Praise the Unity: You are a Gen 1 Super Mutant made in the pits of Mariposa. You get an additional +2 to your Strength and Endurance and are immune to the effects of radiation. Unfortunately, you gain a +1 in DC in all interactions that involve humans and human NPCs are more likely to act negatively towards you. Seriously, dude, look at your skin, look at your lips!
A cursory assessment of Hog would not place him that far away from your average Super Mutant. With his bark-like voice and inhuman looks, one would perhaps not be blamed for thinking him not privy to the intricacies of civilized behavior at first glance. However, appearances can be deceiving, as Hog himself is all too aware and cautious about – as a result, he is deliberately and visibly gentle and kind, a behavior nurtured to find acceptance in the communities of the Wastes. Should he consider you an agreeable party, first contact with him is usually hospitable and improvised in ways that would prove him useful and harmless. The back and shoulders are hunched, the movement slowed. Words are chosen to imply softness of soul. Token amounts of necessities are offered. A look is offered into faulty machinery. All the evidence is presented for the onlooker to believe that hostility is not necessary.
However, beneath the facade of gentleness and simplicity, Hog is an educated, opinionated and jaded creature, although this quality seems to have manifested itself as distance rather than resentment or cruelty in his behavior. More than a hundred and fifty years roaming the lands has weathered the mutant in flesh and soul alike and as such, he has come to view humans as too hedonistic and short-sighted to produce anything but misery for themselves, not unlike animals – pets, in his words. Nonetheless, not being able to content himself with solitude has led him to seek communities in which he can belong and perhaps provide some degree of reason and stability, while keeping enough distance to shield him emotionally from what he thinks will be their inevitable and sad demise.
Should one somehow form a closer bond with him, Hog tends to drop pretensions of the gentle giant, save for the token offerings, and provide instead a steadfast if occasionally witty companion who is willing to fight and hurt for his convictions. Despite an appearance that would imply very much otherwise, Hog can be surprisingly sensitive on an emotional level when with those he feels an affinity towards. When hurt, the monstrous part of his Super Mutant nature shows itself the strongest as he tends to react violently and vindictively in such situations. More than one community has met its end at the hands of Hog for having wronged the wrong pet.
Background
Mariposa. That is the first thing Hog remembers. In the dim corridors of the military base was where he was first shaped and given purpose. To fight in the name of Master, of Unity. Armed with weaponry scavenged from the stocks of the compound, he like countless others was set out into the world to find souls worthy of ascending their humanity. He remembers his training with the gun, his yet virgin skin being first touched by the scorching sun, his forays against weak and strong men. He remembers when an armor-piercing round from his gun first pierced the softer abdomen plating of a Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel and spilled the man’s blood and guts and hydraulic fluid all over the desert, the red-black concoction sizzling and smoking as it heated up on the hot sands. He is not proud of those days, but they too were his days nonetheless.
He was not there for the death of the Lieutenant or the Master, he and his cohort having journeyed too far in their quest to provide specimens for their growing army. He remembers the news hitting them hard, too hard. A couple of them sitting dumb and unable to process the possibility, their squad leader weeping and sounding like a dozen animals being butchered – the first time he heard one of his kin cry. He remembers realizing there that not all they had been taught was true. Contention brewing in their hearts from then on. Suspicion. Selfishness. His squad dissolves bit by bit. A deserter there, one executed there. He decides to take the former route, suspecting that otherwise he will end up in the latter. He remembers taking the gun. It has stayed with him since.
He wandered the Wastes from then on, deciding to avoid most company after getting shot at during approach the third time. Making little sense of the world around him, he sought knowledge, seeking insight into the ways of man. He scoured markets, libraries, teaching himself how things worked. Machines, the men that made the machines, the men that made the men. After some years, with new understanding, he sought more nuanced ways of contact, such as rigging up a large picket sign on which he painted “I COME IN PEACE”. It was a slight improvement. Cautious contact with wandering parties eventually led to trade, and gradually, some semblance of acceptance. When he saved a trading caravan from a bighorner stampede via a generous administering of canister shot, their relationship even turned into one of gratitude.
Not long afterwards he was employed. It was with this caravan that he learned firsthand how men behaved. Their likes, dislikes. Their humor. Although a strange and barely tolerated sight in many communities, proper application of his expanding knowledge of human society slowly built a niche for him. As a force multiplier of his own, he provided a means for his caravan master to expend less on security, a fact which he quickly realized and used to increase his pay. As his financial position improved, he even went after certain luxuries to elevate his status. A hat. A pistol. A holster. An overcoat. It reached a point where whores in more destitute communities began hitting on him, which once caused such outrage that the town militia nearly run them out of town. Slowly and surely he made a name for himself in the Klamath-Oregon circuit.
Good times, he learned, were not everlasting. His first employer was killed in an ambush by the Jackals. While they paid dearly for it, a despondent Hog was still left aimless and took to drifting between towns until he was befriended by an innkeeper, though in a few years he too was killed in an altercation. Hog decided to stay around the inn nonetheless, for the sake of his late friend’s daughter and her wellbeing, though she would be consumed by her own vices. Outlasting his companions became a pattern and after some decades Hog grew tired of it, retreating to the wilderness of Idaho. Years spent in quietude taught him many valuable lessons, the most important being that despite his best attempts, he was still a social creature. Having grown tired of dog keeping, he wandered south once more, to a changed landscape. A world reconnecting, regrowing. Pretensions of statehood, civilization.
This time around, Hog decided to bond with communities, not singular people, reckoning them less likely to meet a sudden end. His skills made him useful to whichever community that would accept him, and he found that while his considerations regarding communities seemed to be correct, they were far more likely to fall victim to change. Sometimes for the better, often for the worse. Hysteria. Vice. Greed. More than once did he find a people worthy of cooperation to be worthy of reprimand, or worse. He came to tolerate this fact, gradually, but never did find his peace with it, becoming a drifter between communities, relying on the faults of memory to wash away the unsavory details of a place when in another. This went on for a while, although at some point, he found himself tired even with the land itself. The plains. The vastness of it all. Perhaps it was this that drove him to Hawaii. Perhaps it was a desire to begin again. Whatever the reason may be, he is on his way. Woe betide any who’d dare to stop him.
Equipment
The single most distinctive piece of equipment that Hog carries with him is what he simply calls the gun, a single shot, sliding breech anti-materiel rifle repurposed from an M61 Vulcan barrel. He does not know whether it was a pre-war invention or something come up with by the smiths of the Master’s army, but it has proved its worth by having served reliably over the course of Hog’s long and storied life. The years have taken its toll on the gun – its rifling is all but gone thanks to a lack of suitable ammunition driving Hog to build or commission reloaded, handmade cartridges, and more than a hundred years against the elements has nicked it in many a spot. Even though it no longer boasts its former range, the gun still functions as smoothly as the day when Hog first laid hands on it and is certainly his most prized possession.
Besides that, he carries a Ruger .44 Magnum revolver in a cross-draw holster, although this is mostly a status symbol, as he usually resorts to his “power fist” when unable to wield his 20mm – a massive brass knuckle on whose business end is written the word “POWER” in large, faded letters. Besides those, a suspended tool belt, and the clothes on his back –specifically chosen to both be comfortable, durable, and respectable– he carries a large rucksack filled with supplies, tools for his repair work, a heavy-duty multitool, and some miscellaneous trinkets.
A cursory assessment of Hog would not place him that far away from your average Super Mutant. With his bark-like voice and inhuman looks, one would perhaps not be blamed for thinking him not privy to the intricacies of civilized behavior at first glance. However, appearances can be deceiving, as Hog himself is all too aware and cautious about – as a result, he is deliberately and visibly gentle and kind, a behavior nurtured to find acceptance in the communities of the Wastes. Should he consider you an agreeable party, first contact with him is usually hospitable and improvised in ways that would prove him useful and harmless. The back and shoulders are hunched, the movement slowed. Words are chosen to imply softness of soul. Token amounts of necessities are offered. A look is offered into faulty machinery. All the evidence is presented for the onlooker to believe that hostility is not necessary.
However, beneath the facade of gentleness and simplicity, Hog is an educated, opinionated and jaded creature, although this quality seems to have manifested itself as distance rather than resentment or cruelty in his behavior. More than a hundred and fifty years roaming the lands has weathered the mutant in flesh and soul alike and as such, he has come to view humans as too hedonistic and short-sighted to produce anything but misery for themselves, not unlike animals – pets, in his words. Nonetheless, not being able to content himself with solitude has led him to seek communities in which he can belong and perhaps provide some degree of reason and stability, while keeping enough distance to shield him emotionally from what he thinks will be their inevitable and sad demise.
Should one somehow form a closer bond with him, Hog tends to drop pretensions of the gentle giant, save for the token offerings, and provide instead a steadfast if occasionally witty companion who is willing to fight and hurt for his convictions. Despite an appearance that would imply very much otherwise, Hog can be surprisingly sensitive on an emotional level when with those he feels an affinity towards. When hurt, the monstrous part of his Super Mutant nature shows itself the strongest as he tends to react violently and vindictively in such situations. More than one community has met its end at the hands of Hog for having wronged the wrong pet.
Background
Mariposa. That is the first thing Hog remembers. In the dim corridors of the military base was where he was first shaped and given purpose. To fight in the name of Master, of Unity. Armed with weaponry scavenged from the stocks of the compound, he like countless others was set out into the world to find souls worthy of ascending their humanity. He remembers his training with the gun, his yet virgin skin being first touched by the scorching sun, his forays against weak and strong men. He remembers when an armor-piercing round from his gun first pierced the softer abdomen plating of a Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel and spilled the man’s blood and guts and hydraulic fluid all over the the desert and the the red-black concoction sizzling and smoking as it heated up on the hot sands. He is not proud of those days, but they too were his days nonetheless.
He was not there for the death of the Lieutenant or the Master, he and his cohort having journeyed too far in their quest to provide specimens for their growing army. He remembers the news hitting them hard, too hard. A couple of them sitting dumb and unable to process the possibility, their squad leader weeping and sounding like a dozen animals being butchered – the first time he heard one of his kin cry. He remembers realizing there that not all they had been taught was true. Contention brewing in their hearts from then on. Suspicion. Selfishness. His squad dissolves bit by bit. A deserter there, one executed there. He decides to take the former route, suspecting that otherwise he will end up in the latter. He remembers taking the gun. It has stayed with him since.
He wandered the Wastes from then on, deciding to avoid most company after getting shot at during approach the third time. Making little sense of the world around him, he sought knowledge, seeking insight into the ways of man. He scoured markets, libraries, teaching himself how things worked. Machines, the men that made the machines, the men that made the men. After some years, with new understanding, he sought more nuanced ways of contact, such as rigging up a large picket sign on which he painted “I COME IN PEACE”. It was a slight improvement. Cautious contact with wandering parties eventually led to trade, and gradually, some semblance of acceptance. When he saved a trading caravan from a bighorner stampede via a generous administering of canister shot, their relationship even turned into one of gratitude.
Not long afterwards he was employed. It was with this caravan that he learned firsthand how men behaved. Their likes, dislikes. Their humor. Although a strange and barely tolerated sight in many communities, proper application of his expanding knowledge of human society slowly built a niche for him. As a force multiplier of his own, he provided a means for his caravan master to expend less on security, a fact which he quickly realized and used to increase his pay. As his financial position improved, he even went after certain luxuries to elevate his status. A hat. A pistol. A holster. An overcoat. It reached a point where whores in more destitute communities began hitting on him, which once caused such outrage that the town militia nearly run them out of town. Slowly and surely he made a name for himself in the Klamath-Oregon circuit.
Good times, he learned, were not everlasting. His first employer was killed in an ambush by the Jackals. While they paid dearly for it, a despondent Hog was still left aimless and took to drifting between towns until he was befriended by an innkeeper, though in a few years he too was killed in an altercation. Hog decided to stay around the inn nonetheless, for the sake of his late friend’s daughter and her wellbeing, though she would be consumed by her own vices. Outlasting his companions became a pattern and after some decades Hog grew tired of it, retreating to the wilderness of Idaho. Years spent in quietude taught him many valuable lessons, the most important being that despite his best attempts, he was still a social creature. Having grown tired of dog keeping, he wandered south once more, to a changed landscape. A world reconnecting, regrowing. Pretensions of statehood, civilization.
This time around, Hog decided to bond with communities, not singular people, reckoning them less likely to meet a sudden end. His skills made him useful to whichever community that would accept him, and he found that while his considerations regarding communities seemed to be correct, they were far more likely to fall victim to change. Sometimes for the better, often for the worse. Hysteria. Vice. Greed. More than once did he find a people worthy of cooperation to be worthy of reprimand, or worse. He came to tolerate this fact, gradually, but never did find his peace with it, becoming a drifter between communities, relying on the faults of memory to wash away the unsavory details of a place when in another. This went on for a while, although at some point, he found himself tired even with the land itself. The plains. The vastness of it all. Perhaps it was this that drove him to Hawaii. Perhaps it was a desire to begin again. Whatever the reason may be, he is on his way. Woe betide any who’d dare to stop him.
Equipment
The single most distinctive piece of equipment that Hog carries with him is what he simply calls the gun, a single shot, sliding breech anti-materiel rifle repurposed from an M61 Vulcan barrel. He does not know whether it was a pre-war invention or something come up with by the smiths of the Master’s army, but it has proved its worth by having served reliably over the course of Hog’s long and storied life. The years have taken its toll on the gun – its rifling is all but gone thanks to a lack of suitable ammunition driving Hog to build or commission reloaded, handmade cartridges, and more than a hundred years against the elements has nicked it in many a spot. Even though it no longer boasts its former range, the gun still functions as smoothly as the day when Hog first laid hands on it and is certainly his most prized possession.
Besides that, he carries a Ruger .44 Magnum revolver in a cross-draw holster, although this is mostly a status symbol, as he usually resorts to his “power fist” when unable to wield his 20mm – a massive brass knuckle on whose business end is written the word “POWER” in large, faded letters. Besides those, a bandolier, and the clothes on his back –specifically chosen to both be comfortable, durable, and respectable– he carries a large rucksack filled with supplies, tools for his repair work, a heavy-duty multitool, and some miscellaneous trinkets.
Appearance: At a height of 5’11 and weighing around 160 pounds, Ted is of a rather inconspicuous physique; while his time in the military has forced him into shape, he is not an actively fit man by any means and maintains his physical health solely through a healthy diet and occasional visits to the local gym. His head does not stray far from the lean lines of his body. His face is gaunt, his cheeks sunken, his nose thin, his broad forehead kept out of sight only thanks to the messy tuft of hair shrouding his scalp like a black cloud or a bird’s nest. His brown eyes bulge out of his sunken eyelids, not unlike two wet billiard balls lodged in his face.
Profession: CIA Global Response Staff
Education: Alumnus of History, Georgetown University
Psych Eval/Personal Info: Born to a family of low-level bureaucrats in Maryland, Theodore Roosevelt Parkhurst had a fairly routine middle class upbringing, described by his teachers as one not necessarily asocial, but preferring to keep to himself. Thanks to his parents’ busy routine, most of his time out of school was either spent with his great-uncle Frederick, an eccentric antiquarian or playing video games. With his predilection for first-person shooters nurturing in him an affinity for all things military, and time spent with his great-uncle rubbing off on him, Ted decided early on in his life that joining the army as a way to support his dreams of college education would not be a bad idea and joined US Army not long after graduation from high school.
Theodore’s military career was rather uneventful. Applying for the position of a combat engineer (due to him thinking that the Hurt Locker was a good movie), he soon found out that the necessities of the job really appealed to him and took a shot at the Sapper Leader Course the moment he could. While considered to be a bit of a whiner, his vocal behavior was nonetheless compensated for by his quick wits and an aptitude for learning. Earning his Sapper Tab in 2015, he was due for deployment in Afghanistan after attending a live-fire exercise near Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
But that’s where things went awry.
Four dead, three wounded. Papers would blame it on improper equipment usage; court-martial would find at fault a neglected detonator. Theodore was (and is) fairly sure that it was otherwise. He remembers their charges cracking a hole in the ground itself; he remembers the change in demeanor over radio chatter. Confusion. Silence. Ropes brought, carabiners readied. A descent into darkness. And in the darkness, amongst the flashlights, a discovery. A bipedal body, curled up in the darkness, skeletal, fossilized. He remembers an onlooker joking about how they’d just found their own Ötzi. Someone joking about Dungeons and Dragons. Flashes from cameras. The oddities of the fossil. He recalls it looking like one of those lightning-spewing creatures in Dark Souls at Sen’s Fortress, the ones that would push you down those narrow bridges.
He recalls it hissing at the top of its lungs and pouncing onto Staff Sergeant Guzman. Fangs bared, dripping. Screams. Gunfire. Another hiss, something cracking in the air like a whip, a limb flying by. A spattering of fluids, black one moment and bright red the next with every muzzleflash. Powder burns on his face. Ears ringing. He recalls cursing and climbing out, his thighs wet, and he recalls stabbing a fuze into the block of C4 in his hand, and he recalls screaming down the pit for everyone to get out, and he recalls another burst of gunfire and he recalls silence and then a roar and then an explosion. He recalls waking up in a hospital with a bunch of pissed-off men and women waiting by his side. He was quick to memory-hole the less pleasant details of the incident. He was interrogated, over and over again, but managed to convince his interrogators (or at least, convince them that he would not be budging) that he did not recall much. For all he knew, he just got the hell out of dodge the moment things got fishy.
Involuntary discharge, honorable. A form of hush money, he thought, but it was not refused. He carried on with his life as best he could, but it was easier said than done. His desire to understand what really happened would lead him down a crooked path. He sought a degree in history to make him more efficient at understanding the world unknown, following the rabbit hole to articles on cryptozoology, from there anonymous image boards, from there, obscure forums populated by high-functioning nutcases. Meme magic, Kabbalah, UFOs, every conspiracy theory imaginable. Scouring for references to past understandings of the supernatural in academic scholarship. But in the end, neither did the internet offer anything, nor did academia. He had this messy understanding of a world beyond the veil, but said world was more likely dreamed by schizophrenics than actually observed. He felt like he needed to go back to the scene of the crime. Get his hands on something concrete.
He did not go unprepared. A potato cannon was built, with an impact-detonated ANFO warhead. It would not be enough. He procured an M1 Garand. A semi-auto Beretta shotgun, a .357 revolver, a surplus NVG setup. Out there in the woods, in his homemade Rambo kit, he must have looked like a living, breathing spoof of all operators everywhere, but this incursion would not last long. Little wonder; heroic as he may have been, he hadn’t exactly accounted for a six-man spec ops team seeking out exactly the same thing as he in the premises. Caught like a deer in the headlights, he was blackbagged and extradited to god knows where in a manner of minutes, and interrogated in a manner of hours. With little reason to lie this time, he just poured out on what happened, why he was there, and why he was armed like Timothy McVeigh Jr.
Next thing he knew, he was CIA or something. Son of a gun.
Bonds:
-Franklin Delano Parkhurst, father, 60. Hasn’t been seeing his son much lately, thinks Ted’s lost in the scholarly busywork, or one of his many odd-jobs to keep himself afloat.
-Maryanne Parkhurst, mother, 58. She’s always been a bit naggy, and doesn’t like that his son doesn’t come as visiting as much.
-Frederick Parkhurst, great-uncle, 73. A fellow Fortean, he gets along with Ted fairly well, although thinks that he may be caught up in something.
-Rachele Salemi, girlfriend, 29. Having met Ted on a psychoactive substance forum, she thinks he’s part of this worldwide conspiracy and is absolutely enamored by the thought.
Motivations:
-Desire to make sense of his past incident -Belief in duty, more reliant on aesthetics than principle -Compulsion to know
Fears:
-Loss of life and limb in a painful and/or ignominious way -Loss of cognition and/or sanity -Loss of personal integrity
-Talkative demeanor can grate others’ nerves in stressful situations -Twitchy -Herpetophobic
ADAPTATIONS: Violence: X Helplessness:
Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment: Clothing: Casual, perhaps a bit too casual. Tendency for colorful shirts and baggy fit pants. Weapons: Glock 19 in armpit holster, folding knife, taser. Besides that, whatever can be procured. Tools/Equipment: Sports bag full of operational supplies and plausibly deniable ingredients for makeshift explosives.
Operational Clothing/Equipment: Clothing: Whatever is required. Tendency for CBRN equipment. Will keep a gas mask and NVG handy. Weapons: Whatever is issued. Tendency towards explosives. Venerates the M32. Tools/Equipment: Sapper’s Kit, First Aid Kit, operational supplies.
Despite a plate of lapin grillé and a bottle of mulled wine waiting solely for his pleasure on the table that stood before him, Andel’s mood seemed to be in dire straits. Eating alone had never been his specialty, especially not in public settings. Raised as he was, meals were not solely for physical nourishment; they were rituals, with many participants, meant to reinforce one’s place in the social order, and in doing so, provide sustenance for the very soul. Sitting alone at this crooked table, he felt like a mockery, the butt of a joke prepared for him by his nemesis, his current lot in life. Where was Theriault, that foxy, silver-tongued bastard? Where was gallant Galar, ever stalwart, ever loyal? Sure, it was he who had dismissed them, but had they not accepted? How dare they?
He composed himself. Fair men at arms they may have been, but in the end, they were burghers, not privy to the privileges and obligations of nobility. He grasped his fork, a crude, two-pronged affair, and stabbed with it a piece of rabbit, tearing it from the plate and he threw it into his mouth and began chewing, hoping to busy himself from more thought in motion and sensation. He filled a goblet and drank and as he did so in his seat of solitude, around him the inn grew busier and busier, the clanking of plates and cutlery louder now; men coming, men going, men laughing together and patting each other’s backs and spilling their drinks, others growing frisky with scantily clad serving ladies of common birth, bad breath and hygiene forgotten in the wake of unabated lust for flesh and coin, even the lonelies greeted with recognizing smiles by the tenders. Bastards, the whole lot of them, he thought. Enjoying yourselves, hm? Damn you all to hell, then.
Then bolted up an old Dunmer and called his staff to his hand in mere moments, a sight straight from the tales that he’d listened as a wee boy, and rushed outwards with an anxious look on his face, suddenly pouring into the inn a miasma of foreboding. Andel in the moment was far too spiteful to appreciate the gravity of the situation as he normally would have, and figured whatever perdition that the fates had in store for them could very well come now. Then blew in an actual gust, snuffing out candle and laughter alike. Far too caught by surprise to appreciate the irony, Andel suddenly shifted in his seat to look at the windows, perhaps hoping to find some soul that he could persuade to shut them, yet there was naught but mist pouring in through the windows within his line of sight. Almost all sound had ceased, the customers were rightfully anxious, and soon a lumbering figure could be seen outside the window. With a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to finish his meal in ease, he skewered the largest piece of meat he could with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth, and after some chewing, grasped onto his overcoat and got up from his spot.
At that very moment, the figure outside broke in, a green mass of muscle and massive mammaries, her eyes a sizzling red. Well, damn, he thought to himself, then a young lad sprung forward with sword in hand to confront the creature. Such a chivalrous display! What was stopping him, then? Rush forward, Andel! But wait, she’s saying something! And, oh… Sweet Zenithar. Why’d he have to set the damn place on fire?
“Now, or never!” Spoke the gallant young lad, and Andel for a moment could do naught but provide the man with an awkward expression. Had he some sense, he would’ve asked just what the hell was going on, but such concern about earthly matters was beneath his station; he was meant to set an example, especially with that… Oh, she’s not half bad looking, next to him. “Yes indeed,” he asked, “but where to?”
It had been two days since his arrival in Anvil, and yet his flesh and joints ached with the reminders of the journey, the experience of sitting hunched in a poorly fitted wagon moving across a long unpaved road having almost shaken the meat off his bones during the creaky ride. The poorly lit room was tiny and bare of any furnishings and smelled of the sour sweat of its previous occupants despite the open windows, the summer warmth and the windless skies having joined forces to make the circumstances even more unpalatable. Stripped of his clothes save his shirt and breeches, he lay on the bed, at this point only able to hope to cool down for he had already attempted everything else. As he lay still, he scoured in himself the energy to at the very least get up and perhaps jot down his latest impressions in his long-neglected journal, yet there seemed none to be found.
In what felt like mere seconds he found himself dozing off and was suddenly jolted awake by a primordial sort of fear, his body mistaking sleep for death perhaps, and in the following few moments he inferred from the shadows of the buildings outside the window that he’d been asleep for a few hours. He was parched. He would have yearned for a glass of iced Aalto of Third Era vintage had he thought that he could find -or afford- one, but he knew it not to be the case, and thus he yearned for simpler things, a glass of cold well-water, a cutlet, maybe some tobacco. He wiped the dewy sweat off his brow and reached for his purse, emptying its contents onto the nightstand beside his bed. He set apart three Septims -why they were still called Septims he did not know, there hadn’t been a Septim Emperor on them for the last hundred years- of gold and twenty of silver. No, not twenty. Nineteen. He picked up the stray coin with his two fingers and held it up so it could be better seen by candlelight.
Runic inscriptions. Aldmeri, perhaps? A Dominion coin? No. Too geometric, too clean. Dwemer. Sweet Zenithar. Vvardenfell mintage, maybe? No. Not as sophisticated. Reach, most likely. Maybe Hammerfell. Ten gold Septims, at least.
A sense of elation took over him, a sudden jolt of energy, electricity running in his veins. He slid his legs off the bed, reaching to grab his stockings and putting them on with practiced alacrity and then came his boots, crude and heavy, but at the very least, somewhat comfortable. He stood up and began reaching across the room to gather the items of his clothing, and in a manner of moments he was all clothed again, save his overcoat, for the heat was already nigh unbearable. All that was left was his sword belt, and he was good to go. He looked at it, draped across the sole chair in the room upon which his two swords sat. It too was worn after a delay, tightly buckled, for otherwise it could not bear its burden. He reached for the door, then remembered that he’d forgotten his purse, and after filling it back with the coins spilled upon the nightstand, save the Dwemer one which went in his breast pocket, he put it in his satchel and left his room.
One cramped hallway, one creaky staircase and one door later, he was finally outside to bask in the middling glory of the city of Anvil. The last two hundred years had not been kind to the city and for one who knew where to look it showed, with most its houses ramshackle and shoddily built and lacking architectural cohesion, its roads all bent and labyrinthine and paved unevenly, and the city walls patchwork, bearing the damage of the Great War still. In a hundred years the chaos would become part of the city’s aesthetic and add to it rather than subtract, Andel thought; for now it was all too recent to be anything other than an eyesore. He began walking to the town square, not knowing where exactly the market district or the local Synod lay, and as he walked a feeling of foreboding walked with him, growing more and more palpable as he passed through shadowy alleyway after another. At some moments, in narrow streets where the roofs were so close together that the sun barely shone through, this feeling grew so intense that his hand instinctively reached for his sword, but before it found reason to be grounded in reality, he reached the bustling openness of the town square and the feeling was gone.
A few greetings and a few questions later, he knew where to go. An enchanter, by the name of Cassia, was in the hobby of buying such trinkets, enchanting them, and selling them at a higher price. Had he known the subtleties of magic, Andel could have called it unfair, but as he stood he had no right to complain. He walked towards the Old Town, where the wider streets and wholesome even if unmaintained houses made of white stone and crowned with red tiles made for a more pleasant experience. He thought of Cheydinhal and its lush greenery, its black spires and the quiet flow of the Corbolo, and a yearning stung his soul for thinking of it and he turned right as per the directions given to him and upon finding the house with a tiny Akaviri statue on its lawn, walked up to the door and knocked. To his surprise, the hefty wooden door opened itself. “Come on in,” someone shouted from inside, their voice muffled as if it were being heard through a wall. “Upstairs! In the study!”
Andel walked in and lightly shut the door behind him, puzzled by the state of affairs and the amount of Dwemer oil lamps that lit the house for all the curtains were kept shut. Curiosity kept his head on a swivel, his gaze scanning over whatever of interest that he could see, but courtesy kept him from changing his course. He walked upstairs and crossed the hallway, passing by a few paintings, the fossilized remains of what seemed to be an aquatic lifeform and the skeleton of a bipedal creature, not unlike a troll but not quite a troll’s size, and finally reached the study. Inside was a waifish woman, her gaze fixated on a circular object about the size of an orange, shaped not unlike a mirror save the fact that it was pure black as if made of ebony. Andel reckoned it to be rude to interrupt and gazed around the room, which reminded him more of a cabinet of curiosities than a study. Amongst the oddities he saw were fossils, molluscs, bezoars real and imagined, an egg the size of his head coated in gold, and gems, a whole lot of gems, and a mandrake root dressed in doll’s clothing, and a prismatic piece of amber in which a faint silhouette could be seen, and crystal balls, and tomes, and a small terrarium in which a centipede the size of a python kept writhing and writhing. The ebony mirror that the woman was looking into suddenly grew red hot and began melting, setting the table on which it stood afire, leading the woman to grabbing a wall rug and wildly smacking the budding fires before coming to a halt. She turned, her hair a mess, and smiled with a glint in her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting that. I’m Cassia. Cassia Carantha.”
Suddenly, Andel wasn’t sure if this was worth the ten pieces of gold.
“Sir Andel Indarys, at your service, madam.”
Her eyes grew wider with excitement.
“A nobleman! Oh, how wonderful. Prithee, what has brought you to my humble abode?” She asked, her sudden shift for the archaic no doubt inspired by his title.
“I, ahem, I was told that you have an interest in oddities of historical value, and being in possession of such an item, figured that you would have more use for it than I.”
She smiled. “Why, yes, it’s true. I suppose you can tell from the room. And the house. What is it that you have for me, Sir Aristocratus?”
He reached inside his breast pocket and picked out the coin and reached his arm out to show it to the woman. “A coin. A Dwemer coin, I reckon. The inscriptions aren’t that far off from what I’ve seen.”
She walked closer, her brows momentarily rising upon the utterance of the name of the long-lost tribe. Hunching forward and squinting to see the coin better, she shifted the angle of her head to take a look at differing angles, and eventually stood back up. “Dwemer indeed. How’d you come upon this, may I ask?”
“Found it in my coinpurse. I figure that someone passed it onto me as change without realizing its provenance.”
Cassia smiled. “Not the first time I’ve heard a story like that. Such is often the case with antiques and curiosities. See this, for instance,” she said, tapping the glass prison of the giant centipede, “You’d think it to be no more than an overgrown insect, but it’s actually a Daedra.”
Andel didn’t respond.
“Well, Daedric fauna, rather. They say they used to be quite common in the years following the Oblivion Crisis, but these days… Not so much. Bought it off a bunch of kids who kept in a jar. Can you believe it? It can breathe fire, you know! Could’ve burnt them to a crisp! Would you like to see it?”
“No. I mean, I’m not sure if I have the time. Got a very tight schedule today, you see.”
“Oh, oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She seemed genuinely upset by her lack of manners. “But, yes. A coin. What exactly it is that you want of it? An appraisal? A determination of its precise origins? Its previous owner? An enchantment? A disenchantment?”
“I simply wanted to sell it, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, certainly,” she said, even though Andel was sure he could sense some second-hand disappointment in her voice, “Let me take a closer look and I can give you a price estimate.” She took the coin off his hand, the care she took against her hand touching his dealing a slight blow to his confidence, and placed it on the table on which the black mirror had melted and then procured a device from underneath the table, a rather unwieldy microscope, under whose lens the coin was placed and then thoroughly examined. “Hm. Hmm. Mhm,” she murmured to herself as she rotated the plate on which the coin lay. “Skyrim mintage. Had it been from Vvardenfell, I’d have said it to be your lucky day; but still, not bad. What were you expecting for this, hm?”
“I’m aware that it’s no Vvardenfell sample, but it’s Dwemer silver nonetheless. And, as a plus, it’s in good condition. I was hoping for something around twenty pieces of gold, maybe?”
Cassia turned her head back at Andel, her gaze different, almost predatory, eyeing something to be auctioned. His gaze met hers.
“Fifteen. This isn’t the Imperial City. Maybe if it were Kagrenac on the obverse.”
“…It would appear that we have an agreement.”
Andel could not help but notice how quickly time must have passed in the short amount of time that he’d spent in the enchantress’ house. The setting motion of the sun was not unappreciated by the Dunmer, who’d found his molestation by the heat quite intolerable, and now, stronger gusts brought a welcome chill to his flesh. He took the scenic route, not wishing to treat himself once more to the horrors of the choked alleyways, taking in the sight of the sun bleeding purple into the sky and the sea. It had dimmed, closer to the color of an effervescent egg yolk. He stood awhile, his hands around his waist, feeling triumphant for having managed to find a way to extend his journey for yet another month without want of money. It was not without humiliation to find a victory in an event so trifle, but days in which it was an unfamiliar feeling were long gone.
As the sun drowned on the horizon, he made his way back to the Dancing Donkey, hoping to treat himself to a grilled rabbit.
Name: Andel Indarys II, Thorn Bearer Race: Dunmer Age: 32 Birthsign: The Lady Family Origins: Cheydinhal
Appearance: A portrait of Andel around his twentieth birthday
Andel betrays the fact that he’s of blue blood at first glance with his unblemished and fair skin, closer to a faded purple than the usual ashen hues of his fellow Dunmer. His facial features are more gaunt than meaty, but still carry a youthful grace even at his adult age, with almond-shaped eyes bearing bright red irises and crimson sclerae, a ridged brow, an aquiline nose that tapers narrower as it reaches down from between the eyebrows, and prominent lips adorning a well-proportioned mouth. His hair is a vibrant, healthy grey gathered back and tied up in a braided rattail, its oily tendencies only exaggerating its reflectiveness, and just like his hair, the rest of his hairs are grey, his thin and faded eyebrows standing like two strokes from a desaturated paintbrush atop his eyes, reaching out to meet in the middle. His face is kept clean shaven for he is unable to grow a proper beard, save two well-groomed brushlike patches by the edges of his mouth providing a whisker-like mustache, and thick and fuzzy sideburns ending right below his ears.
Of average height and physique, he leaves a wiry impression like many other Dunmer, not very well-reinforced by musculature. Although beneath his clothes he bears a broad, barrel-chested torso, thanks to his lack of muscle and thin and unexercised upper limbs, this genetic advantage is left impotent from an aesthetic standpoint. Beneath the joints, however, his limbs suddenly grow larger, with his forearms almost thicker than his upper arms and his calves bulging with musculature. He bears hands and feet large but not disproportionate, with thick fingers, and his bodily hair is spread not unlike his muscles, with his torso and upper limbs covered with a thin, patchy excuse of grey hairs which suddenly grow in intensity once the limbs reach below their joints.
Despite his aristocratic upbringing, Andel’s clothes are more worldly than courtly. Atop a cotton shirt, he wears a prominently buttoned brownish red dolman that reaches halfway down his thighs, with a fur-collared woolen overcoat of fallow color acting as outer garment. A sword belt is worn around his waist atop his dolman, from which hang scabbards for two swords, both on the left side, and to the right sits a satchel. For legwear he prefers knee length breeches, and thick, crude boots of rawhide take over the duty of covering his legs from the knees down. He has a cap made of rabbit fur for colder weathers, but is seldom seen wearing it, preferring a simple bonnet instead. A gorget worn over the jerkin and two vambraces that reach up to his elbows betray his martial position, but aside from that, he is unarmored.
Personality: Andel was born into nobility, and it shows, but not necessarily in an irritating way. He seems to have an innate understanding of the fact that nobility is all about grace, and grace is all about appearances, and as such, there’s a conscious aesthetic quality to all of his words, deeds, and states of being. His posture is just the right amount of self-confident without seeping into brazenness; his voice can slide across the tone spectrum in the middle of a single-syllable word, and his facial expressions have been honed to dig out the exact responses from the exact people. All this is not to say that Andel manipulates people for his own ends, however; he simply knows the importance of communication, and takes care to express himself with unerring precision. And even all this is kept under a sober and refined layer of humility as to not intimidate his onlookers.
The first impression that Andel makes on people is usually one of agreeableness. While a good conversationist, he is not brazen (or impolite) enough to start a conversation with a stranger for no reason; however, he’s also not impolite enough to leave a stranger without a response. Once Andel is part of a conversation, his demeanor changes somewhat; like a hungry predator tasting blood, he grows bolder and more provocative as the conversation lasts longer, eventually settling at a point of just the right amounts of sweet and sour to leave a lasting and sizzling, but not hurtful impression. This sudden change from pure sincerity to a performative is an interesting one, and behind it lies the key reason for his lot in life; all the boarded-up insecurities that eat away at him from the inside.
Obsessed with living up to his own impossible standards, yet also fearful of acting on his dreams and seeing whether he’ll make the cut or not is a source of constant pain and self-doubt for Andel. On top of that is his legacy, for he is many things before he is allowed to be himself – heir of House Indarys, Thornbearer of the Thorn Knights, his father’s son – and his latent narcissism and perfectionism use this fact to keep him in a constant state of self-paralysis. He wishes to be his own thing in history, a name unto his own, yet the fact that he only came this far (not that far, mind) in the first place thanks to the life that he was born into and not because of his own deeds, and that he will likely never reach the heights that those he respect did, leave him in a state of orbiting the responsibilities that his dreams require, equally unable to reach in or give up.
History: Andel’s history, much to his chagrin, begins well before his birth. It begins with House Indarys, a cadet branch of House Hlaalu, known for its collaboration with the Septim Empire and influence outside of Morrowind’s borders, rather than inside it. Having ruled the County of Cheydinhal since the House of Tharn was deprived of its titles and privileges for its involvement in the Imperial Simulacrum, House Indarys had grown from an unwanted thorn in the Great House’s side, first to an useful tool to help them gain further influence in the Imperial Heartland, then, begrudgingly, to a partner on almost equal footing, with stakes even in the policies of the empire at large thanks to their proximity to the capital. Of course, these were, as far as Andel knows, the glory days, and the days of House Indarys that Andel were to witness were anything but.
Andel was born to a time of great turmoil for House Indarys, even by the standards of the Fourth Era, in which the family had seen itself go from a potential candidate for the Ruby Throne to an impoverished and not very well-liked house of merely local renown. Andel Indarys, the Count of Cheydinhal during the latter part of the Uriel Septim VII’s reign and one short-time claimant for the Imperial Throne, had died an untimely death during the Stormcrown Interregnum; his son Farwil the Daedra Slayer, the gallant Champion of Cheydinhal, had even preceded him, having fallen on the field of battle against the Medes. Farwil’s brother Ilver had thus become head of House Indarys and would have been next in line as Count of Cheydinhal, but the privilege of overseeing the County of Cheydinhal was taken from them for having dared to oppose the Medes, even if briefly.
It was to this mer that Andel would be youngest son, with an elder brother, Ondar, and a phantom brother, Nerevar, that Andel would always hear of, but never have the privilege of seeing, for he, like his late uncle Farwil, had fallen on the field of battle during the Great War.
The responsibility of leading a once-great House through days of turmoil and losing his eldest son in the process had taken a toll on Ilver’s approachability. He was a busy man, and his frayed relationship with his wife Serila, Andel’s mother, meant that the young Andel would rarely manage to spend time with him, having to contend with a mother who had fallen to drink since losing his eldest son. Through Andel’s early years, the task of actually raising and providing a parental figure to him was left to Norasa Dals, sister to Feranos Dals, who was Ilver’s second-in-command in the Knights of the Thorn and heir to the True Weights, a cult of Zenithar. It was in the Dals family that Andel could find some familial refuge from the void of his own family, and this meant a fairly devout upbringing, although the family was never shy of letting Andel delve into the tomes of their library, letting him indulge himself in both academic works and ancient epics and making his own sense of what he read.
This went on for a few years, until one day when Serila decided to kick her addiction and be a good mother to her sons. Thus Andel found himself back in the household, although minus his father, under the excuse of him having to lead the new members of the Knights of the Thorn; he would later learn that the actual reason for it was Serila no longer being able to tolerate the elderly Ilver’s constant infidelity. Being back with his family wasn’t exactly any better for Andel; his mother, while well-meaning, was a smothering and worrisome individual who required a constant supply of soothing salves to stay stable, and this led Serila to be in a constant state of sleep, leaving Andel at the mercy of his carefree and childishly cruel brother. Ondar took great pleasure in tormenting the young Andel in simple ways that were nonetheless hurtful for a child; the young Andel’s bookish nature only made him more susceptible to his brother’s stream of abuse.
Eventually, Andel reached an age at which he could receive proper schooling, and finally considered a member of the household rather than a mer-shaped curiosity that could speak, began his journey through an expensive and extensive cadre of tutors and classes financed by his father Ilver, who’d noticed that Ondar’s cavalier attitude made him a rather weak student and a bumbling courtier, and wished for someone in the family to know court etiquette and requirements of the martial life. His investment would pay off; as years passed and Andel showed signs of maturity beyond his years with each new visit to the Thorn Lodge, so did Ondar show signs of the opposite, unable to control his emotions and put an end to his steadily increasing consumption of alcohol. Ilver wouldn’t understand the gravity of the situation until it was too late; by the time Andel had come of age, Ondar’s alcoholism had reached a point where Ilver was feeling ashamed of presenting Ondar as heir.
Finally an adult, Andel began seeing the family situation for what it was. His father, in his old age, was showing signs of questionable leadership and alienating his compatriots amongst the Knights of the Thorn. First left Feranos, and without his guidance, Ilver quickly went down a route of meaningless endeavors that left the Knights with less than what they had started with. Andel himself had taken to improving his relations with other prominent martial figures of Cheydinhal, believing that the life he was born into and the life he had led so far made knighthood the most suitable role for him in life. Although he’d planned to become a squire in some other figure’s entourage, fate had something different in store for him; Ilver invited him to the Thorn Lodge one day, and told him that a friend of his, a high-ranking member of House Redoran, had noticed Andel’s keen mind during a visit to the Thorn Lodge and asked Ilver to have Andel join his entourage in an upcoming expedition against the Argonians.
Andel accepted, eager to prove himself, and soon after found himself in actual campaign, where, even in his privileged position as junior officer, he was subject to grueling conditions. Having been raised with tales of his ancestors’ glorious deeds, and indeed, with a personal interest in earning fame and glory in battle, Andel felt the need to prove himself; yet the conditions and the responsibilities that weighed upon him made him reconsider what he had built his life towards. He made a positive, but not exceptional impression on his superiors, competent through a combination of factors rather than expertise in one particular skill, and Andel noticed this and did not consider it enough, but nonetheless, his inexperience and personal doubt made him far too fearful to reach out for more. He was unsure as to whether he could carry on with this life. War was a fascinating thing when read and witnessed, but to participate in it was another matter entirely, and, he feared, a matter beyond his caliber.
Eventually, the campaign ended, by which time Andel had learned that his father’s friend had not asked for Andel, but the other way around. Resentful of his father for his deception and for putting his life out on the line, he returned to the family, when his father, once again, asked him to formally join the Knights of the Thorn. Although Andel wished not to, he also wished not to get on his increasingly unstable father’s bad side and put another dent in the already strained family relations. As a plus, he considered that his father’s grooming of him could be a positive thing, and were he to prove himself, he would likely be Ilver’s preferred candidate for leader of the Knights of the Thorn, a position which he hoped would be powerful enough for him to turn his luck around. Unfortunately for the House of Indarys, and unfortunately for Andel, the following years came and went exactly as they had so far.
By his father’s two hundredth and Andel’s thirtieth birthday, the Knights of the Thorn had been reduced, thanks to most of the higher-ups breaking off and forming their own knightly orders, to half a dozen men, Andel, Ilver, Ondar and the lodge servant included. What was worse was that they were up to their neck in debt, Ilver having taken on a contract from the Imperial government to oversee the security of the Blue Road pavement project and failed to fulfill the requirements. Even worse was the fact that Ilver showed no signs of learning from his mistakes and seemed to plan to take on another contract to join a campaign in Morrowind, an expedition which the Knights could not feasibly finance, to pay off his debt to the Empire. Andel felt that something had to be done, and he asked his once-substitute mother, Norasa, to appeal to Ilver and use his devotion to her late father to convince him to stop.
Somewhat surprisingly, it worked, and unsurprisingly, Ilver anointed Andel as new head of the knightly order as opposed to Ondar, who seemed relieved to not have to deal with the responsibilities that the precarious position brought with it. Andel now had the Lodge, its contents, and the loyalty of his knights at his disposal. With leadership of the order came a new responsibility; the Thornblade, the family heirloom with which Farwil Indarys had walked into Oblivion and routed the forces of Dagon, the heirloom with which Farwil Indarys had felled twenty of Mede’s champions even as he bled from twenty fatal wounds, the heirloom with which Nerevar Indarys had cut a swath through the Thalmor at Red Ring Road, was now his to keep and protect. As the ceremony took place, even if pitifully, Andel felt the weight of the responsibilities that he had undertaken for the first time.
Now bearing the sword and title that his father once did, Andel sought out ways to change the path that they were headed down. Downsizing was the first action; the debt to the Imperial government had to be paid somehow, and thus, the Lodge, and almost its entire arsenal, was to go. However, with the Lodge gone, the Knights no longer had a base of operations from which they could carry on their operations, continue the order’s traditions, gather and train new recruits and use as a front. A new Lodge was necessary, and for that, they needed coin. What they could offer for coin were their blades, and thus, the remaining Knights of the Thorn ended up as sellswords in Andel’s leadership, seeking their fortune in Anequina, formerly the lands of Elsweyr, where trouble was afoot ever since the death of the Mane.
Trouble they sought and trouble they found as swords in a Rimmenese warlord’s service, but Andel quickly discovered that leading brothers in arms through such hardship took a toll on one that was without equal. With every decision made being challenged by fear of it being the wrong one, soon, Andel found himself drinking himself to sleep. To bolster their ranks and protect his companions, he recruited more men with the coin that was being made, but in a war-torn land, blades for hire had little understanding of decency and chivalry; the company showed signs of devolving into foul mercenaries, and this led Andel to seek a way to drill some order into his recruits before it was too late. One night, as he sat in his tent, he sought to contact his ancestors for guidance as his people did back in the old country, and unsheathed the Thornblade, grasping its studded grip hard enough to draw blood, hoping to attract the spirits of the sword’s previous wielders.
The sword answered, but not in a way that he expected. As his blood dripped down the length of the sword’s blade, its steel warped into a twisted, vaguely blade-shaped mass of blood red flesh, covered in veins and outlines of facial features, screaming, gritting, but worse was the eyes, oh, the eyes, eyes of men and of mer, eyes of brown, eyes of blue and green and eyes of blood red, eyes of stone cold killers and eyes childish in their innocence. As if the sight was not enough, one of the mouths tried to open itself and to say something, but the utterly perturbed Andel, having had enough of this madness in the last half minute, somehow found in himself strength enough to put the damnedest thing back in its sheath and go back to his bed a shivering, panting and sweating mess of fear and confusion, reaching for his bedside drink and downing the entire bottle of wine in a single drink. Part of him hoped that he would not wake up again, not wishing to try to make sense of it all anymore.
But wake up he did, and with his awakening came more hard decisions. The company was disbanded at first opportunity, with the profits being shared as previously agreed upon, and the Knights themselves were dismissed, although Andel saw to it that the duo were rewarded handsomely for their unwavering royalty through trying times. He traveled back north, alone this time, seeking a qualified enchanter who could explain exactly what was going on with the family heirloom, and more importantly, seeking some repose from the weight placed upon his shoulders. The wandering was financed with what was on hand; first his suit of steel plate was gone, then his spare clothes, then his horse, then his fancy jackboots. By the time he’d found someone willing and able to decipher the Thornblade’s condition, he had naught but what he carried on his person.
The enchanter that he’d found, an eccentric Altmer by the name of Gwendoreth, utilized arcane techniques of scrying to peer into the sword’s past, and came back with the answers that Andel sought. The sword had indeed been a potent artifact in its past, argued Gwendoreth, but it was at the hands of Farwil, or perhaps someone of great power in Farwil’s place, she wasn’t sure, that it took its current form. A great Daedra was slayed by it, said Gwendoreth, so great and capable in its ways that even in death, it could find a new vessel to continue its existence in; the very blade that took its life. Now, the blade was not unlike a black soul gem, feeding on the essence of those that found death by it, growing stronger and more capable with every new life. Following this, she made two offers to Andel; she could, and would happily, buy it from Andel to study it, or, if he’d like, she could exorcise the Daedra from it, but doing so would certainly destroy the sword in the process.
Andel considered exorcism to be the most logical option, but pride and shame kept him from it. He’d taken the Thorn Knights from his father, for the greater good perhaps, but the greater good he was unable to achieve either. On top of it, he had debased the knights, dirtying the order’s name in a meaningless conflict to keep the family afloat; with the sword also gone, Andel would have achieved nothing but failure. Nothing would remain of the Knights of the Thorn, nothing would remain of the House of Indarys, and he alone would be the one responsible for it. Even the idea of it felt like it was worming through his very soul, and thus Andel decided to throw himself on a new path, that is, to make a name for his own. Even if he absolutely had to destroy the Indarys legacy, he owed it to himself to build something else in return.
But how? He does not know. He did not return to Cheydinhal – he could not, rather, not without a victory – and took to wandering, seeking opportunities to prove himself. What few opportunities he found, he hesitated to take, and as chance is a fleeting thing, they disappeared before he could finally act. Andel now wanders the countryside from place to place, relying mostly on his good manners and the goodwill that he can cultivate amongst people to sustain his journey. So far, he has achieved little; but in Anvil, he hopes, that his luck will turn around.
Biggest Regret: Where to even start? He regrets having had to return to his family rather than staying with the Dals family, his fascination with a martial career, his attempts to train and prove himself in it rather than seeking something more fruitful. The fact that he actually stepped on the field of battle, and failed to find the transcendent experience in it that others could. The fact that he is not exceptional, the fact that he proved all too weak and all too mortal and not a hero. The fact that he dared to take over the Knights in their final days and failed to achieve anything with it. The fact that he could not save the Knights from being driven into the ground. The fact that he accepted the family heirloom, the fact that he found out it being cursed. The fact that he didn’t have it exorcised, the fact that he can’t find a way to fix it. The fact that he’s too ashamed to return home. Honestly, Andel’s entire past is a history of regret after another, and it all comes together as one great regret of living, living as a total and abject failure, and at times, living at all.
Andel’s Goal: Andel has come to this age with the stories of those who came and went before him, those who were worthy of being spoken about well after their passing. Living in the shadow of mer greater than him, whether through fame or mettle, has sparked in him an ambition to reach above and beyond them, for he believes that for some reason he must – yet in all his attempts so far, he has failed. Citing his young age and inexperience seems not to influence him, leading him to remind his would-be excusers how his uncle Farwil had taken on the forces of Oblivion at an age younger than he and successfully purged the County of them, even daring to venture into the realm itself to shut down the gate that oozed out the forces of evil that he’d driven off. He wishes to have his name written down into the annals of history like his ancestors did, and not as a footnote of failure, but as a figure greater than any of them. He wishes to earn the mettle necessary for it, as well, for merely being named as such will not do; he must, he absolutely must live up to the standards of being an ideal knight and prove to himself that he is more than a byproduct of his ancestors’ legacy.
Skills:
Adept:
Having had to lead a mercenary company, Andel learned the hard way that an army walks on its stomach, and that an officer’s foremost duty is to keep the army walking. What good are soldiers when they aren’t on the field of battle, and what good is an officer if he cannot procure what’s necessary for them to walk?
As an heir to a knightly order, experience with the sword was a necessity for Andel in Ilver’s eyes. While not necessarily a bad swordsman, and graceful in his movement, Andel never showed the decisiveness necessary to be an exceptional one.
Andel does not actively seek an audience, nor does he try to manipulate it, but he’s well-versed in the oratory arts, and the wide repertoire of books that he can draw references from make him a pleasant companion in almost every environment.
Novice:
A knight is nothing without his horse, and to be a horseman requires at least some nimbleness to stay on the saddle as one gets to have the horse used to his presence atop it.
A knight is a warrior, and during war, if ten percent of your time is spent battling, then ninety percent of it is spent getting to the battle. Tiresome it may be, but it is not alien to Andel.
A Knight of the Thorn is nothing without his floral-patterned plate, and for all its cumbersomeness, Andel had to have some experience wearing it, even if solely for appearances.
A knight cannot be in full armor all the time, although he must at the very least bear the signs of his office, be it a breastplate, or a gorget.
A knight needs to be a man of valor, and as every wise man knows, discretion is the better part of it.
Spells: None
Equipment: - A well-made and well-worn traveler’s outfit of Nibenese fashion - A thick, sheepskin-lined overcoat - A steel skullcap, sewn into his bonnet - A steel gorget - A pair of steel vambraces - A pair of rawhide boots - A medal of the Knights of the Thorn, said to be enchanted - A sword belt with two scabbards, one bearing a lock - A satchel of supplies, containing some potions and consumables - A waterskin - A hanger sword - The Thornblade, locked away in its scabbard
Misc. Possessions: - A key worn around his neck for the Thornblade’s scabbard - A pen holder made of brass with an integrated inkwell - A reed pen - A journal - Spare accoutrements for traveling
Name: Andel Indarys II, Thorn Bearer Race: Dunmer Age: 32 Birthsign: The Lady Family Origins: Cheydinhal
Appearance: A portrait of Andel around his twentieth birthday
Andel betrays the fact that he’s of blue blood at first glance with his unblemished and fair skin, closer to a faded purple than the usual ashen hues of his fellow Dunmer. His facial features are more gaunt than meaty, but still carry a youthful grace even at his adult age, with almond-shaped eyes bearing bright red irises and crimson sclerae, a ridged brow, an aquiline nose that tapers narrower as it reaches down from between the eyebrows, and prominent lips adorning a well-proportioned mouth. His hair is a vibrant, healthy grey gathered back and tied up in a braided rattail, its oily tendencies only exaggerating its reflectiveness, and just like his hair, the rest of his hairs are grey, his thin and faded eyebrows standing like two strokes from a desaturated paintbrush atop his eyes, reaching out to meet in the middle. His face is kept clean shaven for he is unable to grow a proper beard, save two well-groomed brushlike patches by the edges of his mouth providing a whisker-like mustache, and thick and fuzzy sideburns ending right below his ears.
Of average height and physique, he leaves a wiry impression like many other Dunmer, not very well-reinforced by musculature. Although beneath his clothes he bears a broad, barrel-chested torso, thanks to his lack of muscle and thin and unexercised upper limbs, this genetic advantage is left impotent from an aesthetic standpoint. Beneath the joints, however, his limbs suddenly grow larger, with his forearms almost thicker than his upper arms and his calves bulging with musculature. He bears hands and feet large but not disproportionate, with thick fingers, and his bodily hair is spread not unlike his muscles, with his torso and upper limbs covered with a thin, patchy excuse of grey hairs which suddenly grow in intensity once the limbs reach below their joints.
Despite his aristocratic upbringing, Andel’s clothes are more worldly than courtly. Atop a cotton shirt, he wears a prominently buttoned and braided brownish red dolman that reaches halfway down his thighs, with a false-sleeved, fur-collared woolen overcoat of fallow color acting as outer garment. A sword belt is worn around his waist atop his dolman, from which hang scabbards for two swords, both on the left side, and to the right sits a satchel. For legwear he prefers knee length breeches, and thick, crude boots of rawhide take over the duty of covering his legs from the knees down. He has a cap made of rabbit fur for colder weathers, but is seldom seen wearing it, preferring a simple bonnet instead. A gorget worn over the jerkin and two vambraces that reach up to his elbows betray his martial position, but aside from that, he is unarmored.
Personality: Andel was born into nobility, and it shows, but not necessarily in an irritating way. He seems to have an innate understanding of the fact that nobility is all about grace, and grace is all about appearances, and as such, there’s a conscious aesthetic quality to all of his words, deeds, and states of being. His posture is just the right amount of self-confident without seeping into brazenness; his voice can slide across the tone spectrum in the middle of a single-syllable word, and his facial expressions have been honed to dig out the exact responses from the exact people. All this is not to say that Andel manipulates people for his own ends, however; he simply knows the importance of communication, and takes care to express himself with unerring precision. And even all this is kept under a sober and refined layer of humility as to not intimidate his onlookers.
The first impression that Andel makes on people is usually one of agreeableness. While a good conversationist, he is not brazen (or impolite) enough to start a conversation with a stranger for no reason; however, he’s also not impolite enough to leave a stranger without a response. Once Andel is part of a conversation, his demeanor changes somewhat; like a hungry predator tasting blood, he grows bolder and more provocative as the conversation lasts longer, eventually settling at a point of just the right amounts of sweet and sour to leave a lasting and sizzling, but not hurtful impression. This sudden change from pure sincerity to a performative is an interesting one, and behind it lies the key reason for his lot in life; all the boarded-up insecurities that eat away at him from the inside.
Obsessed with living up to his own impossible standards, yet also fearful of acting on his dreams and seeing whether he’ll make the cut or not is a source of constant pain and self-doubt for Andel. On top of that is his legacy, for he is many things before he is allowed to be himself – heir of House Indarys, Thornbearer of the Thorn Knights, his father’s son – and his latent narcissism and perfectionism use this fact to keep him in a constant state of self-paralysis. He wishes to be his own thing in history, a name unto his own, yet the fact that he only came this far (not that far, mind) in the first place thanks to the life that he was born into and not because of his own deeds, and that he will likely never reach the heights that those he respect did, leave him in a state of orbiting the responsibilities that his dreams require, equally unable to reach in or give up.
History: Andel’s history, much to his chagrin, begins well before his birth. It begins with House Indarys, a cadet branch of House Hlaalu, known for its collaboration with the Septim Empire and influence outside of Morrowind’s borders, rather than inside it. Having ruled the County of Cheydinhal since the House of Tharn was deprived of its titles and privileges for its involvement in the Imperial Simulacrum, House Indarys had grown from an unwanted thorn in the Great House’s side, first to an useful tool to help them gain further influence in the Imperial Heartland, then, begrudgingly, to a partner on almost equal footing, with stakes even in the policies of the empire at large thanks to their proximity to the capital. Of course, these were, as far as Andel knows, the glory days, and the days of House Indarys that Andel were to witness were anything but.
Andel was born to a time of great turmoil for House Indarys, even by the standards of the Fourth Era, in which the family had seen itself go from a potential candidate for the Ruby Throne to an impoverished and not very well-liked house of merely local renown. Andel Indarys, the Count of Cheydinhal during the latter part of the Uriel Septim VII’s reign and one short-time claimant for the Imperial Throne, had died an untimely death during the Stormcrown Interregnum; his son Farwil the Daedra Slayer, the gallant Champion of Cheydinhal, had even preceded him, having fallen on the field of battle against the Medes. Farwil’s brother Ilver had thus become head of House Indarys and would have been next in line as Count of Cheydinhal, but the privilege of overseeing the County of Cheydinhal was taken from them for having dared to oppose the Medes, even if briefly.
It was to this mer that Andel would be youngest son, with an elder brother, Ondar, and a phantom brother, Nerevar, that Andel would always hear of, but never have the privilege of seeing, for he, like his late uncle Farwil, had fallen on the field of battle during the Great War.
The responsibility of leading a once-great House through days of turmoil and losing his eldest son in the process had taken a toll on Ilver’s approachability. He was a busy man, and his frayed relationship with his wife Serila, Andel’s mother, meant that the young Andel would rarely manage to spend time with him, having to contend with a mother who had fallen to drink since losing his eldest son. Through Andel’s early years, the task of actually raising and providing a parental figure to him was left to Norasa Dals, sister to Feranos Dals, who was Ilver’s second-in-command in the Knights of the Thorn and heir to the True Weights, a cult of Zenithar. It was in the Dals family that Andel could find some familial refuge from the void of his own family, and this meant a fairly devout upbringing, although the family was never shy of letting Andel delve into the tomes of their library, letting him indulge himself in both academic works and ancient epics and making his own sense of what he read.
This went on for a few years, until one day when Serila decided to kick her addiction and be a good mother to her sons. Thus Andel found himself back in the household, although minus his father, under the excuse of him having to lead the new members of the Knights of the Thorn; he would later learn that the actual reason for it was Serila no longer being able to tolerate the elderly Ilver’s constant infidelity. Being back with his family wasn’t exactly any better for Andel; his mother, while well-meaning, was a smothering and worrisome individual who required a constant supply of soothing salves to stay stable, and this led Serila to be in a constant state of sleep, leaving Andel at the mercy of his carefree and childishly cruel brother. Ondar took great pleasure in tormenting the young Andel in simple ways that were nonetheless hurtful for a child; the young Andel’s bookish nature only made him more susceptible to his brother’s stream of abuse.
Eventually, Andel reached an age at which he could receive proper schooling, and finally considered a member of the household rather than a mer-shaped curiosity that could speak, began his journey through an expensive and extensive cadre of tutors and classes financed by his father Ilver, who’d noticed that Ondar’s cavalier attitude made him a rather weak student and a bumbling courtier, and wished for someone in the family to know court etiquette and requirements of the martial life. His investment would pay off; as years passed and Andel showed signs of maturity beyond his years with each new visit to the Thorn Lodge, so did Ondar show signs of the opposite, unable to control his emotions and put an end to his steadily increasing consumption of alcohol. Ilver wouldn’t understand the gravity of the situation until it was too late; by the time Andel had come of age, Ondar’s alcoholism had reached a point where Ilver was feeling ashamed of presenting Ondar as heir.
Finally an adult, Andel began seeing the family situation for what it was. His father, in his old age, was showing signs of questionable leadership and alienating his compatriots amongst the Knights of the Thorn. First left Feranos, and without his guidance, Ilver quickly went down a route of meaningless endeavors that left the Knights with less than what they had started with. Andel himself had taken to improving his relations with other prominent martial figures of Cheydinhal, believing that the life he was born into and the life he had led so far made knighthood the most suitable role for him in life. Although he’d planned to become a squire in some other figure’s entourage, fate had something different in store for him; Ilver invited him to the Thorn Lodge one day, and told him that a friend of his, a high-ranking member of House Redoran, had noticed Andel’s keen mind during a visit to the Thorn Lodge and asked Ilver to have Andel join his entourage in an upcoming expedition against the Argonians.
Andel accepted, eager to prove himself, and soon after found himself in actual campaign, where, even in his privileged position as junior officer, he was subject to grueling conditions. Having been raised with tales of his ancestors’ glorious deeds, and indeed, with a personal interest in earning fame and glory in battle, Andel felt the need to prove himself; yet the conditions and the responsibilities that weighed upon him made him reconsider what he had built his life towards. He made a positive, but not exceptional impression on his superiors, competent through a combination of factors rather than expertise in one particular skill, and Andel noticed this and did not consider it enough, but nonetheless, his inexperience and personal doubt made him far too fearful to reach out for more. He was unsure as to whether he could carry on with this life. War was a fascinating thing when read and witnessed, but to participate in it was another matter entirely, and, he feared, a matter beyond his caliber.
Eventually, the campaign ended, by which time Andel had learned that his father’s friend had not asked for Andel, but the other way around. Resentful of his father for his deception and for putting his life out on the line, he returned to the family, when his father, once again, asked him to formally join the Knights of the Thorn. Although Andel wished not to, he also wished not to get on his increasingly unstable father’s bad side and put another dent in the already strained family relations. As a plus, he considered that his father’s grooming of him could be a positive thing, and were he to prove himself, he would likely be Ilver’s preferred candidate for leader of the Knights of the Thorn, a position which he hoped would be powerful enough for him to turn his luck around. Unfortunately for the House of Indarys, and unfortunately for Andel, the following years came and went exactly as they had so far.
By his father’s two hundredth and Andel’s thirtieth birthday, the Knights of the Thorn had been reduced, thanks to most of the higher-ups breaking off and forming their own knightly orders, to half a dozen men, Andel, Ilver, Ondar and the lodge servant included. What was worse was that they were up to their neck in debt, Ilver having taken on a contract from the Imperial government to oversee the security of the Blue Road pavement project and failed to fulfill the requirements. Even worse was the fact that Ilver showed no signs of learning from his mistakes and seemed to plan to take on another contract to join a campaign in Morrowind, an expedition which the Knights could not feasibly finance, to pay off his debt to the Empire. Andel felt that something had to be done, and he asked his once-substitute mother, Norasa, to appeal to Ilver and use his devotion to her late father to convince him to stop.
Somewhat surprisingly, it worked, and unsurprisingly, Ilver anointed Andel as new head of the knightly order as opposed to Ondar, who seemed relieved to not have to deal with the responsibilities that the precarious position brought with it. Andel now had the Lodge, its contents, and the loyalty of his knights at his disposal. With leadership of the order came a new responsibility; the Thornblade, the family heirloom with which Farwil Indarys had walked into Oblivion and routed the forces of Dagon, the heirloom with which Farwil Indarys had felled twenty of Mede’s champions even as he bled from twenty fatal wounds, the heirloom with which Nerevar Indarys had cut a swath through the Thalmor at Red Ring Road, was now his to keep and protect. As the ceremony took place, even if pitifully, Andel felt the weight of the responsibilities that he had undertaken for the first time.
Now bearing the sword and title that his father once did, Andel sought out ways to change the path that they were headed down. Downsizing was the first action; the debt to the Imperial government had to be paid somehow, and thus, the Lodge, and almost its entire arsenal, was to go. However, with the Lodge gone, the Knights no longer had a base of operations from which they could carry on their operations, continue the order’s traditions, gather and train new recruits and use as a front. A new Lodge was necessary, and for that, they needed coin. What they could offer for coin were their blades, and thus, the remaining Knights of the Thorn ended up as sellswords in Andel’s leadership, seeking their fortune in Anequina, formerly the lands of Elsweyr, where trouble was afoot ever since the death of the Mane.
Trouble they sought and trouble they found as swords in a Rimmenese warlord’s service, but Andel quickly discovered that leading brothers in arms through such hardship took a toll on one that was without equal. With every decision made being challenged by fear of it being the wrong one, soon, Andel found himself drinking himself to sleep. To bolster their ranks and protect his companions, he recruited more men with the coin that was being made, but in a war-torn land, blades for hire had little understanding of decency and chivalry; the company showed signs of devolving into foul mercenaries, and this led Andel to seek a way to drill some order into his recruits before it was too late. One night, as he sat in his tent, he sought to contact his ancestors for guidance as his people did back in the old country, and unsheathed the Thornblade, grasping its studded grip hard enough to draw blood, hoping to attract the spirits of the sword’s previous wielders.
The sword answered, but not in a way that he expected. As his blood dripped down the length of the sword’s blade, its steel warped into a twisted, vaguely blade-shaped mass of blood red flesh, covered in veins and outlines of facial features, screaming, gritting, but worse was the eyes, oh, the eyes, eyes of men and of mer, eyes of brown, eyes of blue and green and eyes of blood red, eyes of stone cold killers and eyes childish in their innocence. As if the sight was not enough, one of the mouths tried to open itself and to say something, but the utterly perturbed Andel, having had enough of this madness in the last half minute, somehow found in himself strength enough to put the damnedest thing back in its sheath and go back to his bed a shivering, panting and sweating mess of fear and confusion, reaching for his bedside drink and downing the entire bottle of wine in a single drink. Part of him hoped that he would not wake up again, not wishing to try to make sense of it all anymore.
But wake up he did, and with his awakening came more hard decisions. The company was disbanded at first opportunity, with the profits being shared as previously agreed upon, and the Knights themselves were dismissed, although Andel saw to it that the duo were rewarded handsomely for their unwavering royalty through trying times. He traveled back north, alone this time, seeking a qualified enchanter who could explain exactly what was going on with the family heirloom, and more importantly, seeking some repose from the weight placed upon his shoulders. The wandering was financed with what was on hand; first his suit of steel plate was gone, then his spare clothes, then his horse, then his fancy jackboots. By the time he’d found someone willing and able to decipher the Thornblade’s condition, he had naught but what he carried on his person.
The enchanter that he’d found, an eccentric Altmer by the name of Gwendoreth, utilized arcane techniques of scrying to peer into the sword’s past, and came back with the answers that Andel sought. The sword had indeed been a potent artifact in its past, argued Gwendoreth, but it was at the hands of Farwil, or perhaps someone of great power in Farwil’s place, she wasn’t sure, that it took its current form. A great Daedra was slayed by it, said Gwendoreth, so great and capable in its ways that even in death, it could find a new vessel to continue its existence in; the very blade that took its life. Now, the blade was not unlike a black soul gem, feeding on the essence of those that found death by it, growing stronger and more capable with every new life. Following this, she made two offers to Andel; she could, and would happily, buy it from Andel to study it, or, if he’d like, she could exorcise the Daedra from it, but doing so would certainly destroy the sword in the process.
Andel considered exorcism to be the most logical option, but pride and shame kept him from it. He’d taken the Thorn Knights from his father, for the greater good perhaps, but the greater good he was unable to achieve either. On top of it, he had debased the knights, dirtying the order’s name in a meaningless conflict to keep the family afloat; with the sword also gone, Andel would have achieved nothing but failure. Nothing would remain of the Knights of the Thorn, nothing would remain of the House of Indarys, and he alone would be the one responsible for it. Even the idea of it felt like it was worming through his very soul, and thus Andel decided to throw himself on a new path, that is, to make a name for his own. Even if he absolutely had to destroy the Indarys legacy, he owed it to himself to build something else in return.
But how? He does not know. He did not return to Cheydinhal – he could not, rather, not without a victory – and took to wandering, seeking opportunities to prove himself. What few opportunities he found, he hesitated to take, and as chance is a fleeting thing, they disappeared before he could finally act. Andel now wanders the countryside from place to place, relying mostly on his good manners and the goodwill that he can cultivate amongst people to sustain his journey. So far, he has achieved little; but in Anvil, he hopes, that his luck will turn around.
Biggest Regret: Where to even start? He regrets having had to return to his family rather than staying with the Dals family, his fascination with a martial career, his attempts to train and prove himself in it rather than seeking something more fruitful. The fact that he actually stepped on the field of battle, and failed to find the transcendent experience in it that others could. The fact that he is not exceptional, the fact that he proved all too weak and all too mortal and not a hero. The fact that he dared to take over the Knights in their final days and failed to achieve anything with it. The fact that he could not save the Knights from being driven into the ground. The fact that he accepted the family heirloom, the fact that he found out it being cursed. The fact that he didn’t have it exorcised, the fact that he can’t find a way to fix it. The fact that he’s too ashamed to return home. Honestly, Andel’s entire past is a history of regret after another, and it all comes together as one great regret of living, living as a total and abject failure, and at times, living at all.
Andel’s Goal: Andel has come to this age with the stories of those who came and went before him, those who were worthy of being spoken about well after their passing. Living in the shadow of mer greater than him, whether through fame or mettle, has sparked in him an ambition to reach above and beyond them, for he believes that for some reason he must – yet in all his attempts so far, he has failed. Citing his young age and inexperience seems not to influence him, leading him to remind his would-be excusers how his uncle Farwil had taken on the forces of Oblivion at an age younger than he and successfully purged the County of them, even daring to venture into the realm itself to shut down the gate that oozed out the forces of evil that he’d driven off. He wishes to have his name written down into the annals of history like his ancestors did, and not as a footnote of failure, but as a figure greater than any of them. He wishes to earn the mettle necessary for it, as well, for merely being named as such will not do; he must, he absolutely must live up to the standards of being an ideal knight and prove to himself that he is more than a byproduct of his ancestors’ legacy.
Skills:
Adept:
Having had to lead a mercenary company, Andel learned the hard way that an army walks on its stomach, and that an officer’s foremost duty is to keep the army walking. What good are soldiers when they aren’t on the field of battle, and what good is an officer if he cannot procure what’s necessary for them to walk?
As an heir to a knightly order, experience with the sword was a necessity for Andel in Ilver’s eyes. While not necessarily a bad swordsman, and graceful in his movement, Andel never showed the decisiveness necessary to be an exceptional one.
Andel does not actively seek an audience, nor does he try to manipulate it, but he’s well-versed in the oratory arts, and the wide repertoire of books that he can draw references from make him a pleasant companion in almost every environment.
Novice:
A knight is nothing without his horse, and to be a horseman requires at least some nimbleness to stay on the saddle as one gets to have the horse used to his presence atop it.
A knight is a warrior, and during war, if ten percent of your time is spent battling, then ninety percent of it is spent getting to the battle. Tiresome it may be, but it is not alien to Andel.
A Knight of the Thorn is nothing without his floral-patterned plate, and for all its cumbersomeness, Andel had to have some experience wearing it, even if solely for appearances.
A knight cannot be in full armor all the time, although he must at the very least bear the signs of his office, be it a breastplate, or a gorget.
A knight needs to be a man of valor, and as every wise man knows, discretion is the better part of it.
Spells: None
Equipment: - A well-made and well-worn traveler’s outfit of Nibenese fashion - A thick, sheepskin-lined overcoat - A steel skullcap, sewn into his bonnet - A steel gorget - A pair of steel vambraces - A pair of rawhide boots - A medal of the Knights of the Thorn, said to be enchanted - A sword belt with two scabbards, one bearing a lock - A satchel of supplies, containing some potions and consumables - A waterskin - A hanger sword - The Thornblade, locked away in its scabbard
Misc. Possessions: - A key worn around his neck for the Thornblade’s scabbard - A pen holder made of brass with an integrated inkwell - A reed pen - A journal - Spare accoutrements for traveling
POOPHEAD189
Naril
