Post by Baz Silfr on Jan 1, 2022 19:40:11 GMT
Name: Basilius Baz Silfr
Age: 38, Born 75 FA
Nationality: Kandori
Place of Birth: The Deeps, Canluum
Place of Residence: Next to his Aes Sedai, wherever she may be
Affiliation: Rymara Sedai
Rank/Title: Warder
One Power Strength:
Air: * | Earth: * | Fire: * | Spirit: * | Water: *
Date they were raised to Novice/Soldier:
Date they were raised to Accepted/Dedicated:
Date they were raised to Aes Sedai/Asha'man:
Date they were raised to any other rank: 112 FA, bonded as Warder to Rymara Sedai
Talents:
Weave Affinities:
Weapon Skills:
Martial: 9 | Hand-Held: 8 | Stave: 8 | Thrown: 4 | Ranged: 6 | Mounted: 7
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 203 lbs
Build/Complexion: Tall, thickly muscled, pale for Kandori
Eye/Hair Color: Amber/hazel, white
Distinguishing Features:
Rough, salty, can be quick to anger, but has a the appeal of something broken that needs mending to many (especially women). He is deeply resentful of those born into privilege, loathing those who flaunt it or use it selfishly, but can begrudgingly accept those who use their affluence for humanitarian means.
He was born to Moira Silfr in Canluum. Moira had lived her whole life in the Deeps, and she had little to offer her newly born son beyond her love and the name by which he would be known. She chose Basilius, a name suited for a king. Despite his mother’s endearing intentions, he loathed the name and insisted always on being called Baz. When he was only a few years old, his mother fell ill. It seemed to come and go, sometimes seeming to recede for awhile, but inevitably returning and always leaving her weak and frail. Baz’s father was no help to Moira or the son he had begotten. Havrigor Pranyr was a low-ranking merchant who squandered what little coin he managed to accumulate on brandy and ale, which led him to darken Moira’s door of an evening, but he never stayed. For many years, Baz didn’t know the man was his father. When he finally realized the truth, heat like molten iron erupted in the pit of his stomach, sending flames coursing through his veins . It seemed nothing could quench that fire, until he swung a balled fist at the wall, causing the plaster to crack and his knuckles to bleed. Moira cared for his hand, trying to soothe her child, who had always had a pleasant disposition before this. Baz sat with his mother for several long moments, staring at the patches of red soaking through the crude bandages she had wrapped around his knuckles. There was pain, of course, but the fire that had seemed ready to burn him alive had receded to a hearth fire rather than the consuming inferno. The rage would never leave him, but he had found a way to appease its ravenous hunger.
After that day, Baz took to the streets to help feed and get care for his mother. There were plenty of children begging and pick-pocketing in the streets of Canluum. He took up with a gang of them and made enough coin to keep them fed. Before long, however, he grew too big to go unnoticed as a pickpocket and took to more direct, physical means of obtaining necessities. He made his way lending his seemingly ever-expanding muscle to various criminals as protection or to strong arm one of their competitors out of coin or territory. Between his raging temper and heavy fists, his reputation grew and he eventually drew attention from street brawlers. Not only was fighting this or that tough for coin more lucrative, it allowed Baz to unleash the rage within. And he was good at it.
Life carried on this way for the Silfrs into Baz’s twenties, when Moira suddenly took a turn for the worse. Desperate for enough money to afford the traveling expenses to bring his mother to an Aes Sedai for Healing, Baz joined a crew looking to pull off a high-stakes job. When things went sideways, he was the one left holding the bag. He was arrested and put on trial by a minor branch of the Merchants’ Council. When he recognized Havrigor’s face among those standing judgement, Baz’s rage exploded. It took four well-trained guards to restrain him and lock him in irons. For his father’s part, the man did not recognize or acknowledge his son, and pushed loudly and fervently for the highest possible sentence. Olinean Vynogan, the merchant leading the Council, however, showed visible disdain for the suggestion and even more for the man making it. He knew enough of the Havrigor’s unsavory dealings in the Deeps and saw enough of the man in the youth’s face to make the necessary connections. He did not fault the younger man for his anger or his outburst. As the leader of the judgement council, Vynogan ruled that rather than waste Baz’s potential in prison, his skill at fighting should be put to good use fighting along Kandor’s Blight border.
Baz accepted the sentence, but the moment the opportunity presented itself, he runs. Still young and certainly too large to hide easily, he is brought back in front of Vynogan, who manages to get the story out of him: he can’t go off to training and leave his mother alone and without support. Vynogan explains that he will see to Baz’s mother’s healing and transfer to accommodations specifically made for soldier’s families. She would have a guaranteed home, food, and all the care she needed as part of his wages. It wasn’t until years later that Baz would realize that Vynogan had taken it upon himself to give her a comfortable life, never making his generosity known, or allowing either of the Silfrs to feel like the were excepting charity.
Baz adapted amazingly quickly and well to the life of a soldier. He excelled in combat, honing his brute strength into something with a bit more finesse. He studied sword-forms under the masterful eyes of veteran captains and generals. He learned to read his opponents, allowing him to anticipate their moves and avoid attacks rather than just enduring them as he had as a brawler. By far his greatest challenge and accomplishment was learning first to care for, then ride, and eventually fight with horses. The only animals that frequented the Deeps were rats and scrawny street dogs. If at first the large animals gave him pause, Baz quickly found a kindred soul in them. They were big, powerful, and had the potential to do significant harm, intentional or not, when they let their emotions run rampant. Through training and discipline and bonds of trust with their companions they became elite warriors of their own regard. By the time he moved from defending the Border itself to special operation excursions into the Blight itself he had a large warhorse he had trained himself, named Motai.
On one of his earliest missions, an Aes Sedai who was almost comically petite accompanied his company. Though Rymara Sedai was tiny, and a Blue rather than the customary Green, she had a ferocity that belied her small stature and she wielded the Power impressively when necessary, saving more than one life. By the end of the mission she had made a lasting impression on the entire group, perhaps Baz most of all. The two of them never shared more than a passing nod, she being of far more importance than any infantryman and when she departed their camp, Baz assumed he would never see her again.
As time went on, Baz gained more renown as not only a good soldier, but a strong leader. Soon he was Captain of his own company, a force specializing in the same Blight invasions he had first encountered Rymara during. On one such mission, things went horribly, terribly wrong. A young soldier, new to the outfit, but not untested against Shadowspawn found himself entrapped by a Sweet Death. There were no screams from the soldier, barely more than a child, but that old forge of rage exploded into a firestorm within Baz. He shoved the paralyzed man away from the quickly advancing vines of the deadly tree, putting his entire body between them and the rest of his men. Dozens of tendrils wrapped around his neck, chest, arms and legs, quickly dissolving through the layers of leather armor he wore and into his flesh. The paralysis of the Avendemordero is immediate and complete. The pain however is indescribable and Baz’s mind screamed in agony until shock forced him into blessed unconsciousness.
When he woke again, he was in the healer’s tent of the border camp they had last visited before heading into the Blight. He sat up, roaring, as all the adrenaline of his final moments of consciousness flooded through him. A Yellow sister wrapped him in Air, to keep him from hurting himself and others. Being rendered completely immobile from the neck down drove him into a frenzy. He screamed and fought against the invisible bonds holding him, bordering on hysteria. Then the little slip of an Aes Sedai he’d seen those years ago. Her face was familiar enough to bring him properly to the present. She chastised her Sister for reacting so poorly to a patient who had just experienced something so traumatic. Slowly, patiently, she spoke to Baz until his muscles relaxed and the Yellow released the flows holding him, sniffing at Rymara and walking off to tend to other patients.
For the next few weeks, Baz stayed in recovery. A few of the soldiers from his unit visited and explained that they had managed to cut away the tendrils of the Sweet Death that had wrapped around him, but by the time they had reached the camp, it had done significant damage. Despite the Healing he received, there were scars across most of his body from where flesh and muscle had been destroyed. His hair had begun growing in shock white, rather than the brown it had once been. Then there were the nightmares… ones that came waking as well as sleeping. The rage that Baz had tamed and channeled into being a soldier was at a constant simmer just below the surface. The slightest of triggers would send it boiling over.
While various Sisters poked and prodded at him, trying to discern if there was anything further they could do to help him physically, it was Rymara who made the rounds and talked to the soldiers under their care. Baz learned she apparently had little ability in Healing, but he watched over and over as she soothed the mental wounds they had endured in the line of battle. She knew each of their names, where they’d come from, who their families were and what drove them. While the Yellows fussed over the scars they could not Heal, frequently causing eruptions of Baz’s temper, Rymara soothed. She was gentle and patient, but never coddling or pitying. He would not admit it, but he mourned the day she moved on again.
Months later, Baz had been fully discharged with medals to commend his bravery in action that he hated almost as much as he hated his full name. He returned to Canluum, to his mother’s home. Moira was thriving. Baz could not remember a time when she had looked so healthy or full of life and purpose. The illness that had plagued her all of his youth was gone and she’d set herself up as a fairly successful tailor. She joked it was all the practice she had received stitching up Baz’s wounds when he was younger.
Despite his happiness for his mother and the life she had always deserved, Baz was listless and still so, so angry. He prowled the Deeps, looking for fights just to vent some of the pressure and Moira got more and more stitching practice. Eventually, she begged her son to try to find a purpose for his life beyond his fists. He wanted nothing more than to make her happy, but without the war against the Blight, he felt useless, broken.
Then one day, he returned home from one of his prowls to see his mother sitting, smiling at the kitchen table with a dark-haired girl opposite her, the girl’s back to the door. When she turned her face to look at him, Baz grunted in surprise. It was Rymara Sedai. Apparently, she had been looking in on many of the soldiers’ families after her time on the Border. Many, like Moira, repaid the kindness by offering up any information they came across that she might be interested in. She and Baz talked through the day and into the night. When at last she rose to leave, he felt an irrepressible urge to follow her. Moira smiled, seeing the light she’d so long missed in her son’s eyes, and urged him to go. She no longer needed his protection, but Rymara Sedai might. Baz rushed out into the streets after Rymara, and kneeled in front of her when he caught up, offering his strength and his skill, how so ever she may need them.
TIMELINE
75 FA - Born in Canluum to Moira Silfr.
82 FA - Begins pickpocketing to help care for his mother.
90 FA - Makes an unofficial name for himself as a street tough and brawler in the Deeps.
98 FA - Arrested and tried by Merchant Council, sentenced to armed service along the Blight.
99 FA - Trains as a Kandori soldier, quickly gains regard for ferocity in combat.
108 FA - First encounters Rymara on a mission into the Blight.
111 FA - Severely injured by an Avendemordero in the Blight.
111 FA - Though Healed by a Yellow Sister at a border camp, Baz retains multiple scars and shock white hair from the incident. Spends several months in recovery, encounters Rymara for the second time.
112 FA - Returns home to Canluum to find Moira in full health and thriving, encourages Baz to find something worth living for.
112 FA - Rymara makes her third appearance, securing Baz's loyalty to her.
112 FA - Bonded by Rymara.
113 FA - Accompanies Rymara as she returns to the White Tower.
Books read: All.
Age: 38, Born 75 FA
Nationality: Kandori
Place of Birth: The Deeps, Canluum
Place of Residence: Next to his Aes Sedai, wherever she may be
Affiliation: Rymara Sedai
Rank/Title: Warder
Air: * | Earth: * | Fire: * | Spirit: * | Water: *
Date they were raised to Novice/Soldier:
Date they were raised to Accepted/Dedicated:
Date they were raised to Aes Sedai/Asha'man:
Date they were raised to any other rank: 112 FA, bonded as Warder to Rymara Sedai
Weave Affinities:
Weapon Skills:
Martial: 9 | Hand-Held: 8 | Stave: 8 | Thrown: 4 | Ranged: 6 | Mounted: 7
APPEARANCE
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 203 lbs
Build/Complexion: Tall, thickly muscled, pale for Kandori
Eye/Hair Color: Amber/hazel, white
Distinguishing Features:
- White hair
- Extensive scarring on chest, arms, hands
PERSONALITY
Rough, salty, can be quick to anger, but has a the appeal of something broken that needs mending to many (especially women). He is deeply resentful of those born into privilege, loathing those who flaunt it or use it selfishly, but can begrudgingly accept those who use their affluence for humanitarian means.
HISTORY
He was born to Moira Silfr in Canluum. Moira had lived her whole life in the Deeps, and she had little to offer her newly born son beyond her love and the name by which he would be known. She chose Basilius, a name suited for a king. Despite his mother’s endearing intentions, he loathed the name and insisted always on being called Baz. When he was only a few years old, his mother fell ill. It seemed to come and go, sometimes seeming to recede for awhile, but inevitably returning and always leaving her weak and frail. Baz’s father was no help to Moira or the son he had begotten. Havrigor Pranyr was a low-ranking merchant who squandered what little coin he managed to accumulate on brandy and ale, which led him to darken Moira’s door of an evening, but he never stayed. For many years, Baz didn’t know the man was his father. When he finally realized the truth, heat like molten iron erupted in the pit of his stomach, sending flames coursing through his veins . It seemed nothing could quench that fire, until he swung a balled fist at the wall, causing the plaster to crack and his knuckles to bleed. Moira cared for his hand, trying to soothe her child, who had always had a pleasant disposition before this. Baz sat with his mother for several long moments, staring at the patches of red soaking through the crude bandages she had wrapped around his knuckles. There was pain, of course, but the fire that had seemed ready to burn him alive had receded to a hearth fire rather than the consuming inferno. The rage would never leave him, but he had found a way to appease its ravenous hunger.
After that day, Baz took to the streets to help feed and get care for his mother. There were plenty of children begging and pick-pocketing in the streets of Canluum. He took up with a gang of them and made enough coin to keep them fed. Before long, however, he grew too big to go unnoticed as a pickpocket and took to more direct, physical means of obtaining necessities. He made his way lending his seemingly ever-expanding muscle to various criminals as protection or to strong arm one of their competitors out of coin or territory. Between his raging temper and heavy fists, his reputation grew and he eventually drew attention from street brawlers. Not only was fighting this or that tough for coin more lucrative, it allowed Baz to unleash the rage within. And he was good at it.
Life carried on this way for the Silfrs into Baz’s twenties, when Moira suddenly took a turn for the worse. Desperate for enough money to afford the traveling expenses to bring his mother to an Aes Sedai for Healing, Baz joined a crew looking to pull off a high-stakes job. When things went sideways, he was the one left holding the bag. He was arrested and put on trial by a minor branch of the Merchants’ Council. When he recognized Havrigor’s face among those standing judgement, Baz’s rage exploded. It took four well-trained guards to restrain him and lock him in irons. For his father’s part, the man did not recognize or acknowledge his son, and pushed loudly and fervently for the highest possible sentence. Olinean Vynogan, the merchant leading the Council, however, showed visible disdain for the suggestion and even more for the man making it. He knew enough of the Havrigor’s unsavory dealings in the Deeps and saw enough of the man in the youth’s face to make the necessary connections. He did not fault the younger man for his anger or his outburst. As the leader of the judgement council, Vynogan ruled that rather than waste Baz’s potential in prison, his skill at fighting should be put to good use fighting along Kandor’s Blight border.
Baz accepted the sentence, but the moment the opportunity presented itself, he runs. Still young and certainly too large to hide easily, he is brought back in front of Vynogan, who manages to get the story out of him: he can’t go off to training and leave his mother alone and without support. Vynogan explains that he will see to Baz’s mother’s healing and transfer to accommodations specifically made for soldier’s families. She would have a guaranteed home, food, and all the care she needed as part of his wages. It wasn’t until years later that Baz would realize that Vynogan had taken it upon himself to give her a comfortable life, never making his generosity known, or allowing either of the Silfrs to feel like the were excepting charity.
Baz adapted amazingly quickly and well to the life of a soldier. He excelled in combat, honing his brute strength into something with a bit more finesse. He studied sword-forms under the masterful eyes of veteran captains and generals. He learned to read his opponents, allowing him to anticipate their moves and avoid attacks rather than just enduring them as he had as a brawler. By far his greatest challenge and accomplishment was learning first to care for, then ride, and eventually fight with horses. The only animals that frequented the Deeps were rats and scrawny street dogs. If at first the large animals gave him pause, Baz quickly found a kindred soul in them. They were big, powerful, and had the potential to do significant harm, intentional or not, when they let their emotions run rampant. Through training and discipline and bonds of trust with their companions they became elite warriors of their own regard. By the time he moved from defending the Border itself to special operation excursions into the Blight itself he had a large warhorse he had trained himself, named Motai.
On one of his earliest missions, an Aes Sedai who was almost comically petite accompanied his company. Though Rymara Sedai was tiny, and a Blue rather than the customary Green, she had a ferocity that belied her small stature and she wielded the Power impressively when necessary, saving more than one life. By the end of the mission she had made a lasting impression on the entire group, perhaps Baz most of all. The two of them never shared more than a passing nod, she being of far more importance than any infantryman and when she departed their camp, Baz assumed he would never see her again.
As time went on, Baz gained more renown as not only a good soldier, but a strong leader. Soon he was Captain of his own company, a force specializing in the same Blight invasions he had first encountered Rymara during. On one such mission, things went horribly, terribly wrong. A young soldier, new to the outfit, but not untested against Shadowspawn found himself entrapped by a Sweet Death. There were no screams from the soldier, barely more than a child, but that old forge of rage exploded into a firestorm within Baz. He shoved the paralyzed man away from the quickly advancing vines of the deadly tree, putting his entire body between them and the rest of his men. Dozens of tendrils wrapped around his neck, chest, arms and legs, quickly dissolving through the layers of leather armor he wore and into his flesh. The paralysis of the Avendemordero is immediate and complete. The pain however is indescribable and Baz’s mind screamed in agony until shock forced him into blessed unconsciousness.
When he woke again, he was in the healer’s tent of the border camp they had last visited before heading into the Blight. He sat up, roaring, as all the adrenaline of his final moments of consciousness flooded through him. A Yellow sister wrapped him in Air, to keep him from hurting himself and others. Being rendered completely immobile from the neck down drove him into a frenzy. He screamed and fought against the invisible bonds holding him, bordering on hysteria. Then the little slip of an Aes Sedai he’d seen those years ago. Her face was familiar enough to bring him properly to the present. She chastised her Sister for reacting so poorly to a patient who had just experienced something so traumatic. Slowly, patiently, she spoke to Baz until his muscles relaxed and the Yellow released the flows holding him, sniffing at Rymara and walking off to tend to other patients.
For the next few weeks, Baz stayed in recovery. A few of the soldiers from his unit visited and explained that they had managed to cut away the tendrils of the Sweet Death that had wrapped around him, but by the time they had reached the camp, it had done significant damage. Despite the Healing he received, there were scars across most of his body from where flesh and muscle had been destroyed. His hair had begun growing in shock white, rather than the brown it had once been. Then there were the nightmares… ones that came waking as well as sleeping. The rage that Baz had tamed and channeled into being a soldier was at a constant simmer just below the surface. The slightest of triggers would send it boiling over.
While various Sisters poked and prodded at him, trying to discern if there was anything further they could do to help him physically, it was Rymara who made the rounds and talked to the soldiers under their care. Baz learned she apparently had little ability in Healing, but he watched over and over as she soothed the mental wounds they had endured in the line of battle. She knew each of their names, where they’d come from, who their families were and what drove them. While the Yellows fussed over the scars they could not Heal, frequently causing eruptions of Baz’s temper, Rymara soothed. She was gentle and patient, but never coddling or pitying. He would not admit it, but he mourned the day she moved on again.
Months later, Baz had been fully discharged with medals to commend his bravery in action that he hated almost as much as he hated his full name. He returned to Canluum, to his mother’s home. Moira was thriving. Baz could not remember a time when she had looked so healthy or full of life and purpose. The illness that had plagued her all of his youth was gone and she’d set herself up as a fairly successful tailor. She joked it was all the practice she had received stitching up Baz’s wounds when he was younger.
Despite his happiness for his mother and the life she had always deserved, Baz was listless and still so, so angry. He prowled the Deeps, looking for fights just to vent some of the pressure and Moira got more and more stitching practice. Eventually, she begged her son to try to find a purpose for his life beyond his fists. He wanted nothing more than to make her happy, but without the war against the Blight, he felt useless, broken.
Then one day, he returned home from one of his prowls to see his mother sitting, smiling at the kitchen table with a dark-haired girl opposite her, the girl’s back to the door. When she turned her face to look at him, Baz grunted in surprise. It was Rymara Sedai. Apparently, she had been looking in on many of the soldiers’ families after her time on the Border. Many, like Moira, repaid the kindness by offering up any information they came across that she might be interested in. She and Baz talked through the day and into the night. When at last she rose to leave, he felt an irrepressible urge to follow her. Moira smiled, seeing the light she’d so long missed in her son’s eyes, and urged him to go. She no longer needed his protection, but Rymara Sedai might. Baz rushed out into the streets after Rymara, and kneeled in front of her when he caught up, offering his strength and his skill, how so ever she may need them.
TIMELINE
75 FA - Born in Canluum to Moira Silfr.
82 FA - Begins pickpocketing to help care for his mother.
90 FA - Makes an unofficial name for himself as a street tough and brawler in the Deeps.
98 FA - Arrested and tried by Merchant Council, sentenced to armed service along the Blight.
99 FA - Trains as a Kandori soldier, quickly gains regard for ferocity in combat.
108 FA - First encounters Rymara on a mission into the Blight.
111 FA - Severely injured by an Avendemordero in the Blight.
111 FA - Though Healed by a Yellow Sister at a border camp, Baz retains multiple scars and shock white hair from the incident. Spends several months in recovery, encounters Rymara for the second time.
112 FA - Returns home to Canluum to find Moira in full health and thriving, encourages Baz to find something worth living for.
112 FA - Rymara makes her third appearance, securing Baz's loyalty to her.
112 FA - Bonded by Rymara.
113 FA - Accompanies Rymara as she returns to the White Tower.
Books read: All.
