About Silvester RolandSilvester Roland
Backstory: Vermilia Roland had never had the most exciting life. Lucky enough to work as a maid in an austere affair of a manor house, one of the few living servants and a welcome figure in the lives of the four children of Lord and Lady Seraphaelis, she spent her days working and her evenings caring for her own children – the toddler Marilis and the baby Silvester. While Marilis was a captivated child, finding wonder and amazement in the undead gardeners and butlers, Silvester simply saw them as a fact of life, as permanent and predictable as the sun rising in the morning and sweetbreads on Loredays. He was quiet and obedient, doing his chores, drawing by candlelight, and dreaming of life beyond the bounds of the town. His whimsical drawings caught the attention of Darduin, the youngest son of the household, and the two quickly began comparing goals and dreams of adventure. Darduin took every opportunity to tease and tousle the younger Silvester, but the boy gave it barely a care, always determined to outdo his older peer. The boasts and contests were always in good taste, but as the two grew older, the boasts turned to dares. At first the dares were small – Darduin would dare Silvester to hide under the Lord of the manor’s chair at dinner-time, Silvester would dare Dardiun to leap from a second-storey window into a laundry pile – but when Dardiun dared Silvester to steal the hat off the head of a meddlesome Pharasmin priest, he expected to be able to tease the boy and call him cowardly for the next week. He didn’t expect the fifteen-year-old to not only snatch the hat from his head with a deft swipe, but throw it in the town well in a fit of particularly inspired boldness. When he guiltily visited the boy in the stocks the next morning, Silvester could only grin up at his dare-partner and say, “Dare you to take his belt next time”. His two nights in the stocks did little to change Silvester’s increasingly cavalier attitude, and when Vermilia began to worry that her son would be a more troublesome young man, the lord and lady of the house invited him to take lessons with the fencing tutor they had hired for their own sons. Vermilia quickly found her fears assuaged as the discipline and rigidity of the classes, coupled with the necessity of practice between lessons, kept Silvester from getting into too much more trouble. Of course, there was the incident with Serennia Miller, which was the talk of the town for the next several months and earned him quite a scolding, but there were no more ridiculous dares, and Silvester dedicated himself instead to outdoing Dardiun through swordplay. Necromancy, even when practised responsibly, carries with it certain risks. As his training and his drawings improved, his dextrous control over arm and wrist carrying him easily through both, Silvester became more and more endeared to the family of the household, sparring with Darduin and Alabrecht, and accompanying Rasellia and Elvana to market. During one such excursion, the skeleton guard accompanying them broke free from the lord of the manor’s control, attacking three chickens and Elvana before Silvester managed to destroy it with a pair of well-timed rapier thrusts, gathering as many bones as he could before running with the girls back to the manor. Elvana’s arm was broken and Silvester sustained several deep scars, but the event well and truly cemented the boy’s place as a valued member of the house. Silvester soon took his place among the skeleton guards of the household, outfitted in a chainmail shirt, rapier, and tabard with the black-and-purple crest of the noble family. His hair grew long, his beard grew in, and when Rasellia was sent out into the world – across the border, to Numeria – it was Silvester who accompanied her to Torch, eyes and head full of wonder. Appearance: Silvester is a handsome young man of nineteen years, standing slightly short at 5’8” and on the slender side at 160 pounds. His hair is thick and glossy black, hanging past his shoulders and tied back with a purple ribbon, and a short, thin beard frames his narrow face. His nose is slightly hooked, his ears a little small, but his deep brown eyes and full lips draw his face together into an appealing whole. His skin is the dusky hue of his Varisian parentage, though he bears the scars of the skeleton’s claws in three jagged rake-marks across his cheek, which stand pale along his right cheekbone. His hands are long and bony, with sloping fingertips and sharp knuckles, the right usually resting absent-mindedly on the basket hilt of his rapier. While his armour is usually worn with his purple-and-black tabard of the Seraphaelis family, he tends to dress more casually when not acting as Rasellia’s guard, in snug trousers, sturdy leather boots, a loose ivory shirt, and a brown leather jerkin. Personality: At first blush, Silvester seems like a typical young glory-hound, determined to make his way in the world through force of will and derring-do; however, getting to know him more deeply reveals a surprising number of intricacies. He is certainly proud and boastful, possessing no small amount of braggadocio and a sense of accomplishment drawn from his daring exploits; however, he has a strong sense of duty, especially in his capacity as Rasellia’s guard, and a hard determination to do the right thing. He refuses to back down from a challenge, even if it spells trouble for him, but he is a compulsive vower, never going back on his word and seeing his promises through. Having grown up in the Serpahaelis household, he has strange views on undead creatures such as the ones he lived with, seeing them as useful tools, if dangerous when not properly controlled. Being away from the borders of the Gallowspire for the first time, he is still learning about the world at large, finding Torch a very different place, and attempting to capture the new energy and life in his drawings and letters home. |
