About Sven BjornsonA great bear of a man with long limbs thick with muscle and a barrel-chest that would put a bull auroch to shame, Sven is gifted with size and strength rare even among the powerfully built northern folk. His hair is a pale flaxen and worn in long braids that drape across his hulking shoulders. His beard, the same color, is similarly dressed. His features are strong and square and though he bears some scars from his time in battle, they largely serve to enhance his muscular good looks. He's not a graceful man and not one likely to be overlooked or unheard, but he moves with a kind of certain unyielding strength. Each step and each swing of his powerful arms carry a sense of momentum that few would dare challenge. His voice is deep and resonant and richer still when he sings one of the songs of his people, passed down to him by his father. Since he's begun his quest alongside his friends (both old and new), he's picked up a few trinkets and pieces of magical equipment. Among them, an iron-rimmed wooden buckler painted as white as fresh snowfall, and a deadly-sharp double edged battleaxe, forged by Heldrin's master smith and later enchanted by Whitethrone's witches, and a silver circlet bound with magics that make the big man's voice carry even further and presence more powerful. Sven still wears the armor earned during his time as a mercenary, a fine breastplate of proper iron (not the weak pig iron many mercenaries wear) fitted to protect the his enormous torso while leaving his massive arms free and unbound. Attached at the bottom, is a kilt of boiled leather reinforced with dark iron studs. Background*:
Like blades of frozen grass across so much broken ice... With a song so rich and full of sorrow that it stirs the hearts of the dead...
...Is how my father used to describe the Windsister's song echoing through the spires of the Stormspears. Those sorts of tales are the only memories I have of the land of my birth in the far north. My mother, a Shieldmaiden, died when I was young - slain but a jadwiga curse. My father mourned but did not succumb to despair. Many would have sworn themselves a blood-oath and dedicated their lives to vengeance but not my father. Some called him a coward but he wanted a better life for me, a life away from ice and death. So he abandoned his kin - his ties of blood - and left, and though I was a babe hardly old enough to walk, I left with him. We traveled south to the warm southern lands of Taldor. The southern lands were good to us. My father found work in service to the Taldan emperor among his elite bodyguards - the Ulfen Guard. The Prince favored my people for our strength and ferocity. In his employ we never suffered for lack of coin and it was in these warm southern lands that my father raised me. He was a stern man with a warrior's heart but not one without compassion. He taught me about honor and glory, truth and justice. Never raise a blade against an unarmed foe... Treat a yielding opponent with mercy and humility... No man is beyond redemption... Not every lesson was an easy one. I was always large, even as a pup. I often scrapped with the other boys, even the other ulfen children. They would mock my size and strength and I would bloody their noses. My father would chide me after every fight even as he cleaned my bruises. Jotun!, he would laugh. I later learned that was the word for giantkind. He showed me other things too, skills southern folk often call magic. He taught me to truly see a man for that he's worth, to peer into the heart and see if darkness had taken root. He likened it to how a predator spots sickly prey, those should perhaps be culled from the herd... Greater still he showed me how to turn passion and conviction into strength. I was an eager student but it wasn't until I was a man grown that I learned the value of these gifts. It was on the eve of my fifteenth summer that my father died but it was not an assassin's blade that claimed his life, nor the breath of a monstrous dragon, or any other form of battle - cruel fate took him from this world. He was struck by an runaway cart on Oppara's gilded streets. He'd lived a life of honor and died a fool's death. Melancholy and lost I joined the Stalwart Spears, the first mercenary company that would have me, and left Oppara. The Spears took across a good portion of Avistan. In that time I was tested, both in battle and in spirit. The skills my father had been teaching me since I was old enough to heft his seax were honed for the first time in warfare. The conviction he'd shown me was defined within the bloody work the mercenaries handed me. I lived that way for years, and that's what's brought me here, Sven said as he teased a fiery lock of hair. The camp whore shifted, enjoying the feeling of the big ulfen's softening manhood still buried deep within her. She smiled and teased the hair on his chest in turn. Even though the tingling aftermath of their joining was lulling her to sleep she wanted to hear more about this hulking warrior's story. So that's it then?, she cooed. You'll spend your days fighting and killing for the Spears, going wherever they take you? No, he answered flatly. The woman leaned back from her position in the bedding to look up into the ulfen's eyes. What do you mean? Where will you go? The two laid together in silence a moment longer before the northman answered. I don't know but something tells me I'll find what I'm looking for north. I hear Heldren's been having troubles... *Warning: Background features mature subjects Persona:
Although he is a man of simple pleasures, he strives to not be one of excess. One thing his father often emphasized during his weapon training as a boy was the need for control in all things - even the heat of battle. It was a difficult lesson for the naturally hot-blooded young ulfen and one that he continues to struggle with from time to time.
He is not a man of lofty ideals or enormous ambition. He's usually content, or able to quickly make himself content, but often felt out of place in the world around him - a feeling that was only truly abated when he was a boy and his father would hold him and share tales of the North. It's this lost heritage that's driven him home. Sven Bjornson
Cash Log:
+56gp Leftover Starting Gold
+52.4 Saving Lady Argentea -35 weapon trade premium -10 cold iron javelin x5 Subtotal: 63.4 +2144.5 Gold Split at Kellid camp
Subtotal: 4.9 +2,761.25 Gold Split after reaching Whitethrone
Subtotal: 116.15 +4,992.25 Gold Split upon leaving Whitethrone
Subtotal: 908.4 +13,656.83 Post Centuar Slaying
-8500 +1 crusading frost-forged steel full plate
Total: 137.73 |
