[hider=Oren Bandeli]
[table][row][/row][row][cell]
[right]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/VV1WIn8.png[/img]
[/right]
[/cell]
[cell]
[sub][h2]Oren Bandeli[/h2][/sub]
[sup][sup][sup][hr][/sup][/sup][/sup]
7'2'' | 400 lbs. | 27

Male | Redguard | The Lover

[abbr=Be as a boulder.]STRENGTH[/abbr] | [abbr=A boulder that moves.]Agility[/abbr]

Rihad, Hammerfell
[/cell][/row][/table]
[sub][h2][b]P[/b]rofile[/h2][/sub]
[sup][sup][hr][/sup][/sup]
[indent]
[b]§ [u] Appearance   [/u][/b] 

[indent]The first thing that one would notice about Oren is his immense frame. Simply put, Oren is huge – standing a head or two taller than even the average Altmer, with broad shoulders not unlike a troll’s, he is a hulk of a man, and an inevitably conspicuous sight wherever he finds himself. Endowed with beastlike physique as befits his size, Oren’s limbs are unbelievably muscular as well; although despite his immense physique, this is a fact that’s hard to ascertain, thanks to the sheer amount of fat that covers his torso and limbs. Let no description or compliment lie to you – a testament to physical might may lie beneath the adipose tissue that covers Oren’s entirety, yet nonetheless, rippling shoulders and arms aside, to an outsider’s glance, Oren is simply pudgy. 

While one would expect a rough, barbarian-like visage to fill this monstrous silhouette, with his plump lips, unblemished, caramel-colored skin, prominent eyelashes and sky-blue eyes, Oren looks disconcertingly refined, and quite feminine, feminine enough to the point that he has been misgendered in the past, in spite of his gargantuan stature – as a precaution to this, and an odd gesture of masculine pride, he’s taken to shaving the top of his head to ascertain his sex to onlookers. Still, even with this show of machismo, his face stands utterly devoid of facial hair, being unable to grow any thanks to hormonal deficiencies, and with his defined nose, rosy cheeks and well-shaped chin, one could say that perhaps he could’ve been a looker, beautiful, even, if he weren’t so tubby.

Despite his frame and occupation, Oren does his best at being fashionable, wearing clothes of the finest colors and fabrics of floral pattern, although with time and experience he’s figured some go-to pieces of attire for himself, opting for voluminous breeches and loosely cut, false-sleeved robes to let his body breathe, a large sash wrapped around his waist to contain his bulging belly and narrow his frame, and a cloak of a faded yellow color, to hide his physique further, and keep him from the rays of the sun, and stronger winds. His lower arms and legs are often left bare regardless of climate, with simple leather slippers being his sole choice of footwear. Still, he carries gaiters with him for occasions where bared legs would be improper. 

Oren’s hands and feet are quite delicate looking, despite their huge size, and even though a glance to the back of his hand shows well-maintained knuckles, fingers and nails, the insides of his hands have hardened enough to grow into some sort of organic armor tissue that no amount of scraping seems to get rid of, much to his chagrin.
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Motivations and Outlook   [/u][/b]

[indent]Oren considers himself to be a simple man, with simple desires and simple views of life. Romance has never appealed to him, and with his nonexistent sexual drive and capacity thanks to his childhood castration, he has no physical pleasure to gain from a lover either. Nor does he have any particular yearning for authority, having had the chance to closely observe, from his employers, how the pursuit of power drains all joy out of one’s life – with no loved ones to speak of, this too seems to him a futile venture. While he’s crossed out certain motivations, Oren does have certain drives that let him suffer through his line of work with his mind unclouded, namely, a love of food and comfort that a different type of earning would not be able to sufficiently provide for, and secondly, the hope of earning enough riches to have a chance of passing on his legacy in different ways. Although he has no genes to pass on for posterity, the idea of being forgotten, of having suffered through life for no particular reason brings fear to him nonetheless, and thus, he hopes to find a way to cement his memory via non-biological means; whether those means be achieving deeds worthy of remembered in the future, or simply paying to create an institution or structure that will outlast the lives of regular mer and men, does not particularly matter.

While he is not an unintelligent man by any margin, Oren is somewhat uneducated about the wider world, and so is somewhat superstitious about people of other cultures. Nonetheless, he is actively aware of the fact that he is an uneducated man, and is not above getting more information about things, whether it be through asking directly or using more underhanded means. As a bodyguard, he’s well educated in the art of poker face – he often uses this to his advantage, to pretend he knows things he does not, or vice versa, to attain information he would not normally get, or to check for inconsistencies in others’ narratives. Similarly, he’s found that sometimes it is necessary to leave a dumber or smarter impression for one’s convenience, and so he’s quite keen on allowing others to underestimate or overestimate him via his nonplussed demeanor. Despite this tendency, Oren is not a particularly treacherous or manipulative man, and tries his best to be a pleasant person, so long as it does not hurt his work reputation, or make him come across as weak or dependent. As slowly as he makes friends, Oren still appreciates wittier colleagues, and will often get them gifts when appropriate, usually in the form of drinks – despite not being a drinker himself. 

Thanks to his lack of formal education, Oren’s not very well versed in topics that go beyond the scope of a layman, though he does have a dilettante’s affinity for art, and his decent memory helps him remember certain remarks about things fairly easily. Having been converted to the Imperial Cult fairly recently, Oren is a keen, although not very devout follower of Julianos, though he also casually reveres certain figures from the Yokudan Pantheon such as Satakal, and finds blasphemous talk about any sort of spiritual figure to attract misfortune, avoiding them if necessary. Despite being a practitioner of Alteration himself, Oren outwardly has a distrust of magic and magic users, fearful of the possibilities that dabbling in the unknown can cause. Ironically enough, despite his tough physique and external demeanor, Oren does have a sensitive side in his budding hobbies, being an avid, if not somewhat unskilled woodcarver and aspirant poet, and can become quite intense if his hobbies are made the topic of a conversation. Thanks to his rather dogmatic training in martial arts, Oren has a rather dismissive outlook on arms and armor, believing that a true warrior has no need of such tools, and claiming that the prominence of swords in Redguard culture stem from a misunderstood metaphor for ‘decisiveness’.

Oren, in spite of the fact that his castration and following health issues stem from his past as a slave, has no particularly negative outlook on slavery, thinking that the beast races make too much of a fuss over it. He also has an inherent dislike of Altmer, thanks to everyone blaming the Thalmor for the devastated Hammerfell that he grew up in. 
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Background   [/u][/b]

[indent]Truth be told, Oren’s origins are of no consequence. Having been born into a poor Forebear family whose man was a cripple of the Great War and the following Continuation War, the amount of older siblings he had meant that either he was going to be another mouth to feed on the table, or somehow be sacrificed for the good of the rest of the family. He does not remember these times well, perhaps out of repression, or perhaps because of how brief they were – he remembers his father’s mangled hand, with only a thumb left on it, he remembers his mother’s braids, but not much else. He must’ve been ‘acquired’ as a ‘servant’ fairly early on in life, because unlike his family, he remembers his owner, Mu’ad, quite well. A somewhat short, plump and dark-skinned man, rich enough to buy his slaves at infancy, maintain them, and groom them for whatever role he desired. Because of his young age, and because he needed to be taken care of, he was put amongst the females of the household, the chambermaids substituting for a mother, sometimes even acting as wet nurses and ‘doctors’ in secret, while the younger concubines pretended to be his sisters. Perhaps it was this fondness that the females of the household had for Oren, that led Mu’ad to pay for his castration – this way, Oren could continue to spend time with them well beyond childhood, while also keeping Mu’ad’s honor intact.

Oren remembers the day of his castration – taken from amongst the women by a tall, gangly eunuch, given a nice meal of spiced rice and mutton, alongside a thick, white and sweet drink that numbed the throat as he drank, then laid to sleep for a while. When Oren woke up, he was on a coarse carpet, too numb to move, with Mu’ad supervising as an elderly woman lifted his manhood and, after some handling of his privates, took off his scrotum with a single dagger stroke. It was a clean and relatively painless procedure; Oren would learn later in life that such care would not normally be taken and that the surgeries were often horrifyingly painful and fatal. What came afterwards was a long period of celebration and recuperation, for while some of the touchier chambermaids were saddened about the loss of Oren’s sexual functions, most were happy about the fact that their ‘son’ and ‘brother’ would continue staying with them. And stay he did – for the next few years, most he did was eat, and grow larger and larger, to the point that he was about the size of a well-fed Redguard warrior at the mere age of fourteen. This unprecedented growth led Mu’ad to reconsider the role he had in mind for Oren, and he was sent to Sentinel for training. What sort of training it would be Oren did not know until he was led to the adobe-walled courtyard of the school and beheld, for the first time in his life, the Iron Palms of Sentinel smashing cut rocks with their bare hands.

The following five years of Oren’s life were spent in the Iron Palm School, where he was taught the Art of Hand and Foot. Their master, Khogan, was an extremely elderly man, to the point where he could not walk from one edge of the school courtyard to the other without some sort of aid. Despite this, his utterly dense flesh and mastery over the school allowed him to poke his fingers through flesh, bone and rock in the blink of an eye. For the first time in his life since he’d eaten spiced rice, Oren was amazed, and despite his steadily growing weight made it harder and harder for him to practice, he quickly became one of the most diligent pupils of the school, earning the title of Journeyman Trainer under three years. Although some of the other members of the school looked down on Oren for his unconventional methods of combat, such as simply grabbing his opponents mid-attack and throwing them around instead of dodging and landing his own strikes, these opinions would eventually be silenced by Khogan himself, who said that Oren ‘fought like an infirm master, not a healthy pupil’. While this praise was not without its own reprimand, the teachings of the Iron Palms were quite dogmatic, and gerontocratic – that Oren was likened to a master, even if for his lack of stamina, meant for them that he could no longer be a figure of contention.

By the time Oren returned to Mu’ad’s household, he had become like a small mountain, both in size, density, and strength. Trained to use nothing but his hardened flesh in combat, he thoroughly impressed Mu’ad by showing the capability to grasp onto tempered sabers with his bare hands, and throw his owner’s master bodyguard aside like he was a piece of reed. Much to the chagrin of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’, and the previous bodyguard, Oren was assigned Mu’ad’s personal bodyguard, who had fallen into debt, and worse, sick with a growing lump in his stomach that not even magic could cure. To make up for his exorbitant health costs, Mu’ad had begun delving in the art of politics, ‘selling’ certain loyal slaves, so they could work their way to important positions in other figures’ households and provide information for his own maneuvering. Of course, Oren himself was far too vitally important to be thrown into such games, but in the following four years, Oren watched from behind his master’s back how stress and scheming drained the man further and further, leading him to eventually pale to a sickly yellow, and after a few weeks of bedridden life, die. What followed afterwards was total chaos – Mu’ad’s wives, free concubines, children, bastards, acquaintances and debt collectors all trying to get themselves a piece of the man’s wealth, suing, coercing, seducing and murdering one another to get more for themselves.

Oren himself, being a slave still, was inherited by one of Mu’ad’s sons, a young and ambitious man named Fajr. While he moved to Fajr’s household along with some of his ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ without making any fuss, Oren found life there to be a far less enjoyable experience, with their new owner too stressed, too greedy, and simply too cruel to internally justify being owned by. This opinion, it seemed, was not his alone; for one night, while patrolling Fajr’s bedchambers, Oren stumbled onto his owner fatally wounded, a fruit knife plunged into his throat by one of his ‘sisters’. While he comforted the bruised, traumatized woman at first, he soon found himself at a quandary – as things stood, the young woman would be executed, Oren himself sold in the public market for the lowest bidder for his incompetence, and the rest of the household scattered, bought or kidnapped. Oren decided to take another option and woke up his fellow slaves, explaining the situation, and then prompting them to take whatever they valuables they could find, buy their freedom from the flesh markets and leave for parts unknown, before someone from outside took notice. Surprisingly, it went without a fuss - the household scattered overnight, and Oren fled to Sentinel, where he used the valuables he’d taken from Fajr’s house to purchase his name off the Slave Register.

Despite being the place where he earned his freedom, Sentinel bore a tragedy of its own as well. The elderly Master Khogan had long passed away by the time Oren came back, murdered by one of his spurned students, and the events that’d followed had led to the Iron Palm School to be shut down. It was here that Oren felt despair for the first time in his life, having been so used to being led or ordered by someone else that finding out he had no masters left nearly broke him. He wandered in Sentinel for a while, trying to contact his fellow students at the Iron Palm, but the attempts turned out to be fruitless, most having either moved on, or not in the mood to make peace with whatever that had transpired. His funds were draining (Sentinel was an expensive city, and Oren had immense appetite), yet he’d made no progress; Oren realized fairly quickly that if he didn’t take action, he would be left on the streets as a gigantic bum. Figuring that he needed a roof over his head before anything else, he joined up with the Imperial Cult, taking residence in the homeless shelter that they’d converted their chapel’s basement into. It was for their mutual benefit – the mission was small and vulnerable, and Oren’s mere presence alongside them made possible harassers stay away. Oren used the chapel’s influx to start a simple self-defense course, teaching a watered-down version of the Iron Palm for those interested, receiving a meager sum in return.

What began as an arrangement of mutual benefit between Oren and the Imperial Mission eventually turned into something further; the priests of the Imperial Cult began to appreciate Oren for his helpful demeanor and the amount of young, enthusiastic people his self-defense course kept bringing in, while Oren himself began seeing actual goodwill in the toils of the Priests of the Eight Divines – led by a thin, bald man named Ionnaninus Bandelis,  their Sisyphean attempts to teach Oren’s students how to read made a somewhat heartwarming impression on the gigantic man. In reality, Oren did not know how to read and write either, Mu’ad never having deemed it necessary for him to learn how – it took some time for Oren to grow the confidence inform the priests of this, but when he did it was not received with any surprise. He too became a pupil, like some of his own pupils, and soon enough (it did not take long for him to learn the basics), he could read and write with ease. As an act of gratitude, Oren swore that he would worship and honor the Divines for the rest of his days, and following that, to symbolize him being ‘a new person’, took a surname after the man who taught him how to read, being, from that moment on, Oren Bandeli.

Of course, things would not go happily ever after, and Oren would not really become a new person in the way that he hoped – instead of becoming a content monk, he became a killer, when he accidentally caved a man’s face in while trying to stop him from pissing on the Chapel walls. Word spread, and it evolved, and by the time the mob came knocking on the Chapel, they were demanding justice for the old man whose skull had been crushed by ‘that no-ball monster’ for not paying his respects while passing by the Chapel. While Oren knew that the Imperial Cult had lost its glamorous status in the province since the Great War, he did not expect that folks would come and ask for his head; he had to handle an angry, armed mob by himself for a few hours, preventing from coming in through the Chapel’s gate to hurt the others, an act that only resulted in more deaths. Eventually, the town guard came to the priests’ rescue and disperse the mob, although to placate them, Oren was sentenced to exile from Sentinel. Oren thought of this appropriate and let himself get cuffed and escorted out of the city limits, where he was left, to his surprise, without being unshackled from his iron bindings – Oren had to bash his cuffs against rocks and trees for an entire day to free himself. He followed the Iliac coastline to Lainlyn, where his reputation seemed to have reached before him; honest people would not deal with him, for what business did they have with an indiscriminate murderer?

It turned out that some people did, and soon enough Oren began getting approached by shady men who said they wanted to ‘talk’. He brushed them off the first few times, afraid that they were just muggers or troublemakers, but eventually one spoke to him plainly enough for Oren to realize that practically, he’d been brushing off job offers. There were people for whom having unscrupulous muscle on employ was a benefit, and Oren, the notorious, gargantuan outsider, was a perfect candidate. Thus, Oren found himself the personal bodyguard of a mob leader, a dandy with no teeth on one side of his mouth, aptly named Half-Mouth. Guarding a criminal was much different than guarding Mu’ad, for whom Oren was more a figure of deterrence and prestige, not actual combat; in contrast, Oren often found himself dirtying his hands with blood while keeping Half-Mouth safe, growing more and more used to it. His effectiveness grew on Half-Mouth, who began molding Oren in his shape, giving him dressing and etiquette tips; over time Oren’s reputation overshadowed even Half-Mouth’s, and perhaps this could’ve led to Half-Mouth contemplating on how to get rid of Oren, but the latter’s untimely death from a drug overdose prevented that from happening. With Half-Mouth gone, Oren could’ve inherited his organization, but he chose not to, and left for High Rock, where he made a living as a wandering debt collector until he ended up in the employ of a particular mercenary company.
[/indent]
[/indent]

[sub][h2][b]C[/b]apabilities[/h2][/sub]
[sup][sup][hr][/sup][/sup]
[indent]
[b]§ [u] Skills   [/u][/b] 

[indent][list]
[*]Expert – [abbr=The Iron Palm Dogma.]Hand to Hand[/abbr]
[*]Adept – [abbr=Focus. Become iron.]Alteration[/abbr]
[*]Adept – [abbr=Focus. Flow past the strike.]Unarmored[/abbr]
[*]Apprentice – [abbr=Focus. Make the first jump.]Acrobatics[/abbr]
[*]Apprentice – [abbr=Focus. Make your muscles obey.]Healing[/abbr]
[*]Apprentice – [abbr=Focus. Make a show of force.]Speech[/abbr]
[*]Apprentice – [abbr=Focus. Lend the rock your strength.]Throwing Weapons[/abbr]
[*]Novice – [abbr=Focus. Move the mountain.]Athletics[/abbr]
[/list][/indent]

[b]§ [u] Flaws   [/u][/b]

[indent][b]Warning, Confined Space:[/b] Oren’s immense size prohibits him from making a subtle entrance, if he can make one at all. He takes up a large portion of physical space and can have trouble going in through doors, let alone maneuvering through small, cramped areas such as tunnels.

[b]Short, Controlled Bursts:[/b] Even with his training and the aid of meditative magic, Oren simply carries too much weight for prolonged activities of exertion – he prefers to make the most with the least amount of physical effort, and extended movement will make him need to rest for a long time.

[b]Extra Topping, Please:[/b] While he pays for it wherever he can, Oren consumes an immense amount of food and water even in short amounts of time. His appetite is insatiable, and without it placated, his performance can drop visibly, having to deal with cramps and the psychological urges of hunger. 
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Spells   [/u][/b]

[indent]
[b]Alteration:[/b] Burden, Equilibrium, Feather, Ironflesh, Jump, Slowfall, Transmute

[b]Healing:[/b] Fast Healing, Fast Recovery, Healing Hands
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Tactics   [/u][/b] 

[indent]Oren considers the first line of defense to be deterrence. It’s easier to win fights by convincing your opponent that fighting you will not be to their benefit, Oren thinks, and indeed when confronted with a hostile situation his first attempt will be to convince his opponents to stand down, usually through subtle intimidation. Still, Oren knows that a man needs more than one line of defense, and thankfully, has been taught how to walk the walk as much as he likes to talk the talk. 

While Oren’s likely to make an impression of no more than dumb muscle, his way of combat is surprisingly technical and dependent on the subtleties of gravity – while the Iron Palm School taught him to amplify his mass and stand his ground like a rock against his opponents, Oren realized fairly quickly that it’s much more convenient and much less tiresome to simply make his opponent lose his footing, whether that be through the Art of Hand and Foot, or using Alteration to bend the laws of gravity for his convenience. He likes to be unconventional; if attacked in melee, his first response is not to avoid the strike but to actually catch it with his hands and guide it elsewhere, while amplifying the momentum of his opponent’s strike with his grasp to disrupt their balance and fling them away. 

When he attacks, he likes to attack quickly and precisely, often using his feet to hook and kick at his foe’s ankles, amplifying the strength of his hits by hardening his flesh right before the moment of impact. He prefers to take the center stage of battle so that he does not exhaust himself trying to circle around opponents, although obviously that does not work against enemies who keep their distance. For them, Oren has a less subtle, more proactive and far more tiresome technique – using Alteration to propel himself towards the opponent as if he were a gigantic frog and smash into them with the strength of a catapulted rock.

Still, sometimes enemies require much less complicated methods to deal with, and Oren is not above simply caving his foes in with his fists and kicks, which would normally be applied as stomping finishers to his grounded opponents. Flattening windpipes and shattering bones may be far simpler when you can put your entire weight into the strike, but when life doesn’t give Oren the opportunity to do that, he can just smash his enemies apart, armored or not, although it’s not an approach he can keep up for long without needing rest for his and exerted muscles and mind.
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Relations & Affiliations   [/u][/b]

[indent]Ionnaninus Bandelis, once head of the Imperial Mission in Sentinel, now assigned to a post in Cyrodiil
Rest of his relations either lost, dead or unworthy of note
[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Opinions   [/u][/b]

[indent]After introductions.[/indent]

[b]§ [u] Crimes and Accomplishments   [/u][/b]

[indent]Crimes: 
[list]
[*]One count of theft in Rihad, unreported
[*]One count of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as involuntary manslaughter, sentenced to exile as punishment
[*]Two counts of homicide in Sentinel, ruled as self-defense
[*]Two counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, unreported
[*]Three counts of homicide in Lainlyn while employed by Half-Mouth, ruled as self-defense
[/list]

Accomplishments:
[list]
[*]Certified Journeyman Trainer of the now defunct Sentinel Iron Palm Martial Arts School
[*]Certified Layman of the Imperial Cult
[*]Once prominent criminal figure of the Lainlyn underworld
[/list]
[/indent] 

[b]§ [u] Other   [/u][/b]

[indent]Oren is an amateur poet.[/indent] 
[/indent]

[sub][h2][b]I[/b]nventory[/h2][/sub]
[sup][sup][hr][/sup][/sup]
[indent][table=bordered][row][/row][row][cell]
[b]§ [u] Cash & Valuables  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]74 Septims
[/list]
[/cell][cell]
[b]§ [u] Keys & Lockpicks  [/u][/b]
None
[/cell]
[/row][row]
[cell]
[b]§ [u] Tools & Crafting Materials  [/u][/b]
None
[/cell][cell]
[b]§ [u] Clothing, Armor & Jewelry  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]A wide-brimmed conical hat, made of straw
[*]A faded dark yellow cloak with black trim
[*]A brocade robe of a dark green color with yellow trim
[*]A yellow sash
[*]A pair of dark brown breeches
[*]A pair of beige gaiters
[*]A pair of yellow leather slippers
[/list]
[/cell]
[/row][row]
[cell]
[b]§ [u] Weapon & Ammo  [/u][/b]
None
[/cell][cell]
[b]§ [u] Potion & Arcane Supplies  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]Three Potions of Restore Magicka
[/list]
[/cell]
[/row][row]
[cell]
[b]§ [u] Books & Documents  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]Journeyman Trainer Certificate from the now-defunct Iron Palm Martial Arts School
[/list]
[/cell]
[cell]
[b]§ [u] Consumables & Ingredients  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]Two flasks full of water
[*]A whole two-pound block of spiced, cured meat
[*]A satchel of rice
[/list]
[/cell]
[/row][row]
[cell]
[b]§ [u] Bags & Containers  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]A sack
[*]A satchel of potions
[*]A satchel of food
[*]Two large flasks made of dried gourd
[/list]
[/cell][cell]
[b]§ [u] Other  [/u][/b]
[list]
[*]A folded piece of paper, containing previously written verses
[/list]
[/cell][/row][/table][/indent]
[/hider]