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@Kassarock I'm giving Velyn a friend!
Getting to know Garil is not necessarily a bad thing though. He's quite an amiable fellow, if a tad odd in his habits and mannerisms. He has the ability to read people and read them well, a skill he's developed over years of people-watching and questioning. Kindly and well-spoken, he's not at all the judgmental type, as if there was nothing you could say that could startle him and he'd accept you for who you are. If anything, you might pique his curiosity and he'd harry you with more questions without fear of looking dumb or naive. His lack of judgement also shows itself through his liberal approach towards sexuality, thinking very little of the different races and genders of Tamriel intermingling with one another and uses flirtation as a brand of humor regardless of who he is talking to, only reinforcing the stereotype of sexual deviance often foisted upon dunmer. This is an unfair characterization, he feels, since his attitude as a lover is actually rather conservative in the sense that he reserves the action of touch for truly intimate matters. Otherwise, he is content to sit calmly and converse with his loved ones, and it is because of his liberal approach to sex that he doesn't hold it in such a high esteem, as he'd rather sit in candlelit silence and enjoy the calm and peace. Much of his personality, in fact, is reflective of the endlessly infuriating duality of the Dunmer mentality. And yet, he is still one of the most amiable of his kind and gets along worse with other Dunmer.
He has a complicated relationship with spirituality however, as he speaks very little of his ancestors and is a critic of both the Reclamations and the Tribunal saints, all while disregarding the Divines as powerless lesser deities. This does not exactly translate into being a logical individual, as he does have his fair share of superstitions. He regards matters of superstition and spirituality as private affairs, though that hardly seems like a profound statement considering he regards all of his affairs as private. Privacy is his primary value, and the invasion of which is one of the only ways to stoke the even-tempered dark elf's ire. Even then, you'll typically only be met with indignant irritation. He is not the type to explode in rage and anger, and even if the worst of his secrets should come to light, he would merely react to it as one would to any threat of danger -- run. He doesn't consider himself a murderer or dangerous mer -- or, if I may be so bold, a merderder -- and he only resorts to such extremes if there is no other choice. If bandits are intent on killing him, then he'll defend himself, but even in a fight he is more inclined to rely on his rationality than his emotions.
Overall, his company is very calm and welcoming even if it is a bit foreign and bizarre, but he invites others to learn, inquire, and critique, to become curious about the world around them as he is. He frequently refers to himself as a parched, informational sponge. This reflects the fact that although he has no traditional education, he has a very keen mind that is quick to pick up on information and make practical use of it. He's a clever, patient, and resourceful mer if one can't find anything else kindly to say about him, and he takes insult and injury with a saint's grace. One of his most notable talents is his ability to perform impressions, which might sound quite tame in a world where magic exists. Which to be fair is true, but even so, his keen eye and ear can have his constant people-watching pay off with impressive vocal reconfiguration, enabling him to mimic the sound of someone's voice. Aside from vocal impressions, he also has a knack for physical impersonations as well, and can even copy other people's handwriting once he gets a good look at it. Eventually, this skill of his becomes creepily uncanny. However, he hasn't ever used this for wrongdoing and only for the sake of entertainment. He is not totally scrupulous however, as he in his youth was something of a charlatan, liar, and gossip-monger, and the only reason he doesn't continue this way of life is that he was caught too many times and he learned that it wasn't a safe way to make a living. Such skills still remain with him.
Garil is notoriously meticulous and methodical, almost to the degree of neuroticism. Part of his nightly rituals, even at the end of particularly long days, is to lay his possessions out before him and to keep track of everything he owns. If there is a list of chores that needs doing, he'll go down the list one by one even if he is capable of striking multiple things off at once. He has an impulsive desire to see every task through to its end. On one hand, this reassures his employers that he is not one to shirk responsibility and that he'll complete his duties with no mistakes left behind, but on the other hand, this can annoy everyone else to no end if they are impatient and prefer shortcuts, or if they find those specific tasks as arbitrary. His inclinations to obfuscate the truth whenever the opportunity arises, and his appreciation for ambiguity, makes him a mysterious sort. This can sometimes be alluring, but it can also make him an unreliable narrator despite his known collection of rumors and hearsay. He's like a font of information that only rewards those capable of outwitting him, and that can make him threatening to those who don't see the allure in his mysteries. The dualistic nature of the dunmer people is best represented by one of the best known paradoxes which transcends cultural borders: danger can be sexy, but sex can be dangerous. At his best, Garil can be wise and dutiful, but at his worst, Garil can be secretive and selfish.
Garil's story is a simple one, as he says: a first generation Cyrodilian born in Cheydinhal after his family fled Morrowind near the end of the Arnessian War. With the southern side of Morrowind being assailed by argonian guerillas and Queen Barenziah abandoning her country, it no longer felt safe. So, they moved to Cyrodiil, a place where they would be mostly accepted and, more importantly, not a target of war. Garil grew up under kind, yet strict parents that had high expectations of him for living in a land ripe with opportunity and less hostile than the rugged ashlands of Morrowind. Garil calls himself a suitable family disappointment for repeatedly failing to rise above his parent's own humble occupations of tiler and trading in buttons. Instead of becoming a respected warrior or accomplished mage, he instead found himself working other people's land for pay, or even sharecropping. Sure, he picked up a few tricks, a couple of prestidigitated bewilderments... nothing impressive though. He has no claim to power, status, or to land of his own, and though he has received no formal education of his own -- working hard only to help his family put food on the table and putting down payments on a nice, future Dunmer fusion house for future generations to live in -- he's always had been the wise sort. He is more keen to listen than to speak, and absurdly well-spoken despite his humble origins by listening and eavesdropping on the conversations of more noble folk and practicing to himself their manner of speak when he was by himself. Stories from his parents and stories passed down from their parents always helped to put things into perspective. Then when all else failed, a jaunt over the eastern mountains and into Deshaan, a journey that could last a week or more, he could find the cairns of his ancestors there. Communing with them, albeit a dreaded affair given his lineage of very accomplished and very disappointed mages, offered some contrived wisdom or another that his parents never provided. Of course, that would only be as soon as they were done admonishing him for never rising above a meager farmhand.
For reasons he chooses not to disclose, he has not visited his ancestors in some time. Not since the farm he was working on had burned down. In fact, he seems to address them with some measure of resentment that is almost childish in nature, like refusing to speak to one's parents after a petty injury done to one's pride. Interrogating him on the story seems to turn up no correlation between his resentment of his ancestors and the fire, which in itself was a mysterious circumstance. Anyone who has ever met Garil can attest to him being one of the most orderly and organized people they have ever met, hopelessly methodical and infuriatingly meticulous in how he arranges and categorizes his (few) personal possessions and running down the checklist of his responsibilities. The very idea that the fire was the result of an accident -- an oil lantern left burning or a candle left lit -- is inconceivable as long as Garil was around to tend to the farm's affairs. Everything from harvesting the wheat, repairing the barn or wagon, to defending the grounds from hungry and predatory animals and men alike, he was always a dutiful sort that never would've let anything adverse happen to anyone or anything that was under his care. Perhaps, then, it was done in the dead of night as a form of reprisal against the farm's owners for one reason or another.
Perhaps.
He fails to mention that he was partly to blame for the barn's destruction, though perhaps for the reason that he does not feel at fault for it. Garil has a complex relationship with undead, necromancy, and his own people. He is not immune to the dominant Imperial influences either. He felt himself feeling a cognitive dissonance between both his family and culture's coinciding values of respecting the dead, but also embracing the undead in the form of his ancestors' ghosts. And dunmer mostly only cared about necromancy as it pertained to their own ancestors, but generally didn't care if it happened to others. What was the difference between a righteous, ritual necromancy and the evils of philosophical necromancy? Alienation from his people and being constantly spited by his own family drove him to travel many days into Morrowind and into his family's crypt in Deshaan under the pretense that he was setting out to pay his respects, so that he could set the entire cairn ablaze and be free of his ancestors' haunting. Without no one at the scene, he returned thinking it was a fool-proof plan: the fire was a tragedy that must've occurred after he left. He did not think that at least one of his ancestors would remain tethered to Mundus and seek retribution. Indaryn Sadras was a particularly fickle great-great-uncle of his even before the arson, and in the ghost's attempt to incinerate Garil in his sleep for his descendant's transgression, he ended up burning down the entire barn instead.
After escaping, Garil payed a pretty sum to a discreet member of the local Synod chapter to keep his affairs under wraps while asking for a brief lesson in binding spirits. With the help of a Breton mage and a few overnight cram sessions in Conjuration magic, they were able to summon the unbound spirit of his ancestor to the confinement of a ritual circle where they were able to bind Indaryn to a phylactery. This phylactery would be available for Garil to carry on his person, being small enough in size, and its magical inscriptions made it sturdy enough to be mostly adventure-proof. Inscribed upon the phylactery were daedric runes that compelled the spirit to obey his descendant's will and forbade him from uttering any information pertaining to his great-nephew. Though the affair was costly in more ways than one, Garil supposed that this technically made him some kind of mage like his family originally wanted, and that sort of left a bitter taste in his mouth.
However, the affair also left him without a job. So, in his attempt to move on and forget the fire ever happened, he began going around working odd jobs for people around Cheydinhal and relying on various short-lived paramours. His charm was only such that he could only couch surf for weeks at a time, and his air of intrigue and novelty shortly wore off the more his bummish behavior grated on them. He had also taken to a buy-sell formula of making money, buying cheap stocks of clutter from the local stores and selling them at markup, and even going so far as to sell fish oil as miracle elixirs. He was also something of an eavesdropper and gossip-monger, and for a cheap price, was willing to share with anyone the local rumors or the gossip he's overheard. This made him a few friends with some of local burghers, but also a few enemies. Complaints to the local guard had brought him bruises and threats of being thrown out of town. Garil eventually learned that it was probably best to keep such businesses practices less in the open. The odd jobs he had picked up here and there since then had gone from fixing leaks and scrubbing floors to dredging the sewers and exterminating rats, so Garil was able to salvage his reputation as an untrustworthy miscreant to a somewhat reliable if quirky and gossipy handyman.
Yet, from the fruits of his labor arose another problem: his labor was cheap and people took advantage of that. Before long, some of the jobs he began to take were beginning to steal low-level contracts from the local Fighter's Guild. After a thug or two from the guild confronted him in an act of intimidation, he backed down and decided it was best for him to start traveling the road. For a few reasons, really: among them was his new taste for mercantilism, the farm was no longer tying him down, he finally had an opportunity to see the world and perhaps rise above his meager station, and he thought has gotten pretty good with a blade. Good enough to encroach on Fighter's Guild territory at least, so he thought to himself "How hard can adventuring be?" Besides, it would've done him no good to keep living where his next door neighbors were a band of blooded mercenaries whom he had slighted and armed guards who were less than enthused with his eccentricities. He would've bade farewell to his family had they cared to see him again, but his place as the family disappointment was alive and well.
Eventually, after about ten years of adventuring and surviving off of odd jobs or mercenary work, he managed to build up a resume. He's proven himself a fairly capable bodyguard, exterminator, private investigator, ruin explorer, tomb-raiding, or an all-purpose handyman. He learned that his ancestor would be a useful tool to exploit if nothing else, much to Indaryn's chagrin, and relied on his great-uncle's destruction magic to clear out many a dungeon for him. Of course, Garil also learned that his great-uncle was aware of what was going on outside of his phylactery pretty much all the time, and that he was a bitter old ghost each and every time he was summoned. Sometimes it was worthwhile to summon his ghost, and other times... not so much. The two hated each other, and at least that much was clear. Still, his discreet use of summoning a ghost gave him something of a reputation to his employers as a one-man army when in reality he often relied on his ancestor to do much of the heavy lifting. All the while, he was peddling his treasures to merchants or selling them by auction, putting his mercantilism to decent use. Adventuring was easy, and sometimes even lucrative. His penchant for spinning yarns and impersonations also helped him sneak into and out of places that he otherwise had no business being in, but only if such roles called for a dunmer. He tried passing for a sickly Breton once. No one bought it.
Much of the loot Garil collected was basically junk, save for the rarer finds such as valuable jewels and tithes of gold. Oftentimes they were pieces of antique furniture or ceremonial displays, things that would be more interesting to historians and eccentric nobles than any general merchant. What he can say, at least, is that his travels took him to many different places, like High Rock and Hammerfell, boats from which brought him briefly to port in Auridon before making way to Elsweyr, and he even traveled into Black Marsh -- only to high-tail it out of there after a few weeks when he got chased by some of the more rabid tribes of argonians. He managed to pick up a lot of skills along the way as well, being a sponge for information and fascinated by other cultures. High Rock helped him hone his speechcraft and magic, Hammerfell taught him how to better swing his sword and sneak past their tomb sentinels, Auridon taught him that high elves were pricks, some Baandari in Senchal taught him some of their dances and to always watch his pockets, and Black Marsh taught him that not all cultures are created equal.
Eventually he found himself in Anvil, ready to explore the region of the Gold Coast. His many years of travel has accustomed him to violence, of which there are several varieties: bloody violence, the violence of dramatic action, or the violence of change (albeit not yet desensitized to such violence). Yet, in doing so, he has built his proficiency in both swordplay and mental resilience. He has come to the realization that his claim of being a mere farmhand might now be a lie, though he has no intent on changing that. Though an old sailor he met once told him a thing or two about Anvil, he still isn't quite sure what to expect even as a native Cyrodillian. Still, as long as it was nothing like the customs agents in Black Marsh, he felt pretty secure in being here for the sole purpose of selling his wares at the market or town square.
At least, that's what you're all made to believe.
" G A R I L M A V O S "
"I be just a simple farmhand, sera, though I may sell you my services if that is what you wish."══════ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T ══════ _______________________________________________  _______________________________________________ ═══════ C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y ══════ "Garil Mavos" _______________________________________________ 55 | ♂ | Dunmer _______________________________________________ Farmhand, Mercenary, and Impersonator ▼ P H Y S I C A L T R A I T S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Build - Lean and athletic; built for dexterity. ► Skin Color - Ebony, with mild hues of dark blue and ashen grey ► Hair Color - Black, with grey strands. ► Eye Color - Deep red. ► Other - Body is littered with scars from small cuts and labor. ▼ D O S S I E R ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Birthplace - Presumably Cheydinhal in Cyrodiill. ► Birthsign - The Ritual ► Biggest Regret - Garil would have you believe that it was his inability to seize ripe opportunities and rise above his humble origins, as well as cutting ties with his family. Also the fire, he feels pretty bad about that. ► Garil's Goal - To perform great, honorable deeds that would make his ancestors proud. Maybe make him a little famous. Fame and fortune, really. Maybe not fame. Probably fortune. Power and wisdom? Seeing the world, definitely that. Garil's goals are as protean as the Dunmer himself. ▼ F A V O R E D A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Personality ► Agility ▼ S K I L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Speechcraft - Adept ► Acrobatics - Adept ► One-Handed - Adept ► Conjuration - Apprentice ► Stealth - Apprentice ► Athletics - Apprentice ► Smithing - Apprentice Technically, all the rest of the skill tree would be in the Novice category anyway, but these three are those of which he employs somewhat regularly without proficiency despite the fact: ► Alchemy - Novice ► Pickpocket - Novice ► Hand to Hand - Novice ▼ S P E L L S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Conjuration - Conjure Dagger, Conjure Sword, Summon Ghost ▼ E Q U I P M E N T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Weapons - Three knives, though they look to be more for utility than anything else. There's a skinning knife with a gut hook, a filet knife, and a silver cheese knife. ► Armor - Nothing but the clothes on his back. ► Containers - A satchel which hangs from his shoulder and a 32 oz. waterskin. ► Food, Drink, Potions - A cheesecloth pouch filled with two pounds of assorted nuts and seeds, dried fruit, and dense preserved bread. Two large and round bottles with cork stoppers, and are filled with sujamma. ► Miscellaneous - Two small wooden bowls and two small clay bowls. Tightly packed in the satchel are small, folded mats and rugs. Assorted trinkets and mementos from past lives. Strangely enough, a bundle of scrolled documents. | ══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════ Garil is as unassuming as a dunmer can get: he dresses modestly with threadbare clothing, he's clean shaven, and he carries himself with such a humble and passive disposition, so obviously trustworthy, that the only thing keeping him from being conspicuously unassuming would be his impressive height -- 6'2". Though his build is somewhat lanky, and not at all like one would would expect a soldier or mercenary from, he is still lean from what he claims to be years of hard farm work. Knicked and scratched by numerous petty scars across his hairless body, too few of them appear to be from life-threatening injuries by blade or creature, either lending credibility to his skills or undermining his integrity. He walks, stands, and sits with a slight hunch, and often rocks his jaw from side to side when in contemplation. He also tends to gesture his hands quite often when talking, and has a distinct tell whenever he's lying, where he cranes his head in as if to invade your personal space and his tone becomes suggestive. Curiously, he's quite acrobatic and has an impeccable sense of balance. He doesn't seem to have much reason to be as adept as he is, and any questioning is answered with a shrug and a blasé, "I like to climb things. I guess I just have good balance." He walks with a peculiar grace and sense of purpose, as if he has a clear destination in his mind's eye, a gait which other dunmer familiar to him have insultingly referred to as monkey-like. You can occasionally catch him looking over his shoulder or staring at other dunmer. Watching Garil swing a blade, on the other hand, he doesn't seem so great at it. There's almost a hesitance or uncertainty as he cuts the air -- no confidence -- but a trained eye can find his perfect grip and footing, and figure out pretty quickly that he probably picked up a couple of lessons. His angular features are somewhat striking. His cheekbones are high and pronounced, almost jutting from his face and combined with the gauntness of his cheeks, this quality being particularly highlighted. His chin is long and comes down to a point. However, he also has a wide jaw, which adds to the strength of his facial features. Almost out of place upon his face are a pair of a thick lips, their shade a darker hue than the rest of his face. He's almost always munching on nuts or seeds, swelling his jowls as they fill with food, rocking his jaw side to side as he chews. His mouth sits beneath a long, hawkish nose that may have once been broken in the past if the vertical crookedness is not just another sharp facial feature on a long list of sharp facial features. His ears, low on the sides of his head, flare out quite a bit like two dishes waiting for signals. His peripheral extremities, his arms and legs, are quite spindly though not without lean muscle; you'd be forgiven for underestimating the strength in his figure due to his light toning, but even so, the dunmer is more agile than he is brutish. His black hair is long and well kept, also undercut, and behind his neck you'll often find residing loose, frizzy hair. He prefers to keep his hair tied back and usually does so in the shape of the bun to keep the hair off his neck and back while he's working. Overall, Garil is a dunmer that seems very conscious of his personal hygiene despite his humility and humble occupation. Of course he has no qualms with getting himself dirty, but with as often as he seems to mock pride and vanity, he seems quite content to preen himself with the beginning and end of every day. That said, he is not so self-conscious either that he'd remove the gray hairs growing on his head. In fact, he seems quite fond of them. He is at least self-aware enough to acknowledge his contradictions and hypocrisies, though it's almost as if he occasionally forgets he holds such values. There aren't many accessories on his person. Little holes sit on his ears where there were once piercings, and as mentioned before, what little clothes he has appears old, weathered, and quite obviously favoring warmer colors such as reds and oranges -- they compliment his eyes, he says. What passes for a shirt is actually more like a red blanket or a shawl, which he wraps around his torso to cover himself during the day in a Nibenese-esque fashion. It's not uncommon to see him using the toga wrap to use as an arm sling after a long and tiring day of work. The pants he wears goes down to his knees and are held up by a leather cord, and his calloused, leather-like feet have not the luxury of proper footwear beyond a pair of sandals, which he occasionally forgoes in favor of the cool sensation of morning dew upon the grass. ═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════ All around a peculiar person, Garil enjoys his privacy and does his best to appear unassuming and inconspicuous. This is best done when minding his own business, which he does successfully for the most part, but he's also irrepressibly curious. While he might do what he can to keep his hands and mind busy, such as sweeping or mopping the deck, overhearing a conversation will pique his interest enough so that he might pay undue attention to whomever he may be eavesdropping on. To others, he could very well just be some random, nosy s'wit, which in turn can -- counter-intuitively -- direct even less attentions towards himself if he can push others away. No one wants to be around somebody who can't mind his own business, and that's the genius of it. If he can convince others he's not worth paying attention to, then it makes his goal of staying inconspicuous even easier. He watches and listens, preferring to have the edge over others, just in case it's better to be safe than sorry. |
He has a complicated relationship with spirituality however, as he speaks very little of his ancestors and is a critic of both the Reclamations and the Tribunal saints, all while disregarding the Divines as powerless lesser deities. This does not exactly translate into being a logical individual, as he does have his fair share of superstitions. He regards matters of superstition and spirituality as private affairs, though that hardly seems like a profound statement considering he regards all of his affairs as private. Privacy is his primary value, and the invasion of which is one of the only ways to stoke the even-tempered dark elf's ire. Even then, you'll typically only be met with indignant irritation. He is not the type to explode in rage and anger, and even if the worst of his secrets should come to light, he would merely react to it as one would to any threat of danger -- run. He doesn't consider himself a murderer or dangerous mer -- or, if I may be so bold, a merderder -- and he only resorts to such extremes if there is no other choice. If bandits are intent on killing him, then he'll defend himself, but even in a fight he is more inclined to rely on his rationality than his emotions.
Overall, his company is very calm and welcoming even if it is a bit foreign and bizarre, but he invites others to learn, inquire, and critique, to become curious about the world around them as he is. He frequently refers to himself as a parched, informational sponge. This reflects the fact that although he has no traditional education, he has a very keen mind that is quick to pick up on information and make practical use of it. He's a clever, patient, and resourceful mer if one can't find anything else kindly to say about him, and he takes insult and injury with a saint's grace. One of his most notable talents is his ability to perform impressions, which might sound quite tame in a world where magic exists. Which to be fair is true, but even so, his keen eye and ear can have his constant people-watching pay off with impressive vocal reconfiguration, enabling him to mimic the sound of someone's voice. Aside from vocal impressions, he also has a knack for physical impersonations as well, and can even copy other people's handwriting once he gets a good look at it. Eventually, this skill of his becomes creepily uncanny. However, he hasn't ever used this for wrongdoing and only for the sake of entertainment. He is not totally scrupulous however, as he in his youth was something of a charlatan, liar, and gossip-monger, and the only reason he doesn't continue this way of life is that he was caught too many times and he learned that it wasn't a safe way to make a living. Such skills still remain with him.
Garil is notoriously meticulous and methodical, almost to the degree of neuroticism. Part of his nightly rituals, even at the end of particularly long days, is to lay his possessions out before him and to keep track of everything he owns. If there is a list of chores that needs doing, he'll go down the list one by one even if he is capable of striking multiple things off at once. He has an impulsive desire to see every task through to its end. On one hand, this reassures his employers that he is not one to shirk responsibility and that he'll complete his duties with no mistakes left behind, but on the other hand, this can annoy everyone else to no end if they are impatient and prefer shortcuts, or if they find those specific tasks as arbitrary. His inclinations to obfuscate the truth whenever the opportunity arises, and his appreciation for ambiguity, makes him a mysterious sort. This can sometimes be alluring, but it can also make him an unreliable narrator despite his known collection of rumors and hearsay. He's like a font of information that only rewards those capable of outwitting him, and that can make him threatening to those who don't see the allure in his mysteries. The dualistic nature of the dunmer people is best represented by one of the best known paradoxes which transcends cultural borders: danger can be sexy, but sex can be dangerous. At his best, Garil can be wise and dutiful, but at his worst, Garil can be secretive and selfish.
═══════ B A C K G R O U N D ══════
Garil's story is a simple one, as he says: a first generation Cyrodilian born in Cheydinhal after his family fled Morrowind near the end of the Arnessian War. With the southern side of Morrowind being assailed by argonian guerillas and Queen Barenziah abandoning her country, it no longer felt safe. So, they moved to Cyrodiil, a place where they would be mostly accepted and, more importantly, not a target of war. Garil grew up under kind, yet strict parents that had high expectations of him for living in a land ripe with opportunity and less hostile than the rugged ashlands of Morrowind. Garil calls himself a suitable family disappointment for repeatedly failing to rise above his parent's own humble occupations of tiler and trading in buttons. Instead of becoming a respected warrior or accomplished mage, he instead found himself working other people's land for pay, or even sharecropping. Sure, he picked up a few tricks, a couple of prestidigitated bewilderments... nothing impressive though. He has no claim to power, status, or to land of his own, and though he has received no formal education of his own -- working hard only to help his family put food on the table and putting down payments on a nice, future Dunmer fusion house for future generations to live in -- he's always had been the wise sort. He is more keen to listen than to speak, and absurdly well-spoken despite his humble origins by listening and eavesdropping on the conversations of more noble folk and practicing to himself their manner of speak when he was by himself. Stories from his parents and stories passed down from their parents always helped to put things into perspective. Then when all else failed, a jaunt over the eastern mountains and into Deshaan, a journey that could last a week or more, he could find the cairns of his ancestors there. Communing with them, albeit a dreaded affair given his lineage of very accomplished and very disappointed mages, offered some contrived wisdom or another that his parents never provided. Of course, that would only be as soon as they were done admonishing him for never rising above a meager farmhand.
For reasons he chooses not to disclose, he has not visited his ancestors in some time. Not since the farm he was working on had burned down. In fact, he seems to address them with some measure of resentment that is almost childish in nature, like refusing to speak to one's parents after a petty injury done to one's pride. Interrogating him on the story seems to turn up no correlation between his resentment of his ancestors and the fire, which in itself was a mysterious circumstance. Anyone who has ever met Garil can attest to him being one of the most orderly and organized people they have ever met, hopelessly methodical and infuriatingly meticulous in how he arranges and categorizes his (few) personal possessions and running down the checklist of his responsibilities. The very idea that the fire was the result of an accident -- an oil lantern left burning or a candle left lit -- is inconceivable as long as Garil was around to tend to the farm's affairs. Everything from harvesting the wheat, repairing the barn or wagon, to defending the grounds from hungry and predatory animals and men alike, he was always a dutiful sort that never would've let anything adverse happen to anyone or anything that was under his care. Perhaps, then, it was done in the dead of night as a form of reprisal against the farm's owners for one reason or another.
Perhaps.
He fails to mention that he was partly to blame for the barn's destruction, though perhaps for the reason that he does not feel at fault for it. Garil has a complex relationship with undead, necromancy, and his own people. He is not immune to the dominant Imperial influences either. He felt himself feeling a cognitive dissonance between both his family and culture's coinciding values of respecting the dead, but also embracing the undead in the form of his ancestors' ghosts. And dunmer mostly only cared about necromancy as it pertained to their own ancestors, but generally didn't care if it happened to others. What was the difference between a righteous, ritual necromancy and the evils of philosophical necromancy? Alienation from his people and being constantly spited by his own family drove him to travel many days into Morrowind and into his family's crypt in Deshaan under the pretense that he was setting out to pay his respects, so that he could set the entire cairn ablaze and be free of his ancestors' haunting. Without no one at the scene, he returned thinking it was a fool-proof plan: the fire was a tragedy that must've occurred after he left. He did not think that at least one of his ancestors would remain tethered to Mundus and seek retribution. Indaryn Sadras was a particularly fickle great-great-uncle of his even before the arson, and in the ghost's attempt to incinerate Garil in his sleep for his descendant's transgression, he ended up burning down the entire barn instead.
After escaping, Garil payed a pretty sum to a discreet member of the local Synod chapter to keep his affairs under wraps while asking for a brief lesson in binding spirits. With the help of a Breton mage and a few overnight cram sessions in Conjuration magic, they were able to summon the unbound spirit of his ancestor to the confinement of a ritual circle where they were able to bind Indaryn to a phylactery. This phylactery would be available for Garil to carry on his person, being small enough in size, and its magical inscriptions made it sturdy enough to be mostly adventure-proof. Inscribed upon the phylactery were daedric runes that compelled the spirit to obey his descendant's will and forbade him from uttering any information pertaining to his great-nephew. Though the affair was costly in more ways than one, Garil supposed that this technically made him some kind of mage like his family originally wanted, and that sort of left a bitter taste in his mouth.
However, the affair also left him without a job. So, in his attempt to move on and forget the fire ever happened, he began going around working odd jobs for people around Cheydinhal and relying on various short-lived paramours. His charm was only such that he could only couch surf for weeks at a time, and his air of intrigue and novelty shortly wore off the more his bummish behavior grated on them. He had also taken to a buy-sell formula of making money, buying cheap stocks of clutter from the local stores and selling them at markup, and even going so far as to sell fish oil as miracle elixirs. He was also something of an eavesdropper and gossip-monger, and for a cheap price, was willing to share with anyone the local rumors or the gossip he's overheard. This made him a few friends with some of local burghers, but also a few enemies. Complaints to the local guard had brought him bruises and threats of being thrown out of town. Garil eventually learned that it was probably best to keep such businesses practices less in the open. The odd jobs he had picked up here and there since then had gone from fixing leaks and scrubbing floors to dredging the sewers and exterminating rats, so Garil was able to salvage his reputation as an untrustworthy miscreant to a somewhat reliable if quirky and gossipy handyman.
Yet, from the fruits of his labor arose another problem: his labor was cheap and people took advantage of that. Before long, some of the jobs he began to take were beginning to steal low-level contracts from the local Fighter's Guild. After a thug or two from the guild confronted him in an act of intimidation, he backed down and decided it was best for him to start traveling the road. For a few reasons, really: among them was his new taste for mercantilism, the farm was no longer tying him down, he finally had an opportunity to see the world and perhaps rise above his meager station, and he thought has gotten pretty good with a blade. Good enough to encroach on Fighter's Guild territory at least, so he thought to himself "How hard can adventuring be?" Besides, it would've done him no good to keep living where his next door neighbors were a band of blooded mercenaries whom he had slighted and armed guards who were less than enthused with his eccentricities. He would've bade farewell to his family had they cared to see him again, but his place as the family disappointment was alive and well.
Eventually, after about ten years of adventuring and surviving off of odd jobs or mercenary work, he managed to build up a resume. He's proven himself a fairly capable bodyguard, exterminator, private investigator, ruin explorer, tomb-raiding, or an all-purpose handyman. He learned that his ancestor would be a useful tool to exploit if nothing else, much to Indaryn's chagrin, and relied on his great-uncle's destruction magic to clear out many a dungeon for him. Of course, Garil also learned that his great-uncle was aware of what was going on outside of his phylactery pretty much all the time, and that he was a bitter old ghost each and every time he was summoned. Sometimes it was worthwhile to summon his ghost, and other times... not so much. The two hated each other, and at least that much was clear. Still, his discreet use of summoning a ghost gave him something of a reputation to his employers as a one-man army when in reality he often relied on his ancestor to do much of the heavy lifting. All the while, he was peddling his treasures to merchants or selling them by auction, putting his mercantilism to decent use. Adventuring was easy, and sometimes even lucrative. His penchant for spinning yarns and impersonations also helped him sneak into and out of places that he otherwise had no business being in, but only if such roles called for a dunmer. He tried passing for a sickly Breton once. No one bought it.
Much of the loot Garil collected was basically junk, save for the rarer finds such as valuable jewels and tithes of gold. Oftentimes they were pieces of antique furniture or ceremonial displays, things that would be more interesting to historians and eccentric nobles than any general merchant. What he can say, at least, is that his travels took him to many different places, like High Rock and Hammerfell, boats from which brought him briefly to port in Auridon before making way to Elsweyr, and he even traveled into Black Marsh -- only to high-tail it out of there after a few weeks when he got chased by some of the more rabid tribes of argonians. He managed to pick up a lot of skills along the way as well, being a sponge for information and fascinated by other cultures. High Rock helped him hone his speechcraft and magic, Hammerfell taught him how to better swing his sword and sneak past their tomb sentinels, Auridon taught him that high elves were pricks, some Baandari in Senchal taught him some of their dances and to always watch his pockets, and Black Marsh taught him that not all cultures are created equal.
Eventually he found himself in Anvil, ready to explore the region of the Gold Coast. His many years of travel has accustomed him to violence, of which there are several varieties: bloody violence, the violence of dramatic action, or the violence of change (albeit not yet desensitized to such violence). Yet, in doing so, he has built his proficiency in both swordplay and mental resilience. He has come to the realization that his claim of being a mere farmhand might now be a lie, though he has no intent on changing that. Though an old sailor he met once told him a thing or two about Anvil, he still isn't quite sure what to expect even as a native Cyrodillian. Still, as long as it was nothing like the customs agents in Black Marsh, he felt pretty secure in being here for the sole purpose of selling his wares at the market or town square.
At least, that's what you're all made to believe.
"Truth is a fickle creature. I may be no farmhand, but does my harvest not reap life in service of life? Were my services not for sale?"
