Maedoc Galenos Race: Human Age: 26 Birthday: 50th day of Winter, 485 A.V. Religion: Rhysol Height: 6'2'' Weight: 215lbs Physical Maedoc Galenos is an embodiment of the harshness sometimes needed to survive in today’s chaotic Mizahar. Maedoc is a looming six foot two inches and weighs about 215lbs. His build is slim with wide, well formed shoulders. Most of his strength is in his back and shoulders, testament to his many years swinging the unforgiving pick deep in a silver mine. His face is pale and gives off a slightly lethargic, hollow air from many years battling sickness without a doctor. His eyes are pale green and his hair a shock of white blonde. He bears many ugly scars from his time as a slave and his eyes often seem dull and un-alive, as if his face had not experienced joy in a very long time. He wears a tunic and breeches with his high boots and grey cloak. Usually he is seen with grey leather armor strapped on and always has his vicious war hammer close. Personality The tragedy that is his sad life has severely warped the mentality of what could have been a polite, happy Syliran boy. He is angry and bitter and prone to cruel outbursts. Never trusting and always judging, Maedoc breeds turmoil in any relations he has with other people unless they are as callus and emotionless as he portrays himself to be. His anger is usually enough to give him courage, but his childhood fears have subconsciously plagued him for years. He fears the Zith and the idea of losing his newfound freedom, and he fears the Sylirans for reasons even he cannot understand. They made him their pariah, and so he must hate them. But under his hate he knows it stems from a deep rooted jealousy. He should have been a knight, it was his right as the son of a wrongly accused knight. And the fact that he still cared after so many years made him hate them all the more. Maedoc is brave, though through his cruelty this can hardly be seen as a virtue. He seemingly propels himself through opponents out of sheer spite. He shrugs the risks of dangers off as part of life. He hadn’t had an easy existence since he was eight years old, why start now? The hardships and pains of life did little to disturb him, never darkening his mood. On the contrary he seems happiest when on the road or moving away from society. The sight of normal people who were raised with normal parental love and care makes him sour. Maedoc, in short, is the product of many unfortunate mishaps and ill-lucked tragedies. Pre-creation History 494AV: Maedoc Galenos’s story starts with the one huge tragedy of his father. Typhon Galenos was a Syliran Knight and role model to the young Maedoc for the first eight years of his life. Maedoc had become a page and was beginning his long journey down the path of training and grooming that would eventually lead to the honored life of a Syliran Knight himself. Spending mornings learning his letters and afternoons doing everything from weapons and armor care to being drilled about the history of the Windoak and Syliras. He was just like every other boy his age, youthful, hopeful, and eager to be a hero. But Typhon was accused of adultery with another knight’s wife, being a single parent himself. Pride was one of the knight’s vices and upon hearing the heated claims, his shame was so great he decided to turn his back on the city and go into self exile until he regained his honor back. He packed his warhorse and a second pony laden with supplies and began his journey along the long arduous tracks of Mizahar. It was not long, however, until he realized he was not alone. In his devotion and idolizing love of his father, Maedoc had donned his page’s tunic and followed his father. So happy to see the boy was Typhon that he did not punish his poor judgement, instead telling Maedoc his love and loyalty were a tribute to his honor. The shamed knight and his son set out together in search of a new life away from Syliras. Typhon continued Maedoc’s schooling as best he could from the road but slowly began to stop, becoming tired of the wasted hours and instead taught him how to heft a hammer and told him bitter stories of his past glories. Thus, where Typhon had grown on stories of the glories and heroics of the Syliran Knights, Maedoc was fed upon hateful and spiteful tales of self-righteous warriors with a totalitarian control over Syliras. His past happiness in Syliras did not matter, it did not exist for the impressionable youth. What was memory to his father’s words? Maedoc began to take on his father’s bitter attitude. 497AV: Shrunk from his utter failure to recover from that one spiteful slight, Typhon had tumbled into a drunken, abusive cycle of outbursts and beatings that left Maedoc confused and deeply hurt. Typhon took all of his anger and resentment on the only sentient outlet he had, his son. Maedoc, being a young boy and non the wiser of such things, assumed he was the problem. He cried himself to sleep many nights wondering why his knightly father hated him so much, begging the gods to make him worthy of his love once again. Alas such things are beneath their notice apparently. Somewhere in southern Sylira, on the border of Cyphrus, Typhon and Maedoc were camped. Night had fallen and the moon was no where to be seen. Tall grass was bent and broken in a wide circle around their camp and they had little in the way of camouflage or protection set up. They weren't expecting anything to happen, least of all an ambush from a troop of Zith slavers. Typhon awoke and told Maedoc to stay inside the tent. He neglected his armor and even his shirt, not having time to don anything but his breeches and boots. Hefting his war hammer expertly, Typhon ran from the tent with a well worn battle cry on his lips. Maedoc took a moment to gain the courage to crawl to the tent flap and peer outside. In the dark night’s shadows he could barely make out the thin grey forms of three Zith rending the mule to small bits as two more bounced around the clearly, trying to find an opening in his father’s defense. Cruel and bitter he may be, but Typhon Galenos was a power when it came to combat. He stood, covered in Zith blood, past the bodies of no less than four Zith slavers already. Their wings smashed and their skulls caved in under the might of his hammer. But alas, he was only one man, one tired man. He eventually got his war hammer stuck in the ribcage of a Zith and the others took the opportunity to pounce. Two Zith carried him into the air by the arms as the former knight bellowed threats and angry curses. They hissed and yelled back in their own language but he was neither listening nor understanding. But Typhon had seen enough of battle to know what was coming next. He finally calmed and stared with the most pain and regret Maedoc had ever seen, his eyes watering as they found Maedoc’s own. Then a third Zith shot three well aimed arrows into his father’s chest. The knight neither screamed or grunted as the shafts drove home. He simply slumped down and the with let go. He fell to the ground and landed on his head, limp body sprawled out horribly. Maedoc had just lost the last person who had ever cared about him. He had lost the last connection he had with his past, his entire existence really. Rage burned deep inside of him, but more so did fear. He feared the Zith, he feared the wilds, but most of all he feared a life spent alone. The Zith landed and returned to fighting over the remains of the mule and the horse. None seemed to show any interest in the tent, assuming the knight had been alone. Blinded by emotions he was entirely to young and inexperienced to understand, Maedoc ran from the tent. To do what he had no idea. But upon seeing his father more closely he realized just how dire his situation was. The smell of fresh blood and the reek of organs accosted his nose and the cruel sounds of breaking bones and inhuman squawks filled him with a lethargic fear. He glanced around desperately as the Zith began to look up from their feast. His eyes lit upon his father’s hammer, discarded near the corpse. Maedoc ran to it just as the Zith began to take flight and give chase. He wrapped his fingers around the handle for the first time, feeling the soft leather hilt and praying he could lift it. He barely hefted the thing over his shoulder when the first Zith came within killing distance. He was so frightened of the fierce and foreign thing that he dropped more than swung the hammer at it. The head dropped onto the thing’s shin and took from it the skin from the knee down to the ankle, along with crushing the flimsy bones of the left foot. Maedoc could not lift the hammer a second time before the Zith were on him. They tied him up with relatively little difficulty, he was only eleven after all. They gathered his father’s gear and took him away once they had finished eating the horse, the mule, and the poor boy’s father. 505AV: After losing his father, Maedoc spiraled further into his emotionlessness, the only defense he had to the harsh life of a Zith slave. He harbored his hate and bitterness inside himself, drawing strength from it. The now club-footed Zith had claimed him as his own and treated him to all manner of brutal torture and labor before grudingly selling Maedoc to a human who ran a silver and iron mine in Sylira. That was in 500AV. For five years Maedoc broke rocks in the dark caverns with a bent old pick that gifted him a splinter every time he picked the damn thing up. He was fed little and given muddy water to drink, causing little growth of muscle and all manner of sickness that left him with a pale, hollow complexion. The hard work was long and without break as Maedoc grew into adulthood. Eventually he became so healthy and strong he was given the task of pulling the cart up out of the mine and into the miners’ camp. It was huge and took three large slaves to pull the whole half mile back to the camp, but Maedoc was glad to see the sun and the sky again. Usually the only time a slave left the mine was to sleep just outside under the moldy tarps the miners had set up. He came to know the other two, one a Myrian warrior captured and broken down. The other a Drykas who had his horse go lame and was walking back to his pavilion when the zith ambushed him. Both were large men, both were angry men. It was a liberating feeling, sharing a hatred with other men who were strong enough to care about something still. It rekindled something inside him. For the first time in a long time Maedoc Galenos cared where he was and who he was. He was the son of a Syliran Knight, though he had hated that group for a long time now. Nevertheless, these slavers should be taught a lesson. The formulation of a plan began to slip itself into his head. The first people he told of it were the Myrian and the Drykas, though more were told when they were bold enough to eavesdrop on the three’s hushed conversations late at night under the tarps. Eventually there were ten men and two women bold enough to act. The Myrian, the Drykas, and Maedoc pushed the huge cart along the track and into the miner’s camp. Surrounded by tents and heavy wagons for carting the merchandise away, Maedoc felt a bit fearful. The miner’s were burly men, most with whips and clubs too. But nevertheless he slammed a fist hard on the metal of the cart. The chief miner looked at him oddly and then, slowly, his gaze lifted to the edge of the cart. A red faced, scrap-clothed slave howled in joy as he split the man’s head with a pick. Maedoc helped the Myrian and the Drykas ward off the miner’s long enough for the slaves to leap out of the cart or run up from where they hid along the track. Every slave had a vicious pick in their hand, or else a shovel. All save for the three who pushed the cart, though the Myrian had taken a whip from the dead miner and flicked it expertly, a vicious grin on his lips. The salves and the miners did not bellow any warcries as Typhon had on his last stand, but it was a battle or vicious proportions. Miners split throats and faces with deadly whips while slaves ripped bone, muscle, and organ from bodies with their long picks. In the end the slaves wanted freedom more than the miners wanted profit. The survivors fled into the woods, leaving their weapons and mizas behind. The Myrian, Maedoc would later learn he was called Tulk, gathered the slaves together and had them raid the miner’s tents for supplies and clothes. He was a natural leader, and a savage. Tulk told the newly freed slaves that they could take a small portion of the plunder and go, never to return, or they could take a larger portion and some weapons and work for him. Maedoc, impressed with his confidence and the easy way he ended lives, decided to enlist his services with the Myrian. Tulk led the group deeper into the forest where they started a relatively lucrative career as highwaymen and bandits. He taught and guided them all in the arts of ambush and intimidation until everyone of the band was a hard bitten criminal. They started with clubs and picks and by the time a year had past they carried crossbows and swords, with bits of armor and the clothes off rich merchant’s backs. Maedoc loved the freedom the life gave him, never having experienced it before. His anger and cruelty earned him a place as Tulk’s second. A lifetime of pain and failure finally began to pay off for Maedoc. Tulk gave him bigger shares of the loot and even gifted him a set of leather armor they took from a Syliran scout. Thus began the golden years of Maedoc’s adolescence. 512AV: After a long stint as a bandit under the now notorious highwayman Tulk the Terror, Maedoc had learned to be everything his father had worked to rid Mizahar of. He was cold and unforgiving, any empathy or sympathy he felt he quickly squashed with a wave of fear, not wanting Tulk to see weakness in him and have him replaced. He had learned the warhammer, a last reminder of his father, and earned something of a reputation for cruelty and ability with it. But no one thing can last forever. The troop had been relaxing after an expecially lucrative robbery in their hidden camp deep in the woods when the first signs of the great Djed Storm cropped up. None had any experience with such magics and they could not find adequete shelter if they had. The forest turned into a deathtrap of vile destructive power as trees were shattered and the earth danced under their feet. Maedoc saw Tulk took a branch through the skull right before he blacked out from an impact on the back of his head. When he awoke Tulk’s mangled corpse lay a few yard from him and many of his friends were similarly dead across the remnants of the camp. Maedoc was numb with shock and fear. What would he do now? Where would he go? Though he had been through hardship after failure, he had never been alone. Never. Equipement and Possessions
Housing:None Ledger
Skills
Practiced Languages: Fluent Language: Common Poor Language: Zith Lores Lore of Being a Bandit Lore of Suffering the Whip Ambushing a Caravan Fighting For Revenge Tailing a Party in the Woods The Pain of Being Shot in the Back Mother's Secret Knight's Code Location: The Caern Penn is Kelvic Yukman (Basic) Ambushed by Yukman Fighting In The Dark Thread List Flashbacks
Spring 512A.V.
Fall 512 A.V.
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