Dashmiel's Characters

Character Bio

Halfdan Windrivver lived a fairly ordinary childhood by his reckoning. Cloistered in a barracks with seven other youths from the moment he was six years old, it was wake up two hours before dawn every day. Fifteen minutes were spared for morning ablutions, then it was out into the practice yard.

Before the thought of breakfast could even begin to form, there were morning exercises to be completed. One hour divided into running, quarterstaff katas, and balance training. Half an hour sparring with his peers. Another half an hour spent practicing his letters and reciting the sagas of the masters; poetry meant to encapsulate the meaning of war into poignantly elegant bite-sized refrains.

Breakfast wouldn't be served until insightful commentary could be made in a manner that pleased the Master of Combat.

Life in the warrior monk retreat of Teldashain could be hard looking from the outside in, but to Halfan it was what normal meant.

Nestled within a remote pass surrounded by imposing mountains, the monastery often felt like a world unto its own. The closest (and only) hamlet of note was a Halfling town a full two days trek to the south.

The monastery boasted a population of slightly less than 200 men and women who more or less had decided that a life of ascetic contemplation spiced up by beating up each other occasionally was better than all of the bullshit living in actual society encompassed.

Or so was Halfdan's opinion come his early teenage years.

After morning activities, it was the usual chores you'd expect to be thrusted upon a bunch of youths living in a remote enclave. Sweep the dust off the rough hewn stone of the inner cloister, move heavy casks around to the Master Brewer's content, maintain the weapons in the armory.

All of the busy work a young mind could ever dream of. Somewhere in there surprisingly, diligence was learned.

After chores it was a simple lunch, and on to more training. Endless training.

For the monks of Teldashain had one main export that they peddled in. In their small corner of Toril at least, your coin couldn't hire better muscle than a Teldashain monk.

Halfdan had the cliche and utterly unremarkable backstory among his peers of having been dropped off as a newborn babe swaddled in hempen blankets in the back of a tavern somewhere.

Surviving a cold winter night in the alley behind a drinking hole until a curious travelling monk found you was the usual entry trial into the Teldashain ranks.
While there was the usual glut of spiritual enrichment and knowledge found in monasteries everywhere, to Halfdan's solidly average intellect the whole point was to learn to kick ass so that you could at least get to be on the hireling groups.

After afternoon training, it was time to go get dinner. Going to get dinner being a literal statement, because wilderness training ran until the evening hours. From the age of eight, there was no such thing as a free dinner for Halfdan.

Equipped with his wits and spear in hand, with his friends at his side and a pack with some supplies; wilderness training consisted of being told to scram the hell out and not return until enough food to feed their group of four times two was acquired. There was no set time, you returned when you had enough to meet the rations quota if you wanted to sleep in your bed that night.

Some of Haldan's favorite memories were of sneaking into the Master Brewer's stores to tap a cask or two before wilderness training. It was not uncommon to spend the night out in the rough, and the warmth of good ale more than made up for the tongue lashing and extra training heaped on you by the Master of Combat the following day.

Thus did Halfdan spend his youth. Learning the art and philosophy of war amongst other castoffs of society. A quiet and simple life, where deep lessons were imparted almost without his noticing through hard labor.

There wasn't much religion to be had for all that they were a monastery. Or at least not much that was forced upon them. Old Man Hrothgar, their Grandmaster was supposedly a cleric of Tempus who boasted quite the adventuring life in his youth, though Halfdan had never seen him do much that he would consider "clericky" during this upbringing.

Still there had to have been a reason for their renown, and Halfdan suspected there were certainly secrets about the Teldashain order that he would have eventually been inducted into.

However, he'd never get the chance.

By virtue of the predictable flow of his life until then, the day that changed the course of Halfdan's life was a completely ordinary one. It happened only a few months after he'd turned 18, and half a season before he would have been ready to go set out on his first hired mission.

He'd been loitering out during wilderness training, alone for once after a dispute with his barrack-mates. He was deep in his cups, watching the monastery from a nearby ridge as he pondered turning in early with his snare of hares full when he saw the setting sun be darkened.
Enough of his training had been devoted to the beasts and creatures of the land to technically be able to recognize what he saw...but seeing a dragon illustrated in a page is a wholly different experience to seeing one descent into your world.
Before he could really register what he was beholding, the flames began. And as he stood rooted to the spot in terrorized awed, he noticed the movement of hundreds of humanoid shapes approaching the side of the monastery.

Halfdan could never truly recall the moment he started moving, but something in his training must have propelled him beneath the notice of conscious thought.

By the time he reached through the gates of the monastery some fifteen minutes later, a massive breach had already been blasted through one of the side walls.

Throngs of strange armed figures filled the training grounds; some dressed like warriors with glittering weapons galore while others were adorned with strange robes filled with symbols that hurt Halfdan's mind when he tried to make sense of them. All the while the huge red dragon perched upon the battlements, menacingly watching.

He half thought to move to defend his home, before an arm held his shoulder. With a stern expression, the Master of Combat handed him a spear and bid him stand by. There was a spectacle beginning to unfold.

In the midst of the cultists and mercenaries, another dragon stood. Or...not a dragon, at least not in the way the huge lizard was. It stood upon two legs like a dragonborn...but while it lacked wings, a powerful tail swung to and fro menacingly.

Halfdan had no idea what it was but if it was a dragonborn, it was certainly the most fucked up exemplar of the race he'd ever heard of. His stature of a full 7 feet tall also seemed to indicate it was something Halfdan had no knowledge of. Covered in bright blue scales that scintillated in the dying light and muzzled in cruelty, the creature scanned the area with lizard's eyes.

It growled a command in a language Halfdan could not understand, and pointed a clawed hand towards a group of manacled figures Halfdan had noticed only then.

Skianna, Varni, Jor, and Theth. His barrack mates.

They had split from him a few hours past while out in the woods, after a childish argument that would haunt Halfdan's memories forever. Through a narrowing sense of perception, Halfdan's vision tunneled. He felt like he missed several minutes as the shock of seeing his friends in danger forced him down through thoughts of how the evening should have turned out.

He came back to as the monstrous creature barked out a challenge, this time in the common tongue.

"Bring me your strongest, famed Taldashain. I demand good combat with the best of you, in exchange for the lives of your younglings. Deny me and I will raze your world to the ground".
Halfdan's grip tightened upon his spear. At his side, the Master of Combat took half a pace forward then stopped.

Up the steps leading into the inner chambers, came out old man Hrothgar. The old man was as Halfdan had never seen him before. Head held high, clad in supple leathers with a shining mace in hand. Hrothgar barked out to the creature in the same rasping, sharp tongue as the creature had first called out.

Halfdan had no idea what was being said but by the narrowing of the creature's eyes and the rumbling deep chuffing laugh emanating from the belly of the perched dragon, he suspected that Hrothgar's famous cutting wit was playing a part.

For a moment, he almost relaxed. Then he noticed the tense way the Master of Combat stood by him. He spared a closer glance at the Grandmaster, and recalled. The man was soon to enter his 86th winter. For all of his wisdom, all of his experience, and all of his wit...he was a simple man who they were preparing to celebrate an 86th birthday in a manner of weeks.

What followed was hard for Halfdan's mind to comprehend. Sure, he'd trained for all of his short life in the art of combat but this was something else.

The sheer brutality in the creature's attacks. The elegance in old man's Hrothgar's movements. The speed with which it all unfolded. It would take him years yet to comprehend what transpired beneath a flurry of striking claws, shimmering magic, and arcing mace strikes.

For a moment even the Master of Combat relaxed a fraction. It was clear in the serene way Old Man Hrothgar moved that long experience far outmatching the creature was in display.

And yet...eighty-six winters. It only took a moment. A slight faltering. A momentary drop of guard. It was at that moment that Halfan learned to his horror the lesson of what an instant's dropping of one's guard meant in a real fight.

In a fountain of blood and a battlecry like the hissing a million snakes, the pillar of his world fell away. Before he knew what was going to happen next, he found himself forcefully shoved off down an opening into the Master Brewer's store room. The Master of Combat's words were barely intelligible as he commanded Halfdan to hunker amidst the casks.

Outside the din and clashing of weapons began, punctuated by staccato bursts of fire and sorcery. Halfdan tried to defiantly stand and gesture with his spear outside, but he never registered the movement as the Master of Combat knocked him unconscious.




That was now two years ago. Two years since Halfdan awoke to a world consumed by flames and filled with ashes. Two years since he crawled from the rubble of his life, and beheld the hundreds of mutilated corpses of his once extended family.

Two years since the day that with tears in his eyes and blood running down his scalp, he whispered a vow. Two years since a voice rang clear and true in answer.

The vow would rise to the level of Oath one day, Halfdan was sure. His conviction since then was simple. He would have his revenge, and avenge his fallen order. In the name of Tempus.
 
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Physical Appearance
Halfdan Windrivver is a youth of 20 years, of average build. He is 5’9” tall, with a physique of mostly lean musculature borne from a life of endurance training. Weighing in at 170 Lbs, the last two years of wandering since taking up his calling as a Paladin have begun to bulk up the once stringy youth.

His skin is fair, with faint warm olive undertones that speak to a lineage not entirely pure Illuskan somewhere in his unknown ancestry.

His face is an angular plane full of sharp features, broken up by an aquiline nose that is slightly crooked after untold minor breaks during the harsh training of his youth. Intense emerald green eyes peer out from a heavy brow, dappled with flecks of hazel throughout the irises.

The beginnings of what with time may become a fearsomely respected beard partially obscure a mouth that’s just slightly too thin to be called average.

An aggressively square jawline finishes the portrait of a youth quickly on the path to becoming a severely stern looking man.

Halfdan’s hair is the slightly dirty blonde color of straw, and still retains traces of youth in the manner that he wears it. It is long enough to stretch slightly past the collar of his chain mail at the back, and is of a fine nature.

Notable Features: A half-moon scar in the lower right of his cheek, slightly pink amongst his fair skin.


 
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Story so far

After two years spent traveling around, Halfdan finally had a lead.

His time thus far hadn’t been spent idle—Tempus granted power and will, but did not exactly include an instruction manual—but traveling around filling his time between exercising his newfound proficiency with weapons and armors with occasional bouts of laying hands on people as he sought evil did not scratch at the itch in his soul.

He needed to get concrete information on where he could begin the quest that led towards the fulfillment of his vow. That lead came in the form of a mysteriously vague letter from an unexpected source. Leosin Erlanthar, another one of the scant few survivors of the Taldashain massacre.

In the time since that event, Halfdan had discovered he wasn’t the only one to survive. While almost all of the monks had already reconvened at the Monastery in preparation of the upcoming celebration of the Grandmaster’s 87th birthday, there had still been a handful of those whose travel plans had been delayed for various reasons.

Over the years, those lucky few had shared a tenuous, yet unifying force. While the order was certainly defunct, there was still the question of what in the Nine Hells happened.

While few of the survivors shared Halfdan’s burning need for vengeance, they nonetheless kept each other abreast of their findings through sporadic correspondence.

So it was that Halfdan learned via cryptic letter that Leosin had relocated to the town of Greenest, a small trading hub on the way on to places of more note. Leosin had always been more attuned to the more…clandestine aspects of monastery life, and more often than not was embroiled in illicit dealings with the halflings rather than off at his missions.

He was a half-elf with a good ear to the ground, but all of that innate sneakiness meant he of course wanted to share his information in person.

So it was that Halfdan was now on his way to the town of Greenest after agreeing to guard a caravan and help supplement their evening meals in exchange for a patch of wagon to sleep in and some coppers.

First Impressions

Halfdan spent most of his time during the caravan ride tending to his duties. He would have spent most of his day a bit out from the caravan guarding their rear flank, and most of the time before evening break hunting small game to supplement the communal pot. He would have been passingly cordial but mostly uninterested in small talk.
 
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