leave he still lived with his comrades. The two men who would one day ascend to lieutenantship under his command as Captain were his bunkmates, his drinking mates, and his best friends. Many a time they woke up on the floor of a tavern together, heads pounding and stomachs curdling - and many a time too did they sleep together in the same foxholes, or in the same tents, under the burning stars or in the pouring rain. They did everything together. First trip to a brothel included.

First true combat included.

It was one of the unofficial conflicts - the tiny skirmishes that dot the borders during those tensest of ceasefires. They weren't ready for the Alovians when it happened, their visibility hampered by the rain, and a third of their unit went down in the first fifteen seconds of combat - struck by Nantego bowmen, he would later learn. It had been nothing but luck and chance that neither he nor his closest had been amongst those caught in the first wave of the ambush - though Hugo, now serving as his first lieutenant, went on to lose a finger and gain seven horrific scars at the hands of a rogue Alovian knight. He was lucky, too, to have survived the encounter.

As the battle went on, they became separated from their unit, pursued by a shock of Alovian vanguard troops - and then they became separated from each other too in the chaos of battle.

And then, he turned to see her. Her.

She was young. Pretty. She looked innocent, surprisingly. Scared, too. As scared as Edgar, maybe - and unlike him, she didn't look like she wanted to be there at all. That was the first thing he noticed, actually - this poor, soaking girl, eyes red as if she had been crying, a nasty gash along her forearm where one of his compatriots had managed to wound her, looking for all the world like she was the victim. The second thing he noticed was that she was, without a doubt, a witch.

They spent a solid minute staring at eachother, frozen in the rain. Edgar's knuckles were white around the hilt of his arming sword, his breath heavy and desperate, his armour already faintly stained with blood from other injuries. She was pale, face framed by raven hair slick with the rain, her tiny body shivering and her clothes totally unfit for the weather, let alone war. Part of him wanted to put away his sword, to reach out and reason with her - he knew just enough about magic to know that even with the six metres of distance between them, he probably didn't stand a chance, but more than that there was something in his heart that felt wrong about trying to hurt her.

He, falteringly, took a step forward.

She, falteringly, stepped backwards, her breath hitching, her hands rising.

"No!" They both screamed at once - her at his advance, him at the bolts of lightning and fire she set upon him - and the horrible burning, blistering, popping of his arms as the magic made contact with him and burst open his flesh, giving him the scars he wears gloves today to hide.

But through the pain, he saw just clearly enough to throw his sword.

He got lucky. She screamed too, her voice barely audible through his own agony, and the flow of magic stopped. When he could see again through the stars and darkness that pervaded his vision, his head light and his mind fainting, she was gone. His two friends, Hugo and Arthur, found him still kneeling there when the battle was over and the enemy repelled - though the blade of his sword had been shattered completely. Presumably on account of some degree of witchcraft.

Recovery was slow, but when he returned to active duty he and the other two were awarded promotions for their relative calmness in the face of mortal peril - and for the impressive feat of having survived at all. From his new position, he had more of an opportunity to show his fitness for duty as an officer, and his ascent through the ranks - though still punctuated by difficulty with nobles, and his underlying phobia of magic - only accelerated. Then the queen vanished, and before he knew it a task force was being put together to figure the whole thing out and-

And he had been ordered onto it.

He hadn't volunteered, you see. His unit, the one he ended up leading, were among the first sorts of 'special projects' units employed by the Thelannian army, and in particular his individual expertise was in anti-magic. It wasn't the specialty of his company as a whole, but it was a useful and fairly unique skill to have - and because it was likely that witches were being assigned to the task force too... Command wanted counterspelling capabilities on their own side. Edgar had wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, and he nearly had a heart attack when he received his orders - but duty is duty, and it must be done.

He wears his regents and contramagic gems closer, these days.

Sometimes, the blackened patches of scar on his arms still open up and bleed. It's not uncommon to see him wearing bandages under his gloves when this happens.