In what seems to him like a former life but was really only 7 months ago, Marcellus was a young recruit in the army of Prince Eonal. Thinking on it now, he's not sure what he was expecting from life in the companies. Something exciting for sure. Baalspawn raids on the border and troll hunts in the countryside? Adventure?
Whatever those lost expectations may have been, it was the hounds of reality that chased them off. War strikes in this land at the whim of spoiled lords and cousins draw each other's blood over grievances that are not their own. And not his own.
The only facet of that life that did answer and even exceed expectations was getting to work with and observe the spellguard. Here was a philosophy with some appeal. The intersection of the arcane and the physical. Balance and progression. Regimen and study. That does seem awhile ago.
War is a terrible thing to behold. Sometimes that license to uncap the inner devil will draw to it some very ugly souls indeed. After his first and only encounter with the slaughterhouse he walked away from it. The cold detachment between the mad killing field and its distant, maybe unknown root cause was simply too much.
He deserted in the chaos after some battle and subsequent sack of that town. He fled east, across the Sea of Athanin and into Korinal. He hopes he's presumed dead. Instead of dying, he dove into a bottle for awhile. Enn Korin was as good a place for that as anywhere else.
The sun also rises. Before spending all of his saved pay on wine and women he decided to stand up and pull his boots back on. There is a magical academy in Enn Korin. Perhaps there might be things to learn from the cloistered mages.
So he's back to studying the arcane in the tradition of the guard members he was exposed to, but he's no longer sure he wants to kill for someone else's agenda. It's with some reluctance that he takes jobs as a sell-sword these days. He's not scared of danger, but he distrusts the motives of others. He wants to do something heroic, and he's not sure that fighting in the brothers' war qualifies.
