[hider=Aud Longspear]
[B]Name:[/B] Aud Longspear
[B]Race:[/B] Nord
[B]Sex:[/B] Female
[B]Age:[/B] 29
[B]Birthsign:[/B] The Lord
[B]Family Origins:[/B] The Skaal of Solstheim
[B]Appearance:[/B] 

[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/493428353643053067/598520114958041098/aud_2.jpg[/img]

Aud, as a Nord, is unsurprisingly tall, only an inch or so under six feet. She is a strong woman, and a compact one: her entire body is covered in corded, rippling muscle from a life lived in the harsh climate of Solstheim, and long days and nights spent hunting. Her skin is extremely fair, and burns easily. As pale as it is, though, the rough, almost leathery texture very clearly indicates the many-many long hours she’s spent under the sun and in the driving snow. She has raven-black hair that falls in a tight braid down to her mid-back, as it’s far harder for it to futz you up in a fight if it’s harder for it to get in eyes and mouth.

 Her body is covered in scars, acquired over many years of hunting and defending the Skaal from bandit incursions and other threats. The largest and most important is a long series of parallel lines on her left shoulder, forming a jagged claw mark that runs all the way from her shoulder’s apex to just below her breast. It serves as a stark, potent reminder for her to never grow overconfident in her skills. She has a very sharp face with angular features, with the Nord high cheekbones so common to see in Skyrim and Solstheim. Those cheekbones frame a pair of glittering pale-grey eyes, narrow and suspicious. Underneath each of her eyes is a thick stripe of black war paint to guard her eyes against sunglare, and a narrow red stripe cuts vertically through each. Her nose is medium-sized and straight, narrowing to a sharp point. 

When she’s not wearing her armor (which is essentially all the time that she’s not actively and consciously preparing for combat), her general clothing is a reflection of the harsh arctic climate where she was born and raised: a shirt and kilt of thick gray-black bear furs over horker-hide trousers, occasionally speckled with daubs of ground shells to break up her silhouette and make it a touch paler, depending on the climate in which she’s hunting. She wears a heavy bearskin hooded cloak just slightly lighter than the rest of her furs, pinned about her neck by a bear claw toggle. The clothing is rounded off by a pair of sturdy leather boots, light enough for a swift, easy run but heavy enough to withstand the constant wear and tear of the snow and stones of Solstheim. If you look closely, you can see them patched in several places.

However, describing her normally is only half of her description, because Aud just so happens to be a werebear. She has a wild, unpredictable strain of lycanthropy, a seemingly-random time passing between transformations, though it’s never more than twice a week and never less than once every fortnight. When she transforms, whatever she's wearing and bearing melds into her; she is [i]much[/i] larger and bulkier, and her posture is hunched; her fur is the same color as her cloak, a charcoal-grey, and she has long, sharp claws and fangs. Her eyes remain the same pale grey, but turn bestial and glint angrily as she unleashes her frustrations.
[hr]
[B]Equipment:[/B] 
[list]
[*]Her primary weapon is a replica of Hircine’s Daedric artifact, the Spear Of Bitter Mercy, forged out of good, quality steel. There’s nothing else special about it; it’s simply a well-crafted (if slightly rugged-looking compared to the original) spear about five and a half feet long, generally slung over her right shoulder. She did, however, make one major concession: instead of metal, the haft is made of a gray-stained fire hardened wood. It’s been enchanted with sun-magic, for better fighting of vampires.
[*]On her left shoulder, opposite her normal spear, is a somewhat strange object: it looks like a basic quiver, but nearly twice as long, sitting a hefty four feet. Inside of it are five spears slightly shorter than her main spear, much more simple in their forging (though no less effective) and specifically for throwing: steel and fire hardened wood. These are also sun-enchanted, so losing one is a big blow to Aud’s arsenal; they’re not easily replaced.
[*]A set of Nordic carved armor, significantly cut down to vastly reduce weight, for use during real combat: a chestplate, pauldrons, vambraces and tassets. She refuses the use of a full suit, insisting that it slows her down too much in combat. It’s been modified since her joining of the Dawnguard; instead of chainmail, it’s been mounted on a suit of light Dawnguard leathers.
[*]A brilliantly-crafted Stalhrim dagger, forged by the finest craftsman of the Skaal some hundred years ago. When she went exile, she stole it from the village as her only memento, something to remind her of her roots, however many paths she may wander down and however far she may stray. She hangs it from a leather thong around her neck underneath her clothing, but that does not diminish its potential as a weapon if she really, really needs it.[/list]
[hr]
[B]Misc. Possessions:[/B]
Always one to travel light, there isn’t much else that Aud carries with her. Most of her food comes with her hunting.
[list]
[*]A simple leather backpack (a fairly small one, compared to most traveler’s packs) that she carries most of her things in.
[*]Flint, steel and dry tinder kept in a pouch of oiled leather. Self-explanatory.
[*]Two-liter leather waterskin. Hung on the outside of her backpack by a leather thong.
[*]A small bottle of oil that she uses to lubricate the joints of her armor.
[*]Needle and heavy thread.
[*]A whetstone.
[*]A purse and a few septims, mostly to pay people to renew the enchantments on her weapons.[/list]
[hr]
[B]Family and Associations:[/B]
Gisli Horn-Blower - Father (Estranged)
Skið Swifteye - Mother (Estranged)
Basically The Whole Skaal Population Of Solstheim - Former tribemates, now estranged.
The Companions - She tried.
The Dawnguard - Current membership, and who she considers family. She’s fiercely protective of them.
[hr]
[B]Favoured Skills:[/B]
Highly proficient: Two-handed (Spear): Aud is an expert at the usage of a spear. While she’s not particularly acrobatic with the weapon (she’s no Mazrah), she’s exceptional at using it to space herself apart from shorter-range enemies, harrying them until she can find an opening. She’s mostly a defensive fighter, and due to the sheer quantity of animals and bandits that she would often end up fighting with a very small group, she’s become very skilled at fending off multiple adversaries at a time. All those scars gotta come from somewhere, after all.

Highly proficient: Marksmanship (Also Spear): And just as she excels in the use of spears in melee combat, so too does she excel at throwing them, perhaps even more so. It’s a fairly uncommon practice compared to archery, which she initially began after watching the rieklings of Solstheim bringing down far larger prey than themselves with the use of their spears. She found it far more effective than archery (which she was always rather incompetent at), and it became her primary hunting vector. She’s practiced throwing spears since she was barely a teenager, and it shows: she can throw them a very long distance (nearly 40m, or about 130 feet), and is very, very accurate with them. They cause far more severe wounds than a typical arrow, but she can only carry so many at a time.

Moderately proficient: Athletics: A native of an incredibly harsh climate and a hunter-warrior since her youth, Aud has become very fit. She can jog for hours at a time, and is capable of bursts of incredible speed to chase down deer, though she tires out quickly during them. She is also a capable climber, able to navigate her way around the rocky crags of Solstheim.

Moderately proficient: Stealth: Hand in hand with her athletic skill and her spearcraft, her skill in stealth comes with hunting. While in a city she wouldn’t know how to even begin to escape a view, whenever she’s in the wilderness she can melt into the background as long as she’s holding still or moving slowly. Moving quickly while hiding isn’t something in her wheelhouse, however, and she reveals herself rather quickly. Still, it’s useful for ambushing a deer. Or a bandit.

Somewhat proficient: Light Armor: While she doesn’t much like wearing armor, she recognizes how useful it is when she engages in combat and so has become fairly decent at moving around in it. She loses much of her explosive speed, but if it turns away a single lethal blow, it’s more than worth it to her.
[hr]
[B]History:[/B]
Aud was born to Gisli Hornblower and Skið Swifteye, in the deep winter of 4E184. Her life in the Skaal village was one of hardship from the beginning. Solstheim is not a kind place at the best of times. Crushing ashfalls and the winter weather are just as lethal as any living being on the island. But in addition to the hardships of life as Skaal, there’s a deep camaraderie there; in such a hostile place, you can’t afford divides in the tribe. That and the shared belief in the All-Maker foster a deep interconnectedness in the Skaal, and Aud threw herself into the center of it. If you asked her, she could still probably name everybody in the tribe when she lived there. Then she’d knock you out for asking her about it, but the point remains,

From the very beginning, she was a willful child, unwilling to sit inside. Many times in her childhood, she had very close escapes from life-threatening incidents. Her favorite story to recount is clinging to the rocks outside Frossel at only ten years old with groups of Rieklings both above and beneath her, unaware of her presence as she desperately looked for a way out without sending any loose stones showering down to show her presence. 

As she matured, this willful nature settled into a fierce independence and athleticism. Roving far across Solstheim was a calling for her, and her keen eyes and strong muscles conspired with these qualities to turn her into a skilled hunter. Still...she felt that the bow in her hands tried to kill her more than it tried to kill her quarry. She simply could [i]not[/i] get the hang of the weapon. She still has scars across her first three fingers from the string biting into her unskilled hands. Then, one day, she watched Rieklings bringing down a deer, peppering it with their arrow-sized spears, and an epiphany bloomed in her. Taking a trio of poorly-balanced spears from above the mantle of her home--her mother was always better with the bow anyway, and her father the axe--she stole off into the arctic night. She returned at sunup, exhausted and satisfied, with the corpse of a fully-grown horker dragged on a makeshift sled behind her. 

That first hunting trip with spears changed Aud’s life. She came into her own as a consummate spear-wielder, and as she aged, she only grew more skillful. Her spears were just as brutal in combat as they were on the hunt, and at sixteen, she earned her epithet--Longspear--by killing a frost troll with a single spear to the back of the neck, cast from nearly thirty paces. This feat--combined with how effective her fighting style was at harrying bandits and raiders off from the Skaal, scars she’d acquired notwithstanding--had earned her ales and claps on the back from people much more seasoned, who’d seen things that she couldn’t have imagined.

Then, the next year, things in Solstheim got harder. Not the same kind of hardness; Aud was used to that. No; Skaal began to act strangely, and they clustered around the All-Maker Stones, building something while repeating an odd mantra over and over. In an attempt to help them, she traveled to the Beast Stone, thinking she would do something to make a difference. But she was unable to make any change at all. In powerless frustration, she lashed out at the Beast Stone, tried to demolish whatever structure they were building. And she only realized what a mistake she’d made when one of the people working on the structure morphed into an abomination: a werebear. And though she tried her best to fight it off, it mauled her savagely, carried her into the woods, and left her for dead.

And that is when Aud felt the Turning for the first time.

Her impotent rage manifested inside of her as she lashed out at the trees around her, the new-grown claws on her malformed paw-hands shredding the bark and wood like paper. Red descended over her eyes and assaulted the forest for a full night. When she returned to her shaken, pallid form in the morning, she looked around at the destruction she’d wrought, and bile rose in her throat. She vomited from the existential illness of what she’d become, and a deep self-loathing was born in her. She slunk back to her tribe and presented herself to Fanari Strong-Voice, asking what needed to be done to redeem herself in the All-Maker’s eyes. She was given two choices: she could let herself be killed to show the All-Maker her deference and respect, or she could leave and search for a way to remove her lycanthropy. She was a hair away from asking for death, but the smallest voice within her urged her to seek redemption. She gathered her things--her parents would no longer look at her--snatched a dagger of pure Stalhrim in a desperate fit of sadness, and departed for Skyrim. She was on the cusp of her eighteenth year.

She wandered Tamriel for a long time. Skyrim, Cyrodiil, Morrowind; in none of them could she find a sense of belonging. Her self-hatred refused to leave. Her werebear nature had her removed from the Companions before long. She balked at the strict rules of the Cyrodiil fighter’s guild. Everywhere else, everyone else, laughed her out for her uneducated nature, and her illiteracy.

When she returned to Skyrim after years of roaming--she was 26 at the time--she heard rumors of an organization that killed monsters--vampires, she later discovered--that had been rebuilt south of Riften. Traveling across the country, she saw the scars that the civil war had left deep within the nation, and--more important--she saw those scars exploited by all walks of villainy. It came to a head one night as she slept under the stars near Ivarstead. Her memory of the incident is crystal-clear, even now: the burning orange of her assailant’s eyes, and the baleful red of the magic that began to pull her life away. It was her dumb luck that it was a newly-turned, weak vampire, or she would have died that night. She pinned it to a tree with three spears through its torso and one through the neck, and let the sun take it in the morning. Then, galvanized by an urgent sense of self-preservation, she set forth for Fort Dawnguard with a renewed purpose.

And in the Dawnguard, she finally found a place that accepted her and her...condition. A place where she could belong. Over the next few years, she would come to a new resolution: her lycanthropy was not a damning curse, as she’d believed for a decade now. It was a boon. Her unnatural vitality, and her immunity to Sanguinaire Vampiris--her twisted ursine form--it was all a weapon to use against those who were [i]truly[/i] cursed: the vampires. She learned to read. She made friends, armed herself better. And she set out from Fort Dawnguard. Now, she wanders Tamriel again. But this time, she is not aimlessly, despondently meandering. Hearing rumors muttered on the wind of a Higher Vampire in Valenwood, Aud has gone back to her roots, and is doing what she does best:

She is [i]hunting.[/i]
[hr]
[b]Aud's Biggest Regret:[/b]
For a long time, it was going to the Beast Stone, and the subsequent choice to survive instead of to die. But now? Now, after finding people to care for and protect? Now it's that she spent so long living a half-life as she wandered, despondent, through Tamriel.

[b]Aud's Goal:[/b]
For an equally long time, it was to find out a way to remove her lycanthropy so she could return to her home. But now, her goal is one that's more...open-ended, with no strict endpoint: now that she has a [i]new[/i] home, she goal is to ALWAYS have that home to return to.
[hr]
[B]Personality:[/B]
Aud is an intense woman. Unnecessarily intense, many have said. Her years of self-loathing, believing that she was an abomination that could only escape by purging herself, or finding herself a cure, have worn the patience out of her soul through long abrasion. She has no time for social games, either her own or those of others. She is straightforward and stubborn, point-blank refusing anything she deems wrong without any preamble or justification. She is...not a quiet person. Never one to let things move on around her without having any say, she’s fairly practiced at slamming her hand on a table to shut people up so she can have her say, and she’s goddamn [i]getting[/i] her say, no matter who tries to shush her.

And she’s not just that aggressive in conversation. She is an exceedingly confrontational person in most other aspects of her character as well. While she can, of course, discern when getting in a fight would probably kill her or make it impossible for her to do her job and thus avoid one, she’s not just an angry person. She [i]loves[/i] fighting. Barroom brawls are a fairly common occurrence for her, and she’s won her fair share of coin by beating the tar out of overconfident men who can’t imagine being bested by a young woman. She’s lost just as much from having the tar beaten out of her as well. She takes the loss and the pain in stride; she doesn’t use much money, and it’s of fairly little importance to her. 

Perhaps the picture being painted here is that Aud doesn’t know how to have fun. And most of the time, that’s...not inaccurate. Aud’s had a lot of disappointment over the past decade or so of her life. She doesn’t trust positive emotions easily, and she’s had so many holes poked in her self-esteem over the years that she’s more likely to be suspicious of happiness than to enjoy it. Still, there are times when little fragments of her old confidence resurface. Mostly, it’s when she’s inebriated. Drinking reminds her of the old camaraderie that she had in the Skaal, and of the new friendships she’s made in the Dawnguard. She relaxes and lets some of her spite go, and Aud without anger is almost a different person, with a penchant for bad jokes and bawdy songs. And when she is comfortable enough around somebody to show them that side of her, she becomes fiercely protective of them. And thus her Dawnguard zealotry. While it’s congealed by now into a deeply-rooted hatred of vampires, it began as a burning need to protect the ramshackle little family she has in the group from those who would see them killed.

Speaking of the Dawnguard, the way they operate--the loose structure they have, and the relatively few rules--speaks to perhaps the deepest-seated point of Aud’s personality. Ever since childhood, the thing most important to her has been freedom. Her maturation has given unto her the realization that total freedom--anarchy--is...less than a good thing, and in fact leads to people like the vampires doing whatever they want while the weaker people are beaten down by them. She extends her surprisingly protective nature out to them, but subscribes to a simple philosophy: the best defense is a good offense. Instead of shielding people and protecting them like a town guard, she takes it upon herself to remove what’s threatening them.[/hider]