Name: Ferric Vintas
Age: 36
Race: Human
Faction: Omenbryn Loyalists
Physical Description: Have a pic instead!
Possessions:
Bastard Sword- He has a solid sword of good, reinforced steel. It has the handle-and-a-half grip which defines bastard swords, but is significantly shorter and heavier than most other weapons like it.
Light Armor- Despite his heavy weapon, he prefers to stay quick on his feet. His armor has been modified slightly to account for more leather than steel, and many of the guards in his faction do the same. His left side’s arm has sensibly retained its full plate armor to counter predominantly right handed attackers. He also makes sure he always wears a helmet when in the field, and considers people who go into battle without one either incredibly stupid or desperate.
Toolkit- He has lock picks, a couple slim knives, and a few other small objects in a pouch above his sword’s sheath.
House- He owns a small but respectable house in the residential district. It doesn’t look like much on the surface, with barely three rooms, but below the earth’s surface is an exceptionally large basement where he keeps most of his belongings.
Powers or Strengths:
Weapon Skills: Ferric can handle himself in a combat situation with a wide variety of weapons, and has a reasonable understanding of most melee and firearms. However, he has his betters and prefers to fight as unfairly as possible. He’ll go right for the eyes or the groin at the first available opportunity, and tries to use the surprising weight of his weapon to catch opponents off-guard.
Dishonorable: He is happy to fake evidence and lie if he has less substantial reasons to suspect a person is guilty. He’s very quick and comfortable with deception, and easily able to keep track of and maintain a ruse. Though Ferric is never outright malicious, he also believes strongly in an “every man for himself” line of reasoning which occasionally causes him to step on others for personal gain.
He considers such tactics normal and is surprised when other guards are unwilling to use them. If someone tries to call him out on this sort of behavior, he acts offended; in his mind, there is just about no way the other person hasn’t personally done the same.
Charismatic: Ferric isn’t likely to convince people he is the pinnacle of morality, but somehow conversations with him tend to end with him getting what he wants. He has a smooth voice and keeps a measured tone that makes his point of view sound inherently reasonable. It is thanks to this skill he managed to acquire a job in the guard at all.
Improvisation: He is quick to adapt to new situations, and can come up with a course of action which almost seems like he planned it in mere seconds. He enjoys ambushes and traps for disabling enemies, rather than head on combat, and can keep himself reasonably quiet and still to take advantage of this preference.
Picker: He can pick both locks and pockets, and is a bit cagey about where he managed to acquire these dubious skills. He’s a far cry from an expert at either skill, especially lock picking, but that still places him a notch above your average guard. He usually prefers to simply bash a door down when subtlety is not needed, as he can occasionally be heard lamenting how rusty he is.
Experienced: Ferric has been working for the guard for about a two years over a decade. He as learned the ins and outs of the job, knows how to effectively respond to a range of situations, and has a little bit of talent in a wide variety of guard-related skills. The old idiom “jack of all trades, master of none” would be an appropriate one to apply to Ferric.
Mind Games: Ferric is highly skilled at goading, baiting, deceiving and scamming. He can get a good read on a person’s mental weak points just by watching them fidget, and can use conversational tricks to make people say things they quickly come to regret. If he fails to get what he wants with words, he won’t hesitate to take advantage of his powers as a guard and resort to more mundane methods of interrogation.
Weaknesses:
Pride: He firmly believes in his own ability to handle a situation, and strongly dislikes admitting it when he or the Loyalists don’t have everything under control. He almost never tells guards outside his faction what information he has, and expects the other factions to cooperate with him without needing an explanation.
Cheater: He’s a bit too eager to cheat. He might use faked evidence when legitimate evidence could have been found with more effort. The Omenbryn Loyalists may be a bit less idealistic than other guard factions, but all the same this has given him a minor reputation. Those higher in the chain of command occasionally double check his methods with other guards, which can get him in trouble.
Cynical: He commonly sees the worst in people, and tends to be highly suspicious of those who act kind to him or those around him without an obvious motive to do so. He might even refuse assistance if it were presented politely; if it were proposed either grudgingly or outright rudely, he’d paradoxically be much more likely to trust the offer.
Outsider: His chances at advancement are hampered by the fact that he is from Keltaris, and therefore a foreigner to Marn. He is unashamedly and openly not a puradyne, which causes some to question his allegiance to the partially theocratic Marn government.
Nearsighted: He wears glasses at home, but on the job finds it difficult to wear a pair of glasses with a helmet. He can see perfectly fine within a distance of four yards, but beyond that it gets progressively more blurred and difficult to distinguish details, including potentially important ones such as facial features and written script.
Journal: He carries around a comprehensive journal in which he chronicles daily events. Someone who got their hands on it could feasibly learn a good deal about him and his actions. Personally, he finds that writing in it helps to calm his nerves. He also has a slight interest in history, and occasionally fantasizes that his journal might help a future historian uncover what was occurring in this time period.
Antagonistic: He doesn’t just see the worst in people. Ferric has a compulsive need to draw it out. He employs his mind games not only on deserving criminal targets but also on just about anyone he finds even remotely annoying. Though he doesn’t quite consciously register why he does this, he feels compelled to strip away what he sees as the masks of others in search of their true selves.
Ever since the incident with Miklos, he has been attempting to reign this in, and makes at least a token effort to cease this behavior if it persists.
Unpopular: A certain fiasco last Yiamas has left Ferric despised by many of his fellow guardsmen. He has a much smaller range of support to call upon than other guards and is generally disliked by those outside the loyalists. This, combined with his already weak position as an outsider, can often put him in a difficult position.
History:
Ferric came to Marn quite the sorry sight. Riding upon a wagon with nothing but a slim short sword hanging from his belt, he had apparently been lucky enough to find someone with enough pity to hire a dour young 20-something as a guard for a trade caravan. Fortunately, they had encountered no resistance along the road and made it safely into the region.
Ferric left the trade caravan to join the rest of the refugees around the city. His story was not uncommon, just one more man forced to flee an old life he wanted nothing more to do with, and he found many friends he could talk into giving him easy work. Some also call this swindling.
Unfortunately for Ferric, he never had felt destined for the life of a drifter. Many were the nights he would sit, staring longingly into the heart of the city. One day he wandered in, seeking better work. He managed to find his way to a group of guards recruiting.
Ferric had heard quite a bit from the citizens about the nobility and honor of the guards, and Ferric had been intrigued even then. Back where he was from in Eyropa, the guards were oftentimes inseparable from the criminals. He had to admit their armor was rather impressive in its immaculate nature, and he admired the power they had, both that which was officially granted to them and that which was unspoken.
Even so, he bypassed his first chance. Ferric had spent most of his life avoiding formal government, and wasn’t about to start now. He successfully bluffed a man into believing he knew how to ride a horse and began taking supplies between Marn and Shim, using his experience on the caravan, intuition, and quick lessons from the stable boy to learn how to handle horses on his own. The job was stable, since there was usually some upper class idiot with a house in both settlements who couldn’t be bothered to move their stuff themselves, but it still wasn’t what he wanted from life.
His eyes were again turned to the guards when the store across from his workplace was robbed. A passing guard patrol had managed to stop the attempt just before Ferric came in with the carriage his service had given him. He stepped off to find out what happened when he overheard one of the guards mention “interrogation.”
That gave Ferric pause. The men clearly had surrendered the moment the guard had entered the scene, and now he realized that there were duties to being a guard independent of combat. He strode up to the man he assumed was the officer and asked if they were still interested in new recruits.
The officer looked him up and down, smiled, and responded in the affirmative. Ferric was directed to an office within the headquarters where he signed his name on a slip of paper and reported for training the next day.
Living life out of the barracks wasn’t bad. Ferric had been fairly malnourished for much of his life, and he had never eaten so well. Between his new diet and the training, he grew from a skinny young man into a well built adult. In fact, if you asked him he would tell you he never smiled so much as his first four years in the guard.
A part of this joy was from an exceptionally strange source. He had always had a sharp tongue and a knack for ruthlessly exploiting weak points, but now that he could gain a captive audience to practice on he discovered a disturbing love for cracking minds apart with words, to the point where some of the men who watched his interrogation sessions could even call the spectacle “really creepy.” Regardless, he got results with ever increasing speed and proved his worth to the guard, doing Marn good in the process. Multiple secret magic users and drug dealers were uncovered thanks to his questioning of associates and family members.
Unfortunately, his smile began to grow weary. He became increasingly dissatisfied with his fellow guards as his skill at analysis grew, who he gradually regarded as useless louts. Ferric felt as if he had suddenly lost control of his skills; as he came to see exactly what flaws he could exploit in those around him, he kept finding himself angry that they were trying to hide those flaws from him at all.
In particular he fixated on one man named Miklos, an associate of his who he often wound up patrolling alongside. He began waging a campaign of what seemed to be, to any outside observer, casual, even friendly, barbs related to Miklos’s affinity for birds. Ferric was certain that Miklos had difficulties controlling his anger, and became determined to expose them.
One day Ferric and a new-blood guard, named Tasza, were out on patrol with Ferric’s unfortunate target. They saw a wealthy looking man arguing with a man outside an apothecary shop, and it was quickly agreed that the wealthy man needed to be followed. While Miklos went to ask the shopkeeper what the argument was about, the other two tailed the aristocrat.
The pair followed him to a tavern, whereupon they were soon overwhelmed. Despite the guardsman’s best efforts and firmest scowls, the crowd leapt into a drunken frenzy and roared down the street, cries of “witch!” and “mage!” upon their lips. The apothecary was hit quickly, and the pair of guards arrived only in time to see windows and various remedies smashed.
Ferric was about to pull out his sword and attempt to intimidate the crowd into submission. Tasza has apparently noticed something and had grabbed his shoulder, something about a boy, when a bird burst from the side of the building. Ferric recognized it immediately, and winced as it got hit by something and fell to the earth. He knew with some clarity what was about to happen.
His former friend Miklos burst from the building, leaping through the very window he had watched his flacon die from, and picked out the boy quickly; he had apparently separated from the crowd to shoot down the falcon with a sling.
Ferric wasn’t eager to get in front of the man’s way, as he was obviously fuming with rage. Miklos blazed past him and slammed the child into the dirt, dealing a savage beating to the panicked boy.
Working with Tasza, he was eventually able to pull the guard off. The kid look a bit... broken, to say the least. Ferric nodded sympathetically, though it was barely perceptible. He told Tasza to take Mikal back to the headquarters while he tried to prevent further damage here.
After some time and the fortuitous arrival of backup, the storekeeper was dead and the crowd was dispersed and/or arrested, a distinction which Ferric was fairly certain was contingent upon who had looked at the guards funny. The boy had received rudimentary medical care from a guard Ferric happened to know named Braken. Looking at the child and the situation he could no longer salvage, he stalked back to the headquarters.
Upon his arrival, Miklos was apparently justifying himself to some officer. Ferric sauntered up and bluntly called him an asshole, with predictable results. Miklos wasted no time giving the man who had been tormenting him for years a good punch to the face. Unfortunately, this only made him look worse before the officer, who immediately called for his arrest and that he be taken before the council for justice. Miklos swore at Ferric as he left, but Ferric only snarled as his nose bled down to his white teeth. He had been right. Anger issues, tied to the bird.
The officer called him in for a report. As they entered the headquarters, Ferric was shocked to recognize it was the very man whom he had spoken to when asking for recruitment, though the officer did not seem to return the recognition. Ferric was asked to recount events.
He had little to gain from deception. He told it as he saw it. However, as he wrote up the reports he added “But listen, it isn’t entirely Miklos’ fault. The rest of us guards had been tormenting him about the birds for years, it made sense he would snap about it eventually.”
The officer shuffled up the papers which Ferric had filled out, “That changes little. A man shouldn’t assault a kid over a carrier pigeon, much less attack his fellow guard over a petty insult. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention.” He shook his head “His job here is done, and the civilians would tear us up if we said otherwise.” There was a pause. The officer looked a bit uncomfortable. “You, however, have done well. I take it you’ve heard of the Omenbryn Loyalists? I’ve read your file. They could use people like you.”
Ferric was confused, to say the least. What was the officer talking about? As Ferric understood things, he had accomplished little today, and certainly nothing to merit transfer to the Loyalists, which would net him an automatic promotion.
Ferric turned an eye to the officer, watched the way he sat just a little to still. Then he understood. This was, essentially, a bribe. He was one of two people who had seen a certain wealthy man start a riot. The aristocrat must have wanted to make sure he stayed quiet about the cause of the disturbance, and pulled some strings to do so. Tasza might not even have been approached, but the word of one guard, especially one newer to the job, was easier to dismiss.
Well, it wasn’t his problem. The officer was probably trying to justify it to himself with thoughts like ‘the money from this guy will really help the guard force, overall’ but Ferric didn’t terribly care to dress things up. “Sure, I’ll take the promotion. I assume I’m not to support Miklos at his trial?”
The officer looked a bit stunned before angrily responding, and Ferric wondered how much time he had spent preparing a sales pitch which wouldn’t quite as directly say he was being bribed. “Now look, you just don’t mess with people like this guy. Especially not officially.”
“Of course not.” Ferric responded simply. He sat there expectantly. The officer grumbled about it, but eventually signed on his recommendation for transfer to the Loyalists.
As Ferric took his promotion, he eventually heard that Miklos’s trial had gone exactly the way it must have. He also managed to discover that Taza had spoken against him, and briefly paused his Loyalist training to wonder if Tasza had been bribed or was simply a rulebook kind of kid. Ferric rather doubted his personal testimony would have made much difference for Miklos’s fate, though he did occasionally wonder whether or not he could have arranged for the aristocrat to suffer some sort of legal trouble for his actions.
He fit in with his new faction quite well, and soon lost whatever doubts he had about his choice. The Loyalists were generally his kind of people, a bit street savvy and occasionally too clever for their own good. He’s learned of the rebellion and the threat it poses to Marn society, and while not personally invested in their removal has been altogether happy to keep his job.
He has been using his skills for field interrogation and trickery to help the loyalists for several years now, only rarely stopping to wonder what became of the likes of Miklos and Tasza. A recent raid on a presumed rebel den uncovered a suspicious array of bird feed and falconer’s equipment, and Ferric couldn’t help but wonder... what had happened to the man he once knew?
