Name: Solomon Antabolis, the Slaughterfish.
Race: Imperial.
Sex: Male.
Age: 54.
Birthsign: The Tower.
Origins: The Imperial City, Cyrodiil.

Appearance: Tall and wiry, Solomon has the build and body of a someone used to tough conditions and hard work. There isn’t a gram of excess fat beneath his skin and the sinewy musculature of his limbs make him deceptively strong and nimble for a man of his age. He has a warrior’s scars and calluses, seemingly at odds with his profession as innkeeper, that speak of a hard-fought existence. If fate had tilted ever so slightly at various points in his past, Solomon would undoubtedly have joined his father and his brothers in the afterlife long ago.

The Imperial possesses a long and narrow face, weathered and tanned by the sun and dominated by strong, hawkish features. His brows are sharp and angular, making it seem as if he is frowning or sneering at all times, and one could cut themselves on his high and prominent cheekbones. Gaunt cheeks end in a downturned mouth with modest lips, partly covered by the full and somewhat ruddy mustache -- the tips just long enough to twirl when lost in thought -- and goatee that he chooses to wear. The Imperial’s age is evident not only in the deep lines in his face but also in his receding hairline, creating a widow’s peak in his dark hair that is emphasized even further by his swept-back, practical style. His only touch of fashion is a single silver stud earring in his left earlobe.

His mannerisms are reserved and deliberate, speaking in the clipped tones of a soldier and moving with the understated elegance of a man conserving energy for when he fears he might need all of it. Solomon’s expression is almost invariably inscrutably neutral, with piercing, heavy-lidded eyes, pale as the autumn sky, that see even the most minute hints of dishonesty with alarming perceptiveness. Slow to smile and seemingly bereft of joy, there is precious little warmth to be found in him, spoken or otherwise, but he strikes a capable and dependable image -- a man with many qualities and hidden talents.

Solomon is usually dressed in practical and understated clothes of simple make and muted colors. A common outfit is a white linen shirt beneath a black jacket, a pair of leather vambraces, brown pantaloons stuffed into sturdy black boots and a belt around his waist. He owns a fur-lined greatcoat for the colder winter months (or, recently, the unseasonably cold nights) which is probably the most expensive piece of clothing in his armoire. Solomon prefers any armor he might wear to be lightweight enough to afford him full freedom of movement, in line with the Imperial leather armor he wore during his time with the Legion.

A permanent presence by his side is his dog Sirius, a large, shaggy, wolf-like shepherd with fur as black as the night and eyes like gold, after who Solomon’s roadside inn is named. He is five years old, still in excellent health, loyal to a fault and ferocious in defense of his master. However, Sirius prefers to laze by the fire and snack on other people’s generosity as often as he can get away with it.

History: The Antabolis family had a rich military tradition in the Fourth Era, with almost every man in the family serving with the Legion at one point or another in their lives. Solomon was practically raised with his father’s war-stories and he grew up full of adoration for him. He was not alone in that regard, and Solomon did not fail to notice the respect his father commanded in Imperial society. Being the youngest of three sons, Solomon deeply desired to prove himself and coveted such respect for his own. As brothers are wont to do, Solomon was frequently picked on by Lucius and Bram but always struck back twice as hard, even from a young age. His father, Gabriel, saw the ‘fire that burns in his heart’ and encouraged it, nurturing it in his own way: he did not intervene and let the three brothers quarrel, much to his wife’s exasperation. Not that Gabriel was home often anyway. The middling years of the second century of the Fourth Era were turbulent times and the Legion was often deployed throughout the Empire to keep the peace. Solomon yearned for his father’s approval and he struggled with Gabriel’s long absences, but whenever his father was home he would take the time to sit down with Solomon and explain to him the necessity of his work. These were lessons that the young Imperial never forgot.

He took to his education, both martial and academic, with more apparent talent and enthusiasm than either of his brothers, working tirelessly and often forgoing the normal diversions of childhood to study or practice more. When Lucius and Bram were out playing on the streets, Solomon was swinging his wooden sword in their house’s practice yard, or pouring over books and scrolls with unrelenting dedication. More than any of his peers, Solomon paid close attention to the news of the day and to his father’s words, especially when Gabriel thought none of children were listening, and Solomon discerned that which many did not, or did not want to: war was brewing. The boy wanted to be ready.

He was still a young man, only recently trained and accepted into the ranks of the Imperial Legion as a legionnaire under the illustrious command of Captain Carius, when the Great War between the Empire and the Dominion broke out. The horrifying reality of the battlefield came as a shock to the system of many of Solomon’s kinsmen, but the young Antabolis had been bracing himself for years. He fought tirelessly in the white-knuckle battles, frequently lost and only survived by the skin of his teeth, that were waged in the first years of the war along Cyrodiil’s southern borders. The sieges of Leyawiin, Bravil, and many more skirmishes in the forests and fields in between forced him to become a hardened combat veteran in no time.

His Legion suffered great casualties and Solomon climbed the ranks at breakneck pace, forced to replace far more experienced superiors as they fell on the battlefield, or as they were slain in their beds during the nighttime Thalmor raids. Morale was low and the advance of the Dominion seemed inexorable as Lord Naarifin marched his armies slowly towards the Imperial City over the next two years. The Imperials were forced to retreat repeatedly and Solomon grit his teeth whenever they had to give up more ground and abandon yet another city to the elves. He was determined to offer up more resistance than Captain Carius could manage. And so, within the Third Legion, Solomon gathered a group of likeminded soldiers to his side in secret to return the Thalmor’s favor. They snuck out of the Imperial encampment at night to wage a war of terror on the pursuing Dominion forces under the cover of darkness. They marked themselves to one another by subtly inscribing their leather vambraces with the likeness of the slaughterfish -- ripping and tearing from the depths only to disappear when the sun rose. It was not without risks and many of them died in the line of duty, but there were always more soldiers that were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for emperor and country.

After two years of bloodshed and destruction, Carius had rejoined the Third Legion with the Emperor’s own forces in the Imperial City. This saw Solomon reunited with his family -- by some miracle, all the Antabolis brothers had survived the war thus far, and even their father, Gabriel, was still alive, although gravely wounded. He was cared for by his own wife in his own home and often visited by his son whenever they were rotated off duty as he recovered slowly. Bloody fighting continued outside of the City’s walls as Lord Naarifin attempted to encircle the capital entirely and cut it off from reinforcements. It was a slow and hard-fought process as the Imperials made the elves pay dearly for every inch of ground they surrendered around the Niben and many spectacular naval battles were fought in the waters around the Imperial City over the course of the next two years.

For it wasn’t until 4E174 that the elves began their final, massive assault on the Imperial City. Against all of his advisors’ words, the Emperor decided to abandon the city and fight their way free, breaking north towards reinforcements from Skyrim. This was a bitter pill for Solomon to swallow -- he was loathe to leave his home for the Dominion to desecrate, and he knew the innocent population would be subjected to great horrors at the hands of the Altmer. Even worse, what was a national tragedy turned into a personal one. Gabriel fought and died with the Eight Legion’s heroic last stand, defending the rearguard of the retreating Legions against the vengeful elves as they fled the city, leaving the Antabolis brothers suddenly deprived of their beloved father. They each broke ranks in the chaos and personally escorted their heartbroken mother from the city, wading knee-deep through rows of corpses in the streets and the fields outside the walls, facing off against all manner of Daedric summons from the Dominion’s sorcerers. It was hell on Tamriel and for the first time, Solomon found the strength of his spirit wavering. How had they not just definitively lost the war? An Empire without the Imperial City was no Empire at all. Mankind seemed doomed.

But there was barely any time to reflect on that. The Emperor relentlessly marched his soldiers north until they were out of range of the Dominion and they found refuge in Bruma, where the Antabolis brothers left their mother in the loving care of distant relatives they had up there. But even now, their respite was brief. The Empire still had need of them as the Emperor began to draft up his plan to retake the Imperial City the following year. The borders of Bruma needed to be defended against the occasional prodding attack or Dominion scouting party. It was in these seemingly trivial engagements that Lucius lost his life to a stray elven arrow. Solomon was angered by the apparent pointlessness of it all, but he let his anger fuel his resolve. Battered, bloody and close to broken -- for Solomon had sustained many injuries and close brushes with death of his own over the past five years -- he still persevered and reconvened the lodge of the Slaughterfish to his side. They were just thirteen men and women now, but they swore a blood oath to find and kill as many elves as they could, independent of the Legions’ orders. They struck forth from Bruma and returned south, using their knowledge of the land against the foreign invaders. The Slaughterfish warriors spent six grueling winter and spring months hiding in the forests of Cyrodiil, striking against the forces of the Dominion wherever they found then, though shying away of assaults on well-fortified positions. They picked off patrols and scouts, nailing corpses of Thalmor officials clad in black and gold to the trees, taunting and striking fear into their enemies. After the winter was over there were only four of them left, but their guerilla tactics had seen them inflict their own casualties on the elves many times over. It was grim work and Solomon saw some of his kinsmen lose themselves to the bloodthirst, becoming shadows of their former selves, dehumanized by their own actions. But not him. He took no pleasure in the murder and slaughter, but it was necessary. The Emperor had not abandoned the Imperial City yet. The Dominion had to be as weakened as much as possible for the inevitable counterattack.

It came in 4E175. Solomon and his surviving Slaughterfish warriors linked up with the marching Legions once they learned that the Emperor was moving south was once more. Their desertion, aided by their substantial collection of elven ears, was forgiven, for the Imperials needed every able-bodied soldier to win the ultimate battle of the Great War. Solomon was placed under the command of his own brother, Bram, as Captain Carius hoped that his older brother would be capable of reigning him in and keeping him disciplined. Solomon found it hard to defer to Bram, who he considered a lesser warrior for waiting in Bruma while Solomon had been out there to bring the fight to the Dominion, and the two brothers had many vehement arguments -- just like the old days. But they set aside their differences once and for all on the eve of what would become the most famous battle in the Empire’s history: the Battle of the Red Ring.

For five days, the relentless soldiers of the Empire drove the Dominion back in a three-pronged attack. Solomon, cold-hearted and pitiless, fought in the vanguard of the Emperor’s own forces as they assaulted the city from the north. Thousands of his fellow soldiers fell around him as the elves put up ferocious resistance, but Solomon would not be denied. His sword and armor were gore-drenched by the time they breached the walls and he dug up energy from reserves he did not even know he had. The sight of the Emperor himself, Goldbrand held aloft, leading the assault, fortified his resolve and the Imperials swept the elves like a tsunami while the Nords and the warriors from Hammerfell attacked the city from other angles.

The very last battles fought in the war, street to street in the dark and blood-soaked husk of the sacked Imperial City, were the hairiest fighting Solomon had ever seen. The elves were tenacious, he had to give them that, and he did not sleep for more than fifty hours straight during the final days of the assault, driving the elves back, inch by inch, towards White-Gold tower. The Imperials sang songs of Pelinal Whitestrake, the hero who had slain the Ayleids in ages past, and they spilled elven blood on the cobblestones in imitation of the ancient histories. Not even Bram’s death, torn apart by angry Atronachs, could diminish Solomon’s resolve. They were on the cusp of victory. There was no room for sorrow. Their war-horns and battlecries echoed through the halls and corridors of White-Gold tower. And at last, on the eve of the fifth day, the Emperor’s personal forces apprehended Lord Naarifin. The battle was over. The war was won.

For five years, Solomon had fought. Five years worth of blood took a long time to wash out of his proverbial clothes, and so for five more years, Solomon rested. He retired from the Legion and returned to his ancestral home, ruined but still standing, now the last Antabolis left in the Imperial City. His mother, unwilling to return to the site of the death of so many of her family, remained with her relatives in Bruma, and slowly diminished before dying peacefully in her sleep.

Nightmares plagued Solomon and there was a tight-wound tension in his limbs, knots of stress and alertness, that took years to ease and come loose. He accidentally almost killed not one, but two men in two different incidents in which they were foolish enough to wake him from his restless sleep. Normal life slowly resumed in Cyrodiil, but Solomon found himself unable to hold down a job and he burned through his family’s remaining wealth in order to keep his himself clothed, fed and housed. He spent night after night stalking the empty halls of his home and frequently drowned his memories in booze, getting into trouble with his neighbours and with the local guard -- they had a soft spot for him because of his status as a war hero, but there was only so much that they could ignore. It wasn’t until 4E180 that someone appeared on the doorsteps of his house and rescued Solomon from himself.

The stranger turned out to be an Intendant of a newfound order, the Penitus Oculatus, a man by name of Karthus Marin. He had learned of Solomon’s activities as the leader of the Slaughterfish warrior lodge during the winter of 4E174. Solomon shrugged, half-drunk and apathetic, expecting a full court-martial by this so-called Penitus Oculatus business for his desertion and the reckless endangerment of the men and women under his command, but instead Karthus came with an unexpected offer: he extended an invitation for Solomon to join the order. Karthus explained that they needed men like him, men who would stop at nothing to fight the Empire’s enemies, who could operate autonomously outside of the direct chain of command and who did not shirk from assassination and torture to achieve their objectives. The Blades were no more and in the modern political landscape of Tamriel, the Emperor required a more… ruthless secret police force, properly integrated within the Imperial government, and loyal to a fault. With no other prospects and no other way of putting his experience or his skills to use, Solomon agreed.

It turned out to be exactly the push he needed to find his park once more. He managed to kick the booze habit as his training began in the order’s exclusive library in the White-Gold tower. Solomon’s fellow initiates were men and women of action that were each as interesting and as capable as he himself was, and he was inspired by them to put himself back together and pursue excellence once more. The dedicated student he had once been, almost washed away permanently in the baptism of blood that had been the Great War, was reborn in the dim candlelight and the hushed whispers of the library under the tutelage of the knowledgeable Professors of the Penitus Oculatus. When his old comrades asked him during their weekly game of cards what had happened to him to turn his life around like that, Solomon could only shrug and say that time healed all wounds. He had to keep his status as an Initiate secret to everyone, but he found that it wasn’t hard to do. The rejuvenated and sober Solomon had made a conscious effort to remember his father’s lessons about the importance of order and the rule of law, and he placed his loyalty to the Empire -- and to due diligence, discretion and operational security -- above all else. He would no longer go rogue and act as he saw fit. His defiant temperament had been tempered by age and experience, and a more reserved, calculating Solomon was born.

Even so, upon his graduation from the academy and his promotion to field agent, his asset designation was to be ‘Slaughterfish’. Solomon could only laugh to himself, and he decided to let it serve as a reminder of the man he could be when the chips were down. His work saw him travel across the width and breadth of Tamriel in the decades that followed and the development of his skills continued. Simple, but deceptively useful magic spells became a part of his arsenal, he learned how to hide in plain sight, observing his targets from right under their noses and he mastered the art of silent assassination, of which a hidden dagger stuffed up his sleeve in a spring-loaded mechanism became an instrumental part. With these skills, Solomon quietly put down an insurrection in Morrowind in 4E183 by capturing the leader of the secession movement and turning him in to face proper Imperial justice; in 4E188, he operated in the shadows of the Bravil Riots to assassinate the two Skooma kingpins that were responsible for the chaos in the city; he spent a few years behind enemy lines in Elsweyr and Valenwood during the 190s, tracking the movements of Kilvayne One-Eye, infamous extrajudicial vigilante; and in 4E200, he investigated a secretive religious movement in the underbelly of Breton society that whispered of dark days to come.

It was an illustrious career that should have led to a high position among the order’s ranks, but fate decreed otherwise. Titus Mede II could not be saved from a Dark Brotherhood assassin’s blade in the final days of the Stormcloak Rebellion. The Penitus Oculatus was sternly reprimanded for being unable to save the Emperor’s life by the Elder Council and many existing agents were sidelined or demoted. Solomon, through no fault of his own by virtue of not even being in Skyrim at the time, was told to remain in High Rock and relegated to simple intelligence gathering, stripped of his field agent autonomy and his license to kill. His only responsibility became to monitor the loyalty of the mercurial and deceitful Bretons, and he was given the deed of ownership to a run-down inn to the northeast of Daggerfall. The whole thing was dressed up as an important task, for (allegedly) the last thing the Empire needed was another rebellion in another province, after Hammerfell’s secession and the Civil War in Skyrim, but Solomon knew that there was little chance of an organized insurrection by the Bretons, who preferred to quabble amongst themselves. His assignment was a political one, to get him out of the way of appointments that the new Emperor deemed… more reliable. “The Slaughterfish has been defanged,” his young (and dubiously qualified) replacements joked. Solomon swallowed his pride and let his loyalty to the Empire rule his actions, settling quietly into his new role as innkeeper without making a fuss.

After so many years of blood and intrigue, Solomon had to admit that it was somewhat pleasant to have a peaceful existence devoid of violence. He was still as fit and capable as ever, but he was getting on in age, and there had never been a field agent that had died in their own bed. Solomon took to the profession of innkeep as seriously as he took to any other endeavour in his life and turned the newly-rechristened Loyal Hound, named after the dog he decided to purchase for companionship, into a well-run and profitable operation. As for his work with the Penitus Oculatus, Solomon still took his posting seriously and he diligently reported back to his superiors in the Imperial City every week, making sure to catalogue and document every whisper and rumor he heard in his inn.

Recently, these rumors have taken a particularly dark turn....

Personality: Solomon is a complicated man with a harrowing and blood-soaked past. He has long since lost count of how many people he has killed on the field of battle or in the line of duty and their faces continue to haunt him frequently in his dreams, for it has never given him any pleasure to take a life, but he does not regret any of it. He has always done whatever had to be done to save and preserve the Empire, and he will always continue to do so. It is his loyalty, and not any particular penchant for violence or bloodthirst, that is Solomon’s most defining quality, even though his actions, observed in a vacuum, will seem like those of a man obsessed with death and slaughter.

And all this death and slaughter has undeniably had a jading effect on him. Solomon cares about the people of the Empire he works to protect, but only in an abstract way. He has seen too many people die, including his whole family, and slain too many people with his own hands, to readily connect with other people on a personal level. The vast majority of them can never understand what Solomon went through, and after everything he has done, Solomon cannot really understand them. Boundaries and sensibilities that are normal to people from civilized society have been eroded in him, and even his manners have been diminished by the life of a soldier and a spymaster to the point that it requires conscious effort on his part not to speak brusquely, far too used to giving orders and having them obeyed. All that said, he means well, and his morals and sense of justice are as ironclad as ever. One can rely on Solomon for leadership and unwavering determination in the face of danger and he makes for a fairn, if stern, employer in his tenure as innkeeper.

He has never had much time for romance in his life -- the phrase ‘married to his work’ applies here -- and his only experiences with physical intimacy have been with women of the night. Solomon is secretive, reserved and slow to trust, preferring to keep people either at arm’s length or in a subordinate position to him so that he does not have to deal with prying questions he cannot afford to answer in all honesty. Lying comes as second nature to him after so many years with the Penitus Oculatus but he does not like to engage in it without good reason, and it is easier to simply stop people from asking questions in the first place. However, his loyalty does extend ferociously to cover the people he admits into his inner circle and he has never readily abandoned anyone under his command during his entire life.

Ice runs through his veins and Solomon is supremely good at staying calm and focused while under great duress. He is resourceful, quick at thinking on his feet and impervious to threats. Having survived everything the world has thrown at him thus far says little about his fear of death; Solomon is perfectly willing to take immense risks and put his life on the line if the situation calls for it. One of his weaknesses, however, is that he can tunnel-vision onto a particular goal in the heat of the moment and he has to make a conscious effort to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Experience has taught him that even the best-laid plans are usually ruined as soon as the situation begins to develop, so he prefers to improvise and work with whatever is available, and this focus on the here-and-now means he sometimes doesn’t think as far as ahead as he should.

Like practically all Imperials, Solomon believes in the Nine Divines -- the Thalmor can pry his private Talos worship from his cold, dead hands. It has been a long time since the Great War, but Solomon definitely hasn’t gotten over his prejudice towards Altmer, Bosmer and Khajiit since then and he is often unreasonably paranoid about their true natures or intentions.

Equipment:


Misc. Possessions:


Family and Associations:


Favored Attributes:


Favoured Skills:

_{▼ S K I L L S}
^{▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Speechcraft - Music and Empathy - Expert
► Provisioning - Culinary arts - Expert
► Tailoring - Adept}

_{▼ R E L A T I O N S & A F F I L I A T I O N S}
^{▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Honorhall Orphanage
► The now-destroyed Blushing Hawk
► A number of adventurous men she once called lovers, who are occasionally the subject of her songs.}


_{▼ E Q U I P M E N T}
^{▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Stylish linen rucksack.
► Coin Purse - 47 septims currently.
► Lyre, Lute, Ankle Chimes.
► A brooch in the shape of wings with a blue stone in the centre - the only clue she has to her parentage. She keeps this hidden.
► Sewing and knitting needles, threads.
► A set of 6 chef’s knives, and the tools to keep them sharp and well maintained.
► Tasting spoons seem to litter her pockets.
► Pinches and pouches of salt in various grind sizes, as well as sugars and other herbs - always somewhere on her person to sprinkle into a dish without searching too far.
► Parchments, notebooks, quills, and ink pots -- a supply of everything she needs to continue writing her songs, and more recently, a novel that she is working on drawn from the stories of those she meets..}


_{▼ C L O T H I N G & A R M O U R}
^{▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
► Casual:Never one for vanity, Joy dresses in simple outfits - usually in shades of light hues, figure hugging feminine clothing that do not necessarily have grandiose embellishments, but little touches here and there in pretty stitching. Practical clothing, that allows her to move freely. She will often be wearing her apron as she gets to work in the kitchens, or to her other barmaid duties.
► Formal:When performing, she dresses slightly more luxuriously - as much as can be allowed. She’ll wear deeper hues, revealing cuts, and often opt to go barefoot, banded chimes adorn her ankles and she will show a lucrative amount of skin to display them.}

“Give a farmer seed and he’ll give you food. Give a bard a tune and he’ll give you music. Give a soldier an enemy and he will create nothing. The soldier only kills. Only destroys. Only takes.

Everyone gets their’s... sooner or later.”


Aka Big Jan

Nomme de Guerre: Havel
Race:Colovian Imperial
Sex: Male
Age:42
Family Origins: Barony of Sutch/Stonehaven, Eastern Hammerfell, Kingdom of Rihad
Birth Sign: The Steed
Preferred Attributes: Major - Willpower
Minor - Intelligence
Appearance:
When one looks at Jan, there’s no doubt why he was called Big Jan, or Havel, which means Ox in Old Waldic-Colovian. He overtops 6 feet by a good 6 inches and has the breadth of one in his shoulders. His muscles are well-developed despite his age and though he moves slow and keeps an aloof look to him, one finds that he can snap to violence at the snap of a finger. Even so, he only shows it in moments where he’s cornered and forced to take matters into his hands.

He was the main laborer and weapons instructor of Chief Ragnar Vargsson’s warband, colloquially called Ragnar’s Rangers for their deeds during the Civil War on the Imperial side, entangling Ulfric’s forces in unconventional warfare behind their lines. Because of his station, he made his days building fences and patching up things, as well as a little maintenance for tools and the like when not teaching pig farmers how to kill. This has kept him healthy and strong, sinewy cords of old muscle, broad shoulders and thick forearms. His blonde hair has started graying in strands from the stresses of his life and the abuse of alcohol. Somehow, though, he’s managed to keep a more youthful visage. Janus blames it on his stress-free lifestyle.

He stays to himself mostly, never doing too much work lest it be expected of him, and never too little lest he be chided. For his intimidating breadth, he keeps a lazy smile on his face for whoever chances a talk with him on a fine day. Although he cuts the image of a brute, or a do-nothing, those who have experienced the things Janus has can see it in his eyes. A sharpness there, a thing as sharp as blades, and as watchful as a hawk. A warning, or a threat. But Janus smiles, and shares a joke or two, laughing from the belly, content with a spot under a tree and some wine.

If anyone has been to Eastern Hammerfell before and seen some of the Colovians that call it home, they’ll instantly recognize the tattoos he keeps on him and he takes great pains to keep them hidden. A menagerie of different pictures and sayings, all dedicated to the patriotism the Colovians of Sutch Barony and Stonehaven keep for the Empire. Whether a permanent message of patriotism and solidarity with the downtrodden Imperials of Rihad’s far-flung Colovian minority or a brash taunt to his old enemies, the Crowns, he wears them with fondness as a former Stonehaven Irregular.

He hides these tattoos under loose-fitting garments. A long-sleeved linen shirt of a neutral color is usually the order of the day, and from the rest of his ensemble, one could think he was trying to look to as unremarkable as he could. Even his six-foot-six frame is shrunken down to a slightly shorter six-four by his slouch.

Equipment:
Armor and Weapons: When the time comes to defend himself, Janus only has his dirty but meticulously maintained arming coat and mail to rely on, always keeping back from the fight until it gets dire enough. He takes his moment and lends overwatch, a scout and skirmisher armed to the teeth with a menagerie of short blades. His legs are protected only from the elements by hose and deerskin chausses.

When he must leave a man leaking, he takes to his knives and hatchet. A collection of blades long and short, six in total, growing from a whittling blade with a cutting edge no bigger than his forefinger to a heavy chopping knife with a blade length of fifteen inches. His hatchet has a gull wing style head of steel, simple, but deadly. A good match for Janus.

Kept sheathed and hidden away in his belongings, and probably forgotten, is his old saber. A Hammerfell style weapon, adopted from the thinner scimitars and shamshirs, and made more heavy by the Colovians that settled in Eastern Hammerfell. He is, or at least used to be, a terrifying sight with it, the curved blade always on the move as he cut through foes on foot or slicing through them on horseback.

Clothing:
When not in combat, and he tries to stay away from needless violence if he can help it, he walks camp with a long sleeve shirt to cover his heavily tattooed body, thick leather gloves that have seen their share of work on his hands to cover the ones his shirt does not. He keeps his chausses on him over his trousers to offer a little more protection from the element. He always has at least one of his smaller knives on him should the need arise that he needs to cut a rope or somesuch task that needs a sharp blade. The knife is usually tucked and hidden underneath his red sash, now playing belt, one of the few leftovers from his old life. The longcoat he only dons when it gets cold enough.

Misc. Possessions:
His horse, Vodevic, a heavy soldier’s draft that’s as fast he is strong and loyal as he is old.

Family and Associates:
Viktor, Father, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate

Hilde, Mother, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate

Niklaus, Killed in the Pogrom at Bell’s Gate

Boian, Childhood Best Friend and Brother-in-Arms, killed at a siege during the latter part of the Stonehaven Rebellions

Savian Kastav, an Inspector of the Penitus Oculatus, unknown

Favoured Skills:

Highly Proficient: One-Handed; Janus worked tirelessly to master the art of fighting with the saber both on horseback and on foot. Should the situation arise that he has it in hand, he is more than capable of showing his opponent(s) the mistake of standing against him. Likewise, he has no fear of a sharp blade and has quick hands with his knives, and is able to fight with his hatchet and knives just as well.

Moderately Proficient: Hand-to-Hand; Someone as big as Janus hardly needs finesse to bludgeon someone with his fists, but years of bare knuckle fighting in bars and the ring to earn money or respect has taught him some dirty tricks through hard-earned trial and error.

Marksman; You can trust him to make a long shot with a short bow, hold under pressure and drop men like flies in the heat of battle with them shooting back. He’s a good enough shot.

Sneak; Whether cold camping in the mountains or laying low in towns, Janus knows how to wage a guerrilla war. The tricks of rangers in the mountains and the forests were taught to him at a young age and he knows how to stay unseen in crowds just as well.

Restoration; As all the Priesthood of Stendarr, Janus used to freely offer healing services to the people of Bell’s Gate. When he became an Irregular, his talents were of much use and he never fell out of practice.

Somewhat Proficient: Destruction; On the same note, Savian Kastav and his trainers taught some of the tricks of the trade of destruction magic.

(Note: Mages only, up to 7 spells)

Flames
Firebolt
Frostbite
Ice Spike
Healing
Fast Healing
Heal Other

History: For a veteran of two wars, one could say Janus has taken it relatively well. Born among the rabble in the Dock District, where he fell in with street urchins stealing for meals and fun, he and his Legionnaire father were at constant odds. His father, a low-ranking Legion man, couldn’t keep his son in line and fulfill his duties to the Legion at the same time. They lived almost entirely on his father’s wages, as his mother couldn’t find work in the city. Too little jobs, and too many asking for one. He was six when the Great War pulled his father away from home. Before the Altmer armies could lay siege to White-Gold, Janus, Niklaus, and their mother fled the city with a stream of other refugees.

His family moved to the mountain pines in the high country of Eastern Hammerfell where a diaspora of Colovians lived in the High Country of Rihad Kingdom, spending their days in the mines for pay. There he made his days tending the sheep and goats on the family farm when he was old enough. As young men do before they have an idea of the realities of war, he fantasized about it. He’d daydream at his father’s swords on the mantle, wondering what it would be like to take up a weapon and go off to fight.

The world he lived in had been embroiled in war from the time he’d been a toddler. It had never touched him, but when he’d visit town, he could sometimes see the pillars of black smoke far off on the horizon. He heard the songs in the taverns, about brave men dying in the fields and just how manly an occupation was the soldier’s. Niklaus, his younger brother, wanted to be just like father. No one could blame him for wanting that life. Adventure, travel, a righteous cause. His father and many younger men just like Janus and Niklaus had taken up a weapon for the Stonehaven Irregulars, a ragtag people’s army of farmers, tradesmen, miners, and bandits that stood against the Crowns ever since the first pogroms after the Empire seemingly abandoned Hammerfell.

He didn’t understand the history behind the fight, just that it was happening and had taken his father’s love away from him. At the young age of ten, he and his best friend Boian had been clacking sticks together like swords when one of the Redguard children in Bell’s Gate had begun pestering them. The Redguards had no love for the Imperials. The long memory of the Redguard remembered the days when Yokudans and Colovians would shed each other’s blood, and the hatred had been renewed after the Empire ceded Hammerfell under pressure from the Thalmor.

When the young Redguard Hazmid and his friends pinned Boian to a tree, Janus bit the ear off one and took a rock to Hazmid’s head. Hazmid fell into a coma and never woke. Janus was taken under the wing of Father Valdir of Stendarr’s church there in the Colovian town of Bell’s Gate. It was an arrangement his father had with Father Valdir to keep Janus’s nose clean. Valdir had told him it was the only way to repent for his sins and find forgiveness in Stendarr’s light, and so Janus begrudgingly gave as little effort to the priesthood as he could.

Janus was called a killer, hissed at. Fighting and war had lost its gleam then. It was with the priesthood that he learned to heal the sick and preach to the congregation. As he grew a few years older, his eyes roamed for more things than the clergy. As boys do at that age, they’d chase girls and get in trouble for drinking. He and his best friend Boian would do both with each other, though Boian was always the more handsome of the two.

As the years went on, the pillars of black smoke grew closer. You could smell the burning farms on a breeze some days. Boian had left town at the age of seventeen to join the Irregulars, leaving Janus to preach alone. At times, the wounded would come to town and ask for his and Father Valdir’s healing and prayers. They would give them freely, but Janus always dreaded the day he would see Boian or his father coming back home with the wounded. Or the dead.

When the day came that his father rode home with his contingent, mother wept and scolded him for his lost arm. His father had earned a promotion for his heroism, but a position at the rear at Bell’s Gate for his debilitating wound. And for his trouble? A great many bottles and anger that spilled over too often. His father grew more distant, and the times he came close would be thunderous with yelling. Janus and Niklaus would spend more time away in town with Father Valdir, seeking shelter from their father’s tyranny. Soon enough, Janus found a girl. Although he had never wanted to be a farmer, he figured he could endure it with Nika. They moved to a farm a few miles down the road from Bell’s Gate.

When the wars grew more ravenous, they crept close and closer still to Bell’s Gate. Janus and Nika were awaiting their child and young Janus soon was cradling a bundle of screaming beauty. The seasons came and went, and tiny Ilda had learned to crawl and then to walk. With the birth of his child came the renewal of his faith in the Nine. One evening, the smell of burning timber seemed too close as he tended the fields a ways away from his farm. That day, the pillars of black smoke were too close. His home, his family, his town, all of it gone. Eaten by flames.

He made it to his childhood home to find his parents and his brother had met the same fate. His father had made a last stand before he was felled, six corpses for his one. And that old saber still clutched in a stiff fist. He took it, rummaged through his ransacked childhood home and left that place in a longcoat and sash, saber on his hip. He looked every bit the thing he had tried to avoid all his life. A Stonehaven Irregular, a soldier, a killer.

He met the Irregulars along the road out from Bell’s Gate, their response too late to help anyone. Boian was with them, and that night, Janus wept into his best friend’s arms that he had not been able to save his family. The Stonehaven Irregulars of Bell’s Gate marched on, Janus the most ready to repay a debt of blood. Years passed, men died, and Janus had not been among them. High time that the Stonehaven Irregulars marched on Rihad, but were utterly defeated and broken there during the siege of one of Rihad’s forts.

Janus was taken prisoner, plucked from the fields of wounded to be hanged in Rihad. Before the day came that he was to be hanged, he escaped with the help of a stranger and smuggled out of the city through a network of tunnels. When he asked the stranger his name, he only gave one, Savian. They hid in a dingy shack of a house for three days, Janus not being able to leave and relying on Savian to bring back food and water. In the light of day, the man looked peculiar. Oddly feline, but manlike. On the third night, they made their escape from Rihad and set foot on the roads. When Janus asked why Savian had rescued him, he only gave muddied answers. Talk of skills and the need for them.

Before long, Savian and Janus had crossed the border into Cyrodiil, bedding down in Anvil before resuming their trek. By the end of it, the White Gold city was on the horizon. Janus was almost immediately put to work and training, brushing up and drilling in both old and new skills he’d learned from a lifetime of fighting. The purpose was unclear to him, but after a year of training, he was brought to the Head Intendants of the Penitus Oculatus with Savian at his side. Tensions were brewing in Skyrim, Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak was rousing the people of Eastern Skyrim and amassing a host of unknown size with him, backed by unknown individuals.

Savian and Janus set forth to Skyrim at once. Under the employ as an “advisor” to the Penitus Oculatus, he was given the name Rudd and a life story that was the epitome of ordinary. Their mission was only to observe the happenings in Skyrim and find out if the Thalmor were truly playing a hand in the rising unrest. Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak and a small host rode for Solitude, and it was there that Skyrim would be changed forever. Janus watched Torygg accept the offer of a duel with Ulfric Stormcloak, and he watched him die. Hasty scribbles were the only sound from Savian’s room in the inn that night.

To the Empire, it was an act of war. Ulfric Stormcloak went into hiding somewhere in Eastern Skyrim, and the Penitus Oculatus was given the job of rooting him out and gathering intelligence on his benefactors. Savian and Janus are put in charge of infiltrating behind Stormcloak lines with a select group of Inspectors and sowing mayhem. The first order of business was making contact with an old veteran named Brunwulf Free-Winter and offering the chance to end Ulfric’s tyranny and madness. A large sum of coin helped Brunwulf agree. Brunwulf’s task was to sow dissent inside Windhelm in small measurements, as well as keep an eye on troop movements and supplies into and out of the city with Savian.

Janus was to take the other Inspectors and form a militia under a lesser known anti-Stormcloak warlord named Ragnar Vargsson who had been operating in the area for months before Ulfric killed Torygg. Janus and the Inspectors trained Vargsson’s men in unconventional warfare and tradecraft. A ratline was set up and Brunwulf helped garner recruits for the growing band under Ragnar, who had come to be called Ragnar’s Rangers after a series of daring night raids and ambushes on soft targets and assassinations of high value personnel. As the war dragged on, the Legion leaned more and more on Ragnar’s Rangers and bands like them to punch holes in the Stormcloak lines. The war had a timely end in sight as the Dragonborn entered the fray on the side of the Empire.

Ragnar’s Rangers were tasked with sending back reports on particularly dug in strongholds, high value targets, and important supply depots. The Dovahkiin’s dragons proved instrumental in making precision strikes against these objectives, and played a crucial role when Tullius and the rest of the conventional forces of the Legion broke through the weakened lines and laid a laughably short siege on Windhelm.

The Penitus Oculatus celebrated a short-lived round of praise for the heroics that would be forever hidden in a dossier in a dusty cabinet. Janus and Savian shared a toast with the Rangers and the rest of their team before the news came of the Emperor’s assassination at the hands of the Dark Brotherhood, a weakened organization that shouldn’t have been able to reliably kill a beggar, much less the Emperor himself.

With the security blunder of the Penitus Oculatus came a wide purge of the ranks. The reshuffling had many in high places in the Oculatus sidelined, if not outright removed from the organization altogether. The machinations largely went over Janus’s head, save for the most visible consequence as Janus’s employment as a contractor was cut short, and the money with it. Savian himself was relegated to an embassy in a place Janus was not allowed to know about. As for Janus himself, there were only two options. Strike it out on his lonesome to find work, or stay with the Rangers, who had taken almost immediately to banditry and mercenary work. Tiring once more of war and death, Janus left Skyrim for High Rock, eager to get away from his past of blood.

Nowadays, he teaches swordplay to anyone with enough coin, and spends that coin in whatever tavern he beds down in that night. A simple life, hard-fought for and well-deserved...

Personality: Unflinchingly polite.

Capably violent.

Janus may be a simple wanderer, but there was once a preacher that walked in the footprints he’s left from Hammerfell to here. That priest of Stendarr would shake his head and offer absolution to the man he’d become, bottle in bloodied hands. A fall from faith had seen the naïveté of the young priest clipped away like angel’s wings and put a sword in his hand and vengeance in his heart.

For what more reason should a man have a loss of his faith than the loss of his home.

The years have worn away at him, and now all the faith in the good of the world he once had was a casualty of two wars. Lucky day if you get words out of him, but he has always been a man of his word, no matter how few they are now and how mean and snipped they can be when a dark mood overtakes him. He makes for a steadfast companion and a good friend to those who’ve sought out and chosen him, for the seeking and choosing of friends is something he has no want for these days. He just settles for whoever stays.

Any humor out of him is sardonic, and not really for anybody else but for him. A way to deal with stress and what life offers, but he maintains an aloof and care-free image despite. Like the man, all his weapons are utilitarian. Even his saber, old as it is, holds no runes carved in it and is set with no jewels. As simple and forward as his fighting style. He holds no qualms with killing, and holds only to two rules- quick hands and long patience. Even with such a seemingly passive demeanor, ask some of the shallow graves from Windhelm to Wayrest if he’s willing to die for someone else’s convenience. A survivor, a killer; patient and strong-willed.

A functioning alcoholic, quiet, and polite despite it all, there are flashes here and there of the old Janus. The man who wanted for nothing more but crops to sow and reap, a wife, and a daughter. One just needs to keep a watchful eye and open ears for him. He may say he’s washed his hands of the blood now, but he knows as well as anyone; he is what he is.

Full Name: Inzoliah Assurnarairan

Race: Dunmer

Gender: Female

Age: Around 100 years

Birthsign: The Ritual

Origins: Somewhere in Morrowind

Appearance: Inzoliah appears, at first glance, and even second glance to be a rather fetching middle-aged Dunmer woman, her hair is quite long, a soft auburn and is usually done up in a ponytail so as to not interfere with her spellcasting. She possesses the sharp features common to her race, including a pointed chin, long swept back ears, and prominent cheekbones. Her skin is the typical ashen-grey of Dunmer and her eyes a lively red that seems to dance when light is played across them. Her body is matronly, to be somewhat expected of a mage. She isn't necessarily chubby, however, her body just has curves to it that say, a warrior might have worked off by now. She prefers wearing robes to anything else and doesn't shy away from showing off her bust. Her own personal travelling hedge-mage robes are dark green, almost black, with a hood and various pouches and other alchemical storage devices attached for ease of transport. It's obviously cared for and well-worn. Most tellingly is that the robes are singed around the edges and are almost always possessed of a layer of soot on them due to the nature of her... shall we say, personality.

If one possessed magical sight however, they would be able to lay eyes on Inzoliah's true appearance. For the most part she looks much the same, and from a distance there really is no difference. Her hair is the same, her face is the same, her body is largely unchanged. Maybe her makeup is less messy. But that would be impossible to notice, the major difference is that the right side of her face is a mass of burn scars, grossly discoloured and strange to the touch. These burns extend all down the right side of her body, down her arm and leg and partially her chest. Her right eyebrow is half gone, her ear an unrecognisable mess. It would be obvious to anyone who beholds her injuries why she disguises her appearance with Illusion magic, the sheer extent alone is shocking. Obviously she is quite secretive about her appearance and does her best to prevent anyone from seeing her true face. She even wears an amulet enchanted with a Fortify Illusion effect so as to prevent the façade from faltering.

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History: Inzoliah is fairly tight-lipped about her past, but what is known is that she was born to two Dunmer refugees from Vvardenfell, who had traveled to mainland Morrowind after the Red Year decimated their home. They had set up a small refugee village in the Stonefalls region of the southwestern mainland. They eked out a bitter existence much like the Ashlander clans of their home island. It was a rough life for the Vvardenfell refugees, but it was somewhat stable. Things had not much improved 90-100 years later, when Inzoliah was born. The town had grown somewhat, and was a modest fishing port and trading post along the way to Ebonheart. Inzoliah's parents were respected in their community, her father was a skilled craftsman and her mother a healer and mage of some note.

At some point in her early childhood, a defining event happened for young Inzoliah. No one alive now knows how the fire started, and Inzoliah was asleep when the fast spreading flames came to her family's tent. Had she been awake, she might have turned out a very different person. Instead, she only woke when the tongues of flame were quite literally licking her face. The intense heat caused her to jolt awake and saved her life but half of her body was already horribly burned, the rest choked with soot from the rapidly conflagrating house. She woke her parents and they all managed to escape with their lives, but for the second time they had essentially lost everything. The only thing that saved their young girl's life was her natural fire resistance and the deft healing spells of her mother.

So for second time Inzoliah's family packed up and moved on. This time they headed into Cyrodiil, seeking a new start in a new land. They settled in Cheydinhal, a city noted for its large Dunmer population. Cheydinhal was still being partially rebuilt after a recent sacking and Inzoliah's father was able to find work helping to repair damaged buildings or help build new ones. This was also around the time that Inzoliah's affinity for the arcane began to manifest. Her mother began teaching her basic spells and the young Dunmer picked them up easily, but none held her attention like fire. In her mind's eye she could see the memory of the great fire that had scarred her in each flame she made erupt from her finger. It scared her, but it also thrilled her. Since the night of the fire, she had eschewed campfires and hearthfires in all their forms, preferring to sleep as far away from any source of heat as possible, but now that she had some measure of control over the flames, she was enraptured. Its beauty, its power. It had marked her skin, left a permanent reminder of the power and strength. Flame spells became an obsession. She spent hours each day in the fields around Cheydinhal burning leaves and sticks and even small animals, launching gouts of fire and flares into the sky just to watch them fizzle out in a flash. The Destruction lore of flames became second nature to Inzoliah by her teens and she devoted most of her time to studying new manners in which to control and harness fire. The local Synod took note of her prodigious Destruction talent and offered her membership, and she happily accepted. All was well for Inzoliah for the next years, her membership with the Synod gave her steady work and an outlet for her pyromania. She sent most of her gold earned from her Synod jobs back to her parents, allowing them to retire after a lifetime of struggle, and the little she kept she spent on food and little else. Though her talent and obsession with arcane flames grew endlessly, her hate and fear of natural flame never went away. Her quarters in the Synod hall were cold and dark, Inzoliah never letting even a single candle into her room. Food she cooked would be roasted with a flames spell and not with a cooking fire, and any light she needed during a job would be provided by magefire, not torchlight.

Around this time Inzoliah also began researching Illusion, though her study was much less passionate and more scholarly than her frantic and wild inhalation of any magickal lore related to fire. Eventually she developed a spell to disguise her appearance and hide her scars. Also around this time she begin to get suitors more frequently than she had ever had before. She also began singeing them to get them to leave her alone. In return for Destruction training she was taught alchemy by another of the Synod's mages and took to it quite well, finding it relaxing after a day of torching stuff.

Unfortunately, just before the outbreak of the Great War around 4E170-171, despite her good standing with the Synod she was forcibly expelled after a conflagration of her design consumed a farmstead and the surrounding fields. Though no one was harmed, it required the combined talents of three Ice Mages to contain the firestorm. Despite the sadness at having lost her job, the intensity of the blaze filled her with excitement and she had spent most of the day watching it scorch the landscape bare, enraptured at her creation.

A few months later, her parents passed away, both of them were into their second century and expired within a week of one another. Their deaths deeply saddened Inzoliah and she locked herself in her house for a week following her mother's death. Soon after, word that the Aldmeri had invaded reached Cheydinhal and a battalion of Dominion troops was spotted on the march towards the city. This got Inzoliah out of her depression. She raced out to meet them, ignoring the warnings of the town guard that'd she'd be killed. Without waiting to treat with them or even ascertain their intentions, Inzoliah conjured an enormous fireball, and hurled it into the mass of troops, turning the middle of the column into a funeral pyre. Immediately the Thalmor archers returned arrow fire and Inzoliah merely laughed, conjuring a wall of flame that incinerated the arrows before they could harm her. The rest were dispatched with lances of flame and deadly accurate firebolts. She returned to the grateful Cheydinhal, though most threw her more than one sideways glance after her 'demonstration'. Not long after this incident, her parents' old home burned down in a mysterious fire and Inzoliah disappeared from the city.

After this point, Inzoliah next pops up in High Rock, having made her way across Cyrodiil, making a name for herself as a hedge-wizard as she traveled. More than one bandit tried to rob her, only to end up as a smoking corpse in the Northern Wilds of Cyrodiil. Many caravans also hired her for protection during her travels, as having a Destruction mage was a good way to deter bandits and other brigands from robbing you blind. Once she arrived in High Rock, she took up residence in an inn and began selling her services as alchemist and mage to locals. Many farmers gladly paid to have a pack of wolves or a bear incinerated and many passing adventurers purchased her potions to prepare for whatever task they had set out on. Eventually she was approached by a local duke and offered a position as his court wizard. Inzoliah gladly accepted. She spent a few years in his service, mostly keeping to her own devices, studying Destruction and occasionally offering advice on aetherial matters. Unfortunately her service as court wizard came to an abrupt end with the incineration of a courtier who had threatened Inzoliah over a trivial matter. Since she had been threatened, the Duke merely banished her instead of having her executed. Again she took up her hedge-wizarding ways and sold her services to any who would pay, not particularly caring what needed burning just as long as something did. That is how Inzoliah found her way near Daggerfall, to a wayside tavern.

Personality: To put it lightly, fire has consumed Inzoliah's life. There is nothing she enjoys more than burning things. Living things, dead things, animate things, inanimate things. If it's flammable she will burn it. If it is not, she will try anyway. However this only applies to arcane fire. Natural fire scares the wits out of her. She can't stand to be near it in any form. Cooking fires, torches, hearthfires, they all repulse her. Many fellow mages have tried to argue with her that there's essentially no difference between the two but Inzoliah will not hear of it. To her there is fire that can be controlled and fire that cannot. To say she is slightly loose with her application of fire is one way of putting it, and many mages have called her hypocritical in this fashion, though never to her face of course. Away from fire she is fairly normal for a mage, many expect mages to be a little 'quirky' and so any of her other fire-related personality traits are waved away as merely the eccentricities of another mage who spent one too many times casting 'Drain Personality' spells. She enjoys idle chatting (though never about her or her past) and will gladly talk your ear off about fire magicks. She can be extremely arbitrary at times and will do things for no other reason than she decided she needs to, but at the same time is flexible as can be (as evidenced by the multiple jobs she's held). As far as the typical Dunmer go, she is fairly personable and willing to help strangers, usually for a favour or coin or a gift. She still prefers to keep some secrets and she isn't necessarily quick to trust others with her life. Other races might describe her attitude as 'mercenary'.

Her romantic life has been less than fruitful. Though she has attracted her fair share of suitors and otherwise, she usually dissuades them from pursuing her much further than a gift or two. Partially because she is too enraptured by Arcane Flames to have much time for romance. Though on the other hand she definitely wouldn't say no to every eligible man in Tamriel, but of course that would require finding a man she trusts and feels comfortable enough around to show her true appearance to. Which hasn't happened yet and it's been a good half century or so.

Though she enjoys the company of others, she isn't totally comfortable in large crowds and is perfectly capable of spending long periods alone. She also seems mostly aware that her obsession with fire borders on the intensely unhealthy but either doesn't care or can't stop. She is of course, capable of managing her addiction to flames, especially where income is concerned and she generally attempts to find outlets for her need to torch things. Many former colleagues have described working with her like using a damaged staff of fireballs, it works fine, though you get the uneasy feeling it might explode and burn everyone around it at some point. You also usually get singed. In conclusion, Inzoliah is a pyrophobic pyromaniac, a glass mirror that might be broken but you can't quite tell from this angle.

Equipment:
- Well Worn (and slightly burnt) Robes of Fortify Destruction, enchanted by a member of the Synod in Cheydinhal
- Steel dagger, kept mostly for utility as opposed to defense
- Amulet of Fortify Illusion, never taken off
- Knapsack, as befits a hedge-wizard
Misc. Possessions:
- Pouch of septims, contains around 50 at the moment
- Various basic potions, 2x potions of healing, 3x potions of restore magicka
- Assorted common alchemy supplies, picked on her way to the tavern
- A bedroll
Family and Associations:
No living family
Barred from the Synod
Banished from a Duke's lands in the south of High Rock

Favoured Attributes:
Major: Intelligence
Minor: Luck

Favoured Skills:
Highly Proficient: Destruction (Fire Damage is the only Lore she uses)

Moderately Proficient: Illusion, Alchemy, Mysticism

Somewhat Proficient: Enchanting, Sneak, Restoration

Spell List:
Flames
Firebolt
Fireball
Fire Storm
Wall of Flames
Burning Spear
Incinerate

Here, his honesty works against him. He can be brutally honest, blunt, and insensitive to those who might be going through a hard time or making a difficult decision and he doesn't really know how to emotionally connect with people. His idea of helping someone is by solving the problem, but being emotionally supportive isn't in his wheelhouse. He can also be unprecedentedly aggressive, and his idea to solving a conflict is to yell at it until it goes away. If it doesn't? Brute force the problem away.

But you know what? All that being said, there's really no one else you'd rather have at your side. I mean, maybe an expert swordsman if you're being attacked of course, but Bruno's at least got the spirit to tackle them down and pummel their face into a smoothie. He's loyal to a fault and would put himself against the law if it meant protecting a friend. While he never received a formal education, he has his own brand of smarts. His home-life is completely self-sustained and nearly everything he has, he made himself. If you need something that isn't, like, an expertly forged sword, enchantment, or a magical potion, he could probably do it for you. He is an extremely handy person to have around and seems to know how to do or make anything -- and if he doesn't, he'll probably figure it out or find a way to make it happen. Truly, his ingenuity is something to behold, and he can even extend this ability to self-defense via traps, snares, and improvised weapons. He is also a hunter, after all. His philosophy is the more skills he knows, the better off he'll be.

At his best, Bruno can be forthright, loyal, and generous. At his worst, he can be brash, judgmental, and stubborn. At his bestest best, Bruno has a dog. So he's pretty much the best guy ever.

Bruno was born and raised in Eastern High Rock. By East, I mean East. Nestled between the Wrothgarian and Druadach mountains, he basically lived in the Reach, and yes, the Reachmen were absolutely a problem. You didn't have to worry about bandits, but you did have to worry about a gaggle of pissant tribals trying to raid your house and steal your cattle. So, he quickly had to learn how to make quick judgments, be proactive, and be especially aggressive in his defense of home. If you so much as see an antlered headdress peeking over the slopes, you best grab your bow and send a few Hail Mara's over the hill. Coyotes and wolves also loved to take a bite out of your livestock, so he got plenty used to bludgeoning and axe murdering a few of them into hash, and then there were the lord of the land who came by every so often to bully them into paying their taxes. Not that his family could say no to them, but they did have to stick up for themselves and remind those lords that they'll have their money when they have it. Any piece of land can only produce so much in a certain span of time, and the rocky land in these parts weren't suited to growing more than a few crops at a time, so livestock was their best bet.

As surviving soldiers of the Great War, his parents were both very disciplined and had a hatred for elves, and although Bruno never inherited it, his perceptions were very much colored by the mistrust his parents bestowed upon him. Any elf that came by their farm to do business, he suspected were secretly Thalmor agents for the longest time -- only he had never actually encountered one. The upbringing Raven Rock provided was actually quite tumultuous given the rising threat from the Reach, and the ever-present sense of danger made it difficult to sleep soundly at night. But this is our home, his parents said, we built this home and we will defend it. We will defend our right to be here with our lives. Eventually, they did.

When he was a young adult, he awoke to fire and smoke amid the night. He was dizzy and delirious from the inhalation, but he could see the door busted open with a broken hinge, and outside, a bright orange glow illuminating the many dead pigs, goats, and cow outside. The yipping of Forsworn war cries filled the night. The last thing he saw before succumbing to unconsciousness once again were their shadows being cast against the rocky outcrops. The next time he awoke, he was in a medical tent pitched by Evermore soldiers outside of his homestead. The ground was burnt, all the livestock were dead, and the bodies of his parents were retrieved. All of the Forsworn invaders were dead, his family avenged. His home was beyond repair, and he realized that the Reach was no longer a safe place to live. What's more, he kept a guard dog ever since that fateful day.

After grieving, he decided to move towards southern High Rock. There, the soil was more fertile and the weather was nice, and he wouldn't have to worry about his livelihood being at risk if all of his livestock was stolen or killed. He built his home just a mile outside its walls, plowed a few acres of land for wheat and rye, built his fence and paddock, and he's been there for close to twenty years now. He makes his own beer and ale, hunts and grows his own food, makes his own clothes, raises his own cattle, and makes his own jewelry. Most of these skills were self-taught through trial and error. There was still the occasional brigand or highwayman who payed him a visit, but given the following: they usually just wanted his money, their lack of fanatical devotion to his death spoke little of their commitment to the cause, and his new penchant for keeping a dog to alert him to people and potential threats all meant that they were a significant upgrade to the Forsworn he had to deal with in the days of old.

Since his time living in Glenumbra, he's become somewhat recognized by the locals - at least, they know his name. He keeps a quaint little homestead outside of the city and rarely leaves, only coming into town to trade his food in the market and yell at nobles. In fact, the latter was how he got his name. Rumor has it that there was some lord or lady of the court, and there may or may not have been a tax collector involved, and Bruno was very pissed and seeking some kind of justice. So he entered the court where the peasantry usually made their appeals by kicking the door open and bellowing so loudly that someone's wine glass had shattered. Some say that isn't possible and that maybe he startled them and they dropped it, or they clenched their hands so tight that the neck snapped -- regardless of what happened, an irate, blood-boiled shepherd and a shattered wine glass was involved, and now people make jokes about Bruno having the Thu'um.

Who knows? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Anyways, his first dog died just a couple years ago, which saddened him greatly, and now he's on his second dog. His name is Bozo and he's the bestest and sweetest boy ever and he loves to bark.

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Name: Sihava Blackthorn, the Smoke Dancer
Race: Half Nord, half Dunmer
Sex: Female
Age: 31
Birthsign: The Shadow
Origins: A working-class family in Windhelm
Appearance: Sihava largely takes after her mother in appearance. Tall, willowy and beautiful, she looks like more like a courtier than a priestess-thief. She doesn't have the defined musculature of a warrior, to be sure. But to call her weak would be a grave disservice. She's been wandering the length and breadth of Tamriel for over a decade, from southwestern sands to the wild oceans of Winterhold, and so her body reflects that. Her legs are pure muscle, from thighs to calves, and there is not an ounce of fat on her body; her constant roaming burns it all off far faster than she can build it. While her arms aren't as strong as her legs, they're plenty on their own. Years of illegal climbing have built them up (especially her shoulders) to a surprising degree. That's not to say she could arm-wrestle a Legionnaire, but she's certainly no pushover.

Her skin is a dusky Dunmer gray, though a bit warmer than most. Though it is roughened by decades of travel through sun, sand and snow, she does her damndest to keep it as soft and clean as possible. Though she takes after her Dunmer mother, her face is where her mixed blood is given away. Instead of the sunken cheekbones that so characterize the appearance of a Dunmer, her face is round. Not quite as much as a Nord's, but close. Her eyes, as well: instead of the swollen irises of an elf, hers--while Dunmer red--are more in line with the size you might see of a human's. Those eyes, a sign of her dual heritage, are also a study of the dual sides of her personality. While they glimmer with barely restrained excitement, they are also constantly shifting back and forth, searching, scoping, making sure things are safe, equal measure of innocent and calculating. Often, though, they are obscured; her long, fine hair, a pale gray-white, hangs loose most of the time, and can easily sweep in front of her face until she brushes it away with a finger or breath to behind one of her ears, which--while not as much as a full elf--are definitely a sharper shape than any human's.

The only time she ties up her hair of her own will is when she's wearing her thieves' clothing. Tight-fitting leggings and tunic of deepest blue and dappled with black, along with a matching mask and a headscarf to hide her distinctive white hair. A leather shoulderbelt dyed in the same colors cuts across it, filled with thievery supplies; lockpicks and key wax, a pry bar, a strong thin rope. As long as she's done it right, the only parts of her that show are her eyes and her hands.

When she's not wearing her thieves' clothing, she has fairly expensive tastes. Nothing too extreme; wouldn't want a simple merchant to look like royalty waltzing through the countryside and getting the attention of every bandit and guard within a hundred miles. But she is very fond of luxurious fabrics done in red. Mostly, she wears a simple burgundy tunic over brown leggings; her traveling clothes. But she does reserve some clothing for an occasion. When she wants to make an entrance, or an impression, she dons a stately floor-length dress of wine-red satin, coupled with a golden collar-style necklace studded with a large carnelian. She combs out the knots that usually infest her hair, and perhaps dabs some kohl on her eyes to complete the transformation: from scruffy wandering merchant to a woman that could blend in in the Blue Palace.

History: Demivah Rallaron was a Cyrodiil Dunmer. Born and raised as a carpenter in Cheydinhal, she felt a burgeoning wanderlust growing ever since she was a small child. Though her parents weren’t exactly thrilled (to say the least), the call of the road was stronger than the call of home, and when she grew up, she became a wandering trader, a caravaneer that poached and sold curios from all around Tamriel, ranging from ancient Akaviri daggers, to Welkynd stones from deep beneath the Ayleid ruins of her homeland, to branded Septims from the reign of the Wolf Queen, Potema, and everything in between. Nothing was safe from her questing grasp. But she never stole. Adamantly. She was an honest businesswoman, and proud of it.

Ulfskaar Blackthorn was a Skyrim fisherman, native to the beautiful city of Windhelm and intensely proud of that fact. The architecture! The history! Truly, Windhelm was the best city in Skyrim to live in. He’d never left Skyrim; he’d never even wanted to leave, really. Fishing was a taxing, time-consuming job, and what little leisure time he had was spent at the Candlehearth Hall. Warm fire, cold mead, good friends to chase away the chill. A good life.

The two met in the winter of 4E172, quite by chance, as Demivah passed North, fleeing from the Great War, and stopped in Windhelm to replenish her supplies for the journey north, to Winterhold and then to Dawnstar. Ulfskaar purchased a strange insect, trapped in Elsweyr amber from her, and the two began to talk. They talked for a long time. Days, which stretched into weeks, which stretched into months. Until both of their coin began to run short, and Demivah left for Winterhold, promising that she would return. He waited for her, and a month later, she kept her promise, coming back with a ring of Solstheim gold, and asked if he would marry her. And though the rumblings of war grew stronger in Cyrodiil, the two of them were wed. Then, two years later--Morning Star, 4E175--they had a single child. A girl, who they named Sihava.

And then came the White-Gold Concordat. And the goodwill that Demivah had built up with her neighbor Nords, the friends she’d made--it began to all peter away. Nationalism steadily rose at the thought of the worship of Talos being banned, and then shifted rapidly into a boiling racism. For as established as she was, Demivah became just another ‘grayskin’ spying for the Dominion. She was spared the Gray Quarter, living as she was in Ulfskaar’s ancestral home. But she was spared very little else. It was in that political climate that Sihava was raised. Windhelm isn’t the friendliest of cities for a growing girl. Growing up in a cultural center of anti-mer racism doesn’t help. Especially if you’re a “half-breed.”

Sihava had a target on the back of her head since she was born. Even as a little girl, she was scorned, insulted, bullied; by children, and even by adults. She didn’t know why at the time, but as she grew, she figured out what caused it. She heard the people calling her mother a grayskin, a Dominion spy, a filthy elf. She heard people calling her father an elf-lover, a supporter of the Dominion, despite the shrine to Talos in his home. And she grew bitter. Bitter at the Great War, for causing so much pain. Bitter at her neighbors, for hating her for such a stupid reason and for leaving her friendless. Bitter at her parents, for falling in love like they had, and for somehow remaining so happy with each other. And bitter at herself, for being so bitter. She lived a quiet life, stewing in her resentment. Against all odds, she managed to find a job when she was twelve. Sorting Wuunferth the Unliving’s workshop and laboratory. Nothing particularly interesting; arranging scrolls on a bookshelf, sorting the soul gems on the display racks, cleaning the alchemy and enchanting workbenches...something calm and quiet. And though Wuunferth didn’t particularly care for her, from his mumblings as he worked, he cared for ‘those clod-headed guards’ even less.

And then, all that bitterness that had build up in her came to a head when she was fourteen years old. She was walking back home from her job when she was jumped in front of her home by a boy--Aljor something-or-other--she’d seen grandstanding about his Nord heritage around the city. He was going to rebel against the Imperials, he’d said, and other things along those lines besides. He shoved her, hard. Her bag was dashed to the ground. The strap snapped. His eyes fell on her purse, the few Septims that she’d made from her work with Wuunferth. And he advanced on her as she scrabbled desperately to dig through her bag. That’s when, from out of her fallen bag, she snatched the spell scroll she’d stolen from Wuunferth in a fit of curiosity. She channeled it as he ran at her. She prayed it would save her. And she let the magic fly. Aljor stood poleaxed for a moment, eyes suddenly running with red light. And then he screamed. He shrieked in terror and ran from her, dropping her purse in his haste to escape from the nondescript girl. And as she returned to her home to escape the guards that his scream would surely have brought running, a knifelike smile formed on her lips.

She never forgot the look of terror on Aljor’s face, and she longed to experience that feeling of power again. From that point on, she devoted her life to procuring as many books on illusion magic as she could. And those texts that she wasn’t allowed to access by Wuunferth--who showed surprising interest in the development of her magic, remarking that perhaps she would make a decent apprentice in a few years’ time--she would steal, squirreling them away under a floor tile in her house. Never more than one or two at a time, but enough for her to grow...well, not good, but adequate enough. And she found that the feeling of power that magic had given her was almost more intensely given by that theft. She’d been schooled since she could remember by Demivah to never steal. But, she reasoned in a fit of anger, these Nords had stolen her childhood from her. So she would respond by stealing from them in kind.

She was eighteen, in 4E193, when she told her parents that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a traveling trader. They were--to her surprise--thrilled. They’d seen the way she had been treated by the people of Windhelm. And Demivah took her in her arms as she left: “Siha, you asked me once why we didn’t leave Windhelm and find somewhere else to live, and I told you it was because Windhelm is our home, and the heart follows home. But...it’s not your home, sweetling. And just as the heart follows home, home follows the heart. So go find yours, sweetling. I love you.”

As she walked from the city, with nothing but her clothes and a massive backpack filled with trinkets to sell, she let the tears fall down her face, and she apologized to her mother, and to the Divines. And then she embarked on an epic crime spree across Skyrim that took her from the Ratways of Riften through Dragonsreach and the Blue Palace of Solitude, and every town and city in between. The feeling of power grew stronger as she grew quicker and more confident in her crimes, pillaging not only coin and jewelry, but also the laboratories of court wizards all across Skyrim. She read voraciously, and her study of illusion grew feverish as she felt her aptitude growing. Soon, she could bend people to her will, or drive them mad. And with that accomplished, and Cyrodiil stabler than Skyrim now, with the tension reaching a fever pitch, and it seeming safer to leave than to stay--her crimes across the country, from the smallest settlements to the largest cities, had taken her through 4E197--she departed, heading south. The Imperial City looked mighty rich for someone like her, and she was hungry.

She quickly became something of an urban legend in the Imperial City. Nothing like the Gray Fox had been, so long ago; nowhere approaching that level of notoriety. But certainly, she had the guards feeling nervous. They even gave her a nickname: the Smoke Dancer. A wisp of whirling shadow, almost visible out of the corner of your eye, but impossible to catch. With her skill as a thief, and her expertise in illusion magic--she was so skilled now that she could turn invisible--she was like a shadow, dipping in and out of shops and well-to-do homes as she pleased and taking what wasn’t nailed down, hiding her finds in secret pouches throughout her backpack. She did do some trading, to keep up a veneer of legitimacy, and to justify her huge bag, but it was mostly a side business to her real passion. And then a man approached her one day. Galerus Quintilius, he introduced himself. And told her to come to the ruins of the Waterfront district that night, at midnight, and tell the beggar Old Milky--named for her blind right eye--that she was there to see Quint.

Interest piqued despite her caution, she did so, and so came across the Cyrodiil Thieves’ Guild. She ran with them for many years, discovering a sense of comradery and compassion that had been sorely absent from her lonely, angry life. She and Galerus became close friends as she rose in the ranks, and she eventually met a figure that she’d believed to be a myth. Someone she’d only ever heard of in scattered legends and occasional books. Someone that caused her to, for the first time in her life, be truly awestruck: the Gray Fox. Legends say that he stole the Cowl from Nocturnal herself, whispered Galerus to her, once. And so her interest in Nocturnal began to grow.

As she aged, that newfound friendship with the Guild’s members had unforeseen consequences. Namely, she stopped enjoying thievery. With her anger and bitterness ebbing, she no longer needed that same feeling of power that she once craved. She longed instead for something bigger. Mysterious. Incomprehensible. Something to figure out, or attempt to, like she had done for magic. She hacked together, out of a novice’s study of mysticism and a creative mind, a way to impress images into another’s mind, and then she stopped talking. She commited herself to silence, for a reason that she scarcely understood. And then she felt an urge. A calling, towards the north. And so, for the first time since she’d left--years later, in 4E203, after the end of the Stormcloak Uprising--she made a pilgrimage back to Skyrim, drawn by rumors, myths, and a half-forgotten dream to a cave in Falkreath Hold. Guided by an inexorable pull that she didn’t understand, she winged on silent, invisible feet through the Pilgrim’s Path, and emerged into the place that she now knew she’d been longing to find for her entire life.

The Ebonmere.

And as she stood there, beneath the darkness of the Evergloam, she heard a faint voice speak to her. She does not remember what it said. But she emerged from the Twilight Sepulcher with a new purpose in life. No more would she simply steal from those more fortunate than she was. No, her theft was part of a higher calling now: to embody the darkness, silence and mystery that was Nocturnal, and to spread the shadow of the Evergloam, until all the thieves of Nirn could feel Nocturnal’s shadow.

Ever since, she’s been wandering, ghosting through towns and cities and leaving them with a backpack maybe a bit heavier than it was before she got there. She may be out of practice with lockpicking and and...well, most of the thieves’ trades, but Nocturnal smiles upon her, and so she knows no fear. But now, roaming through Daggerfall, the nights have gotten colder. They have grown longer. And this is not the kind of darkness that Sihava knows.

Perhaps it is time that whatever is causing this supernatural shadow learns what a real night looks like...

Personality: Sihava’s personality comes across differently than most because of her silence. She moves through the world quietly in every way--quiet feel, quiet movements, quiet breaths--and with something that seems to most like great solemnity; like she has a terrible weight dogging her heels, pulling down on her shoulders, pressing her to the ground. And she does feel that she carries a great responsibility with her. But it doesn’t weigh her down the way that many people seem to think it does. The solemnity that they see is simply her way of walking. In fact, past the long-standing silence only broken with mysticism or writing, Sihava is a remarkably personable woman, with a wry smile, a dry streak of sardonic humor, and perhaps more than a touch of vanity.

In her trades as a thief and a merchant, she learned better than anybody how to roll with every punch she takes. Consequently, she’s as far away from stubborn as you can find: she is remarkably flexible, and if someone tells her that she’s doing something unfathomably stupid, she’s able to step back, analyze what she’s doing, and come to the conclusion that they’re probably correct.

Speaking of unfathomable stupidity; while her worship of Nocturnal has changed many things about her, it hasn’t changed her personality at its core. And so she is very, very reckless and easily excited, surprising those who have heard about the Smoke Dancer and her epic crime spree through the Imperial City and find out that’s who she is. While she’s learned how to take things slow and scope something out over a period of days or even weeks before making her move out of pure necessity, her natural proclivity is to jump into a situation headfirst, escaping with her illusion magic, her skill at stealth, and the seat of her own wit. Consequently, she’s excellent at thinking on her feet, able to come up with workable plans in a moment’s notice, even while under heat. The converse, however, is also true. Whenever she tries to plan something out meticulously, it backfires on her. Inevitably, and usually spectacularly. Doing her best work in the moment means she overcompensates and overplans, and when even one thing goes wrong, it all comes tumbling down. She’s no strategist. Keeping it simple is the only way she survives.

As for romance, she’s not interested. She once thought that perhaps she and Galerus might have something, but by the time anything could have developed, she’d given herself over to Nocturnal. Perhaps she could still find someone, but they would need to beat a Daedric Prince for her attention, and that is a steep task indeed for anyone who might wish to woo her. She does love dancing, though.

It is in her nature to be slow to trust. Even now, so far removed from her troubled childhood, its scars still linger, and the years as a thief don’t exactly help. She is an incredibly suspicious person, second, third, and fourth-guessing anybody who she gives her companionship to. And while, after some time, she might begin to trust you more than she did, she’ll likely not really trust you. A full unconditional trust is something that she can only give after years of companionship, if ever, and she’s only ever given it to Galerus.

As might be surmised by Sihava’s particular occupation over the years, she’s not overly concerned with legality. There are, however, some lines to be drawn. She will not murder. Kill, yes. If someone comes at her with a sword and she has no lines of defense to withdraw behind, she is a fair hand with her daggers, and has no compunctions over self defense. But murdering someone is different. She also does not steal from those who have nothing to begin with. While the law might not care if you take the scant Septims from a beggar’s purse, Sihava will. Not only is it a waste of time for very little return, but she does still have a conscience. Stealing every Septim of someone who has nowhere to go is similar to murder, in her mind, and she does not care for it. Not only that, but beggars are patroned by Nocturnal, just as thieves are. If she sees someone stealing from a beggar, she will follow them and slowly take every scrap of coin or jewelry on them and funneling it back to the beggar. So while the law is minimally important to her, ‘the law’ and ‘justice’ are not the same thing.

There is one glaring weakness that Sihava has, despite largely being imperturbable to threats and the like. She’s spent a long time distancing herself from her childhood in Windhelm, but has never been entirely successful. ‘Knife-ears.’ ‘Grayskin.’ ‘Half-breed.’ These words, and words like them, occupy a place of childish terror in her heart. Hearing them leaves her scattered and flustered at best. At worst? She’ll break down crying, futilely trying to forget the past as it claws at her mind.

Equipment:


Misc. Possessions:


Family and Associations:
Demivah Rallaron: Mother
Ulfskaar Blackthorn: Father
Galerus Quintilius (Quint): Still a very close friend

Favored Attributes:

Favoured Skills:
Highly Proficient:

Moderately Proficient:

Somewhat Proficient:

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» Race: Bosmer
» Sex: Female
» Age: 50
» Birthsign: The Steed
» Origins: A small village community a small trek from Southpoint, Valenwood

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» Favored Attributes
Major: Agility
Minor: Intelligence
» Favoured Skills
Hightly Proficient: Destruction, One-handed (Blade)
Moderately Proficient: Acrobatics, Archery

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Sinalare is all speed and toned muscles, with a lithe form well-suited to treks through her native Valenwood’s rough terrain. Though more suited to speed than pure strength, her body is toned, flexible, and acrobatic. While she would lose a contest of pure strength when faced with a larger opponent, she is well used to lifting her own body weight and has a high level of control over her limbs when focused. She is more at home in flexible, patchy armour that allows her a mix of maneuverability and protection. She is tall for a wood elf - the tallest of all her sisters, in fact. Her tanned skin is littered with scars and her hands callused: wear-and-tear earned from years of war and mercenary work. Her hair is messy and cropped short, just long enough that she can tie it back when entering a fight. It often falls in front of her face in disarray, hiding her hazel eyes. Her most notable scar crosses her chest - a vast, bumpy gouge that, without magical healing, clearly would have been a fatal blow.

Her face rests with a scowling impression, which many, many people have found off-putting; though, when you’re looking to hire a mercenary, Sinalare’s rough looking face sold itself. Her general demeanor isn’t unapproachable, though her face often makes her look that way - on a good day, she’s friendly enough, so long as no one strikes a nerve. When she drinks, her face loosens up and her usually stiff body language loosens up.

Most often, Sinalare is in armour, since she is typically working as a mercenary. Her armour is a patchwork; the make-shift is made of mix-matched sets she has collected and worked together over her years as a mercenary. The original design is long-lost. However, while between jobs, she typically wears comfortable travelling clothes, often in greens, browns, and grays. While Sinalare is far from shy, the unobtrusive clothes are an advantage should she need to blend in. In armour or not, Sinalare is inseparable from the flask on her hip.

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Sinalare is from a small, quite close-knit village in Valenwood. Her father, Faenlin, was a pelt trader and hunter, while her mother, Sifina, focused mostly on home life, though when she had the time, she helped with his business and was a capable huntress in her own right. Sinalare had two older brothers and three younger sisters, whom she was close with. Her childhood is remembered fondly, full of family hunting trips for the business and playful rough-housing.

However, the quiet, family oriented life of her parents wasn’t enough to satisfy Sinalare’s ambitions. Throughout her youth, extended family often visited. Most importantly, this included her uncle Banor, who was quite a storyteller. He would regale the children with tales of glory and war, which stuck with Sinalare passionately through her youth.

When she was 15, in 4E171, the Great War began. For several weeks, she talked incessantly to her parents about joining the military and going off to fight valiantly on behalf of their country, for glory. They, of course, told her she was too young. They told her not to go, and tried to convince her not too. Sinalare refused to listen, and eventually, she ran off to the nearest city, Southpoint, in order to enlist. Having lied about her age, they took her without much complaint, as they needed the numbers.

So, she began her training, for which she was sent to the Summerset Isles. It was a brief few months, and Sinalare, along her group, excelled with the bow and sword - or so she thought at the time. They outfitted her as an archer, armed with a light sword to use in a pinch, and sent her along with the rest of her training group, made up of other Bosmer and a few Khajiits, all the way to the front line in Hammerfell to join Lady Arannelya’s forces.

Her group was sent all the way up to the front lines. Sinalare's peaceful existence ended abruptly. The camp was run-down, though they were thrilled to receive the supplies that came along with the reinforcements. Unfortunately, the Imperials were not so thrilled, and attacked at sundown, targeting the newly-brought supplies. Sinalare was thrown head-first into a brutal, bloody battle where she could hardly tell friend from foe. The opponents fought by fire-light as supplies and tents raged in a burning inferno. She tumbled from her tent, just barely having fallen asleep, and after being shocked by her surroundings, she roused her companions and rallied them. Fearing that she would lose track of her friends in the fighting, she focused on keeping her small group organized. For what felt like hours but must have been mere minutes, Sinalare and her companions fought tooth and nail to defend their camp, lacking any orders or organization. When at last the officers organized the Dominion forces, to Sinalare’s relief, they drove off the Imperials, though at a great loss of supplies.

Her first taste of real war was grueling and horrific, and she threw up well into the night over the stench of blood and burning corpses. The rude awakening was discouraging at first, and for miserable hours she cried, wishing to return home, remembering those she had struck down in the night’s confusion. She saw her allies, dead bodies in heaps, and realized just how underprepared she and her friends truly were… They weren’t excellent students; they were cannon-fodder. However, when daylight broke, she found her friends around her were proud of how she had kept them together. With their encouragement, she applied herself to continuing to train with the rest of the camp, and worked hard alongside their companionship. She knew how unprepared the group was and she urged them all to improve. As it turned out, she was talented at it - both the sword, and the role as leader she had adopted among her training group.

She drew the attention of one of the officers, an old Altmer named Ceadur. He was a mage who quickly became a beloved mentor to Sinalare. He took her under his wing and discovered her affinity towards destruction magic. She excelled quickly, and continued her training with him. She abandoned her role as an archer, and focused all her attention on destruction magic and swordplay. Over the next four years, she fought and trained fiercely on the front lines in Hammerfell, determined to be more than cannon-fodder. She rose in the ranks at an incredible rate for her age, helped along by her mentor, and followed his example of exceptional loyalty to the Dominion.

In late 174, at 18, she was in command of her own squad, made up of many of her closest friends from the past few years, along with some new, young faces fresh out to the front lines. Sinalare’s friends believed in her ability as a leader, and perhaps more importantly, so did she. So when they, along with a couple other bands, were assigned to a mission similar to the one she had witnessed on her first night at war, she was eager. Sinalare was all fire and fury, and tore through her enemies at a formidable rate, and she inspired loyalty from her group. They were on a streak of wins, and feeling like they could take on the entire Imperial Army.
So they crept behind enemy lines, targeting a supply train which was supposed to be only lightly defended. Sinalare’s group attacked from the back. She had a small group of stealthy fighters, those she trained with and friends she cherished. Two other groups would come from the front, louder and larger, just before they would rush in to debilitate the supply train.

Unfortunately, they only got part of the way through their plan before additional hidden forces attacked them, snapping the Imperials’ trap closed. Sinalare and her group were in the back, blocked off from retreat as the other groups pulled out. The enemy forces descended on them, and as they fought fiercely, Sinalare tried to save her companions. She watched friends fall on enemy swords and die to enemy fire. She herself sustained a fatal injury, sliced across the chest as their stealth mission. As the blood poured out of her, she collapsed on the battlefield. She remained conscious only long enough for her to see her friend, a Khajiit healer, leaning over her, mumbling words and trying to keep her awake.

When she woke up next, she was in a prisoner cart with an angry scar across her chest.
In 4E174, she was tossed in a Hammerfell prison, where she remained, nearly forgotten, for six years. She rotted in a dark cell, antsy and on edge, with no companionship and little light. Her only possession remaining was the small, carved-bone ball, made by her little sister, which she hid carefully. She spent her time raging at the guards, from hysterical to exhausted in a matter of seconds. She exercised, scraping her skin against the rough stone floor as she had little protection. In her mind, she held onto one idea: she would get out, and she would fight for her country again.

But the years dragged on. She had no news from the outside. The last she had heard of her family was of her mother’s pregnancy. She wondered how long had it been. Was her new sibling healthy? She months turned into years, and Sinalare lost hope. She waited and wasted away. Though she held with the Green Pact throughout her life, after a few days without food, she could no longer resist even the stale bread when they tossed it through the slot in her cell. She focused on one thing: her survival.

As the war had continued in Hammerfell, Sinalare was not released until the Second Treaty of Stros M’Kai, in 4E180. However, the small prison she was in held mostly local criminals, and it was only by chance that she was left there. Instead of being sent back with a group, the guards left her outside the prison with only the clothes on her back. Having lost her faith in just about everything she believed in, she instead became a vagabond, a wandering mercenary. For the next two years, she wandered Hammerfell, avoiding large cities and gatherings, which were intensely stressful after six years of little human contact. War with the Dominion ravaged southern Hammerfell. Though they were long gone, the sentiments towards a wandering Bosmer were unkind. She set sail for Elsweyr once she had enough coin saved.

Booze was her unwavering friend. Elsweyr was kinder than Hammerfell, and she fit in a little better. There were other veterans around, and she joined up with a mercenary group in 4E187 which included many.
It was a relief to have someone else giving the commands; the fear she gained after her failure told her to never give orders again. So, she became comfortable in the mercenary band, and she stayed in Elsweyr, hopping from different mercenary companions in different parts of the province for twelve years. She was afraid to stay too long in one group, and avoided getting attached. Her life became a routine existence of fighting for money and then blowing it all on booze; her drunken stupor rarely left her. At times, she retreated to the wilderness, overwhelmed by the company of others and used her hunting skills to keep herself going. Tormented by nightmares and unable to get over her losses, Sinalare spent the years after the war alive, but hardly living. She had a thousand acquaintances - drinking buddies especially - across Elsweyr, but not one friend.

In 4E199, Sinalare was drinking in Orcrest. Due to an unfortunate combination of a nightmare, an alcohol-induced nap outside, and finally, an unlucky bystander’s kindness in trying to wake her up, Sinalare’s time in Elsweyr met a rather bloody end as she fled the city guards.

After that, she found herself in the forests of Valenwood, home again at last. She hardly knew how she found herself there - she walked the whole way, only focused on running away rather than toward. Once there at the edge of the Green, she turned away. The guilt of her past actions and lack of adherence to the Green Pact after her imprisonment drove her from Valenwood’s familiar trees and she went north. She hardly trusted herself around other for several years, and mostly travelled off the roads, only stopping in cities for alcohol, which she often stole if she couldn’t sell her game or her services as a mercenary. Over the next six years, her city visits grew more and more common as she readjusted.

By 4E206, she found herself in Daggerfall, having just completed a mercenary job and intending to blow all her coin on drinks before she moves on…

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Sinalare’s personality is often like a field of landmines. While on the surface, she is often boisterous and fairly jovial. She is quick to learn about her companions, which helped her to be a good leader while at war, and often joins in with friendly teasing. She might know a lot about the people around her, but she struggles to express sympathy and will avoid the personal struggles of others when possible. At best, this makes her awkward, and at worst, downright mean.

Sinalare’s demeanor can change on a dime. If questioned about her past, she immediately closes up, becoming rude and short. When there is any sort of physical threat, she embraces it, releasing a violent side of herself. She relishes in fights, and holds the belief that the world is inherently violent - there’s no point in fighting against violent action, so instead she revels in being good at it. She isn’t downright bloodthirsty, and has had many a bar brawl without killing her opponent, however when it comes down to it, she has no hesitation about killing, especially on the job. She takes her mercenary work rather seriously - a job is a job, simple, and she completes them without question.

When sober and working, she is typically on her guard and always aware of her surroundings, but she easily falls into the trap of loosening up as soon as alcohol is involved and quickly loses her finesse. Alcohol makes her friendly, and she becomes more indifferent to her own problems and others’. She is not often an angry or violent drunk, but instead these traits come out while she is sobering up.

She has, thanks to her time in prison, a crippling fear of ever going back. At the simple threat of being locked in any sort of enclosed space sends Sinalare into a rage where she will fight tooth and nail to avoid it. Her claustrophobia extends further than only being imprisonned. When she was first released, she could hardly go inside buildings. Though she has improved past that point, she still often fears being in dark caves or rooms without windows and the like.

Sinalare avoids responsibility at all costs. Having failed her friends while in command, she swore she would never again be in charge of anyone at all. She will never be a leader again.

Because of her upbringing, Sinalare is very comfortable living off the land. She has a great sense of direction and often feels most comfortable away from large cities. Part of her longs for her childhood, in Valenwood. Once she broke the Green Pact, nihilism kept her from trying again, and guilt kept her from returning to her family in Valenwood. The additional guilt of so much blood on her hands makes her afraid to face her family, especially her younger siblings. She often believes she should have died with her allies in Hammerfell, rather than being taken prisoner, but she clings desperately to her own life because it is a gift that her friend gave her at the expense of her own in those last moments, leaving her the scar on her chest as a reminder.

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» Mis-matched set of armour
» A steel one-handed sword, well used and well maintained
» A couple pairs of travelling clothes
» Her trusky flask and a waterskin
» Coin purse, currently holding 52 septims

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Sinalare travels light, but she has held onto a carved ball, made of bone, which was clearly carved by a child due to its bumps and lack of artistry.

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Family: Sinalare has a large family in Valenwood, though she lost contact with all of them. Her parents and five siblings were well before she left. While she was enlisted, she often sent letters home to her village, as well as money whenever she could. Once she was imprisoned, she lost contact with them and even once she was released, she never re-established a connection out of guilt, and cowardice. She hasn’t seen or had contact with any of her relatives since was imprisonned in 4E174.
Other Associations: Most of those she knew in the Dominion army were killed when she was captured. There are still many who would recognize her, though she would avoid them at all costs. Her former mercenary comrades and acquaintances remain in Elsweyr, as far as she knows.

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» Thunderbolt
» Lightning Cloak
» Chain Lightning
» Incinerate
» Lightning Rune
» Whirlwind Cloak