Aeraul Smythe
12-12-07, 12:01 AM
Caden here. Felt like doing my part to stick it to the Elf D: Tried to avoid ripping off Green is the New Black's character while simultaneously incorporating a few similar elements from his background (mostly the whole Tribal Orc thing), along with the only other Orcish characters I could find.
Name: Aeraul Smythe (Prefered, Human name), Malgor Kildrake of the Black Sun Tribe (Rarely used, Orc name)
Age: 27
Race: Half-Human, Half-Orc
Hair Color: Glossy black
Eye Color: Light green, situationally phospherescent red or green
Height: 6'6"
Weight: 295 lbs.
Occupation: Navigator, Tourguide, Negotiator, Scholar, Philosopher, Swordsman
Languages Spoken: Common (Tradespeak), some Elven, Aleraran and Orcish
Personality: In a word: Reserved. Aeraul is the living antithesis of your standard orc; neither undisciplined, nor rowdy. He meditates constantly, has little to no sense of humor, and is an avid reader. Despite the distance he attempts to put between himself and others, Aeraul is both blessed and cursed by the residual empathic talents inherent to his mother's side of the family: The emotions of others can and do hold a measure of influence over him if he doesn't spend at least one hour each day meditating. Another reason for this meditation is also due to his mother's side: If he doesn't meditate, he faces the constant risk of going into a blindly animalistic rage at the drop of a dime. Despite his mixed heritage, Aeraul considers himself Human. As a consequence of past experiences, he also harbors a deep loathing for High Elves, and a slightly lesser contempt for their Aleraran cousins. His attitude towards Orcs varies as much as his attitude towards humans. While professing pacifism, Aeraul instinctively seeks out challenges and combat -- something he occasionally feels shameful about.
Appearance: Elegant and refined; the very antithesis of the common conception of an orc or half-orc. Aeraul would be short and slender by the standards of Orcs, but among Humans he's tall and broad. He weighs a little under three-hundred pounds but hides it well; you'd never know most of that weight is solid muscle, especially not with how flexible and quick he is on his feet. His skin is colored a lighter green than his eyes, and tans quickly to darker shades. His hair is glossy black and often pulled back into a short, tight ponytail with well-trimmed sideburns leading to an elegantly thin beard along his jawline and chin. He has a very human appearance beyond the shortly pointed ears and the heavy, almost square jawline. His eyes are generally light green, but they can turn phospherescent in lower light and red with intense anger. This usually gives them a glassy, vile look. He dresses in a manner reminiscent of a philosopher; baggy white pants and a neatly pressed black cheongsam with dark purple trim, usually in tandem with a pair of well-worn boots and a heavy purple sash worn as a belt. Unlike most Half-Orcs, he keeps his nails and fangs filed down to Human lengths and shapes.
Skills, Powers, Racial Attributes:
Formal Swordsmanship: Aeraul has trained in formal swordsmanship for most of his life now. His style is marked by emphases on tight circles and precise attacks; defenses are almost exclusively limited to parrying and avoidance, though Aeraul can handle himself in a lock-up relatively well. He specializes in the Dao and Jian, with which he has Average skill. Aeraul is naturally left-handed, and it shows in his swordsmanship -- even when using two weapons, he almost always leads with the left.
Saiko Hirei: Another of those ten million exotic martial arts with funny names. Essentially reminiscent of real world Tai Chi with throws and a few grapples and joint locks from Jujutsu. His actual skill with the art is only Below Average, something he mistakenly tries to fix through pure strength and speed -- which generally makes each hit or throw more damaging than it would be from a normal human of his size and skill, but considerably less accurate and unbalanced. Saiko Hirei is also considered a gateway art to martial pyromancy, evidenced by the translation of its name: Supreme Fire Spirit. At present this potential is mostly unrealized, since Aeraul is currently only able to generate candle-like flames from his fingertips, and only while meditating. When thoroughly enraged, he can sometimes blow thick clouds of smoke from his mouth or nostrils.
Empathic Resonance: As a consequence of his partial Orc heritage, Aeraul has a tendency to passively register the emotions of anyone within a ten to fifteen foot radius of himself, growing strongest when he faces someone directly. While he can read the general emotions of a person or group, he has difficulty determining anything beyond the basics: Direction, the nature of the emotion, and the overall intention of the person or people feeling it. At this point in his life, he has great difficulty distinguishing between the emotions of specific people, and can be overwhelmed by a large enough crowd if he hasn't been meditating properly. While overwhelmed, Aeraul typically has difficulty maintaining focus and control over his own emotions. This ability is useless for reading actual thoughts.
Half-Orc Strength: Another consequence of his mixed heritage: Aeraul has more strength than a human of comparable size and build -- roughly 50% and, in all likelihood, staying that way. His control of this strength is a mixed bag: At some times flawless, and at others he can cause a glass to explode in his hand just by trying to hold it.
Goblinoid Senses: Aeraul has decent vision in situations of poor or extremely low lighting; he can see almost normally up to fifteen feet in low light, and up to ten feet with some effort in complete darkness. His hearing is roughly 25% better than a normal human's, and his sense of smell is 50% better -- with a certain tendency to hone in on scents that normal people (and Aeraul himself) consider unpleasant. As another consequence of his heritage, his eyes glow green at the iris, becoming brighter and brighter as lighting grows worse.
Caged Berserker: The most give-and-take of Aeraul's abilities, and the one he would most enjoy being rid of forever. Due to his abnormal make-up, and possibly the result of the nature of his parentage, Aeraul has to walk a perpetual tightrope between being civilized and becoming a raging berserker. The triggers for this rage tend to be smaller things that add up; insults, a loss of emotional control, runs of bad luck and so on. The symptoms of Aeraul nearing Berserker status are most pronounced around his eyes and in his posture. As he loses control of himself, his eyes will gradually turn red and start to glow at the iris. Likewise, he develops an almost inhuman slouch, specifically at the neck, that completely fails to effect the rest of his posture. Once in a rage, Aeraul develops an incredibly strong resistance to pain and cannot be talked down easily; you have to either wear him down, knock him out, kill him, or pull back and allow him to regain control on his own. This does not make him immune to things like blood loss, but it does make it difficult to knock him out or incapacitate him without killing him outright. Ironically, he's less likely to enter a rage while in battle, since he tends to be happier when fighting. For every day that Aeraul goes without a proper hour's meditation, he suffers a seriously increased chance of going berserk -- even more so while in a heavily populated city.
Equipment:
Steel Dao: A heavy three-handed sword with a wide, backswept blade. In real world terms, this is a variant Chinese broadsword. The blade is very well kept; polished to the point that you can see clear reflections on its sides and sharpened enough to cut through a stack of paper with relative ease. The handguard is sloped upward in back and down in front, the hilt is three-handed even for Aeraul's large hands, and the pommel is a thick metal ring. The word, Mankind, is engraved near the base of the blade on either side. Ceremonially, Aeraul carries it under arm wrapped in a heavy white sash. Otherwise, he usually wears it on his upper or lower back, always with the hilt on the left side.
Leather Backpack: Vital for any traveller. Whenever he sets out on a job, Aeraul tends to load this with light food, water, a change of clothes, rope, a few small knives and some other bare essentials for a journey on foot or horseback. It bears a thick leather holster for his Dao, and a clasp for holding a proper iron-framed lantern that Aeraul often carries more for comfort than necessity.
Current Dwelling: Aeraul currently lives in a small one-room apartment on the top floor of a three-story building in Scara Brae. The bottom floor is a tavern, the second floor is a lodge often rented out to local guilds of every flavor, and the floor that Aeraul lives on is mostly occupied by transients, a merchant or two, and at least one priest. His possessions are mostly limited to basic furniture, clothing and cookwares. Rent is relatively cheap and the view is taken up by a combination of the Dajas Pagoda, the Bazaar, and the daily glories of the rising sun.
History: The living contradiction to every Half-Orc ever born of an Orc father and a Human mother. Aeraul Smythe is the only son of a Human father and an Orc mother, bearing seperate names for both cultures. The story of how he was concieved isn't exactly known or important to Aeraul; his father always described it in minimal details: I spent a year with the Black Sun Tribe and went local. For Aeraul, this is enough. He spent his first two or three years as the runt of an Orcish creche, at which point his mother was killed in a land dispute and his father was recalled to his home offices not long after that -- he was an advance scout for an adventuring company that specialized in goblinoid expeditions.
Upon returning home, Aeraul spent a few months adjusting to proper human society before his father was called back out to another expedition. Aeraul himself was sent off to several schools abroad. He endured numerous prejuidices as he moved from school to school, but found measures of acceptance in each one. This was mostly due to his withdrawn nature, his ability to empathize with others, and the fact that he could throw most of his would-be tutors through walls if they angered enough of the students. Around puberty, the problem became so bad that he was shipped off to a monastic school in an attempt to learn some control over himself.
This worked, more or less. Not only did the monetary have the effect of teaching Aeraul a measure of self-control and discipline, the monks also ended up completing the near total disconnect that Aeraul felt towards his Orcish heritage. They did so by treating him not as a half-breed, but as a mere human who happened to have special needs -- which is, more or less, how Aeraul views himself these days. After close to a decade in the teachings of the monks, Aeraul came of age and briefly worked for his father's adventuring company; the two even handled a few expeditions together.
Unfortunately, Aeraul had become too accustomed to humans. It showed. Orcs in the tribes they explored quickly grew to bear contempt for him and by the end of his first year with the company, the feeling was mutual. Aeraul parted from the company on good terms, and managed to parlay his experiences there into a relatively cushy job as a caravan and seaship navigator. He grew restless after a while, found his way to Alerar and spent a few unpleasant months working as everything from a manual laborer to a barely legal underground pit fighter. Not long after that, he journeyed through the lands of Raiaera, and found the Elves there to be even worse than their dark-skinned cousins; all the pretentiousness, more of the prejuidice, and none of the contributions. He stayed long enough to gain a mild understanding of local religion and bardic traditions, then headed through Corone just a few months short of the civil war currently wracking that kingdom.
Incidentally, his time spent in Radasanth remains the only time when Aeraul has ever truly feared for his own safety. Not because of any background prejuidices, as he was long used to those, but because of the sense of dread, fear and tension that built up in the city. He left after less than a week and, much to his own chargrin, again took up the job of navigating a seaship for about a month before finally making his way into the city of Scara Brae and its surrounding territories.
He's been there ever since; a rough two or three years, give or take a month. His occupancies have varied from small shacks to makeshift campsites to third-story apartments, and his jobs have often involved the guidance of smaller caravans or adventuring parties from the city to their destinations and back again. Once in a while, he's gone so far as to play mediator between Human and Goblinoid interests, and even acted as a negotiator with local Elves on behalf of Goblin's Cove once or twice. As a local activist, he's also played a role in helping to 'civilize' visiting Orcs and their ilk. Once in a while, and much more frequently when tensions run high and the blood gets boiling, Aeraul has taken to duelling on behalf of others as a means of settling disputes, and he's occasionally acted as a mentoring figure for several younger Humans and Goblinoids.
In general, he's stayed true to his nature and refrained from heavy social contact; he's the type of man with a lot of business connections and few friends or enemies to speak of.
For what it's worth: The eyeglow and the resonance bits are the result of a Human/Orc missmash. It's similar to how you can only get Ligers from male Lions and female Tigers. Most of his 'abilities' are more double-edged than anything else, and I'd be happy to further nerf them if necessary.
Name: Aeraul Smythe (Prefered, Human name), Malgor Kildrake of the Black Sun Tribe (Rarely used, Orc name)
Age: 27
Race: Half-Human, Half-Orc
Hair Color: Glossy black
Eye Color: Light green, situationally phospherescent red or green
Height: 6'6"
Weight: 295 lbs.
Occupation: Navigator, Tourguide, Negotiator, Scholar, Philosopher, Swordsman
Languages Spoken: Common (Tradespeak), some Elven, Aleraran and Orcish
Personality: In a word: Reserved. Aeraul is the living antithesis of your standard orc; neither undisciplined, nor rowdy. He meditates constantly, has little to no sense of humor, and is an avid reader. Despite the distance he attempts to put between himself and others, Aeraul is both blessed and cursed by the residual empathic talents inherent to his mother's side of the family: The emotions of others can and do hold a measure of influence over him if he doesn't spend at least one hour each day meditating. Another reason for this meditation is also due to his mother's side: If he doesn't meditate, he faces the constant risk of going into a blindly animalistic rage at the drop of a dime. Despite his mixed heritage, Aeraul considers himself Human. As a consequence of past experiences, he also harbors a deep loathing for High Elves, and a slightly lesser contempt for their Aleraran cousins. His attitude towards Orcs varies as much as his attitude towards humans. While professing pacifism, Aeraul instinctively seeks out challenges and combat -- something he occasionally feels shameful about.
Appearance: Elegant and refined; the very antithesis of the common conception of an orc or half-orc. Aeraul would be short and slender by the standards of Orcs, but among Humans he's tall and broad. He weighs a little under three-hundred pounds but hides it well; you'd never know most of that weight is solid muscle, especially not with how flexible and quick he is on his feet. His skin is colored a lighter green than his eyes, and tans quickly to darker shades. His hair is glossy black and often pulled back into a short, tight ponytail with well-trimmed sideburns leading to an elegantly thin beard along his jawline and chin. He has a very human appearance beyond the shortly pointed ears and the heavy, almost square jawline. His eyes are generally light green, but they can turn phospherescent in lower light and red with intense anger. This usually gives them a glassy, vile look. He dresses in a manner reminiscent of a philosopher; baggy white pants and a neatly pressed black cheongsam with dark purple trim, usually in tandem with a pair of well-worn boots and a heavy purple sash worn as a belt. Unlike most Half-Orcs, he keeps his nails and fangs filed down to Human lengths and shapes.
Skills, Powers, Racial Attributes:
Formal Swordsmanship: Aeraul has trained in formal swordsmanship for most of his life now. His style is marked by emphases on tight circles and precise attacks; defenses are almost exclusively limited to parrying and avoidance, though Aeraul can handle himself in a lock-up relatively well. He specializes in the Dao and Jian, with which he has Average skill. Aeraul is naturally left-handed, and it shows in his swordsmanship -- even when using two weapons, he almost always leads with the left.
Saiko Hirei: Another of those ten million exotic martial arts with funny names. Essentially reminiscent of real world Tai Chi with throws and a few grapples and joint locks from Jujutsu. His actual skill with the art is only Below Average, something he mistakenly tries to fix through pure strength and speed -- which generally makes each hit or throw more damaging than it would be from a normal human of his size and skill, but considerably less accurate and unbalanced. Saiko Hirei is also considered a gateway art to martial pyromancy, evidenced by the translation of its name: Supreme Fire Spirit. At present this potential is mostly unrealized, since Aeraul is currently only able to generate candle-like flames from his fingertips, and only while meditating. When thoroughly enraged, he can sometimes blow thick clouds of smoke from his mouth or nostrils.
Empathic Resonance: As a consequence of his partial Orc heritage, Aeraul has a tendency to passively register the emotions of anyone within a ten to fifteen foot radius of himself, growing strongest when he faces someone directly. While he can read the general emotions of a person or group, he has difficulty determining anything beyond the basics: Direction, the nature of the emotion, and the overall intention of the person or people feeling it. At this point in his life, he has great difficulty distinguishing between the emotions of specific people, and can be overwhelmed by a large enough crowd if he hasn't been meditating properly. While overwhelmed, Aeraul typically has difficulty maintaining focus and control over his own emotions. This ability is useless for reading actual thoughts.
Half-Orc Strength: Another consequence of his mixed heritage: Aeraul has more strength than a human of comparable size and build -- roughly 50% and, in all likelihood, staying that way. His control of this strength is a mixed bag: At some times flawless, and at others he can cause a glass to explode in his hand just by trying to hold it.
Goblinoid Senses: Aeraul has decent vision in situations of poor or extremely low lighting; he can see almost normally up to fifteen feet in low light, and up to ten feet with some effort in complete darkness. His hearing is roughly 25% better than a normal human's, and his sense of smell is 50% better -- with a certain tendency to hone in on scents that normal people (and Aeraul himself) consider unpleasant. As another consequence of his heritage, his eyes glow green at the iris, becoming brighter and brighter as lighting grows worse.
Caged Berserker: The most give-and-take of Aeraul's abilities, and the one he would most enjoy being rid of forever. Due to his abnormal make-up, and possibly the result of the nature of his parentage, Aeraul has to walk a perpetual tightrope between being civilized and becoming a raging berserker. The triggers for this rage tend to be smaller things that add up; insults, a loss of emotional control, runs of bad luck and so on. The symptoms of Aeraul nearing Berserker status are most pronounced around his eyes and in his posture. As he loses control of himself, his eyes will gradually turn red and start to glow at the iris. Likewise, he develops an almost inhuman slouch, specifically at the neck, that completely fails to effect the rest of his posture. Once in a rage, Aeraul develops an incredibly strong resistance to pain and cannot be talked down easily; you have to either wear him down, knock him out, kill him, or pull back and allow him to regain control on his own. This does not make him immune to things like blood loss, but it does make it difficult to knock him out or incapacitate him without killing him outright. Ironically, he's less likely to enter a rage while in battle, since he tends to be happier when fighting. For every day that Aeraul goes without a proper hour's meditation, he suffers a seriously increased chance of going berserk -- even more so while in a heavily populated city.
Equipment:
Steel Dao: A heavy three-handed sword with a wide, backswept blade. In real world terms, this is a variant Chinese broadsword. The blade is very well kept; polished to the point that you can see clear reflections on its sides and sharpened enough to cut through a stack of paper with relative ease. The handguard is sloped upward in back and down in front, the hilt is three-handed even for Aeraul's large hands, and the pommel is a thick metal ring. The word, Mankind, is engraved near the base of the blade on either side. Ceremonially, Aeraul carries it under arm wrapped in a heavy white sash. Otherwise, he usually wears it on his upper or lower back, always with the hilt on the left side.
Leather Backpack: Vital for any traveller. Whenever he sets out on a job, Aeraul tends to load this with light food, water, a change of clothes, rope, a few small knives and some other bare essentials for a journey on foot or horseback. It bears a thick leather holster for his Dao, and a clasp for holding a proper iron-framed lantern that Aeraul often carries more for comfort than necessity.
Current Dwelling: Aeraul currently lives in a small one-room apartment on the top floor of a three-story building in Scara Brae. The bottom floor is a tavern, the second floor is a lodge often rented out to local guilds of every flavor, and the floor that Aeraul lives on is mostly occupied by transients, a merchant or two, and at least one priest. His possessions are mostly limited to basic furniture, clothing and cookwares. Rent is relatively cheap and the view is taken up by a combination of the Dajas Pagoda, the Bazaar, and the daily glories of the rising sun.
History: The living contradiction to every Half-Orc ever born of an Orc father and a Human mother. Aeraul Smythe is the only son of a Human father and an Orc mother, bearing seperate names for both cultures. The story of how he was concieved isn't exactly known or important to Aeraul; his father always described it in minimal details: I spent a year with the Black Sun Tribe and went local. For Aeraul, this is enough. He spent his first two or three years as the runt of an Orcish creche, at which point his mother was killed in a land dispute and his father was recalled to his home offices not long after that -- he was an advance scout for an adventuring company that specialized in goblinoid expeditions.
Upon returning home, Aeraul spent a few months adjusting to proper human society before his father was called back out to another expedition. Aeraul himself was sent off to several schools abroad. He endured numerous prejuidices as he moved from school to school, but found measures of acceptance in each one. This was mostly due to his withdrawn nature, his ability to empathize with others, and the fact that he could throw most of his would-be tutors through walls if they angered enough of the students. Around puberty, the problem became so bad that he was shipped off to a monastic school in an attempt to learn some control over himself.
This worked, more or less. Not only did the monetary have the effect of teaching Aeraul a measure of self-control and discipline, the monks also ended up completing the near total disconnect that Aeraul felt towards his Orcish heritage. They did so by treating him not as a half-breed, but as a mere human who happened to have special needs -- which is, more or less, how Aeraul views himself these days. After close to a decade in the teachings of the monks, Aeraul came of age and briefly worked for his father's adventuring company; the two even handled a few expeditions together.
Unfortunately, Aeraul had become too accustomed to humans. It showed. Orcs in the tribes they explored quickly grew to bear contempt for him and by the end of his first year with the company, the feeling was mutual. Aeraul parted from the company on good terms, and managed to parlay his experiences there into a relatively cushy job as a caravan and seaship navigator. He grew restless after a while, found his way to Alerar and spent a few unpleasant months working as everything from a manual laborer to a barely legal underground pit fighter. Not long after that, he journeyed through the lands of Raiaera, and found the Elves there to be even worse than their dark-skinned cousins; all the pretentiousness, more of the prejuidice, and none of the contributions. He stayed long enough to gain a mild understanding of local religion and bardic traditions, then headed through Corone just a few months short of the civil war currently wracking that kingdom.
Incidentally, his time spent in Radasanth remains the only time when Aeraul has ever truly feared for his own safety. Not because of any background prejuidices, as he was long used to those, but because of the sense of dread, fear and tension that built up in the city. He left after less than a week and, much to his own chargrin, again took up the job of navigating a seaship for about a month before finally making his way into the city of Scara Brae and its surrounding territories.
He's been there ever since; a rough two or three years, give or take a month. His occupancies have varied from small shacks to makeshift campsites to third-story apartments, and his jobs have often involved the guidance of smaller caravans or adventuring parties from the city to their destinations and back again. Once in a while, he's gone so far as to play mediator between Human and Goblinoid interests, and even acted as a negotiator with local Elves on behalf of Goblin's Cove once or twice. As a local activist, he's also played a role in helping to 'civilize' visiting Orcs and their ilk. Once in a while, and much more frequently when tensions run high and the blood gets boiling, Aeraul has taken to duelling on behalf of others as a means of settling disputes, and he's occasionally acted as a mentoring figure for several younger Humans and Goblinoids.
In general, he's stayed true to his nature and refrained from heavy social contact; he's the type of man with a lot of business connections and few friends or enemies to speak of.
For what it's worth: The eyeglow and the resonance bits are the result of a Human/Orc missmash. It's similar to how you can only get Ligers from male Lions and female Tigers. Most of his 'abilities' are more double-edged than anything else, and I'd be happy to further nerf them if necessary.