[h3]Drostan Welm / "Osmund Griff" - Dalenham, Ethora[/h3]

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Drostan didn't particularly like being back in Ethora. He supposed he didn't have much reason to be afraid. They were well away from the lands of House Welm, well away from anyone who might have seriously recognized him. And it wasn't as though his name was being spoken much, anymore. Doubtless, it had been months, even years since anyone had thought of Drostan Welm. But it wasn't just fear that had kept him out of Ethora for so long. The place was his homeland, and for all its flaws and depravity, it was a part of him. When he was away, he could pretend as though he'd always been Osmund Griff, as though he'd never before visited Dalenham with his uncle and his sister when he was a boy. But staying here, amongst the people who were once his own, brought back all kinds of memories. 

"I'm getting to be too damn old for this, Varian." He said, mostly in jest as he took a seat next to his fellow mercenary. He said something to that effect after almost every job. It was funny, because he was only thirty-one and because Varian was barely younger than him. But, then again, he was sore and tired more often than not and sometimes his back popped when he sat down. He raised a hand and looked at the bartender. "Barkeep! I'll have some of that Raelus Ale you were whining about." Truth be told, he normally ordered Ethoran drinks in Ethora, just because they were a bit cheaper. They weren't as good, but he didn't mind. Alcohol was a means to an end so far as he was concerned. But he'd heard the barkeep groan about it and couldn't resist. Besides, after this job, he could afford to splurge a bit on some finer brew. It wasn't like he was saving for anything. 

He'd changed out of his battle wear, trading his light armor for simple travel clothes and stashing away his shield and spear. His sword was still buckled on his hip, as it always was. The blade had a name once, not that it mattered much anymore. He'd worn down the identifying inscriptions on the blade and replaced its ornate scabbard and belt with simpler fare a long time ago. 

"I'm never quite prepared for how... [i]monstrous[/i] Orcs can be." He shook his head, taking a long draught from the tankard that the barkeep had brought him. "It's as though every time I see one, I forget about the last however-many times I've seen them." When he was a boy, he'd read 'Treatise on the Orc Dilemma,' by some Falkian philosopher he'd forgotten the name of. It was a long-winded essay that basically said that orcs were just of a different culture and that it was the responsibility of the other intelligent races to educate them, or something to that effect. Having never seen an orc before, he'd brought the paper to his father, interested to see what he thought. Robert Welm had torn it in half, and had the eleven-year-old Drostan fitted with armor and attached to a group of soldiers that were hunting an orc raiding party. What he'd seen had made him seriously question whether that philosopher had ever met an orc. Drostan wanted to believe there was good in the Orcs, as there was in all the other races, but he didn't want to be the poor bastard whose job it was to educate them.