Tau
07-21-06, 01:18 AM
Name: Aun’vre Vyk’ui Tau
Age: Twenty-two
Race: Mixed Breed Human
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Green
Height: 5’8”
Weight: 220 lbs.
Personality:
First and foremost, Tau is out for Tau.
This isn’t merely bull-headed self-centeredness, nor is it done for any particular fear of harm or death – Tau’s complex personal philosophies hold self-interest above all else as a sort of defining principle to promote personal strength and combat his perception of weakness.
Weakness is the only true evil Tau knows.
Aun’vre holds self-reliance, self-preservation, self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-improvement as the only virtues of any real value – both in himself and in those around him. He will never promote what he sees as weakness in himself or in others: he will never request help, and will only offer aid if there is something he can personally gain from it. He has no qualms about preying upon the disadvantaged, as to show mercy is to allow weakness to flourish in others.
Obviously, Tau comes across as infinitely arrogant and self-interested, but none who come to know him can deny his cunning, boundless energy, or strength of will. He prefers to be alone: an aloof, thoughtful but somewhat melancholic creature. Despite his brutish physique, he often proves to have his own brand of predatory wit and sharp powers of observation.
Appearance:
Tau is a brute, not as hulking or towering as some, but a brute nonetheless. He is mightily shouldered and his limbs are thick with prodigious muscle, his chest deep and his abdomen sleek. He is a stout man, and one can imagine him fairing well in combat and feats of strength against men twice his size – he has an aura of preternatural vigor, and he can move with feline grace when the need strikes him.
He is clean-shaven, and his skin was burned bronze by the sun over years at sea. His left arm and shoulder are a veritable canvass of black tattoos, each signifying something – notably those marking him as a thief, murderer, pirate, and as being lecherous and morally unclean, each symbol of alien origin to the next. He has been branded upon both palms, the back of his left hand, and at the back of the neck by different nations, prisons, political bodies, and…private institutions. His back is covered by a network of long, uneven scars – the tell-tale gifts of a whip – and his chest is likewise decorated with evidences of many old wounds from many different tools of war.
Tau’s eyes are piercing green, large, and profoundly focused, and the entirety of his face lends itself to a striking deftness of nonverbal expression. Even those who know Tau well find themselves trusting him despite past experiences, and his eyes play an integral part in this illusion of credibility. His smile, however, gives him the appearance of a distinctly sly predator: his cuspids are slightly longer and sharper than those of normal humans (indicative of his distant orkish heritage), and the upper right cuspid, long lost in a fight, has been substituted with an identical gold tooth.
His hair is very long and black, haphazardly braided into many thick cords. Small trinkets of bone, metal, and stone are braided into his hair at the forefront, along with other small charms – most notably a large, brilliantly colored feather. The longest of these braids reaches just beyond his mid-back.
Tau’s clothing is the motley, mismatched result of his travels, and changes as he needs it to. As he enters Scara Brae, he wears leather pants charred black at his legs. A white, tight-fitting, short-sleeved, breathable and quick-to-dry deckhand’s shirt is at his chest. A pair of big, sturdy black boots and a long, luxurious, brilliantly red sash serve at his feet and waist respectively, and the D’Taan sword is at his back.
History :
Not even Aun’vre Tau himself knows precisely where he came from or how to return there, having endured a turbulent youth of constant travel alone. He does remember his tribe, a tightly-knitted group of nomads that traveled empty, arid plains in search of food and wild game, and who were known for raiding and stealing from other peoples of the area. The tribe was often said to be the outcast descendants of orks and humans who interbred, and some did indeed have orkish features – though most were indistinguishable from other humans. Tau remembers his mother and father and all of his siblings and extended family, but he does not particularly seem to miss them or long for them.
As was said, Tau’s tribe was well-known for its predilections toward thievery. During the summer of Tau’s twelfth year the tribe raided the farms of a larger clan for food and horses. That clan struck an alliance with two others, and then retaliated by attacking the tribe’s camp and scattering it to the four winds – killing and enslaving members of Tau’s extended family wherever they were found.
Aun’vre went far to the south with his mother, siblings, and many of his cousins and aunts and uncles, always managing to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. The vengeful ones caught up to Tau’s group at the base of a range of great mountains, and Tau was left behind in the ensuing chaos.
Then a boy of thirteen, Tau was captured and sold into slavery to a race of stout, assiduous beings that lived in sprawling subterranean caverns beneath the mountain passes. He was tasked with digging in places deemed too dangerous and structurally unsound for the dwarves, and did so for two years before intentionally causing a cave-in at a nearly-completed tunnel during inspection. The only survivor, Tau dug himself free and fled to the surface.
Aun’vre had heard news of his family and tribe, who had reassembled in the northern plains and were, day-by-day, accepting and protecting survivors of the Old Tribe fleeing situations comparable to the boy’s own. He chose not to go to them, feeling no lingering connection to his tribe, and so he continued south across the mountains and away from the plains of his birth.
Some months later he reached the opposite side of the mountains, and the vastness of the sea was before him. He traveled the coast for days, and soon became a professional stowaway aboard small fishing and trading crafts bound for islands and obscure lands, until his luck finally failed him. It was either service or the sea when he was discovered aboard a large trade vessel destined for foreign lands – it was here that Tau learned Tradespeak and the skills that would help him survive life at sea for the next six years.
The second year into his service aboard the trade vessel saw it attacked by privateers, and Tau was yet again taken for slave labor until shore was reached, where he was sold into service aboard a galley. There he served for three years – becoming the longest-lived slave the boat had ever seen – before the galley and all its slaves were sold off so that the captain might retire. Tau was placed aboard a slave ship bound for an island nation with a name he had never heard before, where he was to be put to auction. However, that ship ran aground and the slaves revolted, Tau among them.
Now barely nineteen but already a sturdy man of obvious strength, Tau eked out a life for himself in a large seaside town, relying on his wits and wiles for daily survival and, more often than not, landing himself in trouble whereby the punishments were sorely disproportionate to his crimes – or, at least, Tau thought so. When at last he tested the local constabulary’s patience beyond its limits, he hastily signed on for service aboard a cargo ship to escape prison. Or worse.
He would serve there a year.
As it turns out, the cargo ship in question was transporting stolen and illegal goods, and her captain was not very good at keeping said goods hidden from the local navy. The situation did not find Tau well, as he was discovered to have stolen certain goods from the hold to supplement what he thought to be a scanty pay, and he was taken aboard the navy warship for transport to the mainland, where he could receive a fair trial and a speedy execution.
Now, the good captain of this navy craft was a man of some renown to unsavory sailors everywhere for a number of reasons. First was that he was Admiral and had a sharp nose for business best done in shadowy places, second that he could not be bought or that his price was one’s soul itself, and third that he wielded the D’Taan.
The third one was the kicker. The D’Taan is something of a living legend to those who know of it, a weapon of supernatural origin. It was said that a man could not choose to wield the D’Taan, but that the D’Taan itself did the deciding and chose only the Fated – men of destiny. The sword also reflected its master: a man of strong mind and will would find the D’Taan to be an unbreakable tool of incredible destructive potential, while the wretch would hold in his hands a sword with a malleable, gooey mass in the blade’s place. If the wielder had murder in his heart, the blade would be heavy and wickedly edged, but a peaceful man would hold a swift, unbreakable rod.
But the D’Taan was not enough to keep the Admiral’s men in line when it came to the question of confiscated loot, and so there was a mutiny just days off the coast of what Tau now understands to be Scara Brae. The Admiral felled scores of his traitorous men with the D’Taan before he was put to the sword and hung by his neck from the ship’s bowsprit.
Many of the mutineers attempted to take up the D’Taan with various unfavorable results. The first found the sword to be unbearably heavy, and the second found that the grip to be too hot to touch. The third was cursed with terrible visions whenever he touched the blade, and the fourth was temporarily struck blind and deaf. Finally, the fifth lifted the sword only to have the blade reduce itself to a thick, churning black liquid. He dropped the sword and the blade fused itself to the boards of the deck, and it could not be removed by any man afterward.
Now, it was the plan of everyone aboard (except the prisoners) to quietly dock in Scara Brae and unload the prisoners and the goods without alerting anyone to the Admiral’s grave accident – by now he’d been cut down and entrusted to the deeps. By the time the navy would become aware of the mutiny, the crew would have scattered to the four corners of the world with their goods and money in tow.
Of course, this did not agree with Tau’s own plans at all.
When the time came, the prisoners were chained together and marched above decks, and from there an armed contingent of guardsmen would escort them to the local prison. Tau, laying eyes upon the D’Taan as he passed, made a mad bid for freedom and leapt for the sword. The crew did nothing but laugh at his attempt, figuring the blade would reject him as surely as it did all of them.
It did not. It became firm like iron and sharp as the blade of any guardsman, and Tau used it to sever his chains and dispatch two men as he made his escape – leaping overboard and into the sea.
Now settled into Scara Brae – as much as a man like him can be – Tau has been troubled by this turn of events for some time. That the D’Taan would choose him has implications that Tau cannot entirely comprehend – what is it to be Fated, and what is it that he is fated for?
These questions have sparked a revelation in Tau, a shift in his perception of the world and his place in it: no more would he scuttle to the closest hole when the light was shone upon him. No, to tumble through life fleeing from providence at every turn is weakness.
No, Tau decided. It is no longer enough to merely survive – he must thrive, and D’Taan is the means by which he will effect this change.
Skills :
Aun’vre is a man of great strength and endurance – he is highly tolerant of pain and slow to fatigue, and ten years of physical hardship have shaped him into a burly, tireless animal. He is swift and agile, trained well to work quickly without sacrificing dexterity, and his reflexes were honed over hundreds of stormy nights struggling to keep a seaborne vessel above the waves.
He is as intellectually swift as he is physically, but his education has been limited at best. He can read, but only at a basic level, and he understands and can speak broken sentences in many languages he doesn’t even know the names for. He grasps mathematics only up to and so far as the simple trade of goods for coin. He is of a surprisingly philosophical mind, and it is rare for a system of beliefs to be completely alien to him – though it is far less rare for him to disagree.
For all of his educational shortcomings, he learns quickly and is usually of sufficient wit to “fake it.”
His strengths, however, are by no means superhuman. He is strong, but he knows better than to challenge a titan to arm-wrestle, and he is quick, but there are plenty of men who could have a dagger drawn and put to his throat before he could blink. He is smart, but the magical arts confound him as surely as any other commoner. His hide is thick and he’s slow to express pain, but enough cuts, blows, bruises and arrows will bring him down as surely as any other mortal.
Tau’s skill with a bow is somewhere near average – he was taught to hunt between stints at sea, but has not practiced in close to three years. He was never taught the art of swordplay, but has learned a great deal through observation. This, combined with his above-average strength and agility, and given that he is not above fighting dirty, makes him capable of holding his own against a swordsman with basic training. An experienced soldier, however, would make quick work of him.
Tau is an experienced sailor and laborer in general, knows his way around a boat, and has spent much of his life learning the seaman’s trade – manipulating ropes, operating simple machinery, living off the sea’s bounty, and etcetera. He has witnessed acts of battle and piracy, and has a basic understanding of strategy and tactics.
Equipment :
Tau’s only real possession, save his clothes and other small accoutrements, is the D’Taan sword: a unique, supernatural weapon whose physical form reflects its user’s mind and spirit. It only allows itself to be wielded by those it deems worthy until such a time as that user dies. At that point, and only then, it will choose a new master.
The D’Taan resembles a longsword (or bastard sword, depending on who you ask) in shape alone. Its cross-guard and pommel are brilliantly silver, the latter adorned with what appears to be a large ruby, and the grip is beautifully wrapped in black leather. The blade itself, however, is quite unmistakably abnormal: it is black and slick at rest, occasionally reflecting a dull, dark green glow – though never in the light of the sun. When not held in Tau’s hand, its edges are dull and the blade lacks all but the vaguest shape to define it as such. When he takes it up, however, the blade’s fuller, edge, and ridges flow into distinct contour, and it takes the form of a beautifully crafted weapon.
However, Tau is young yet, and D’Taan reflects this. In his hands it is a ponderous weapon, and though D’Taan can never break or rust, its edge is only as sharp as the most common of swords. It is as good as using any other hefty iron weapon and it does not yet live up to its reputation as a legendary and otherworldly tool of war.
In time, as Tau grows stronger and deadlier, so too shall the D’Taan.
Age: Twenty-two
Race: Mixed Breed Human
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Green
Height: 5’8”
Weight: 220 lbs.
Personality:
First and foremost, Tau is out for Tau.
This isn’t merely bull-headed self-centeredness, nor is it done for any particular fear of harm or death – Tau’s complex personal philosophies hold self-interest above all else as a sort of defining principle to promote personal strength and combat his perception of weakness.
Weakness is the only true evil Tau knows.
Aun’vre holds self-reliance, self-preservation, self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-improvement as the only virtues of any real value – both in himself and in those around him. He will never promote what he sees as weakness in himself or in others: he will never request help, and will only offer aid if there is something he can personally gain from it. He has no qualms about preying upon the disadvantaged, as to show mercy is to allow weakness to flourish in others.
Obviously, Tau comes across as infinitely arrogant and self-interested, but none who come to know him can deny his cunning, boundless energy, or strength of will. He prefers to be alone: an aloof, thoughtful but somewhat melancholic creature. Despite his brutish physique, he often proves to have his own brand of predatory wit and sharp powers of observation.
Appearance:
Tau is a brute, not as hulking or towering as some, but a brute nonetheless. He is mightily shouldered and his limbs are thick with prodigious muscle, his chest deep and his abdomen sleek. He is a stout man, and one can imagine him fairing well in combat and feats of strength against men twice his size – he has an aura of preternatural vigor, and he can move with feline grace when the need strikes him.
He is clean-shaven, and his skin was burned bronze by the sun over years at sea. His left arm and shoulder are a veritable canvass of black tattoos, each signifying something – notably those marking him as a thief, murderer, pirate, and as being lecherous and morally unclean, each symbol of alien origin to the next. He has been branded upon both palms, the back of his left hand, and at the back of the neck by different nations, prisons, political bodies, and…private institutions. His back is covered by a network of long, uneven scars – the tell-tale gifts of a whip – and his chest is likewise decorated with evidences of many old wounds from many different tools of war.
Tau’s eyes are piercing green, large, and profoundly focused, and the entirety of his face lends itself to a striking deftness of nonverbal expression. Even those who know Tau well find themselves trusting him despite past experiences, and his eyes play an integral part in this illusion of credibility. His smile, however, gives him the appearance of a distinctly sly predator: his cuspids are slightly longer and sharper than those of normal humans (indicative of his distant orkish heritage), and the upper right cuspid, long lost in a fight, has been substituted with an identical gold tooth.
His hair is very long and black, haphazardly braided into many thick cords. Small trinkets of bone, metal, and stone are braided into his hair at the forefront, along with other small charms – most notably a large, brilliantly colored feather. The longest of these braids reaches just beyond his mid-back.
Tau’s clothing is the motley, mismatched result of his travels, and changes as he needs it to. As he enters Scara Brae, he wears leather pants charred black at his legs. A white, tight-fitting, short-sleeved, breathable and quick-to-dry deckhand’s shirt is at his chest. A pair of big, sturdy black boots and a long, luxurious, brilliantly red sash serve at his feet and waist respectively, and the D’Taan sword is at his back.
History :
Not even Aun’vre Tau himself knows precisely where he came from or how to return there, having endured a turbulent youth of constant travel alone. He does remember his tribe, a tightly-knitted group of nomads that traveled empty, arid plains in search of food and wild game, and who were known for raiding and stealing from other peoples of the area. The tribe was often said to be the outcast descendants of orks and humans who interbred, and some did indeed have orkish features – though most were indistinguishable from other humans. Tau remembers his mother and father and all of his siblings and extended family, but he does not particularly seem to miss them or long for them.
As was said, Tau’s tribe was well-known for its predilections toward thievery. During the summer of Tau’s twelfth year the tribe raided the farms of a larger clan for food and horses. That clan struck an alliance with two others, and then retaliated by attacking the tribe’s camp and scattering it to the four winds – killing and enslaving members of Tau’s extended family wherever they were found.
Aun’vre went far to the south with his mother, siblings, and many of his cousins and aunts and uncles, always managing to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. The vengeful ones caught up to Tau’s group at the base of a range of great mountains, and Tau was left behind in the ensuing chaos.
Then a boy of thirteen, Tau was captured and sold into slavery to a race of stout, assiduous beings that lived in sprawling subterranean caverns beneath the mountain passes. He was tasked with digging in places deemed too dangerous and structurally unsound for the dwarves, and did so for two years before intentionally causing a cave-in at a nearly-completed tunnel during inspection. The only survivor, Tau dug himself free and fled to the surface.
Aun’vre had heard news of his family and tribe, who had reassembled in the northern plains and were, day-by-day, accepting and protecting survivors of the Old Tribe fleeing situations comparable to the boy’s own. He chose not to go to them, feeling no lingering connection to his tribe, and so he continued south across the mountains and away from the plains of his birth.
Some months later he reached the opposite side of the mountains, and the vastness of the sea was before him. He traveled the coast for days, and soon became a professional stowaway aboard small fishing and trading crafts bound for islands and obscure lands, until his luck finally failed him. It was either service or the sea when he was discovered aboard a large trade vessel destined for foreign lands – it was here that Tau learned Tradespeak and the skills that would help him survive life at sea for the next six years.
The second year into his service aboard the trade vessel saw it attacked by privateers, and Tau was yet again taken for slave labor until shore was reached, where he was sold into service aboard a galley. There he served for three years – becoming the longest-lived slave the boat had ever seen – before the galley and all its slaves were sold off so that the captain might retire. Tau was placed aboard a slave ship bound for an island nation with a name he had never heard before, where he was to be put to auction. However, that ship ran aground and the slaves revolted, Tau among them.
Now barely nineteen but already a sturdy man of obvious strength, Tau eked out a life for himself in a large seaside town, relying on his wits and wiles for daily survival and, more often than not, landing himself in trouble whereby the punishments were sorely disproportionate to his crimes – or, at least, Tau thought so. When at last he tested the local constabulary’s patience beyond its limits, he hastily signed on for service aboard a cargo ship to escape prison. Or worse.
He would serve there a year.
As it turns out, the cargo ship in question was transporting stolen and illegal goods, and her captain was not very good at keeping said goods hidden from the local navy. The situation did not find Tau well, as he was discovered to have stolen certain goods from the hold to supplement what he thought to be a scanty pay, and he was taken aboard the navy warship for transport to the mainland, where he could receive a fair trial and a speedy execution.
Now, the good captain of this navy craft was a man of some renown to unsavory sailors everywhere for a number of reasons. First was that he was Admiral and had a sharp nose for business best done in shadowy places, second that he could not be bought or that his price was one’s soul itself, and third that he wielded the D’Taan.
The third one was the kicker. The D’Taan is something of a living legend to those who know of it, a weapon of supernatural origin. It was said that a man could not choose to wield the D’Taan, but that the D’Taan itself did the deciding and chose only the Fated – men of destiny. The sword also reflected its master: a man of strong mind and will would find the D’Taan to be an unbreakable tool of incredible destructive potential, while the wretch would hold in his hands a sword with a malleable, gooey mass in the blade’s place. If the wielder had murder in his heart, the blade would be heavy and wickedly edged, but a peaceful man would hold a swift, unbreakable rod.
But the D’Taan was not enough to keep the Admiral’s men in line when it came to the question of confiscated loot, and so there was a mutiny just days off the coast of what Tau now understands to be Scara Brae. The Admiral felled scores of his traitorous men with the D’Taan before he was put to the sword and hung by his neck from the ship’s bowsprit.
Many of the mutineers attempted to take up the D’Taan with various unfavorable results. The first found the sword to be unbearably heavy, and the second found that the grip to be too hot to touch. The third was cursed with terrible visions whenever he touched the blade, and the fourth was temporarily struck blind and deaf. Finally, the fifth lifted the sword only to have the blade reduce itself to a thick, churning black liquid. He dropped the sword and the blade fused itself to the boards of the deck, and it could not be removed by any man afterward.
Now, it was the plan of everyone aboard (except the prisoners) to quietly dock in Scara Brae and unload the prisoners and the goods without alerting anyone to the Admiral’s grave accident – by now he’d been cut down and entrusted to the deeps. By the time the navy would become aware of the mutiny, the crew would have scattered to the four corners of the world with their goods and money in tow.
Of course, this did not agree with Tau’s own plans at all.
When the time came, the prisoners were chained together and marched above decks, and from there an armed contingent of guardsmen would escort them to the local prison. Tau, laying eyes upon the D’Taan as he passed, made a mad bid for freedom and leapt for the sword. The crew did nothing but laugh at his attempt, figuring the blade would reject him as surely as it did all of them.
It did not. It became firm like iron and sharp as the blade of any guardsman, and Tau used it to sever his chains and dispatch two men as he made his escape – leaping overboard and into the sea.
Now settled into Scara Brae – as much as a man like him can be – Tau has been troubled by this turn of events for some time. That the D’Taan would choose him has implications that Tau cannot entirely comprehend – what is it to be Fated, and what is it that he is fated for?
These questions have sparked a revelation in Tau, a shift in his perception of the world and his place in it: no more would he scuttle to the closest hole when the light was shone upon him. No, to tumble through life fleeing from providence at every turn is weakness.
No, Tau decided. It is no longer enough to merely survive – he must thrive, and D’Taan is the means by which he will effect this change.
Skills :
Aun’vre is a man of great strength and endurance – he is highly tolerant of pain and slow to fatigue, and ten years of physical hardship have shaped him into a burly, tireless animal. He is swift and agile, trained well to work quickly without sacrificing dexterity, and his reflexes were honed over hundreds of stormy nights struggling to keep a seaborne vessel above the waves.
He is as intellectually swift as he is physically, but his education has been limited at best. He can read, but only at a basic level, and he understands and can speak broken sentences in many languages he doesn’t even know the names for. He grasps mathematics only up to and so far as the simple trade of goods for coin. He is of a surprisingly philosophical mind, and it is rare for a system of beliefs to be completely alien to him – though it is far less rare for him to disagree.
For all of his educational shortcomings, he learns quickly and is usually of sufficient wit to “fake it.”
His strengths, however, are by no means superhuman. He is strong, but he knows better than to challenge a titan to arm-wrestle, and he is quick, but there are plenty of men who could have a dagger drawn and put to his throat before he could blink. He is smart, but the magical arts confound him as surely as any other commoner. His hide is thick and he’s slow to express pain, but enough cuts, blows, bruises and arrows will bring him down as surely as any other mortal.
Tau’s skill with a bow is somewhere near average – he was taught to hunt between stints at sea, but has not practiced in close to three years. He was never taught the art of swordplay, but has learned a great deal through observation. This, combined with his above-average strength and agility, and given that he is not above fighting dirty, makes him capable of holding his own against a swordsman with basic training. An experienced soldier, however, would make quick work of him.
Tau is an experienced sailor and laborer in general, knows his way around a boat, and has spent much of his life learning the seaman’s trade – manipulating ropes, operating simple machinery, living off the sea’s bounty, and etcetera. He has witnessed acts of battle and piracy, and has a basic understanding of strategy and tactics.
Equipment :
Tau’s only real possession, save his clothes and other small accoutrements, is the D’Taan sword: a unique, supernatural weapon whose physical form reflects its user’s mind and spirit. It only allows itself to be wielded by those it deems worthy until such a time as that user dies. At that point, and only then, it will choose a new master.
The D’Taan resembles a longsword (or bastard sword, depending on who you ask) in shape alone. Its cross-guard and pommel are brilliantly silver, the latter adorned with what appears to be a large ruby, and the grip is beautifully wrapped in black leather. The blade itself, however, is quite unmistakably abnormal: it is black and slick at rest, occasionally reflecting a dull, dark green glow – though never in the light of the sun. When not held in Tau’s hand, its edges are dull and the blade lacks all but the vaguest shape to define it as such. When he takes it up, however, the blade’s fuller, edge, and ridges flow into distinct contour, and it takes the form of a beautifully crafted weapon.
However, Tau is young yet, and D’Taan reflects this. In his hands it is a ponderous weapon, and though D’Taan can never break or rust, its edge is only as sharp as the most common of swords. It is as good as using any other hefty iron weapon and it does not yet live up to its reputation as a legendary and otherworldly tool of war.
In time, as Tau grows stronger and deadlier, so too shall the D’Taan.