[hider=Gregor Mercurius][center][h3][B]Gregor Mercurius[/B][/h3]
[img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b7/bb/be/b7bbbe858f4e522e4ef7a4a43d46344e.jpg[/img]

[B]Race[/B]: Imperial.
[B]Sex[/B]: Male.
[B]Age[/B]: 31.
[B]Family Origins[/B]: Bravil, Cyrodiil.
[B]Birth Sign[/B]: The Ritual.[/center]

[B]Appearance[/B]: At first glance, Gregor appears to be quite a typical, well-bred Imperial. He is of above average height and stature, measuring 6’1” from toe to tip and weighing a little under 190 pounds; his muscular physique is as common among Imperial soldiers and adventurers as it is among his fellow smiths, and an impressive amount of raw strength lurks beneath his clothes. His skin is light but his hair is dark, so brown that it is almost black, bringing out the color in his hazel eyes. Those intimately familiar with the slight racial and cultural differences among the Imperials would see at second glance that he is Nibenese, due to the way he wears his hair and his style of clothing and armor, but this is a nuance lost on most of Tamriel’s inhabitants. 

He has been blessed with aesthetically pleasing genetics and Gregor’s face is one that catches lingering gazes often enough to be worth mentioning. His strong nose, high cheekbones and prominent, hawkish brow create a masculine, noble visage, complemented by his keen and deep-set eyes; their gaze, which fluctuates in color from pale honey in direct sunlight to dark ebony in the gloom of an unlit chamber, can be as stern as it can be kindly. He grows quite a long and full beard by Imperial standards and maintains it well, which adds to his authority and helps him look a little like his actual age. Gregor’s hair is also much longer than the austere crop favored by the Ruby Ranks and many others. It’s a little touch of Nibenese fashion. For practical reasons he wears it swept back and tied in a ponytail behind his head. 

The rest of his body is nothing to sneeze at either. Gregor’s parents were well-off and his childhood was one of relative luxury, which shows itself in the strength of his limbs and the healthy lustre of his skin. It is obvious that he never went hungry. More recent years haven’t always been kind and he has gathered a few cuts and bruises along the way, including a row of scars on the left side of his face that extends over his ear; a souvenir from the claws of a Spriggan. It makes him look a little more rough around the edges but otherwise doesn’t ruin the impression of civility and masculine sophistication that he has cultivated. There’s something slightly mysterious and inscrutable about him, his quietly commanding voice and his gentle, unhurried movements, that belays a subterranean intensity that has seldom seen the light of day. There is fire in Gregor Mercurius, make no mistake, but it smolders in soft embers behind his piercing eyes. 

[B]History[/B]: He was born as the first child to Hector and Gaia Mercurius in Bravil in 4E170, just a year before the Great War broke out and the armies of the Aldmeri Dominion invaded the Empire from the south. As such, Gregor’s first memories aren’t of the ancestral home of his father’s lineage but of Bruma, in northern Cyrodiil, during the height of the war in 4E174, where his mother had fled to. Hector was a Legionnaire and had gone to war, so the family lived in fear every day that he might not return, for Gaia was a magistrate’s daughter with no appreciable skills to speak of and she relied entirely on Hector for her livelihood. 

Fortunately, Hector survived the war. The family returned home to a Bravil that was mostly in ruins. The city had been besieged and conquered by the Dominion early in the war and the elves hadn’t exactly been kind to the place. Hector was a smart man, and instead of being dismayed he decided to focus on the opportunities presented by the situation. He accepted honorable discharge when it was offered to him and decided to begin a new life as a merchant with a little capital investment from his father-in-law. This was swiftly turned into a modest fortune by capitalizing on the rebuilding efforts in various ways that were, truthfully, too boring for young Gregor to remember. All he knew that his father was successful, that they lived in a nice house close to the castle grounds, that he ate well and that his education was much better than that of the street urchins he played with. His time in Bruma had been marked by uncertainty and a palpable fear in his mother, so the rest of Gregor’s childhood in Bravil was a welcome relief. He was described by all that knew him as a sweet boy, eager to please and to make people laugh. 

When Gregor was five years old his younger brother Marcus was born, and he doted over the newborn endlessly, wildly excited to have a sibling to play with -- “and teach,” he would say, doing his best to copy the gravitas in his father’s voice, to the amusement of all. A sister would follow two years later, a girl named Julia, and that final addition made the Mercurius household complete. These long years, that lasted into Gregor’s adolescence and even well into his adulthood, were joyous and prosperous. His father’s small mercantile empire continued to line their pockets with gold and Hector came home with a smile on his face everyday, happy to see his family and satisfied with another day of honest work. Gregor was particularly fond of his memories of long, sunlit afternoons spent training with Marcus and his father, sparring with wooden swords, in the yard behind their house. Hector had been in in the Imperial Legion, of course, and thought it was important to prepare his sons for the worst, so every two hours of academic learning were balanced against one hour of martial training. 

As Gregor’s childhood came to an end he remained unsure of what to do with his life. He had considered signing up for the Legion, following in his father’s footsteps, but Hector’s grim-faced silence when prompted with questions about the Great War scared young Gregor away from that prospect. Taking over his father’s business didn’t appeal to him either, and he would have to wait a long time for that to happen anyway since Hector derived so much raison d’etre and joie de vivre from his work that he wasn’t considering retirement for many years to come. Gregor would help his father out with the occasional errand, of course, but it didn’t amount to anything close to a full-time occupation, and certainly not a profession. At a loss for what to do and with no shortage of free time, Gregor took whatever other odd jobs he could get: cleaning the pews in the local chapel, picking fruit in the fields outside Bravil with his friends and even a little construction work during the summer months. He grew out his hair and carefully cultivated a beard to be proud of, and the scrawny teenager became a strapping young man that turned out to be quite a hit with girls his age. 

The Bravil Riots of 4E188 brutally disrupted the lazy serenity that had settled over the lives of the Mercurius family and Gregor was finally confronted with the dark side of his beloved city. Their wealth insulated the family from the worst of the fighting, which took place on the streets, but Gregor was out of the city, working the fields, when all hell broke loose. His journey home was fraught with peril. Hector’s lessons came in handy that day and Gregor managed to defend himself with a reaper’s scythe and a lot of hollering about his total disinvolvement with whatever prompted the rioting. He encountered some of his friends among the rioteers and while they helped escort him to his home, Gregor was deeply disappointed to find that they weren’t the upstanding folks he’d always believed them to be. In turn, his friends were surprised that he [i]didn’t[/i] join in -- a chance to ‘stick it to the man’, as it were, who’d pass that up? The difference between his own privileged upbringing and the strong sense of justice and appreciation for the law that came with it, and the more difficult lives of his friends and their more flexible morals, became apparent to him then. It was a sobering lesson about his place in life. Afterwards, Hector suggested that Gregor apply to become an apprentice to a family friend, Roderic Mero, who was a silversmith that owned his own shop in Bravil. Gregor had always been reasonably good with his hands and, more importantly, inherently patient and even-tempered, so the idea had some merit. He agreed to it after a few days of thinking it over. Fortunately, Roderic was quite willing to give the young man a chance. He’d always been fond of Gregor while the boy had been growing up and would be delighted to help him find his calling in life now that Gregor was an adult. Marcus, eager to step out of his older brother’s shadow, signed up to receive their father’s lessons in the merchant’s trade instead and be groomed to run the business one day. And Julia, sweet Julia, just wanted to become a mother. 

Gregor enjoyed being an apprentice to Roderic when he quickly realized it was a profession he could actually see himself doing for the rest of his working days; creating beautiful things for others, especially [i]women,[/i] to enjoy, sounded like a noble and useful profession to him. While he managed to focus on his work well enough for Roderic not to take issue with him, Gregor did what all young men do and spent more time than he should have with the ladies of Bravil. He continued to prove himself a hard man to dislike, though, and his reputation around the city remained that of a polite, thoughtful and personable fellow over the years that followed. He made new friends of better standing and it was among them that he encountered the love of his life.

Her name was Briar, a gorgeous woman with eyes as blue as the sea, hair as dark as the night and a pearly smile that made his heart skip a beat every time. She was the daughter of one the count’s advisors, a man of similar station to Hector and both fathers approved of the pairing. Gregor courted her with the first piece of jewelry he was actually proud of after years of hard work, a silver necklace with a pendant in the shape of a swan. For her part, she was simply irresistible and a pleasure to be around, full of life and compassion, and Hector frequently favorably compared her to his own wife. She was a good counterpart to Gregor’s more pensive, quieter personality, and his womanizing years were definitively behind him when he pledged himself to her at age 25. The Mercurius family welcomed her with open arms and the two lovers married the next year in a beautiful ceremony at the chapel, before gods and kin.

Alongside his work at Roderic’s jewelry shop and smithy, Gregor continued to assist his father here and there, acquiring rare alchemy ingredients or visiting bookshops throughout the province. Briar accompanied him on these trips, as they had had no luck with conceiving yet and her spousal duties at home were limited. They enjoyed visiting all the different cities in Cyrodiil so much that Gregor never really questioned why his father sent him on these outings, having readily accepted [i]“because I’ve taken on alchemy and antique literature as a hobby”[/i] for an answer. Nor did he all-too-closely inspect the titles or the contents of the books he was meant to acquire, preferring to devote his attention to his lovely wife, the diverse people they saw and the places they found themselves in. One particular moment was so breathtakingly beautiful -- when he saw Briar walk ahead of him across the bridge to the Imperial City, the golden afternoon sunlight dancing in her hair, her blue dress tussled by a fresh breeze -- that he had her immortalized on his forearm with a tattoo, just the way he remembered her.

Because of Gregor’s relatively languid attitude towards finishing his apprenticeship with Roderic, and his master’s enjoyment of having the diligent and intelligent young man around, it took more years than strictly necessary to advance to the status of a journeyman silversmith -- with the eventual promise of Gregor becoming a master in his own right. Slow and steady wins the race, Gregor thought, and their life was good already; with a little financial support from his father the newlyweds were able to purchase their own home in Bravil, a beautiful cottage near the city walls in the district that was rebuilt after the Great War, and there they were happy. Gregor frequently spent his time working on side projects and indulging in his other hobbies, which explained the slow progression in his silversmithing career, but Briar didn’t mind; it was a quirk of his that she had grown fond of. The cracks began to show, however, when the couple continued to be unable to conceive. Was there something wrong with either of them? Briar had always wanted to be a mother and Gregor was quite looking forward to being a father at some point; though, like with anything else, he wasn’t in a particular hurry. Her frustration and fear of being barren turned into anxiety and emotional outbursts that Gregor wasn’t sure how to deal with, and he began to spend more time away from home, traveling in order to procure rare materials for Roderic’s smithy or on errands for his father. Hector did ask once if Briar didn’t mind him being on the road so much, but Gregor merely said it was fine. 

When a caravan he was traveling with was ambushed by bandits, an eventuality that every traveler must answer to at some point in their lives, Gregor was forced to defend himself when the raiders threatened to overwhelm the caravan guards. With trembling hands, he drew the sword his father had given him for protection from its scabbard and jumped into the fray. Hector’s old lessons, and the fire magic that Gregor used at the forge, came through and the inexperienced silversmith was able to keep his wits about him long enough for the caravan to emerge victorious, Gregor himself having slain two of the bandits. His adrenaline ebbed away when he looked upon their corpses and a wave of nausea hit him. He had taken a life -- no, two lives. They might have been outlaws, violent and frightening, but they were still people and the idea was abhorrent to him. And yet… he had not felt fear or disgust when he had plunged his sword into their guts. A great, hitherto unknown satisfaction had flooded his limbs when he had asserted his dominance over them. The feeling was alien to Gregor and it repulsed him as much as it intrigued him.

Returning home with that tale brought approval from his father and deep concern from his wife. Briar had absolutely no interest in Gregor risking his life in such a way, but Hector, a born-and-bred warrior, was proud of his son for standing up for the innocent and defending himself. After some deliberation, Gregor decided that it was the duty of every able-bodied man of the Empire to defend its people and strike down lawlessness when it crosses their path and he resuming training the art of swordplay with his father during his free time and found a tutor in the magical arts to teach him a more varied arsenal of Destruction magic and the basics of Restoration, which all further contributed to delaying the completion of his apprenticeship with Roderic. 

It is only now, already 31 years old, that Gregor is ready to finish his training and deliver his proof of mastery for Cyrodiil’s Guild of Silversmiths. His marriage with Briar has weakened over the years, the depth of his love for her blunted by her newfound fretful, melancholic nature, made worse by the birth of her nieces and nephews -- both Briar’s and Gregor’s younger sister have already given birth to several children. Gregor, for his part, enjoys being an uncle, and while Briar plays the role of aunt par excellence, she is wounded by her own lack of progeny every time she entertains the young ones in their family. For all of his understated charm and attentiveness, Gregor’s inability to properly comfort his wife betrayed a flaw in his character that Briar had never suspected he, of all people, would possess, and it has chilled her attitude towards him in turn. As such, Gregor turns to Jehanna to obtain the desired materials to create a truly excellent piece of jewelry to serve as a proof of mastery with a simmering disquiet in his heart. He is in no hurry to complete his task, even though he has promised Briar that it will be his last adventure, and who knows what he will find that might change his mind? 

[B]Personality[/B]: On the surface, Gregor is eloquent, friendly, polite and well-mannered: a faithful husband to his beloved wife and a devoted son to his wonderful parents. Gregor only seeks to help those in need; family, friends and strangers, in that order. It is not in Gregor’s nature to be a violent man and he never had any great inborn talent for martial prowess or desire to excel in that arena but the dangers of the world have forced him to develop these skills all the same. It is only very seldom that Gregor has need to be anything other than a soft-hearted romantic, an attentive silversmith from Bravil that rarely raises his voice in anger, readily abandons what he’s doing to assist the elderly, the pregnant or the infirm, and who appreciates beauty in the little things in life. He has never been very open or forthcoming about himself, or very talkative in general, but perfectly affable and he has practically no enemies. All of these positive traits have turned out to be shallower than expected, as when one digs truly deep into Gregor’s compassion they’ll find their shovels blunted on something else entirely.

For below the surface simmer the flames of a great and vengeful wrath, rarely stoked, but ever-present. Gregor was unaware of this quality until he was already a man and he is unsure of what to make of it. It undeniably feels good to exercise domination over those that would do harm unto him or other innocents, but dealing death goes against everything he thought he knew about the secrets of living a good life. This lack of empathy, if it can be described as such, is also responsible for the limits of Gregor’s ability to truly care for and take care of those he loves; he eventually reaches a point where he no longer knows what to do or what to say. He has lately begun to lament that not every problem can be solved with quiet tinkering or, bizarrely, and somewhat frightening to himself, violence. 

He likes to play games that test his intelligence, like chess or a good puzzle box. Gregor’s favorite food is cheese and red wine, though he is a light drinker and tries to never drink in excess. Aside from his silversmithing skills, Gregor’s other hobbies include reading, gardening, woodworking, cooking and fishing with his father and younger brother; anything quiet and contemplative, in short.  

[B]Equipment[/B]: 
[indent][u]Steel bastard sword:[/u] Also known as a hand-and-a-half sword, the length and the weight of the blade are perfectly balanced so that it can be wielded in one hand or with both hands. That makes it particularly suitable for Gregor’s style, which incorporates one-handed bursts of Destruction magic to wrong-foot his enemy and bolster his offensive capabilities. This used to belong to Hector and saw service all throughout the Great War, though Gregor’s smithing skills mean that it looks brand new; a shining steel blade a little over three feet long and a hand’s breadth wide, a T-shaped crossguard and the ancestral Mercurius ruby set into the pommel of the two-handed grip. It is Gregor’s most prized possession.

[u]Steel dagger:[/u] Purely for emergencies. Gregor has almost never had to use this, but you never know. 

[u]Light Imperial battledress:[/u] A unique and custom-made ensemble that’s comprised of fortified leather and chainmail worn beneath a coat, an overcoat, a buttoned-up vest and trousers, fashioned from black and red wool and cotton, true to the latest Imperial fashion. It’s light enough for Gregor to wear everywhere and stylish enough to be appropriate in every situation, as the protection it offers is hidden beneath the clothes, just sufficient for his methodical and clever style of combat.  

[hider=Armor][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8a/66/ab/8a66abf6cfabe12c57bd03e07ea22291.jpg[/img][/hider]

[B]Misc. Possessions[/B]:

[u]Rucksack and pouches:[/u] No adventuring outfit is complete without storage space and Gregor has plenty of it. The pouches are attached to his belt and the rucksack is… well, it’s a rucksack. You’ll find it on his back. Among other utilitarian things, Gregor carries 152 septims with him.

[u]Map of Tamriel:[/u] As specified.

[u]Food:[/u] Dried meats, berries and nuts are Gregor’s food of choice. Nutritional and doesn’t spoil. He treats himself to a real meal whenever he’s in town but Gregor spends so much time on the road, anything else would be impractical. 

[B]Family and Associates:[/B] 

[u]Marcus:[/u] Younger brother and the proprietor of the Mercurius family business. 

[u]Gaia:[/u] His mother.

[u]Julia:[/u] Younger sister. 

[u]Briar:[/u] His beautiful wife. 

[u]:Roderic:[/u] Master silversmith to whom Gregor is apprenticed.

[B]Attributes:[/B]
[u]Major:[/u] Strength
[u]Minor:[/u] Willpower

[B]Favoured Skills[/B]:

[u]Highly Proficient: Silversmithing:[/u] The ability to create, repair and polish all manners of jewelry, baubles and accessories. Some of this carries over into Gregor’s skill at keeping his weapons and armor in fighting shape as well. 

[u]Moderately Proficient: Two-Handed:[/u] Even if you have no talent, childhood training from a Legionnaire and some genuine practice at swinging a bastard sword at a few bandits will make one become reasonably good at it anyway. His skills are nothing worth writing home about but they get the job done, especially if Gregor uses his wits more than his arms. His fighting style is either defensive or decisive, and he prefers to use the element of surprise wherever possible, both outside of combat and in the thick of it, dismaying his opponents with unexpected blasts of magic.

[u]Moderately Proficient: Destruction:[/u] While Gregor lacks a proper academic education when it comes to magic, he makes up for it in raw talent and intelligence. The sheer destructive power of his spells are limited but his creative and swift application in combat mean that they still frequently turn the tide and give him the advantage he needs to seize victory. 

[u]Moderately Proficient: Restoration:[/u] Healing wounds and protecting himself against magical harm are two essential skills that every traveler should possess. Gregor is no different, though he is far from an expert… and definitely not good enough to heal his father. He suspects he never will be. 

[u]Somewhat Proficient: One-Handed:[/u] While he is better with his sword when he employs a two-handed fighting style, he can make do with one hand if the situation calls for it -- like having to cast a Ward spell with his off-hand to protect himself against magic. 

[u]Somewhat Proficient: Light Armor:[/u] While he’s been wearing a light form of armor for a few years now, whenever he is on the road, Gregor still tries to avoid a fair fight whenever he can. It doesn’t slow him down and he knows which parts of the armor are stronger and more resistant than other parts, but that’s about where his knowledge and skills end. It’s kept him alive so far.

[u]Somewhat Proficient: Provisioning:[/u] Gregor is far from a chef or a real hunter, but he knows how to cook a tasty, nutritious meal -- if somewhat rustic -- and he can fish to sustain himself in an emergency survival situation. Not that he’s ever had to. 

[u]Spell List[/u]
[list][*]Flames
[*]Fireball
[*]Lightning Bolt
[*]Ice Spike
[*]Flame Cloak
[*]Fast Healing
[*]Greater Ward
[/list][/indent][/hider]