[hider=Karl Borisov of Ivargrod]

[b]Name:[/b] Karl Borisov of Ivargrod

[b]Age:[/b] 39

Appearance:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/7P0MILp.png[/img]
(Art by me)

[i]"If I managed to find a wife with a face like this, you can imagine how great my personality is."[/i]

Karl is a hairy, stout, burly man whose face is covered by smile-lines and wrinkles. He has blue eyes and unkempt black hair that comes down to his neck. Although accustomed to the cold of Lunaris’ countryside, he is rarely seen without his thick, fur-laden armour. Though primarily made of leather (and perhaps some sort of scale?), it appears as strong as any metal.

Karl carries trophies from his kills, which are most noticeable in the aforementioned furs, as well as the necklace of teeth, claws and talons which he keeps around his neck. He allows people to speculate as to which animals these trophies come from, even encouraging some of the more fantastical rumours that they are pieces of wyverns, manticores, and other magical beasts thought to be fictional or long-extinct.

[b]Race:[/b]
[i]"I am what I am."[/i]

Human

[b]Kingdom:[/b]
[i]"I am ambivalent towards my country, but I love its people."[/i]

Lunaris. While he does not hold a great deal of loyalty to either kingdom, he finds the people of his frigid homeland far less pretentious.

[b]Role:[/b]
[i]"One trick of the trade is that if you're good enough at taking people in dead, they're much more likely to agree to being brought in alive. I'm a great negotiator, are I not?"[/i]

Hunter. Karl does not differentiate between his jobs hunting outlaws, Blightborn, or magical beasts. However, he is among the best at tracking them down and ending them--once and for all.

Karl is considered especially gifted at hunting down blightborn beasts, and has taken several contracts from the royal family to do so.

[b]Magic:[/b]
[i]"Some mages think they can outsmart me. Maybe. I've yet to meet one who can outsmart an axe to the skull."[/i]

Try as Karl might, his magical proficiency is highly limited. Though he may admit to using some divination magic, it is hard to tell where spellcraft ends and skill begins. Like many northerners, he has the ability to partially insulate himself from extreme weather, but this is so commonplace as to be practically mundane.

Rather than allow this lack of proficiency to stop him, he has attempted to spin this weakness into an advantage. The strange materials composing Karl’s weapons and armour can blunt and block spells, and he has made a study of how to kill magic users before their arcane trickery comes into play. From this, he has earned the nickname “Magebane”--a title he relishes as an intimidation tactic. Most of this gear was made for him by his patrons, or was taken from defeated targets. Of course, Karl will gladly spin a tale about how the scales of the mighty Ice Wyvern block spells--or some other such nonsense.

Karl knows a few protective charms that ward against the Blight, though prefers to have others cast them on him. Relying solely on his own charms often ends with him falling ill, with symptoms resembling the early stages of Blight corruption.

There is one exception to Karl's lack of magical proficiency. Through a crude approximation of more complex ice spells, Karl has the ability to create ice-carved weapons from water (or more commonly, snow) he comes into contact with. Unlike the truly masterful ice mages, he cannot conjure ice from the air or send forth frozen winds, or even conjure daggers of ice capable of piercing flesh. What he [i]can[/i] do is dip his hand into a pile of snow and pull out an icicle large enough to smash someone over the head with, or turn a snowball into a shotput, or create a crude sheet of ice large enough to use as a shield--at least before it gets blasted apart by a novice wizard hurling magic missiles. Karl can't craft anything more advanced than a club, but he seems to be able to keep these crude objects together and reform them when they shatter. Of course, this ability doesn't help all that much when he's not in the frozen north, and steel weapons will hold up better under pressure than hastily-conjured ice.

[b]Short Bio:[/b]

[i]So you want to know about Karl, yes?

Come, sit, sit. No need to be nervous.

Yes, your confusion I understand, I am maybe not what you expected? Not the seven-foot-tall behemoth who subsists solely on the blood of the blighted?

No, I am a man like any other. Since the Blight first emerged, I have lived on its frontiers. Learning. Hunting. Just living. It is a rough life.

My family is from the north. Far north, in the lands claimed by the Blight. When I was a boy, I lived in Old Ivargrod; a city by our standards, but likely no more than a large town to yours. In the lands yet further north, there were great beasts who would occasionally come down to savage our fair city, and it was my parents’ job to slay them. I joined my father Boris and mother Natascha on my first hunt when I was fourteen. I have been hunting ever since.

Things did not change much after this. When I was twenty-seven, I met Katerina, and within a few years we were married. And a few years after that, she was with child.

Unfortunately, it was at the tail end of Katerina’s pregnancy that signs of Blight began to appear around Ivargrod. And when the time came to evacuate... well, Katerina did not survive the birth.

My dear daughter, my little Katherine, is all I have left of my late wife. To carry on her memory, I will make the world as safe for our daughter as I can. I will continue working for the royals if I must, hunting down the strongest beasts and Blightspawn that the world can throw at me.[/i]

Misc:
Karl’s other skills include:
Leather working, Butchery, Dog and wolf breeding, Drinking large quantities of alcohol, Whittling and woodworking, Falconry (though he typically prefers to use ravens), Crossbowmanship, and slow-roasting wild boar.
[/hider]

[hider=Katherine Karlovich of Ivargrod]
[b]Katherine Karlovich of Ivargrod[/b]
Race: Human
Kingdom: Lunaris
Age: 8

[i]"My doggies think you're very nice."[/i]

Description: Katherine appears to be a mostly unremarkable child. She has raven black hair and eyes, and pale skin dotted with freckles from her time spent playing outside.

Katherine (sometimes called “Katie”) enjoys reading, playing with what few children of her own age she can find, and playing with her father's dogs. She seems to talk to said dogs at length, as though they were people.

Karl remarks that she has an even better grasp on dog-training than he does.[/hider]

[hider=Old Bess]
[b]Old Bess[/b]
Age: 12
Race: Dog

[i]"Bark."[/i]

Description: Bess’ fur is black, though has greyed in several places, most prominently around her muzzle. She is a mix of various hunting breeds (as well as a bit of wolfdog), safely qualifying her as a mutt. She doesn't do much hunting herself anymore, though is the mother or grandmother of most of the hunting dogs that Karl uses.

Usually, she can be found cuddled up with her mate, One-Eyed Jack.[/hider]


[hider=One-Eyed Jack]
[b]One-Eyed Jack[/b]
Age: 13
Race: Dog

[i]"Grrrr..."[/i]

Description: Jack is a scarred, gnarled, nasty old dog with golden-brown fur. His left eye was torn out by a wolf, and his right eye is clouded with age.

In his prime, Jack was capable of tearing apart fully-grown wolves with little intervention. Even now, most other dogs shy away from his old, scarred maw. While his youthful vigor is gone, he seems to have a sixth sense for danger despite being nearly deaf and blind. Usually, he and Bess can be found cuddled up on Karl’s porch. He is ambivalent to most people, aside from Karl and Katherine.
[/hider]