Nihonto,
Typhlosion, Male Swift and deliberate in action, Jovial in person.
Motivation: To carry out the will of his lord, Sakana.
Biography: Nihonto grew up in the tiny but ambitiously named "Grand Principality of Moravia". He was born and raised in the village of Echternach, and for his formative years never ventured more than five or six miles from home. With an impoverished family, who were scarcely able to squeeze a surviving crop out of the unforgiving earth, he learned early on that he would have to earn his keep. After his first evolution, certain... doors opened to him; he found money in places that he is now ashamed to confess.
It was during this time that he met Sakana - then an ambitious Buizel, whose constant fervor convinced him to join the local levy. It was an outfit of no more than a hundred and fifty souls. They signed on together and got put in the batallion - the odds of that were fairly good, there were only three. Each received a spear and a single piece of gold, and were started immediately on their drills. And it continued like this for some time, as Nihonto took home a few precious silver every day and slowly learned to fight.
Eventually, the Grand Principality went to war, joined by a loose coalition of kingdoms that bordered this bend of the Rhine. Their united enemy: The army of Moere. It was with great fear that Nihonto finally accompanied his levy to war; they joined up with the Grand Prince's army and marched under his command; just one in a meager and unruly horde of three thousand men. In due time, the army was destroyed at the battle of Langsur - a last stand for the coalition. Nihonto's own home of Echternach had been burned to the ground during the campaign, and though there was no word of his family, he could only assume nothing remained for him there.
And, for once, the Moere army simply abandoned the territory that they had conquered. The prince was dead, the coalition had been destroyed, and most of the region's wealthiest cities had been burned to the ground.
Sakana, always more spirited than he, rallied the survivors and what stragglers he could find; they know one thing and that was war. So they would continue. They would strike out into the wasteland that had become of their home and carve out a piece of it for themselves. Others had the same idea - for a time the region devolved into bloody civil war and nobody could ever quite remember where the old borders had laid. But by the time it was done, Sakana and his band had secured their dominance over small region that was roughly composed bits and pieces of the old coalition's territories. And then, knowing their time at the top of the heap would only last as long as it took another warlord to rise, Sakana contacted King Veske by runner. The newly forged kingdom voluntarily capitulated to the Moere Empire, securing their own place in the world while offering the Empire a way to extend their control over the region.
As for his personal growth during this conflict, Nihonto learned to survive. He learned to kill. He was knighted when Sakana had secured his place in the world, and during this ceremony he was given an ancient sword that his men had taken from an old family's home during the turmoil...
Skills/Abilities: Excellent swordfighter and martial artist, rudimentary skill with fire magic.
Personal Effects: Nagina, an ancient and enchanted weapon that channels and amplifies his otherwise rather lackluster magic.
Other: He's extremely insecure about Nagina, and never lets the sword leave his sight. He talks to it, and sometimes he wonders if it's trying to answer...
