- Character Name: Joaquín Orozcoso Antar, the “Lost” Prince of Great House Antar and High Captain of the Blue Company; goes under the assumed name "Echbert"
- Age: Thirty
- Appearance: Joaquín stands at an unassuming five feet and ten inches, with broad shoulders and well-developed musculature. The son of the illicit union between Godofredo XI and a Veronian whore, Joaquín thus bears the features of those two nations---bronze skin, dark eyes, and wavy hair of deep brown, with the angularity and aquiline nose of his father framed by a thick beard.
- Personality: Joaquín is an ambiguous man. With his men he can be warm and even bawdy---yet he has proven his coldness and striking cruelty on a number of occasions. He demands the best out of his men and commands their respect, but despite his occasional conviviality he is a man who few can claim to truly know intimately. He keeps himself aloof.
- Talents
- Martial Prowess: Joaquín has proven himself a more than able warrior, and demonstrated his aptitude particularly with blades and partisans. A leader of a band of mercenaries, he has likewise demonstrated his knowledge of battlefield tactics and is well-known as a highly strategic mind.
- Learned: Having been born a prince of House Antar, Joaquín was well-educated, showing particular interest in history, poetry, and the furtive art of alchemy. He was not, however, knowledgeable in mathematics or natural philosophy. And while it has been many years since his abduction from his former life, he has endeavored, as best as he can, to continue his education with what few manuscripts he can acquire. While piddling next to a great mind such as his brother Aquilino or a Brother of Weisheit, compared to the men with whom he deals and the common folk of Orlandis he is well schooled.
- Amateur Hurdy-gurdy Player: Joaquín is an amateur player of the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument which he looted from a small hamlet while collecting taxes for a local lord. Curious about the instrument, he has dabbled in learning it, though he could use some practice.
- Falconer: A remnant of his years as a prince of Antar, Joaquín remains a disciple of the art of falconry, the greatest pleasure of his youth.
- Traits: Mighty Warrior, Amateur Scholar, Legitimized Bastard, Honest, Aggressive Leader, Quick, Vow of Chastity
- Flaws: Cruel, Cold, Just to a Fault, Alcoholic
- Friends & Rivals: WIP
Background Joaquín began his life a prince of the Great House Antar of the Merchant-Kingdom of Voltaani. He was the third legitimized bastard of the late King Godofredo XI, known for his illicit liaisons with whores and his hedonistic lifestyle. Born of a Veronian whore in a bordello in Léonez, Godofredo kept the boy because he had a “strong” look about him, much to the dismay of his wife, Aixa, who had borne the shame of one bastard already. But he was accepted into court and was well liked by his half-siblings---they said he had a “big-head”, and loved to play with him even after he was no longer an infant. He looked so like Godofredo that the Queen Mother, who at that time was already suffering from dementia, thought that she was a young woman again, her breasts swelling with milk. Efraín also took a liking to the child, and when he was eight he took Joaquín on his first falconry trip. It was falconry, it seems, that would be Joaquín’s undoing. He fell in love with the sport, and begged his brother to take him out as often as he could bear. Eventually, his sisters succumbed to the temptation, and the three of them were often seen on Efraín’s heels. But none loved it as Joaquín did. His mind was filled with it always---he dreamt of it, he thought of it as he sat on the privy, he thought of it during his lessons, it was all he talked about. One morning, when he did not have lessons, he begged his brother Efraín to take him out, but he refused, for he had drunk too much the previous night. Thus, Joaquín asked Raúl, the castellan, in his stead. It was a cloudy, dark morning, and the scent of rain was in the air---but Joaquín was not disturbed, and they pressed on, up the coast to the east of Léonez. They had not been out two hours before they had their first quarry. As Ser Raúl bent to retrieve it, a quarrel entered his neck, followed by another to his side. Joaquín drew his sword, trembling, when out of the mists emerged tall, bearded men. They were slavers.
He was on the old side for a catamite, at least for Magister Yunaga’s taste, but he sent the slavers away with a purse of silver and a pound of cocoa beans for the boy. Joaquín had been sold to Magister Yunaga of Nevra---and it was this man who would teach him of the cruelty of the world. Yunaga was unaware that the boy was a prince of Antar until long after his purchase ( the slavers could’ve obtained a higher price had they had told him)---and fearing a reprisal by the Voltaani, he kept the boy close. Joaquín was getting on in years, and thus he had to be well used before he was of age. Joaquín, however, was no mere catamite---and Yunaga was no mere pederast. Even in Nevra, a loose city, the Magister was openly scorned and reviled---but he was rich, and, it seemed, that was all that mattered. He forced Joaquín to act out his bizarre sexual perversions---to lay with other boys and girls, to flog them and to be flogged himself, to eat their hair, to bite and be bitten, and many other horrors which will not be named here. He remained in bondage for three years. Yunaga told him that he loved him, kissed him on the lips, and informed him in a calm voice that after the new year he would be gelding him. On the evening of the New Year’s Fête, when Yunaga was in his cups and the guests of the household had passed out for the night, Joaquín woke his master, gouged out his eyes, clove his limbs off, and, for the coup de grâce, cut off his manhood and stuffed it in his mouth, leaving him to die. He burned the manor to the ground, and in the chaos that ensued, stowed away on a ship, bound for where he knew not.
(
Also, to clarify: the above is making no assumptions or generalizations of ANY kind about homosexuals; Yunaga was a twisted man and that had nothing to do with his sexual orientation, before anyone pounces on this. Also this next part is kind of poorly written, but you’ll get the picture. Sorry!)
It turned out that the ship was bound for Orlandis, and the Kingdom of Euritia. For a time he considered the possibility of returning to his family in Voltaani---yet that life, that life he had lived as a prince, felt as distant and alien as the stars. Inside, he thought, he had irrevocably changed; there was no going back, no returning. The prince who he was had died in the first conflagration of his baptism by fire and would not rise again from those cinders. Thus, he renounced that name given to him by his lord father, and elected a new one which he had read in the sagas of the northfolk: “Echbert”. He did not remember who this Echbert was, or what he had done, only the name. It was with this name that he enlisted in a mercenary corps, named The Blue Company. For a time he was so weak that he could barely pick up a sword---but he soon fell into the old rhythms that Ser Raúl had inculcated into his muscle memory: lunge, shield, parry, thrust, shield, parry, thrust...The captains of the company did not pry into his past, nor did his fellows. For a time, he was only a sword. He killed his second man, and then his third, and then lost count.
It was in his fellows, however, that he re-discovered living. A difficult man to befriend, Joaquín, but those who endeavored to do so were richly rewarded. In time he remembered other sensations; his time in Magister Yunaga’s manor became more and more distant rather than an incessant burning in his mind; and he grew, at least somewhat, out of his coldness. Meanwhile, he rose in the ranks of the Blue Company, and made connections in high places. It was some time afterwards, following the unfortunate outcome of High Captain Jan’s duel with a local lord, that Joaquín, or rather Echbert, was elected High Captain of the Company. To this day he remains in that office, and while the Company has always been small, Joaquín has kept it together while expanding recruitment. He plans on one day building the Company a fortress-headquarters.
Other Information: WIP
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