NOTE: Terms and information taken from Blood of Creation are explained in italics

Character Name:

Tethis Ironfold

"You say fight for honour, glory and respect. I say, what good is honour, glory and respect if I can't afford to eat?"

User:[NamelessMerc]

Race: Human

Age: 41

Gender: Male

Rank/Class/Title: Duellist Mercenary (Duellists rely on speed rather than strength to fight. Mercenary is a trade for proficient fighters)

Appearance:Facially, Tethis is not the most endearing of people. Retaining some of his boyish looks, Tethis’s face is offset by a ragged scar on his left cheek obtained in a duel. However, when he smiles Tethis has some quality which makes him seem more radiant. Tethis has flowing brown hair which, when untied, stretches down to his shoulders. It is shot through with the first strands of grey, but this is the only attribute which comes close to showing his age. Habitually, Tethis ties his hair back with a simple cord and has a bandana fixed over his brows to keep his fringe back from his eyes. Barrel-chested, Tethis prefers to wear a leather breastplate with pauldrons fixed on with large leather straps and brass buckles. He wears no other upper arm protection, and sports leather bracers on his forearms into which are tucked the sleeves of his billowing, faded blue shirt. Tethis’s patchy brown leggings are also light and airy, tucked into his leather boots to make movement easier, and held up by his plain leather sword belt. One of Tethis’s weapons, a rapier on his right hip, is linked to this belt and like the pauldron buckles, the belt buckle is brass. Tethis's other weapon, a two-handed broadsword, is held under his left shoulder in a plain leather baldric.

Skills: Tethis has excellent hand-eye co-ordination, aiding his swordplay. Fighting using two swords, Tethis has gained the ability to defend using either sword whilst attacking with the other. Being a mercenary, Tethis has gained some idea about looting bodies, but detests the need to do so. Tethis is also quite economically aware - In his own land, Bilymas, Tethis controlled the largest mercenary encampment on the island. Tethis detests long-range weaponry, and has no ability to use magic.
Techniques/Abilities:
1. Heroic Strength (Tethis can lift and handle things roughly the same weight as him. Also allows the use of two-handed weapons in one hand. Permanent.)
2. Dual-Wielding (Tethis can fight using a weapon in each hand with no deficit. Permanent.)
3. Elegance (Using speed rather than strength, Tethis can attack in a flurry landing 5-8 blows. Once ber battle.)
4. Minor Smithing (Tethis can repair his own weapons and armour, to a certain degree, over the course of one day. One item per day.)
5. Vital Lunge (With perfect timing, Tethis can evade one attack by an enemy and return a blow which can be instantly fatal. Once per day.)

Personality: Tethis is a quiet and reserved sort of individual, but never ceases to think. He is always watching, calculating and trying to draw conclusions from the information he has collected. This is not to be confused with the idea that Tethis is cold and distant. He is always willing to talk to people, but likes the time to think that his occupation provides. Though he generally has a fairly long fuse, Tethis has a code of honour ingrained into his soul, and if this is broken the fires of hell are not hot enough to stop him bounding through to get to his objective. Incidentally, due to his personal code of honour, Tethis will not consort in any way with known law-breakers.

History: Born the third son of a minor lord in Bilymas (A small island state, currently at war with a demonic race), in the port city of Het Hi Kon (The only Royal port in Bilymas, situated to the North-East), Tethis’s life was destined for nothing particularly meaningful. The first few years of his life were spent annoying nurse-maids, kitchen staff and various other household servants in his father’s manor, whilst at the same time watching his older brothers and sister going about the duties of the house. At the age of six, Tethis decided that he liked fiddling with the numbers his eldest brother, Jerrik, used daily, but that he also had an interest in the soldiers in the training yard. By the age of ten, Tethis had taken up practice with his father’s personal guard, they welcoming him like a mascot, teaching him both fine swordsmanship and the dirtier secrets of real-combat fighting. At this time, Jerrik had also adopted Tethis into his economics office. Here, Tethis learned all about the trade of Het Hi Kon, what it meant to each and every person living in the port city and exactly how much weight was carried on regulating the money going in and going out of the city. Tethis was enthralled. At age fifteen, Tethis’s father intervened in his studies. Tethis was shipped off to Eastford (A town boasting the only true bridge crossing the Great River to Het Hi Kon) to serve in the town guard there. The soldiers’ training came in handy when Eastford was attacked and overwhelmed by a band of marauding orcs. Riding Kogorath (Large, domesticated boars used by Orcs as humans use horses, only much more battle-worthy due to their enormous tusks and sharpened hooves), the orcs had fought their way through Eastford ahead of a detachment of the King’s First (Vanguard of the Bilymasian armed forces), reaching and razing much of Het Hi Kon before the King’s First caught up and returned the favour by massacring them. Tethis lost his father and brothers in that fire, and no one ever found out what happened to his sister. Now trying to make the most out of life without his family, hard as that was for him, the seventeen year old Tethis made his way onto a trade caravan. He was determined not to live the life of an ordinary soldier as he was previously destined to do. He spent ten years traveling Bilymas under various pseudonyms, guarding everything from grain to precious jewels bound for the shrine of the God of Law (The three Gods of Bilymas are Law, Balance and Chaos, each with their individual shrine. The Law Shrine is located in the North-West). In that time Tethis saw everything a man of Bilymas could think of – Bandits, wolf-men, even an undead on one stormy, full-mooned night.
It was at this point that Tethis made a discovery – He was more than what he was trying to be. He’d done exactly what he’d set out not to do. Taking the spoils of his final job, guarding a rather small shipment of smuggled goods from South-Point to Woodhead (Both villages on the Southern edge of Bilymas, known for their smuggling), Tethis set about starting something he liked to think of as his master plan. He gathered all the mercenaries he could find, from the miserable, broken, decrepit old mercenaries right through to the strong-armed sword-for-hire and offered them half of his amassed gold to help him build a community for them all to live in. They would be like a guild, he proposed, with him at the head to oversee the economical issues surrounding the hiring of the mercenaries living in the encampment, right down to things such as procuring food for the inevitable merchants who would settle there. And so building was begun, and finished, in the North of Bilymas. To the West of Het Hi Kon, the encampment named Hen Tek (War Dog in the Old Bilymasian language) sprang up in three years. Full houses, taverns, meeting halls and trade-posts were established, and by the time he was thirty Tethis had hung up his swords behind him in his office as a reminder of days gone by. However, it was not uncommon to see Tethis training with the other mercenaries in the practice yard, as he enjoyed keeping his skills sharp. During the eleven years that passed, Tethis began to study warfare, tactics and deploymen in the field, to better help ‘his men’, as he thought of them, when the King’s Army came to Hen Tek recruiting. By the eleventh year, it was understood throughout Bilymas that the best mercenaries were to be found in Hen Tek.
Then came the war. All across Bilymas, demons known as Nikarath (Large, beetle-like hive demons with no fear and brute strength outweighing any warrior) were making a move they had been planning for decades, perhaps even centuries. People who had been acting strange for years suddenly transformed overnight into hideous beetle-demon nightmares, and the King’s Army was sorely pressed to stop the carnage from overflowing into the other lands surrounding Bilymas. In desperation, King Servius issued a decree that all men eligible to fight were to do so, under penalty of death, and the mercenaries of Hen Tek buckled their belts, oiled their swords and tested their shields. Teithis himself had forged a matching rapier and massive, two-handed broadsword with his insignia (A medallion of a a dog, teeth bared) set into the pommel of both. Tethis personally led the charge against a battalion of Nikarath just on the outskirts of Bilyroth (The capital city of Bilymas) and was struck by two spells simultaneously halfway through the battle. One spell had been thrown by a Nikarath mage, to cause Tethis’s body to shatter into nothing but atoms, while the other was a counter-spell thrown by one of Tethis’s allies, Anthony, designed to move Tethis several feet out of the path of the Nikarath hex.
Alas, the effect of both these spells together was not to rip Tethis into infinitesimally small pieces, but to transport him whilst also attempting to rip his body apart into pieces so small they could traverse Universes. Excruciating pain as his molecules tried to wrench apart tortured him for what seemed hours, as Anthony’s teleportation spell held him together, until the swirling vortex he was enveloped in suddenly ceased to exist, and he was thrown, battered, to the earth. Tethis lay there for some time before he had the energy to even look around himself, dazed and confused. There was no sign of the battle. There was no sign of anyone. He was stuck somewhere he didn’t recognise, without the energy to call for help. As he picked himself up and looked around, one thought went careening through Tethis’s mind… I’m going to kill Anthony when I find him.

Other: Tethis will often become sullen when left unattended for a long period of time. He has lost a lot when journeying far from his home after the errant spell that left him stranded. Friends, brothers-in-arms and his faithful hound Belforth - The inspiration for his insignia and the name Hen Tek - are never far from his mind and, when nothing is there to distract him, often these memories will flow into the fore of his thoughts. It is not uncommon for him to go off alone for a few minutes at these times, perhaps to weep for what he's lost, no one should ever know.

Equipment:
Syretium Two-handed Broadsword
Syretium Rapier
Hardened Leather Breastplate
Hardened Leather Pauldrons
Hardened Leather Bracers
Fine Cotton Shirt
Fine Cotton Leggings
Coarse Cotton Bandana
Supple Leather Boots

Syretium - A strange ore which seems to have the properties of normal steel, but with a slightly red tint. Syretium weapons have the ability to cleave through Nikarath chitin shells like normal human skin.

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