Post by fel on Nov 22, 2014 9:13:11 GMT
Name: Sol Viantene
Age: 17
Ethnicity: Pentoshi
Status: 2, ordinary member of the scouts.
Attributes:
Agility 3d (1b Quickness)
Animal Handling 4d (1b Charm, 1b Train)
Athletics 3d (1b Strength, 1b Swim)
Awareness 3d
Cunning 3d
Deception 3d
Endurance 3d
Fighting 3d (1b Spears)
Healing 2d
Knowledge 3d
Marksmanship 3d
Persuasion 3d
Status 2d
Stealth 4d (1b Sneak)
Survival 3d (1b Track)
Warfare 3d
Will 3d
Benefits:
Night Eyes: See in darkness. +3 to Fighting, Marksmanship, Stealth, and Awareness Tests in Low Light Environments.
Furtive: Reroll 1s equal to Agility rank on Stealth tests; Add Agility rank to the result of all Stealth tests
Animal Cohort: [Wolf]; +1d on all Fighting tests when Animal is present (Does not stack with other Animal Cohort)
Animal Cohort: [Raven]; +1d on all Fighting tests when Animal is present (Does not stack with other Animal Cohort)
Dexterous: Reroll 1s on all Agility tests
Drawbacks:
Forgetful: Reroll 6s on all Cunning tests
Nemesis: [Khal Bhago]
Insensitive: -1d on all Healing tests
Marked: Reroll 6s on all Persuasion tests
Derived Statistics:
Intrigue Defense: 8
Composure: 9
Combat Defense: 10
Health: 9
Equipment:
Short spear, longsword, recurve bow, dirk, throwing knife (x3), hide armour, breastplate, courser
Background:
Life was peaceful and comfortable for most of Sol's life. He was born the son of a moderately wealthy horse-breeder in the outskirts of the Pentoshi hinterlands. As a child he quickly picked up his father's skill with horses and was gifted when dealing with other animals too. Sol was often seen spending hours trying to train any foxes, birds or squirrels that he could coax into approaching him with bits of food. Despite most of his efforts going in vain, he persisted for many years.
On the year of his thirteenth nameday, a wiseman with a chain made of many different metals arrived looking to purchase a fine horse. The greybeard was amused when he saw Sol's gift with the animals, and he told him he was what was called a maester, and he was originally from the Sunset Kingdoms. He now lived in Pentos and kept a ravenry there, and that these ravens had been trained to send messages to faraway places. Sol was fascinated when he learned of this, and questioned the maester endlessly about how he could train other birds to do the same. He gathered all the information he could on it and set about trying to train local birds, but the task seemed beyond him. For two years he tried to manipulate the local gulls, sparrows and pigeons, but either he lacked the intelligence to train them, or they lacked the intelligence to understand.
A couple of years later, Sol still had not managed to achieve his goal, so he begged money from his father and set off to Pentos, where the old maester still lived in the luxurious estate of a magistrate. Sol offered the maester gold for a breeding pair of his ravens, but the old man just laughed, for the magistrate paid him extremely well for his services, which was why he had left the dark castle and the stern lord he had been in service to. Instead the maester gave Sol the pair freely, since he had laboured so long and fruitlessly to find if other birds could be trained. He also showed Sol an iron link on his chain, and told him that if ever he should succeed in training ravens as he desired, he should forge himself a chain of links of iron, as he would be worthy of that honour of the maester's Citadel.
Sol thanked the wiseman thoroughly and set off to return home, giddy with excitement. His mother would be proud be of him, and his father would be happy the gold had not been spent.
After several days on horseback returning from Pentos, Sol had been nearing his home when he saw smoke, he spurred his horse to a gallop and rushed to see what was the cause. He found the buildings of the Danatio family estate, cattle farmers who neighboured the Vianetene lands, up in flames. An attack by raiders, foraying into the edge of Pentoshi lands, he knew.
Fearing the worst, Sol pushed his beloved horse to make great haste to return to his own lands, the complaints of his ravens ignored, but more smoke over the hills confirmed his fears before he had even arrived.
The flames had gone out when he got there, but white smoke still billowed up from the blackened husks of his home and the stables. Sol moved through the charred remains of his life, recognising the bodies of servants and stablehands who he had counted as friends. When he reached the house, he dismounted and moved through the broken building, finding the bodies of his family there. Numbly, he carried them out of the building, and spent the night digging their graves. The sun was rising when he was done, and wearily he put his mother, father, two sisters and brother into their resting place. He tried to think of words to say, like a priest would have, but he couldn't, so he piled the dirt in top of them and laid flowers on each grave. He wanted to do the same for the others who'd worked for them, but vengeance was boiling in his heart too strongly now and he couldn't wait any longer.
Only one of the raiders had been killed in the attack, Sol had found him in the house, same room as his brother and mother. Though half the man's body had been badly burnt, Sol knew immediately who it was, one of these Dothraki horsemen from out east. He'd never seen one before, but he'd heard enough to know one when he saw one.
Sol slept in what remained of the barn, then set out on the trail of the raiders. The tracks were many and easy to follow, he found. It only took a few days for him to catch up to them, they were a group of about 20 raiders he saw when he spied them from behind a hill, with the stolen horses that were his family's life work being led behind them while they drove their stolen cattle on ahead. But finding them had been the easy part, red thoughts of vengeance had fuelled him to here without any real plan of what to do next.
So he waited, and followed the slow moving band through the lowlands beyond Pentos' control. He slept during the day hours, and followed their track at night to catch up unseen until he found their encampment again. One night, the tracks did not lead to their usual make-shift camp, but rather it led through talk stalks of a wet rice paddy field. He followed the prints until he came to a house at its center, flanked by three large silos. He could hear screaming and shouting coming from the house.
Sol dismounted his horse and crept to the window of a room lit by torchlight with his heart thumping through his chest. When he peered inside, he could see four of these Dothraki men, standing above the body of two dead farmers, with a third dying by the entrance.
He heard more shouting coming from around the building, he quickly moved towards the noise while staying hidden and saw seven more of the Dothraki pulling and pushing five naked women out of the house and forcing them onto the muddy ground outside. Sol always had good vision at night, and he could make out the youngest of these women was about five and ten, while the oldest look to be past her fiftieth nameday.
The man who Sol had concluded was the leader of this band while following them approached the youngest girl. He picked her up off the ground and growled something in his language at her while he inspected her. He dropped her and pulled out his manhood from his breeches while he grabbed her. She screamed and wriggled free of his grasp thanks to the mud and ran from him. The girl ran towards the corner of the house that Sol was waiting behind, when she turned the corner and saw him she didn't so much as blink as she kept sprinting for her life. The Dothraki leader followed after he laughing.
Sol readied himself for the man, he who had led the attack on his family and had destroyed everything they had. He pulled out his spear and held it tight, and without the time to consider his decision, suddenly the man was stopped in front of him eyes wide, with Sol's spear sticking into his stomach. Sol didn't waste a moment for the raider to react, he pulled the point out and quickly slashed it across the man's tattooed throat, spilling his lifeblood darkly down his chest.
An alarm ran through his brain now, telling him to run. He turned and made for his horse, as the body of the leader slumped backwards and into view of the rest of the band. Angry howls went up from the rest of the men, their captured women forgotten as they made chase after whoever had done this.
Sol got to his horse and spurred it onto a gallop, whispering urgent words to his faithful steed, begging it to outpace the raiders. It wasn't long before he had cleared the rice fields and made it into an open clearing, letting him push his mount to its full speed. He looked behind him and fear gripped him when he saw the Dothraki in pursuit and gaining. He had always been a good rider, but these men were demons ahorse, and he would be outrun soon. His only hope was to make for a forested area to the east of him and try to lose them in the trees and the darkness.
He angled to his left and headed for the forest which was 200 yards away. Closing in on it, he could hear the guttural, rage-filled cries behind him, baying for his blood. He was only 50 yards away when his trusted horse missed an outcropped rock in the path, making it crash to the ground and twist its leg horribly, shrieking loudly into the night.
Sol was sent flying ahead and onto his stomach, the wind knocked out of him and a searing, crunching pain in his chest that told him he'd broken a few ribs in the fall. He saw the raven cage smash into the earth also, and knew the two precious birds where dead.
Gasping for air flopped onto his back is how the Dothraki found him. One dismounted and drew his curved sword, bringing the point up to his throat. Sol couldn't even find the words to beg for his life as imminent death was upon him. He closed his eyes and waited for it, but it didn't come. He opened it to see the Dothraki arguing with each other. A second man dismounted and pushed the one who had been about to kill him away. He leaned over Sol, glared into his eyes, and then slammed a fist into his face, and then another, and another, and after that Sol remembered no more.
When he came to, his face and his chest were screaming in pain. He found he was hog-tied to the back of a horse. It was day time and the heat and the pain soon cause him to pass out again. The next time he woke he was slumped against a tree, still tied up. Through dry cracked lips he croaked out a plea for water from the Dothraki sat around a fire. After another argument, one of the smaller of the raiders angrily cut loose the bonds on his hands and gave him a half a cup of water. Sol gulped it in one, then desperately asked for more but all it got him was the back of the Dothraki's hand.
For a fortnight they kept him alive and tied up, giving him little to drink and less to eat. He had begun to hallucinate towards the ends, and so when he saw the band approaching a massive host of thousands, he assumed it was part of the madness.
The next time he awoke, it was when he was cut off from the back of the horse and landed on the ground in front of a tall, broad shouldered Dothraki, with scars all over his chest, and a long braided tail of his hair, jingling with little bells throughout. The sight of the little bells made Sol laugh, which earned him another backhand.
The tall Dothraki man shouted at him in his guttural tongue and shook him furiously, but that only made the bells ring louder and Sol laugh more.
"You kill son," he growled in broken Valyrian, finally. "What you name?"
The sound of his own language helped him to focus somewhat as he his addled brain deciphered what had been said to him, comprehension slowly dawned on him. He looked at the ground.
"Sol," he said quietly, before looking up and rasping as loudly as he could "Sol Viantene."
The Dothraki nodded, with what looked like a sliver of respect. "Sol Viantene, I Khal Bhago. You kill son Rotho, now pain for you. Death, slow," he said, tightening his fist until it shook with rage.
Khal Bhago grabbed Sol by the back of his head and lifted him up off his feet. Sol saw now the crowd that surrounded them, crying for Bhago to spill his blood on the grass.
Bhago pulled out his dirk and brought it to Sol's face, pressing the sharp steel into his cheek and dragging it downwards until he reached his jaw.
"Pain," Bhago said, as he pulled at Sol's cheek with his thumb, tearing the wound open more, crimson blood pouring freely down over the two of them. Sol was crying out in agony, too weak to even lift a hand back, not that it would have done much good.
He was dropped to the ground and fell onto his back. Bhago put a boot on his broken ribs and pressed down. "Pain," he repeated.
Sol couldn't even shout anymore, he couldn't even beg for death, his mouthed lolled open making throaty gurgles as his stared into the sky and in his madness he saw a bird flying above them, a bird that appeared to be getting bigger and bigger... and bigger still. A bird with giant leathery wings and scales the colour of ash. On the bird he could even make out a rider, he laughed internally at that, a man riding a bird? Who'd ever heard of such a thing.
The he fell asleep and dreamt of fire.
When he woke, he was on a soft bunk in a large tent, but it didn't take long for darkness to consume him again. The next time he woke he was lying flat in a cart being pulled along by a large workhorse. He could see mounted men, armed and armoured around him, but again he was quickly asleep. The third time he was back in the tent. This time, he was hungry, famished even. He looked around him to see a man in a light robe approaching him. The man smiled warmly.
"A miraculous recovery," he said, "I do astound myself sometimes. Three lost teeth, a broken nose, a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a very nasty gash across your face, and a broken leg, you must have displeased Khal Bhago quite thoroughly. Welcome back to the land of the living, I am Phinaren, the company surgeon here, and you are in the encampment of Emperor Aurion. We found you lying amongst the remains of Bhago's camp after the emperor scared his khalasar away with a few warning shots. We haven't had any injuries yet, so I decided to take you with me to make sure I hadn't gotten rusty. The good news for you is I haven't. Your jaw will click endlessly and your face will never be comely, but your leg has been set well and your ribs will mend in time."
Sol wept then, in gratitude to the surgeon, in mourning for the family he had lost, in weariness after the trials he had faced and the pain he had endured. He signed up with the the emperor's force a few days later, barely able to walk to the recruiter's tent.
Age: 17
Ethnicity: Pentoshi
Status: 2, ordinary member of the scouts.
Attributes:
Agility 3d (1b Quickness)
Animal Handling 4d (1b Charm, 1b Train)
Athletics 3d (1b Strength, 1b Swim)
Awareness 3d
Cunning 3d
Deception 3d
Endurance 3d
Fighting 3d (1b Spears)
Healing 2d
Knowledge 3d
Marksmanship 3d
Persuasion 3d
Status 2d
Stealth 4d (1b Sneak)
Survival 3d (1b Track)
Warfare 3d
Will 3d
Benefits:
Night Eyes: See in darkness. +3 to Fighting, Marksmanship, Stealth, and Awareness Tests in Low Light Environments.
Furtive: Reroll 1s equal to Agility rank on Stealth tests; Add Agility rank to the result of all Stealth tests
Animal Cohort: [Wolf]; +1d on all Fighting tests when Animal is present (Does not stack with other Animal Cohort)
Animal Cohort: [Raven]; +1d on all Fighting tests when Animal is present (Does not stack with other Animal Cohort)
Dexterous: Reroll 1s on all Agility tests
Drawbacks:
Forgetful: Reroll 6s on all Cunning tests
Nemesis: [Khal Bhago]
Insensitive: -1d on all Healing tests
Marked: Reroll 6s on all Persuasion tests
Derived Statistics:
Intrigue Defense: 8
Composure: 9
Combat Defense: 10
Health: 9
Equipment:
Short spear, longsword, recurve bow, dirk, throwing knife (x3), hide armour, breastplate, courser
Background:
Life was peaceful and comfortable for most of Sol's life. He was born the son of a moderately wealthy horse-breeder in the outskirts of the Pentoshi hinterlands. As a child he quickly picked up his father's skill with horses and was gifted when dealing with other animals too. Sol was often seen spending hours trying to train any foxes, birds or squirrels that he could coax into approaching him with bits of food. Despite most of his efforts going in vain, he persisted for many years.
On the year of his thirteenth nameday, a wiseman with a chain made of many different metals arrived looking to purchase a fine horse. The greybeard was amused when he saw Sol's gift with the animals, and he told him he was what was called a maester, and he was originally from the Sunset Kingdoms. He now lived in Pentos and kept a ravenry there, and that these ravens had been trained to send messages to faraway places. Sol was fascinated when he learned of this, and questioned the maester endlessly about how he could train other birds to do the same. He gathered all the information he could on it and set about trying to train local birds, but the task seemed beyond him. For two years he tried to manipulate the local gulls, sparrows and pigeons, but either he lacked the intelligence to train them, or they lacked the intelligence to understand.
A couple of years later, Sol still had not managed to achieve his goal, so he begged money from his father and set off to Pentos, where the old maester still lived in the luxurious estate of a magistrate. Sol offered the maester gold for a breeding pair of his ravens, but the old man just laughed, for the magistrate paid him extremely well for his services, which was why he had left the dark castle and the stern lord he had been in service to. Instead the maester gave Sol the pair freely, since he had laboured so long and fruitlessly to find if other birds could be trained. He also showed Sol an iron link on his chain, and told him that if ever he should succeed in training ravens as he desired, he should forge himself a chain of links of iron, as he would be worthy of that honour of the maester's Citadel.
Sol thanked the wiseman thoroughly and set off to return home, giddy with excitement. His mother would be proud be of him, and his father would be happy the gold had not been spent.
After several days on horseback returning from Pentos, Sol had been nearing his home when he saw smoke, he spurred his horse to a gallop and rushed to see what was the cause. He found the buildings of the Danatio family estate, cattle farmers who neighboured the Vianetene lands, up in flames. An attack by raiders, foraying into the edge of Pentoshi lands, he knew.
Fearing the worst, Sol pushed his beloved horse to make great haste to return to his own lands, the complaints of his ravens ignored, but more smoke over the hills confirmed his fears before he had even arrived.
The flames had gone out when he got there, but white smoke still billowed up from the blackened husks of his home and the stables. Sol moved through the charred remains of his life, recognising the bodies of servants and stablehands who he had counted as friends. When he reached the house, he dismounted and moved through the broken building, finding the bodies of his family there. Numbly, he carried them out of the building, and spent the night digging their graves. The sun was rising when he was done, and wearily he put his mother, father, two sisters and brother into their resting place. He tried to think of words to say, like a priest would have, but he couldn't, so he piled the dirt in top of them and laid flowers on each grave. He wanted to do the same for the others who'd worked for them, but vengeance was boiling in his heart too strongly now and he couldn't wait any longer.
Only one of the raiders had been killed in the attack, Sol had found him in the house, same room as his brother and mother. Though half the man's body had been badly burnt, Sol knew immediately who it was, one of these Dothraki horsemen from out east. He'd never seen one before, but he'd heard enough to know one when he saw one.
Sol slept in what remained of the barn, then set out on the trail of the raiders. The tracks were many and easy to follow, he found. It only took a few days for him to catch up to them, they were a group of about 20 raiders he saw when he spied them from behind a hill, with the stolen horses that were his family's life work being led behind them while they drove their stolen cattle on ahead. But finding them had been the easy part, red thoughts of vengeance had fuelled him to here without any real plan of what to do next.
So he waited, and followed the slow moving band through the lowlands beyond Pentos' control. He slept during the day hours, and followed their track at night to catch up unseen until he found their encampment again. One night, the tracks did not lead to their usual make-shift camp, but rather it led through talk stalks of a wet rice paddy field. He followed the prints until he came to a house at its center, flanked by three large silos. He could hear screaming and shouting coming from the house.
Sol dismounted his horse and crept to the window of a room lit by torchlight with his heart thumping through his chest. When he peered inside, he could see four of these Dothraki men, standing above the body of two dead farmers, with a third dying by the entrance.
He heard more shouting coming from around the building, he quickly moved towards the noise while staying hidden and saw seven more of the Dothraki pulling and pushing five naked women out of the house and forcing them onto the muddy ground outside. Sol always had good vision at night, and he could make out the youngest of these women was about five and ten, while the oldest look to be past her fiftieth nameday.
The man who Sol had concluded was the leader of this band while following them approached the youngest girl. He picked her up off the ground and growled something in his language at her while he inspected her. He dropped her and pulled out his manhood from his breeches while he grabbed her. She screamed and wriggled free of his grasp thanks to the mud and ran from him. The girl ran towards the corner of the house that Sol was waiting behind, when she turned the corner and saw him she didn't so much as blink as she kept sprinting for her life. The Dothraki leader followed after he laughing.
Sol readied himself for the man, he who had led the attack on his family and had destroyed everything they had. He pulled out his spear and held it tight, and without the time to consider his decision, suddenly the man was stopped in front of him eyes wide, with Sol's spear sticking into his stomach. Sol didn't waste a moment for the raider to react, he pulled the point out and quickly slashed it across the man's tattooed throat, spilling his lifeblood darkly down his chest.
An alarm ran through his brain now, telling him to run. He turned and made for his horse, as the body of the leader slumped backwards and into view of the rest of the band. Angry howls went up from the rest of the men, their captured women forgotten as they made chase after whoever had done this.
Sol got to his horse and spurred it onto a gallop, whispering urgent words to his faithful steed, begging it to outpace the raiders. It wasn't long before he had cleared the rice fields and made it into an open clearing, letting him push his mount to its full speed. He looked behind him and fear gripped him when he saw the Dothraki in pursuit and gaining. He had always been a good rider, but these men were demons ahorse, and he would be outrun soon. His only hope was to make for a forested area to the east of him and try to lose them in the trees and the darkness.
He angled to his left and headed for the forest which was 200 yards away. Closing in on it, he could hear the guttural, rage-filled cries behind him, baying for his blood. He was only 50 yards away when his trusted horse missed an outcropped rock in the path, making it crash to the ground and twist its leg horribly, shrieking loudly into the night.
Sol was sent flying ahead and onto his stomach, the wind knocked out of him and a searing, crunching pain in his chest that told him he'd broken a few ribs in the fall. He saw the raven cage smash into the earth also, and knew the two precious birds where dead.
Gasping for air flopped onto his back is how the Dothraki found him. One dismounted and drew his curved sword, bringing the point up to his throat. Sol couldn't even find the words to beg for his life as imminent death was upon him. He closed his eyes and waited for it, but it didn't come. He opened it to see the Dothraki arguing with each other. A second man dismounted and pushed the one who had been about to kill him away. He leaned over Sol, glared into his eyes, and then slammed a fist into his face, and then another, and another, and after that Sol remembered no more.
When he came to, his face and his chest were screaming in pain. He found he was hog-tied to the back of a horse. It was day time and the heat and the pain soon cause him to pass out again. The next time he woke he was slumped against a tree, still tied up. Through dry cracked lips he croaked out a plea for water from the Dothraki sat around a fire. After another argument, one of the smaller of the raiders angrily cut loose the bonds on his hands and gave him a half a cup of water. Sol gulped it in one, then desperately asked for more but all it got him was the back of the Dothraki's hand.
For a fortnight they kept him alive and tied up, giving him little to drink and less to eat. He had begun to hallucinate towards the ends, and so when he saw the band approaching a massive host of thousands, he assumed it was part of the madness.
The next time he awoke, it was when he was cut off from the back of the horse and landed on the ground in front of a tall, broad shouldered Dothraki, with scars all over his chest, and a long braided tail of his hair, jingling with little bells throughout. The sight of the little bells made Sol laugh, which earned him another backhand.
The tall Dothraki man shouted at him in his guttural tongue and shook him furiously, but that only made the bells ring louder and Sol laugh more.
"You kill son," he growled in broken Valyrian, finally. "What you name?"
The sound of his own language helped him to focus somewhat as he his addled brain deciphered what had been said to him, comprehension slowly dawned on him. He looked at the ground.
"Sol," he said quietly, before looking up and rasping as loudly as he could "Sol Viantene."
The Dothraki nodded, with what looked like a sliver of respect. "Sol Viantene, I Khal Bhago. You kill son Rotho, now pain for you. Death, slow," he said, tightening his fist until it shook with rage.
Khal Bhago grabbed Sol by the back of his head and lifted him up off his feet. Sol saw now the crowd that surrounded them, crying for Bhago to spill his blood on the grass.
Bhago pulled out his dirk and brought it to Sol's face, pressing the sharp steel into his cheek and dragging it downwards until he reached his jaw.
"Pain," Bhago said, as he pulled at Sol's cheek with his thumb, tearing the wound open more, crimson blood pouring freely down over the two of them. Sol was crying out in agony, too weak to even lift a hand back, not that it would have done much good.
He was dropped to the ground and fell onto his back. Bhago put a boot on his broken ribs and pressed down. "Pain," he repeated.
Sol couldn't even shout anymore, he couldn't even beg for death, his mouthed lolled open making throaty gurgles as his stared into the sky and in his madness he saw a bird flying above them, a bird that appeared to be getting bigger and bigger... and bigger still. A bird with giant leathery wings and scales the colour of ash. On the bird he could even make out a rider, he laughed internally at that, a man riding a bird? Who'd ever heard of such a thing.
The he fell asleep and dreamt of fire.
When he woke, he was on a soft bunk in a large tent, but it didn't take long for darkness to consume him again. The next time he woke he was lying flat in a cart being pulled along by a large workhorse. He could see mounted men, armed and armoured around him, but again he was quickly asleep. The third time he was back in the tent. This time, he was hungry, famished even. He looked around him to see a man in a light robe approaching him. The man smiled warmly.
"A miraculous recovery," he said, "I do astound myself sometimes. Three lost teeth, a broken nose, a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a very nasty gash across your face, and a broken leg, you must have displeased Khal Bhago quite thoroughly. Welcome back to the land of the living, I am Phinaren, the company surgeon here, and you are in the encampment of Emperor Aurion. We found you lying amongst the remains of Bhago's camp after the emperor scared his khalasar away with a few warning shots. We haven't had any injuries yet, so I decided to take you with me to make sure I hadn't gotten rusty. The good news for you is I haven't. Your jaw will click endlessly and your face will never be comely, but your leg has been set well and your ribs will mend in time."
Sol wept then, in gratitude to the surgeon, in mourning for the family he had lost, in weariness after the trials he had faced and the pain he had endured. He signed up with the the emperor's force a few days later, barely able to walk to the recruiter's tent.
