[h3]Character Description[/h3]
[b]Name:[/b] Leofric Aelwinovich syn Otric (The Shieldbearer Leofric, son of Aelwin) aka Leoka 
[b]Species:[/b] Human
[b]Race/Nationality:[/b] Eahamingas
[b]Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Age:[/b] 39
[b]Languages:[/b] Northern Jugkraian(native), Arventian(fluent, heavy Jugkraian accent), Eahamingan(clumsy, though his accent is less pronounced), Sidfirian(broken monastic teachings) 
[b]Appearance:[/b] Leofric stands around 6’2” with broad shoulders and arms, with a modest if athletic physique. He’s most notable for his long, slightly curled blonde hair and blue eyes.
[b]Personal Effects[/b]: Travel kit - including an axe used mostly for firewood, battle worn mail hauberk, splinted greaves, vambraces and gloves, he’s never without a long, sharp dagger. Weathered tunic, hose, furs for cold weather. A fine, but worn travel cloak, with faded religious order heraldry. His most notable possessions are a fine spatha style sword, custom made with an slightly longer grip, and stiffer, more tapered point for thrusting. And his mule, [i]Zapas[/i].
[hr]
[h3][b]Background:[/b][/h3]
[b]Role[/b]: Swordmaster/Shield-bearer
[b]Backstory[/b]:
[hider]Leofric, was only six when he was recruited by the [i]Eruheronosetsy pri Ordynskaya Storozha[/i], The Holy Militant Order of the Horde Watch, which for generations had guarded the main pass through the great Rzhagomir Mountains against the orcish hordes. Hundreds of years protecting Jugkrai, only to be stabbed in the backs by the very people they’d been sworn to protect.

The men that took Leofric in were the grizzled survivors of that losing battle, passing through Eahamingas on their pilgrimage south, seeking the benediction of the Sidfir before embarking on their great vision to redeem themselves and their order, and reclaim their holy citadel.

He was raised among these men. On their stories of the desperate fighting in the passes and in the unfamiliar snows. Training with them, as they travelled the land, recruiting, preparing, talking always of the great journey north.

Leofric grew strong among them. Trained as a shield-bearer - a squire - to the knights of noble men the Order took on. The Order taught him many things. He learned to speak northern jugkaraian, until his own native tongue began to feel clumsy and unfamiliar on his lips. He learned how to make camps, how to be a shield-bearer - but most of all he learned that if any of them were to survive they would have to train to fight. He learned and trained, until the mother and father and sister he’d left behind faded into distant dreams and he could no longer recall their faces or names.

Leofric was no knight, but he took to the blade. He trained like his life depended upon it. Trained whenever he could. The knights, who had honed their skills now with some of the finest warriors the world over found it amusing at first, then interesting - then useful. They tested each other constantly, honed their skills together until none could best him with a blade. As a young shieldbearer not yet come into his prime, already he was acknowledged as an emerging master of the sword and frequently began to train both knights and squires.

And then the day came when it was announced they would be returning to Junkai - for Leorfric, the first time, but he was confident. They all were.

Leofric won great renown for his surpassing skill with a blade as a squire in Jugkrai, both an instructor and fighting as a squire in many battles against both orcs and the Northern Jugkrai army. Unfortunately, mostly on the losing side.

Twenty years of fighting, and Leofric, son of Aelwin is done with Jugkrai and its wars, the [i]Ordynskaya Storozha[/i] he joined is dead and gone, he’s done with dreams of knighthood, done with the other Eruheronosetsy orders, done with civil war and everything else around it. 

He left Eahamingas a boy, with dreams of becoming a great swordsman and left Jugkrai, a bitter and jaded master of the blade after so many years with little ambition left save to continue perfecting the craft he'd taken up in youth - in truth more now from habit and stubborness than any real drive. Crossing half the world, through many trials, he returned to Eahamingas chasing work; a caravan guard while travelling, a deckhand at sea, he'd thought he might retire to teaching young nobles his craft, perhaps finding kindred spirits to follow in his footsteps but quickly found he had no stomach for youthful nobles. Eventually he sought out the half-remembered life and family he'd left behind, only to find them passed with barely a remembrance of the son that might have carried on their line.

Eventually, Leofric found once again as a squire for an aging knight-errant on some quest or another, while Leofric confronts the trajectory of his life.[/hider]


[b]Character Intro[/b]:
[hider]Leoka squinted into the golden sunlight that pierced his eyes from just above the treeline as he scanned the fallow field that stretched before him, searching for something, anything familiar. He glanced back over his shoulder down the narrow, muddly lane that wound its way down towards the village off in the distance, comparing the track against half recollected memories and dreams.

“Are you lost stranger?”

Leoka turned abruptly enough the weathered, middle aged man standing a distance away took  a step back and gripped his pitchfork tighter. The man’s weathered faced regarded him with wary eyes beneath a brow etched with sweat as he planted the haft of his pitchfork in the earth. Leoka’s blue eyes searched the face and features as they’d searched the fields, but there was nothing familiar there either. “I lived here.” He was painfully aware of the thick Jugkrian accent that afflicted what was once his native tongue as he turned back again, searching one last time against the treeline for some trace of the daub and thatch hut he imagined from his youth. “Somewhere.”

The man’s face scrunched in disbelief though his shoulders relaxed and he leaned on his pitchfork, seeming less wary and more amused. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here. I sure don’t recognize you.”

“I was here all the same. My name is Leofric, son of Aelwin.” Leoka waved his hand, vaguely toward the field and back towards the village. “The homestead was here. I remember this. This lane, to the village. It was here.”

“Aye, Aelwin lived here…” The man’s face shifted, the disbelief given way to now searching Leoka’s face for something familiar, struggling to do so. He seemed to give up on the attempt pointing instead towards the distant treeline. “Over there.”

Leoka studied the treeline, the ground of it, trying to fit the fallow field and trees to his memory.

“Aelwin died, about ten years back.  Not long after his wife passed if I recall. I don’t know I ever met a son…”

Leoka stood still a moment, and only nodded. He glanced back towards the village. “There was a daughter too. She was my sister…” He tried to remember the name, the face, but somehow it was lost to time. He’d known it once. As familiar as breathing but somehow, somewhere along the line it’d been lost. It hadn’t seemed important then, and now it was gone.

The man took a moment before responding. His previous standoffishness evaporated as something in Leoka’s bearing told him this man was exactly what he seemed. “The lord said she sold the sharecrop back after he passed, and left soon after. Not sure anyone did hear from her. You might ask at the manor house.”

Leoka said nothing, and just inhaled, taking in the smell of wet hay and manure sensing some distant memory linked to the scent drifting just beyond his ken.

“There was a cousin too, I think. Next village over.” The man offered after a fashion then, not getting a response ventured further. “You got a place for the night, Leofric?”

Leoka sensed an offer there, but his hand went instinctively to the pouch on his belt, his thoughts turning to the road, to costs, to how far he could get - his other hand coming to rest on the pommel of his sword. “Aye, I’m well appointed enough. I’d just hoped old Aelwin might take comfort, knowing his son was alive and made something for himself.”

“I am sorry friend.”


“What reason is there to be sorry?” Leoka asked brisquely, turning the faded holy emblem on the back of his weathered cloak to the man, while giving a conciliatory waive of his hand that whatever ill he’d done was forgiven. “This too is Eruharion’s grand Design. Who are we to complain?”

The man said nothing then. A simple grunt of acknowledgement to The Maker.

“[i]Eruhu vamu spasi[/i], good man.” Leoka gave the reign of his mule a tug, and the beast lurched forward following the warrior off, down the road.

The old farmer stood there a time, leaning against his pitch-folk as he watched the holy warrior disappearing into the setting sun. Finally stood upright, took a breath and turned back to his fields, resolved to ask the elders in town whether any among them recalled as son of Aelwin who’d gone off to one of the holy orders.

There followed for a few days among the elders in the village discussions and recollections of the day fine knights and riders, their armors gleaming had come riding through town and that poor old Aelwin had sent his son away with them to become a man.

Not that any of it mattered. The man himself was long gone, and never did return.[/hider]