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Name: Finnen
Age: 20
Race: Reachman (Breton, if asked)
Class: Nightblade
Birthsign: The Shadow
Appearance: Most Reachmen from the Northeastern Reach share more in common with the interbreeding of Elf and Breton. Tall and lithe, fair of hair, faint points on the ear and angular faces belong to this arm of Reachman culture. Finnen is no exception to these rules, except he finds himself at an unimposing 5’8”. He stays completely shaven but is able to grow a beard. Slightly effeminate features, lithe but muscled, no excess mass to slow him. Milky blonde hair of an altmer kept in a simple bun, blue eyes of the man-races.
Equipment: Green traveling cloak, leather breastplate, pauldrons and leg plates. Worn leather boots, black leggings, white blouse shirt. Steel dagger on hip, steel dagger on the small of his back, small push dagger in boot.
Talents:
Rogue’s Do It Dirty: Being a nightblade, Finnen is a talented assassin, able to walk away from a knife-fight in close-quarters with another man’s blood on his shirt. He is a crafty fighter, major arteries and the groin are always his targets and he is apt to polish his blade with poison.
Are you a boy or a girl?: Looking like a ponce has actually benefitted Finnen in his life as a nightblade and he can go from a boy too young to shave, a hairy-cheeked man or a woman- though, that was always a dangerous business and is always reserved for targets that just can’t be taken any way else.
A Shadow Among Shadows: Due to his skills as a nightblade, he has learned how to climb and scale buildings and walls to get to those where less tact and more knife is needed. He is exceptional at sneaking and getting into hard-to-reach places.
Spells: Conjuration
-Reanimate Corpse, every Reachman has some skill in Necromancy.
-Bound Dagger, the weapon never seen is the deadliest.
Mysticism:
-Detect Pulse, he needs to know who’s on the other side of those walls.
Restoration: Healing, he likes his blood to stay in his insides.
Healing Hands, No one wants to die alone, but everyone wants a friend to make sure they don’t die at all.
Destruction: Burning Touch, He likes to stay in close, a target far away is a lot of coins lost.
Cold Touch
Curse of Weakness, They can’t run from him if they don’t have the energy to.
Weaknesses:
Knife Fighter: He is not a swordsman, he is not a knight, he is not a strong man. Play to his strengths and you will not be disappointed. Make him into something he can’t be and you’ll be short a man.
I’m not a misanthrope, I hate everyone equally: He hates most of the men-races by default and is apt to distrust them due to the injustices done to his people in the past. He hates mer for the dirty looks they have given him for simply having different blood. Don’t expect him to play well.
Anti-Social: He holds his words close and one may never know him no matter how many words pass between them. He is quiet, sometimes sharp to be left alone and can be a team player if given an incentive. Can be.
Milk of the Poppy, Essence of the Moonsugar: Finnen has a taste for the drugs and vices of Tamriel and when he is not looking to put his knife between ribs he is looking to put himself under intoxication.
Personality (optional): Finnen holds himself close. He is quiet and looks as delicate as his features, but he is sharp with it. He knows his strengths and will play them for his own gain. He seems distant at most times and whether his mind is clouded by the drugs or some memory of something, few will ever know. He doesn't like to be told to do something, but will have no problem doing something he thinks will do him some good. That very thing might also do the group good. He is an unapologetic, manipulative, dangerous individual with a temper as long as his memory. Everyone gets theirs sooner or later, just make sure you're not in the list.
Background: Finnen was born in the Northeastern Reach to the Crow-Wife clan of the Reachmen. From a young age he was taught the traditional talents of his people. Alchemy, hedge magicks and how to wield a weapon. He was exceptional at these skills and showed much promise through hard hours of work. It was drilled into his mind that many people will kill him simply because of who he is, so he might as well learn how to kill them for it. And he did. But his skills wouldn’t help against the dragon that burned his village and his family on that fateful night, too quiet before the loud beating of big wings. He was the first to see it and the only one to see it go.
He wandered ever after until he was found by men too rough to be called family but too tight to be called strangers. He ran with them for a while, robbing the road-travelers and hiding in caves and ruins. He honed his talents even more, able to practice what his father and mother taught him. His touch became ice or fire and the only mercy his fingers gave was that of a sleeping death. He lived with the bandits for many days, earning himself a name among them and earning the favor of their leader. They treated him well enough under their leader but every group has a pecking order. Finnen was not one to let himself be pecked to death and so struggled to stay as high as he could to at least be left alone to stay out of the way of the others.
It was only until the leader of their band was overthrown in a coup and he was thrown away after what they did to him. He wandered to the nearest town and took refuge in an inn, where he learned the skills of the women-of-the-night, how to walk, how to dress, dyes for the hair, learning how to concoct potions that would effect a person’s openness to suggestion or cloud the mind, or to create sensations bordering on ecstasy. It was also with this alchemical knowledge he began to make poisons. When his former bandit associates stopped by their town and made red slaughter of every man from fifteen to fifty and even cleaved a few wenches through, some being his friends, he clenched his teeth and made to intervene immediately. Something held him back, fear, maybe. But that something told him to play the long game. And so it began.
It was three years. Three years of asking every roadside innkeeper, every traveler, following every sign of bandit activity and he picked them off one by one, developing and experimenting with new ways to lure in his prey. Clothes with poorer fabrics in a style of a pauper, clothes with richer fabrics, a chin made of putty, a hat tucked low, a woman’s robes and a lilt in the voice, he used different techniques to kill each man. When he finally came to the man who had made him feel less than such on that night, who made him feel like the filth could never be scrubbed out, he took his time.
Small cuts here and there. He didn’t even know teeth cracked and shattered when a hot iron was pressed against them. It’s a very slow process in hammering nails through scalp and bone and he learned just how fragile men can be that one tiny piece of steel could make them lose something that made them human. Make them laugh one moment, cry the next or just go blank and start drooling. Flesh and blood, that’s all men are. Give Finnen a quiet moment, a dark room, bedchambers and he’ll show you. You won’t even remember your trespass, but he will.
The rumors of his deeds in the years following reached the ears of important men in High Rock and Skyrim and he managed to earn himself a pretty penny for spilling men’s blood. Flipping form one lord to another, serving one man then the next. High Rock had become a very opportunity-filled place after the Empire started to crumble into dust. Emperors come and go, so do Empires. He would let them kill each other, even help some kill others, as long as he had coin and a bed to sleep in.
It wasn’t long until the Penitus Oculatus heard of him, and it was one part lawkeeping and one part job offering they gave him. An ultimatum: they kill him or he earns their coin. He obviously chose the latter. It would be a few months of service before Lyvander Sidonis became the scourge no one expected. The Mede Emperor declared it fit for Lyvander to die by cloak and dagger but every assassin sent after him was either seen again at his side or seen again as a corpse. Finnen liked neither of those and so he deserted his duties as the time for him to try his hand at killing Lyvander came. The Penitus Oculatus found him again, unsurprisingly, and offered another ultimatum: We will kill you or you will do your duty to the Empire.
He chose the latter.
He now finds himself attached to a group named Dragon’s Eye, forcefully signed on by order of the Penitus Oculatus, something he is still sore about.
