K
Kreska
Guest
Name: Salif Marovik
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Race: Human
Appearance: Salif stands slightly taller than the average human height. His skin is yellowy and adorned with various stress marks and small scars from battle. His short black hair is brushed back with a beard outlining his jaw, normally trimmed short but looking a bit raggedy thanks to his circumstances. His clothing, all fairly dirtied, consists of a heavy yellow jacket and an undershirt, grey pants, re-inforced leather boots, and fingerless gloves. What armor he has left after most of it was stolen from him consists of the forearm bracers, the leather underpiece on his torso, and the face-plate that covers his forehead strapped firmly around his head, dull blue eyes glinting through the shadow it casts on his face. The metal on both pieces is deliberately covered in dried mud so as not to attract attention, although Salif looks forward to polishing the metal so it shines again just as soon as he escapes from captivity.
Backstory:
Personality: Salif regards everyone he meets with a certain amount of respect, no matter their appearance or walk of life. However, as soon as he has known enough about someone to decide who they are to him, it is difficult for him to change his ways. He approaches all problems that he faced warily, assuming that his adversaries will be hostile until it is proven otherwise.
Rituals: (waiting until IC)
Skills: Salif has excellent combat proficiency in pole weapons, a glaive being his weapon-of-choice. He also has a passing familiarity with using swords, which is obligatory given the portability and popularity of swords. Although his understanding of politics is cursory, he has plenty of practice in acting like a powerful person (even when he isn't) to coerce would-be enemies, having failure as often as success... but when he fails he can't say it was for lack of trying. Salif's childhood roaming the fields of Krijna gave him wilderness-survival skills that complement the trademark resilience of humans. Like his fellow homo sapiens, he isn't the fastest or strongest thing around (his strength is no laughing matter compared to his peers', either), but he can outlast, be it on a battlefield, in civilisation's midst, or in the middle of nowhere.
Patron God: Berwatsen
Powers: (waiting until IC)
Theme-song:
Goal: Salif aims to find and kill Serhiy, re-take the armor that was taken from him, and eventually return to and subjugate the whole of Krijna as well as Yr and Dhiron, Krijna's neighboring countries whose people only showed him ill will when he had originally approached them peacefully. Of course, subjugation is the best-case scenario for now. He also wants to learn what became of his mother.
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Whew! Sorry if the backstory seems long-winded; I may add a condensed version for quick reference later. I made Salif fairly versatile, so let me know if he is over-/under-powered. I don't think it should be a problem because other fantasy races usually make humans look weak in comparison (or they're just the boring race with no powers), but if humans do have a trademark power/skill in this world other than resilience, say the word and I'll adjust things. If you wish for me to elaborate on Krijna, Yr, or Dhiron (or otherwise change anything), I'll do so. The names are improvised from looking at names in the first post and coming up with something that looks enough like they would fit in.
I gave Salif no weapons to start with because, well, we're starting out as slaves after all. The amount of armor that he still has may be a little of a far fetch, but it's believable enough being slathered in mud and concealed most of the time.
Also, I forgot to say earlier: kudos on the pantheon of gods. Hate being neutral and hell being light gives an interesting sense of the gods not getting along all the time.
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Race: Human
Appearance: Salif stands slightly taller than the average human height. His skin is yellowy and adorned with various stress marks and small scars from battle. His short black hair is brushed back with a beard outlining his jaw, normally trimmed short but looking a bit raggedy thanks to his circumstances. His clothing, all fairly dirtied, consists of a heavy yellow jacket and an undershirt, grey pants, re-inforced leather boots, and fingerless gloves. What armor he has left after most of it was stolen from him consists of the forearm bracers, the leather underpiece on his torso, and the face-plate that covers his forehead strapped firmly around his head, dull blue eyes glinting through the shadow it casts on his face. The metal on both pieces is deliberately covered in dried mud so as not to attract attention, although Salif looks forward to polishing the metal so it shines again just as soon as he escapes from captivity.
Backstory:
Salif was born and raised in Krijna, a land of rolling hills, lakes, bluffs, and not much else thanks to the warlords constantly fighting over and claiming chunks of it for themselves before they are inevitably defeated by some other warlord. There are three types of places where one can live in Krijna: a farming and fishing village, a warlord's keep, or upon the hills themselves, packing one's entire living into a few horses and a tent. Salif's parents chose the last one, the fact that they relayed precious supplies from one village to the next earning them their meals. On Salif's thirteenth birthday, his father took him on a journey into a part of Krijna where they usually didn't go— the Red-lands, named not because of its many clay-lined cliffs but because it was the place where most of the clashing warlords' battles took place: it was said that there was never a time in the Red-lands when blood wasn't being shed.
"Look here. This is the fate of all those who choose to waste away in their own vanity," Salif's father explained to him from a cliff as they looked upon a burning village. The hot embers being carried on the wind, the screams of the peasants caught up in the clash between two factions of fighters— the sight was supposed to scare Salif into following the same lifestyle as his father.
But Salif was only inspired. As his father's eyes grimly watched the villagers dying, the impressionable boy focused entirely on the mercenary fighters trodding through the streets in their armor and bearing their axes and spears: each fighter emitted an unmistakable aura of power... power that Salif decided he wanted to wield himself one day.
Five years passed until Salif's father finally died of sickness. It was a stupid death that was likely preventable, but the man refused to visit a physician of any sort since he believed that it would only prolong his suffering. Fearing that he would not be able to protect his mother alone for the rest of her life, Salif elected to travel west with her until they found a city— Krijna was no place for his mother, who had gone there in the first place only to be with his father. Using a good chunk of his father's money to buy a glaive and some shoddy armor, he set out to find some place where his mother would be able to live peacefully until her death.
Finally the two arrived at Velstad, a city straddling the border of Krijna and Yr, a sleepy republic most well-known for manipulating the international economy to its benefit. Perhaps, Salif mused, the relative barrenness of Krijna was thanks in part to the "money-scientists" of Yr. He hunted down an abbey of followers of Sahlyncirle, the deity that his father (who had believed in leaving the land pristine) had so revered and his mother respected by association with his father. Making his way to the abbey, he was confused when he and his mother were accosted by Yrian guards and asked to show their entry passports, Yr being a nation with strict immigration policies.
What in the seven hells was a passport?!
Blood was shed. After all, one thing that Salif had learned during his life in Krijna was that if you stood in someone's way, then you were putting yourself at their mercy... but he couldn't possibly have had an idea that things were different in other countries. He had begun acting out after the guards had aggressively attempted to disarm him. His mother fleeing after he yelled at her to do so, he successfully defended himself against the guards, the reach of his glaive providing a clear advantage over the dinky short-swords the guards had all been issued. Encountering a mounted guard, he unhorsed the less-armored man and stole the horse, riding it all the way back into the heart of Krijna. His father had taught him some basic tenets of self-defense... but never anything like that. It was the first time he'd gotten in a real fight rather than a petty squabble.
And he looked forward to his next fight already as he rode to the Red-lands. Next time, it would be his enemies who were fleeing.
Salif spent the next five years of his life in or close to the Red-lands, and those five years were several times busier than the eighteen preceding it had ever been. He still ferried goods between villages as a side-job, but most of his lifestyle was based around battle— finding instruction in its arts or participating in it. Finally, he joined a mercenary crew that had some sense of permanence.
Salif's career as a mercenary began in a unrecognised territory in the Red-lands presided over by Serhiy, a small-time warlord. The mercenary crew that he was only a new recruit in was hired by the warlord, short of men, to raid and hold a fortress occupied by another warlord. The mission was successful— in a manner of speaking. Most of Salif's mercenary comrades died capturing the fortress, and the others fled soon after, fearing the inevitable enemy counterattack. As fate would have it, there was no military response at all by the enemy forces, but when a messenger from Serhiy's keep arrived to confirm the capture it appeared as though Salif had defended the place all on his own. Impressed after hearing the news, Serhiy extended an invitation to the mercenary to join his "army" of warriors, really no bigger than a platoon.
Salif accepted the invitation, and he fought as a member of the warlord's forces for about a year, building up his reputation all the while. Gaining an interest in the region's cutthroat politics (for even in the middle of all the bloodshed, the warlords still somehow found time to talk), he decided he wanted more and organised a mutiny against Serhiy, whose incompetence as a leader allowed the plot's success. Cornered, Serhiy was forced to give Salif his armor and flee like a cowardly mutt. The armor was a status symbol: supposedly originating in a faraway empire, it was a magnificent set of metal with shoulder pads fashioned after the heads of eagles and a great blue plume on the helmet. Though it was hard to tell who was beneath all the armor, Salif's fighting style differed enough from Serhiy's that it was clear to see what had happened.
Several months passed as Salif visited the villages dotting his territory in person to demand tribute from the people. They were all too generous— those who had liked Serhiy were starstruck at being the subjects of someone even more powerful, and those who hadn't liked him were grateful to learn the news that he had fled. Additionally, he searched the villages for followers of Reshkold and hired them to begin preaching. Ever since he had acquired a book on the gods and goddesses of the world, Salif had held an admiration for the god of destruction. Thinking back to his father's showing him the burning village ten years ago, it was obviously a message that nobody was immune to Reshkold's finger descending from the sky to rend them asunder at any given time, and not at all the message about the purity of Sahlyncirle's creation that his father had intended to plant in him.
Salif's next move as a newly-minted warlord was to strike a shaky alliance with warlords from two adjoining territories. Soon, he was asked by his new allies to visit the official administration of Dhiron, an autocratic country to the east, with the goal of political recognition of the warlord trio as the rulers of the Red-lands, and later the entirety of Krijna.
His heart was so swelled with pride that he didn't see the obvious trap.
Almost immediately after entering the castle alone, Salif was surrounded by soldiers and forced to kneel before the Dhironite governor within. Knowing that resistance aginst so many men would mean certain death, Salif complied begrudgingly as he was made to give up his precious armor to the governor, humiliated.
By the governor's side was Serhiy, murmuring about how they were going to divide Salif's land after annexing it.
Salif found his way into a cell, then a slave-yard, and another cell and another yard, and the cycle repeated until he was far away from his former allies who had seemingly betrayed them in handing him over to the weasel of a man whom he wished he had killed. This was a lesson to Salif: Reshkold was indifferent. Thought it was well-known that the god took neither sides in the pantheons of light and dark— arbitrarily-named as those categories were— the indifference extended to mortals as well. To truly show his faith to the teachings that no gem remained untarnished and no sword's blade remained straight, Salif resolved to follow the god's example in being indifferent to his own circumstances, and so when he was asked to do something he did so without complaint, but remained quiet when not asked to do anything... quietly plotting.
For Salif was convinced that Serhiy's armor had changed him. Some sort of curse or enchantment must have dwelled inside the plates, in the plume, in the metallic eagles' eyes. When he had worn it, it made him know an arrogance that he had never known, and after it had been pried off of him he desperately wished to find it and put it on again. When the helmet had rested upon his head, he had been so sure that he would be the one to rule Krijna and raise the run-down nation into a fearsome empire whose might would be whispered about across the world. As he dwelt on what had happened, his fantasies of revenge became more and more extreme. At first he had thought that he would eventually end Serhiy's life with a clean cut to the neck— but no, now he wanted to wanted to watch the light leave the man's eyes slowly as he strangled him with his bare hands. Despite these burning desires, Salif remained stoically indifferent as he was passed around as a common heavy-lifting worker. If the god of destruction was truly indifferent, then eventually the deity's acts would fall in Salif's favor. Something dawned on Salif: he respected Reshkold, but did not worship him. How could one worship an indifferent god with more indifference? No, Salif's reverence was not worship, and he began thinking of what he remembered of the dark gods. Though Reshkold's traditions had been the one he had done the most reading about back when he had owned that tome about the deities, it was clear to him that the gods of light did not deserve their exalted title— "gods of light". It was pretentious to say that only a subset of the divine hosts were the ones illuminating Helniclaiir for the people. He thought back to his father who had worshiped Sahlyncirle. "God of creation"! What sort of god of creation was he to let his creation go undeveloped and unimproved in its wretched "purity"? All the world's continents were useless with no people of any sort to build upon them.
But if Salif's mind was painting such lofty pictures as to decide that the deities of light deserved to be cast down and out of favor, the gods that he really needed to worship were on the other side. While he would not lose his respect for Reshkold, this divine problem, and his own problems, could not be solved by indifference. Berwatsen, god of war— perhaps that was a deity more worthy of Salif's praise. War, horrible as it was, got things done. It brought change, and yes, destruction too. Destruction of his enemies and the pathetic light that they swore to.
A few months in captivity passed, until a fellow slave approached Salif telling of a request for a dark oath in exchange for power. For a chance at revenge and much more, the only cost was his soul.
Salif had never run into a better bargain in his whole life.
"Look here. This is the fate of all those who choose to waste away in their own vanity," Salif's father explained to him from a cliff as they looked upon a burning village. The hot embers being carried on the wind, the screams of the peasants caught up in the clash between two factions of fighters— the sight was supposed to scare Salif into following the same lifestyle as his father.
But Salif was only inspired. As his father's eyes grimly watched the villagers dying, the impressionable boy focused entirely on the mercenary fighters trodding through the streets in their armor and bearing their axes and spears: each fighter emitted an unmistakable aura of power... power that Salif decided he wanted to wield himself one day.
Five years passed until Salif's father finally died of sickness. It was a stupid death that was likely preventable, but the man refused to visit a physician of any sort since he believed that it would only prolong his suffering. Fearing that he would not be able to protect his mother alone for the rest of her life, Salif elected to travel west with her until they found a city— Krijna was no place for his mother, who had gone there in the first place only to be with his father. Using a good chunk of his father's money to buy a glaive and some shoddy armor, he set out to find some place where his mother would be able to live peacefully until her death.
Finally the two arrived at Velstad, a city straddling the border of Krijna and Yr, a sleepy republic most well-known for manipulating the international economy to its benefit. Perhaps, Salif mused, the relative barrenness of Krijna was thanks in part to the "money-scientists" of Yr. He hunted down an abbey of followers of Sahlyncirle, the deity that his father (who had believed in leaving the land pristine) had so revered and his mother respected by association with his father. Making his way to the abbey, he was confused when he and his mother were accosted by Yrian guards and asked to show their entry passports, Yr being a nation with strict immigration policies.
What in the seven hells was a passport?!
Blood was shed. After all, one thing that Salif had learned during his life in Krijna was that if you stood in someone's way, then you were putting yourself at their mercy... but he couldn't possibly have had an idea that things were different in other countries. He had begun acting out after the guards had aggressively attempted to disarm him. His mother fleeing after he yelled at her to do so, he successfully defended himself against the guards, the reach of his glaive providing a clear advantage over the dinky short-swords the guards had all been issued. Encountering a mounted guard, he unhorsed the less-armored man and stole the horse, riding it all the way back into the heart of Krijna. His father had taught him some basic tenets of self-defense... but never anything like that. It was the first time he'd gotten in a real fight rather than a petty squabble.
And he looked forward to his next fight already as he rode to the Red-lands. Next time, it would be his enemies who were fleeing.
Salif spent the next five years of his life in or close to the Red-lands, and those five years were several times busier than the eighteen preceding it had ever been. He still ferried goods between villages as a side-job, but most of his lifestyle was based around battle— finding instruction in its arts or participating in it. Finally, he joined a mercenary crew that had some sense of permanence.
Salif's career as a mercenary began in a unrecognised territory in the Red-lands presided over by Serhiy, a small-time warlord. The mercenary crew that he was only a new recruit in was hired by the warlord, short of men, to raid and hold a fortress occupied by another warlord. The mission was successful— in a manner of speaking. Most of Salif's mercenary comrades died capturing the fortress, and the others fled soon after, fearing the inevitable enemy counterattack. As fate would have it, there was no military response at all by the enemy forces, but when a messenger from Serhiy's keep arrived to confirm the capture it appeared as though Salif had defended the place all on his own. Impressed after hearing the news, Serhiy extended an invitation to the mercenary to join his "army" of warriors, really no bigger than a platoon.
Salif accepted the invitation, and he fought as a member of the warlord's forces for about a year, building up his reputation all the while. Gaining an interest in the region's cutthroat politics (for even in the middle of all the bloodshed, the warlords still somehow found time to talk), he decided he wanted more and organised a mutiny against Serhiy, whose incompetence as a leader allowed the plot's success. Cornered, Serhiy was forced to give Salif his armor and flee like a cowardly mutt. The armor was a status symbol: supposedly originating in a faraway empire, it was a magnificent set of metal with shoulder pads fashioned after the heads of eagles and a great blue plume on the helmet. Though it was hard to tell who was beneath all the armor, Salif's fighting style differed enough from Serhiy's that it was clear to see what had happened.
Several months passed as Salif visited the villages dotting his territory in person to demand tribute from the people. They were all too generous— those who had liked Serhiy were starstruck at being the subjects of someone even more powerful, and those who hadn't liked him were grateful to learn the news that he had fled. Additionally, he searched the villages for followers of Reshkold and hired them to begin preaching. Ever since he had acquired a book on the gods and goddesses of the world, Salif had held an admiration for the god of destruction. Thinking back to his father's showing him the burning village ten years ago, it was obviously a message that nobody was immune to Reshkold's finger descending from the sky to rend them asunder at any given time, and not at all the message about the purity of Sahlyncirle's creation that his father had intended to plant in him.
Salif's next move as a newly-minted warlord was to strike a shaky alliance with warlords from two adjoining territories. Soon, he was asked by his new allies to visit the official administration of Dhiron, an autocratic country to the east, with the goal of political recognition of the warlord trio as the rulers of the Red-lands, and later the entirety of Krijna.
His heart was so swelled with pride that he didn't see the obvious trap.
Almost immediately after entering the castle alone, Salif was surrounded by soldiers and forced to kneel before the Dhironite governor within. Knowing that resistance aginst so many men would mean certain death, Salif complied begrudgingly as he was made to give up his precious armor to the governor, humiliated.
By the governor's side was Serhiy, murmuring about how they were going to divide Salif's land after annexing it.
Salif found his way into a cell, then a slave-yard, and another cell and another yard, and the cycle repeated until he was far away from his former allies who had seemingly betrayed them in handing him over to the weasel of a man whom he wished he had killed. This was a lesson to Salif: Reshkold was indifferent. Thought it was well-known that the god took neither sides in the pantheons of light and dark— arbitrarily-named as those categories were— the indifference extended to mortals as well. To truly show his faith to the teachings that no gem remained untarnished and no sword's blade remained straight, Salif resolved to follow the god's example in being indifferent to his own circumstances, and so when he was asked to do something he did so without complaint, but remained quiet when not asked to do anything... quietly plotting.
For Salif was convinced that Serhiy's armor had changed him. Some sort of curse or enchantment must have dwelled inside the plates, in the plume, in the metallic eagles' eyes. When he had worn it, it made him know an arrogance that he had never known, and after it had been pried off of him he desperately wished to find it and put it on again. When the helmet had rested upon his head, he had been so sure that he would be the one to rule Krijna and raise the run-down nation into a fearsome empire whose might would be whispered about across the world. As he dwelt on what had happened, his fantasies of revenge became more and more extreme. At first he had thought that he would eventually end Serhiy's life with a clean cut to the neck— but no, now he wanted to wanted to watch the light leave the man's eyes slowly as he strangled him with his bare hands. Despite these burning desires, Salif remained stoically indifferent as he was passed around as a common heavy-lifting worker. If the god of destruction was truly indifferent, then eventually the deity's acts would fall in Salif's favor. Something dawned on Salif: he respected Reshkold, but did not worship him. How could one worship an indifferent god with more indifference? No, Salif's reverence was not worship, and he began thinking of what he remembered of the dark gods. Though Reshkold's traditions had been the one he had done the most reading about back when he had owned that tome about the deities, it was clear to him that the gods of light did not deserve their exalted title— "gods of light". It was pretentious to say that only a subset of the divine hosts were the ones illuminating Helniclaiir for the people. He thought back to his father who had worshiped Sahlyncirle. "God of creation"! What sort of god of creation was he to let his creation go undeveloped and unimproved in its wretched "purity"? All the world's continents were useless with no people of any sort to build upon them.
But if Salif's mind was painting such lofty pictures as to decide that the deities of light deserved to be cast down and out of favor, the gods that he really needed to worship were on the other side. While he would not lose his respect for Reshkold, this divine problem, and his own problems, could not be solved by indifference. Berwatsen, god of war— perhaps that was a deity more worthy of Salif's praise. War, horrible as it was, got things done. It brought change, and yes, destruction too. Destruction of his enemies and the pathetic light that they swore to.
A few months in captivity passed, until a fellow slave approached Salif telling of a request for a dark oath in exchange for power. For a chance at revenge and much more, the only cost was his soul.
Salif had never run into a better bargain in his whole life.
Rituals: (waiting until IC)
Skills: Salif has excellent combat proficiency in pole weapons, a glaive being his weapon-of-choice. He also has a passing familiarity with using swords, which is obligatory given the portability and popularity of swords. Although his understanding of politics is cursory, he has plenty of practice in acting like a powerful person (even when he isn't) to coerce would-be enemies, having failure as often as success... but when he fails he can't say it was for lack of trying. Salif's childhood roaming the fields of Krijna gave him wilderness-survival skills that complement the trademark resilience of humans. Like his fellow homo sapiens, he isn't the fastest or strongest thing around (his strength is no laughing matter compared to his peers', either), but he can outlast, be it on a battlefield, in civilisation's midst, or in the middle of nowhere.
Patron God: Berwatsen
Powers: (waiting until IC)
Theme-song:
Goal: Salif aims to find and kill Serhiy, re-take the armor that was taken from him, and eventually return to and subjugate the whole of Krijna as well as Yr and Dhiron, Krijna's neighboring countries whose people only showed him ill will when he had originally approached them peacefully. Of course, subjugation is the best-case scenario for now. He also wants to learn what became of his mother.
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Whew! Sorry if the backstory seems long-winded; I may add a condensed version for quick reference later. I made Salif fairly versatile, so let me know if he is over-/under-powered. I don't think it should be a problem because other fantasy races usually make humans look weak in comparison (or they're just the boring race with no powers), but if humans do have a trademark power/skill in this world other than resilience, say the word and I'll adjust things. If you wish for me to elaborate on Krijna, Yr, or Dhiron (or otherwise change anything), I'll do so. The names are improvised from looking at names in the first post and coming up with something that looks enough like they would fit in.
I gave Salif no weapons to start with because, well, we're starting out as slaves after all. The amount of armor that he still has may be a little of a far fetch, but it's believable enough being slathered in mud and concealed most of the time.
Also, I forgot to say earlier: kudos on the pantheon of gods. Hate being neutral and hell being light gives an interesting sense of the gods not getting along all the time.
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