Svend

[Svend]

Svend

"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."

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Appearance

"I don't mean to leave this world without scars and stories."

Full Name: Svend
Aliases: Scav
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 24, Born 6th of Zi'da, 692nd Arc
Height: 6 feet 4 inches
Weight: 200 lbs
Origin: Etzos
Religion: Various

Blessings: None
Location: Eastern Settlements, Rynmere
Profession: Scavenger, Trapper, Wilderness Guide
Factions Joined: N/A

Likes: Money, Mead, Music
Dislikes: Magic, City life, Sheor
Merits:
Flaws:

Languages: Common - Fluent, Xanevic - Broken

There's a certain wild carefree look to the man's eyes. Whilst he bears the scars and grungy look of a man whose been through the ringer, his eyes maintain a sort of brightness that keeps him above it all. Not naivety, but something like hope but more nefarious. Ambition perhaps. Tenacity. Life has certainly hit him with the low blows, and he bears the many tiny scars and the stringy look of it. His thinness is the sinewy sort that comes not from an unlucky season, but from the regular dance with starvation and malnutrition that has lasted a lifetime. He wears his brown hair loose and pushed back, often greasy from a few days without a wash. The beard he keeps relatively close to the jaw when he can be bothered to maintain it. Most of his grooming seems to be done by his own dagger.

His clothes are a mismatch of simple wool and fur all seemingly designed to be unremarkable. The functionality of his garb looks to be its' only virtue, but to those observant enough, its' ability to blend in with the drab mundanity of woods and city alley is appreciated. With a quick grin and a somewhat devious sense of humor, it often seems like the focus of Svend's attention is the butt of some joke, though he is the one who lives in a cave.

Personality

Svend has had a hard life, though he's only spent a few arcs away from home. He deals with the lot he's been given with a sort of rueful cynicism that gives the man a toughness one wouldn't expect. Toughness defines Svend. He's got nearly nothing, he's been enslaved, and he's still alive and smiling. When life deals him a blow, Svend absorbs it and makes it a part of him. His trials define him. for this reason the man may seem a bit reckless, and in truth, he is. He'll shrug off danger at times when he shouldn't and take risks that another may never dream of.

He's not particularly loyal to family or country, having lost touch with both over the six arcs he has been adrift. Part of the man's struggle is a sense of self. He is lost in the world as much as in himself. Truthfully he is just waiting for a cause to latch onto...

[Svend]

History

Origins

Well growing up was much better than being grown up for Svend. That is a trend with many people though, so who cares? He spent his childhood on a farm outside of Etzos. He pushed a plow and collected eggs from the chicken coop. It was utterly boring and unremarkable. It wasn't really a beginning to who Svend is, more of a prologue. He carries almost none of those memories close to heart.

His real definitive moment was when he joined the scouts in the Etzori Army. He spent long trials trekking through the wilderness of Idalos with a handful of compatriots. He learned to camp and to walk, to live off the woodland animals and to collect water from a stream. This was the truest belonging he had ever felt and the man loved it. He loved every moment in the wilderness and found himself resentful when he was forced to return with his unit to the city of Etzos with it's high walls. He felt confined, captured. The open wilderness promised more protection than the city for him. Those three arcs amongst the Etzori scouts were the golden age for Svend. That age came asunder in Cylus of 713.

Svend and his commander, along with a handful of other scouts were patrolling the wild border lands to the south, beyond which Rhakros lay. This was historically a dangerous area as it was a focal point for both Etzori forces and those of Rhakros. The ambush came when they had just settled for the night. Two of the scouts were dead before Svend realized that they were under attack, black arrows sprouting from their chests like branches from a young tree. In the end the Rhakian patrol captured everyone who did not die in the initial attack, Svend included. His commander, brave and true to Etzos as he was, ended the night with five Rhakian arrows for souvenirs to the next life. It broke Svend and he wept as he was hauled off to the City of Poisons...

Rhakros

The next two years were a blur of pain and suffering that systematically gutted any naive notion of good and righteousness from Svend. He was stripped of his humanity and identity. He was poisoned and tortured. He was made to abase himself publicly for the various masters he served. He spent season long stints in heavy labor camps and some number of trials he knew not how, so addled by nefarious concoction was he. The man became a hollow shell of his past self.

The only refuge he had was his resilient cynical nature and his dark humor. These two elements of his personality swirled around each other as if in subtle rebellion of Rhakros and the suffering it offered. Svend latched on to them like a lifeline. He would bow and serve, he would even drink the wretched creations they forced upon him, but he would never cease to ridicule the black luck.

In the end it was this drive that kept him alive when all those around him petered off into oblivion as the years progressed. He watched one of the scouts he had been captured with go mad and succumb to one of the potions, dying in a frothy mass of bodily fluids. He watched a girl he was taken with accidentally crush her foot in a labor camp and fall to the infection that resulted. But Svend himself never let it do more than tear apart his physical body. He was careful where it mattered and bold in other areas. Rhakros was just another hostile environment to survive. Eventually he was bought by a sailing merchant as a personal guard.

Esperus

Morgan the Girth owned Esperus, a merchant cog that traversed the wide seas of Idalos seeking fortune. He bought Svend for a few gold nels after seeing his skill with a longbow and purchased one for him. He needed someone with skill to keep him alive as he spent much of his time trading in less reputable parts of the world, Rhakros included. Svend didn't really care about Morgan, or the less reputable places he went. He was just ecstatic to be away from the poisoners of Rhakros. He would train with his new bow on the deck of the Esperus, shooting seagulls from the sky. The old movements of the training brought back dark memories of wilderness far away and fire-lit faces of the long dead.

They traversed the world a few times in the arcs in which Svend served Morgan. Svend had to fight and kill for the merchant, not that he minded. He got a hammock and bread and water every day. He almost got over his sea-sickness by the end of the first arc, but never quite. He even learned to like the fat man a bit, when he forgot he was a slave. But he didn't forget, and he was always acutely aware of the watchful gaze Morgan's more loyal men kept on him.

Monster Lands

Zi'da 716, the Esperus was curving it's way between the island mainland of Rynmere and the Eastern Settlements on it's way to Viden when the sky darkened. At first everyone thought it was a storm. Spiteful and black it was, but just a storm. The panic started when the red spots appeared over the treetops along the eastern coast. The sailors and merchant's slaves watched as they spiraled upwards in beautiful clusters. Men laughed and wondered aloud what it could be. They stopped laughing when they saw the dots were moving closer. Faster and faster the things approached until eventually Morgan ordered the Esperus to veer westward, the panic evident in his voice.

They did not flee fast enough. The dots revealed themselves to be some sort of flying, flaming insect. They buzzed angrily as they approached and the arrows they shot at them did nothing, bouncing from their carapace as if it was steel. Svend did not stop shooting. When faced with such danger the mind sometimes simply repeats what it knows. Svend was a horrible shot too, and he inwardly doubted any of his longbow arrows even reached their targets.

The insects attacked the ship with a vengeance, their flaming ends catching the wood where they landed. Men screamed and desperately tried to douse the flames, but insects were picking them up and tearing into them. Bits of man dropped from the sky like some hellish snow and Svend found himself reeling in disgust. The ship was fast aspiring to be nothing more than kindling and the man knew he had to swim or die.

So he dove. He struggled and splashed, never having learned properly to swim. Eventually the slave was able to latch on to a piece of the hull which had come free in the fire. Svend tried to shout to his fellows on the ship, but his voice only rasped and coughed when he tried. Svend spit up black slime, the remnants of smoke in his throat. Eventually he fell asleep on the half burnt chuck of wood, exhausted.

When he woke he was amongst the corpses and bits of debris on a shale covered beach. Svend awoke with nothing, not even the sword in his scabbard. He had his life though, and that was more than anyone else on the Esperus had. He began to shake as he knelt there, his back convulsing. Then he raised his head and howled with laughter...

[Svend]

Possessions & Housing

*Starting with the Wilderness Package.

On Person

• • One longbow
  • Thirty arrows
  • One set of unkempt fur clothing - Poor quality
  • One knife
  • One Kukri

Field Gear

• • Two lanterns
  • Two tinderboxes
  • 200 feet of rope
  • Two barrels (for food storage)
  • A pull wagon (two feet wide, three feet long, two feet deep)
  • One knife
  • One bedroll
  • One compass
  • Fisherman's net, fishing pole, and thirty hooks
  • One Trapper's Kits
  • One blanket
  • One set of toiletries
  • Three waterskins
  • Three rucksacks

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Andrea

Andrea is a hawk brought up and trained by Svend. The man found her on the forest floor only a week after his shipwreck and they became fast friends. He seized upon the hawk as a means to stay grounded and create a task for himself. Now the hawk follows him in the sky and hunts where ever he roams. She is small and can carry messages for him when he needs her too. Though he prefers to trap his own meat or hunt with the bow and does not use her for hunting, she will often signal him as to the presence of animals from the sky and sometimes bring him back 'treasures' from her own hunt.

(Hawk: 30gn)
Used as the personal animal valued below 50gn for Wilderness Package.

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Cavern shelter - Welles woodlands in Eastern Settlements (Rynmere)

Svend has found and adapted a small cavern as a home where he can easily store pelts and supplies. He has a bed of furs and a simple chest that he carried from the shipwreck of the Esperus. The cave is secured with a series of wooden barriers made from logs to keep predators out.

[Svend]

Skillset and Knowledge

Skill Name	Level	Points	Tier
Fieldcraft	25	25/251	Novice
Ranged (Longbow)	25	25/251	Novice
Stealth	25	NA : FT	Novice
Detection	5	5/251	Novice
Navigation	5	5/251	Novice

Knowledges

Core Skills

• Fieldcraft: Starting a Fire (WP)
  Fieldcraft: Forest Biome (WP)
  Stealth: Minimizing movement sounds
  Stealth: Walking silently through Forest brush
  Stealth: Using shadows to break up silhouette
  Stealth: Using Cover to Avoid sightings
  Ranged: Long Bow: Bend the Bow with Your Back

Academic

Religious

Regional

People

[Svend]

Ledgers

Currency (Nels) Ledger

Source	Earned	Spent	Total
Wilderness Package	10 GN	-	10 GN
Kukri (combat knife price)	-	5 GN	5 GN

Skill Ledger

Source	Earned	Spent	Total
Starting Package	50	-	50
Wilderness Package	10	-	60
Racial Bonus (Blades)	25	-	85
Blades	-	25 RB	60
Fieldcraft	-	10 WP	50
Fieldcraft	-	15 SP	35
Stealth	-	25 SP	10
Navigation	-	5 SP	5
Detection	-	5 SP	0

Fame Ledger Ledger

Source

Points (+/-)

Total

Point Bank Ledger

Source

Earned

Spent

Total