Equipment- Backpack, Traveler's garb, Waterskin, Heavy mail, Heavy shield, Short bow, Long sword, Spear, Quiver of 20 arrows, Whetstone, Flint and Steel, 5 Torches, 20 yards of Rope, 1 week of Travel Rations, a strange necklace- black onyx pendant in a silver setting (worn- aids with jumping and climbing?), lesser potion of healing (2d6+4), heavy leather armor
Money- 29 sp
Description Calder is a testament to his peoples' barbarian ancestry: large, broad-shouldered and dark of hair and eye. His hair is cut short and he usually sports a few days worth of stubble or a short beard- any more would provide an opponent with a potential handhold, but he doesn't like the feeling of smooth cheeks (it's elf-like, unmanly, for a man to have a perfectly smooth face in Calder's view).
Personality and Background
Spoiler:
Calder grew up on a Freehold in the northwest of Ferelden, near the River Dane and Lake Calenhad. He has three brothers and two sisters, grew up raising horses and planting crops. Though he's yet to be truly trained to ride horses, he has a very good rapport with them and most other domesticated animals and he dreams of one day having a mabari hound of his own. It was during his tenth summer that his friend Kelsie was swept away in the Dane and nearly drowned. After that he made it a personal goal to be a good swimmer so the same wouldn't happen to him.
Growing up, he heard all the stories of King Maric and Loghain Mac Tir's exploits against the Orlesian despots. While he loved his King as a Fereldan should, Loghain was the man that most inspired him and proved the best of Fereldan culture- social mobility. While Calder realizes he isn't a brilliant tactician (yet...), he aspires to at least elevate himself (and, of course, his family alongside him) to knighthood or even, Maker willing, a bannric of his own. In that spirit, he left the freehold when he was old enough and enlisted with his bann to be trained as a soldier.
While Calder is certainly a decent man (he doesn't break his word, he loves his family and supports his friends and comrades) he isn't selfless: personal glory and elevation to a better social strata are his ultimate goals, after all. So sometimes he may act rashly if his honor is slighted and he'll never turn down a challenge to a duel or similar contest. Calder also has yet to fully shed his rural upbringing- confronted with a mage of the Circle or an apostate, he'll see if the milk is curdling at their passage, or if he can see a demon in their shadow. He checks his coin purse whenever an elf passes close by, though he doesn't go out of his way to antagonize them like some of his drinking buddies.
