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by Reverend Norv » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:28 pm
by Lazarian » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:33 pm
Constaniana wrote:Ironclads are using steam and coal. Magitek is perceived as fanciful stories about the prowess and technological supremacy of the much more magically attuned Galllian Empire.
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:34 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:Excellent, Const. Thanks. So I should be imagining the 1840s/1850s, including the development of early industry and the middle class, but with the firearms technology - and resulting pike-and-shot tactics - of about the English Civil War?
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Reverend Norv » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:37 pm
Constaniana wrote:Reverend Norv wrote:Excellent, Const. Thanks. So I should be imagining the 1840s/1850s, including the development of early industry and the middle class, but with the firearms technology - and resulting pike-and-shot tactics - of about the English Civil War?
That's a good way of putting it, aye.
by Hanafuridake » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:37 pm
Constaniana wrote:Reverend Norv wrote:Excellent, Const. Thanks. So I should be imagining the 1840s/1850s, including the development of early industry and the middle class, but with the firearms technology - and resulting pike-and-shot tactics - of about the English Civil War?
That's a good way of putting it, aye.
Hanafuridake wrote:This entire RP was just a way for you to reenact the British Empire, wasn't it?
Suriyanakhon's alt, finally found my old account's password李贽 wrote:There is nothing difficult about becoming a sage, and nothing false about transcending the world of appearances.
by Reverend Norv » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:40 pm
by Rupudska » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:41 pm
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:53 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:Sorry, another question. What was the Great Gallian War of 1733-1763 all about? My character is likely old enough to have experienced the tail end of it.
It wasn't really one unified conflict, but a period of general turmoil throughout most of the continent. A big part of it was the myriad petty states being forcibly united into the dozen remaining ones that formed the U.G.F.Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Reverend Norv » Wed Feb 13, 2019 1:04 pm
Constaniana wrote:
What makes you think having the rural, coal-rich north beat up the snobby south, with a heroine named the White Rose involves British wish-fulfilment?Reverend Norv wrote:Sorry, another question. What was the Great Gallian War of 1733-1763 all about? My character is likely old enough to have experienced the tail end of it.
I'm not quite sure myself, to be honest.
by Hanafuridake » Wed Feb 13, 2019 1:52 pm
Constaniana wrote:Hanafuridake wrote:Having watched Silence (excellent movie) I wonder if there would have been Gallian missionaries who tried to convert Tsubaki to the Helreskaffen Church. It would have been amusing for them to try and explain that, no, Pryastar is neither a woman nor a sphere of hot plasma that the world revolves around.
Probably. The Galllian Empire had Yuelkelu as a protectorate in the ancient days, because of course you protect the tropical island paradise from the ravages of hellspawn, and assuming Tsubaki is somewhere near Yuelkelu missionaries would have canoed their way over eventually.
Suriyanakhon's alt, finally found my old account's password李贽 wrote:There is nothing difficult about becoming a sage, and nothing false about transcending the world of appearances.
by Serconas » Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:33 pm
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:35 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:Constaniana wrote:What makes you think having the rural, coal-rich north beat up the snobby south, with a heroine named the White Rose involves British wish-fulfilment?
I'm not quite sure myself, to be honest.
Makes sense. My character is from eastern Albrion, so I'll just make it about the Duke of Haventown fighting the Duke of Galabrow, at least in that neck of the woods. If nothing else, it provides some historical basis for why Albrion split during the Northern Revolution.
Serconas wrote:Alright, so my App is basically finished but with the caveat that I´m not sure about the chars homeland.
I wanted to make use of the 'spatial wibbly-wobbly' mentioned in the OP to transport him to Carogne (or where-ever he´ll show up first) from some sort of ancient past of my NS-nation. This would be some sort of mesoamerican-esque place with a similar tech-level.
So WIP App in the spoiler, for which I´d like some feedback, please.
Honestly, the obsidian knife is only there because I saw someone mentioning it. No Saltman though.
Edit: Should probably include something about his experience with the much more advanced tech of Gallia, though
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:36 pm
Hanafuridake wrote:Constaniana wrote:Probably. The Galllian Empire had Yuelkelu as a protectorate in the ancient days, because of course you protect the tropical island paradise from the ravages of hellspawn, and assuming Tsubaki is somewhere near Yuelkelu missionaries would have canoed their way over eventually.
Now I'm imagining demons and daimyo going to war against each other.
Not sure where it would be placed, mainly because I can't remember where Yuelkelu is located, but figure it would be helpful to have a map of Tsubaki, to provide a better picture (no pun intended) of where Fumi came from and the various fiefdoms underneath her.
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Serconas » Wed Feb 13, 2019 5:45 pm
Constaniana wrote:I'm a bit confused; is he from Gaiaca, or whatever planet your NS nation is on?
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:59 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:App should be up in the next five hours.
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Serconas » Wed Feb 13, 2019 7:25 pm
Constaniana wrote:Reverend Norv wrote:App should be up in the next five hours.
Noice.Serconas wrote:Sorry, should´ve clarified. It´s the latter, my character would´ve come to Gaiaca via accidental interdimensional travel, so to speak.
If you allow it, of course.
I don't think I'd like to open that tin of worms. He could be a savage from some uncharted isle, although that sort of background makes it a problem to get him joined up with the group, since he doesn't appear interested in interacting with Galllians.
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:18 pm
Serconas wrote:Constaniana wrote:Noice.
I don't think I'd like to open that tin of worms. He could be a savage from some uncharted isle, although that sort of background makes it a problem to get him joined up with the group, since he doesn't appear interested in interacting with Galllians.
Understandable. I´ll try to come up with something else.
Say the desert beyond the Sahranjja´s Iron Wall is completely uncivilzed? Or would there be room for some small kingdom that has significantly regressed since the demons took over most of the island? He could then be victim of a demon raid on his village, they then use him in a ritual, which goes wrong and he ends up in Galllia. Or still to far fetched?
Him joining the group of adventurers would be out of desperation to find a new purpose for himself and with the ultimate goal to get back home.
While I imagined he would´ve mostly lived by himself since his arrival he still would´ve interacted with the Galllians in some way, since he´d came across bandits/hunters in the woods and would at first try to find a town (where nobody would understand him, but he´d try) to get information as well as some supplies he can´t make himself.
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Reverend Norv » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:37 pm
Name: Everard "Ev" Mallow. Formally, he is Colonel Mallow of the Driegdern Regiment of Horse, Albrasfont State Army - but the regiment was officially mustered out six months ago, and so the rank is theoretically honorary.
Sex: Male
Age: 41 (born March 12, 1740 G.C.C.)
Appearance:Ev looks every inch the new man of the modern, industrial North. He is of average height or a little more, trim but not thin, solid with workmanlike muscle. His forearms and wrists are unusually developed, a common trait among swordsmen. His hair is an unusual dark grey, the color of burnished iron, and he wears it cropped close to the head in a deliberately middle-class rebuttal to flowing aristocratic locks. The skin of Ev's face is an even pale tan, the sign of a man who spends most of his life outdoors, and his features are symmetrical but a little too strong and long and solemn to be conventionally handsome. He is clean-shaven, and takes care to remain so even on the road; there are fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. The eyes, though, are interesting: large, and the grey-green color of spring rain, and altogether too soft and thoughtful for the hard face in which they are set.
Everard usually wears a buff leather coat, tough enough to turn a sword-blade, and a heavy steel cuirass, over riding breeches and boots. The final layer is a grey wool traveling cloak. He wears a blue-green sash under his swordbelt - the distinguishing mark of the pro-Commonwealth Albrion regiments during the war - and carries a finely worked mortuary sword in its scabbard and a pair of wheellock pistols thrust through his sash.
Element: Metal, though his gift is not particularly powerful. For Ev, it most commonly manifests in a freakish accuracy with firearms: because he can subconsciously guide his bullets to their targets, he literally does not miss.
Skills:Physically, the colonel is an outstanding horseman, a deadly swordsman, and an impossibly, inhumanly perfect shot with carbine or pistol – especially from a moving firing position, like the back of a horse. He has a kind of explosive, whipcord strength – Ev might not win many arm-wrestles, but if he smacks you in the face, you will break bones. Service in both of Gallia's most recent wars has given Ev a grimly effective skill set: as he has risen through the ranks, he has gained an exceptionally solid grounding in tactics, logistics, field medicine, and the other exigencies of battle. Slowly advancing age has forced Ev to learn to push his body despite pain and fear and exhaustion, and this has given him impressive endurance and stamina. In battle, Ev fights with ruthless pragmatism, and the lessons of a thousand combats have taught him how to bring down a foe with a minimum of time and a maximum of brutality.
Mentally, Ev benefits from a swift intellect and a fine middle-class education. He is a naturally calm, rigorous, logical thinker, not prone to sudden bursts of inspiration but largely immune to the temptations of easy assumptions and flawed deductions. He has a remarkable ability to keep his head and think clearly under fire. As the son of a Helreskaffen priest, Ev's education was initially focused on the classics: he can quote vast sections of the scriptures and the ancient Gallian poets from memory, and he speaks, reads, and writes fluent High Gallish. His university education in Erilhall equipped him with extensive knowledge of history; gave him training in formal logic that allows him to organize his thoughts and plans with great clarity; and drilled him in classical rhetoric until he could turn a phrase and inspire a crowd almost without thinking about it. His interwar stint on a privateer has even taught Ev something about ship-handling, naval warfare, and getting along with people of other cultures.
He also has an unnatural facility for blacksmithing, machinery, and the precise deployment of artillery. While he never received formal training in the use of his Elemental gift, Ev is privately aware of it, and it shows through in his talent for metal-related fields.
Personality:Everard Mallow embodies many of the contradictions of the new North. Like his industrializing country, Ev is a man of ruthless pragmatism - a trait only exacerbated by years of war. Detail-oriented, patient, rigorous, and studious, he reveres competence, appreciates intelligence, and treats hard work as a primary moral value. His sense of humor is dry and sometimes dark. He is committed to dealing with the world as it is, and is accordingly practical and occasionally unscrupulous in his methods. He is, in many ways, a very hard man: he has killed some men, and sent others to their deaths, and he loses very little sleep over having done either. It takes a great deal of danger or excitement to elevate his heart rate.
But like his deeply religious country, Ev is not simply defined by ruthless efficiency. He is a still the son of a priest, raised in the Helreskaffen Church and steeped in its ethics and doctrine. He remains a personally, deeply pious man, for whom morality is largely defined by the ancient and sacred struggle of light and dark, harmony and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal, order and chaos. He recognizes a categorical ethical imperative to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and this endows him with a peculiar gentleness: he can see value in beauty and in innocence, whether or not they serve a practical purpose. Because he is loyal more to principles than to worldly institutions, he is also able to recognize virtue in his enemies and value in those who differ from him. This does not prevent him from hating them with righteous fury.
Finally, because of his faith, Ev is deeply aware of his own smallness in the cosmic tale of light and dark of which he is a part. He is at peace with the fact that a man may live a good life that contributes to society, and yet be forgotten after he dies. He does not yearn to leave his mark on history, or even to be the biggest man in the room. And paradoxically, it is this very humility that has inspired such loyalty in those who fight for him: Ev is trustworthy when lives are on the line, because he would no more waste them on his own reputation than he would spare them at the expense of the cause.
Weaknesses:Everard Mallow never received formal training in the use of his elemental gifts, and because metal is a fairly subtle and difficult element - one cannot simply project steel from one's palms as one might with fire or lightning - his facility with it is accordingly limited and largely subconscious. For the most part, Ev can only do with metal what other men can do with metal - he just does those non-supernatural things supernaturally well. Ev can also be quick to judgment and slow to change his mind when proved wrong: he is deeply suspicious of nonhumans, downright hateful toward Watchtower, despises the van Kriegen family, and is sharply condescending toward foreign religions. While a deadly swordsman on the battlefield, he is reliant on various dirty tricks, and when he can't use them - in a formal duel, for example - he is much less effective. Finally, on matters that he perceives as moral questions - which means most matters - Ev is utterly inflexible in his convictions, and fond of declaring that "One and the gods constitute a majority." He is not much interested in seeing the world from any perspective that challenges his most deeply held beliefs. This is one reason why he has largely rejected the peace that ended the Wide Northern War.
Equipment, if any:Clothes: soft doeskin trousers, a loose white shirt, and a black jerkin. Over this goes harquebusier armor: a coat and riding boots of heavy buff leather, thick and hard enough to turn a sword-cut; a steel cuirass; a steel lobster-tailed helmet; and a steel gauntlet and vambrace protecting the left hand and forearm. The helmet stays in his pack unless it is needed. He wears a sash of blue-green silk under his swordbelt but over his cuirass - blue-green is the traditional color of the Albrion rebels. Ev's weapons are a doglock carbine; two wheellock pistols; a skinning knife for various utility purposes; and a stout mortuary sword of fine steel. Ev had a hand in forging all of his equipment, and it is of extreme and even unnaturally high quality. He carries powder and shot for his firearms in a pouch. In the inside pockets of his buff coat are a whetstone for his sword and two small leather-bound books: one a volume of ancient Gallian poetry, the other the scriptures of the Holy Helreskaffen Church. He also has a coin pouch containing a considerable sum, a trusty cavalry horse named Sam, a roll of bandages, and saddlebags with camping supplies, canteens, and dried food.
Bio:Everard Mallow was born in the village of Hexstead, in the foothills of the Driegdern Mountains of eastern Albrion, toward the beginning of the Great Gallian War. His father was the village priest, a gentle man who believed that the Church was the guardian of the smallfolk against the power of the nobles and the state. He preached ferociously against the Federation's attempts to bring the Church under political control. From him, Ev inherited his steady piety, his belief in the endless struggle of light and dark, and his deep suspicion of the centralizing power of Villdernheim. To this day, he believes that the Wide Northern War was fought for these reasons - the Good Old Cause. From his mother, who died when he was young, Ev acquired something else: a sense that unnoticed and forgotten contributions were the most honorable, that the best of people sought no glory and soon would be forgotten by all but the gods.
In that impoverished rural village, the Mallows were one of the few middle-class families: they were literate and owned a small stone house, and Everard's stepmother had some money from the wool trade. The boy had a good upbringing, though the threat of the war was always present. Still, Ev spent his early childhood playing hide-and-seek in the hills and the forests, and his experiences with the other children taught him to wear his little local privilege lightly: he became convinced that there was no fundamental difference between master and servant, landlord and tenant – all had the same fears, hopes, blood in their veins. Ev would carry that lesson with him all of his life.
From the age of eight on, Ev was sent away to grammar school in Haventown, where he spoke nothing but High Gallish for several years on end, and was immersed in the ancient authors and in the scriptures. Much of this was rote learning, but it gave Ev the tools that he needed to teach himself history, law, and rhetoric – which he began to do from an early age, spending long hours in the library. The priest's son proved well-loved of his clerical teachers, and at the age of sixteen, they sent him along to their brethren at the College of Bracksbure. There, Ev received formal training in several foreign languages, the whole sweep of Gallian history, formal logic, and rhetoric. It was a grueling education, drilled into him by the rod – but it honed Ev's mind into a disciplined, razor-sharp weapon.
After he graduated from the university at the age of nineteen, the death of his stepmother brought Ev back to Hexstead to help his father with the administration of the local church. There, during the funeral, Everard Mallow experienced a religious epiphany. What had before been habit now became true and living faith; Ev came suddenly to believe with utter certainty that the gods had saved him from himself and prepared a humble role for him in their endless struggle with darkness.
But before Ev could act on that feeling, the Duke of Haventown's recruiters arrived in the village, drumming up men for the endless war with Galabow over control of the Albrion state government. Ev's modest family money and first-rate education secured him a junior officer's position in a cavalry regiment. He fought three pitched battles in the southern Albras mountains, against other Northemen: a brother's war, this, brutal and bitter and sad. And by the time it ended four years later - after endless nights of sleeping rough, and half a dozen bouts of dysentery, and panicked skirmishes on mountain trails in the dark - Everard Mallow was a changed man. He still had his faith - he always said that his faith kept him alive through the worst of it - but he no longer felt at home in his father's little stone house next to the church. The Driegdern Mountains had seen too much blood, and so had Ev. He left in search of newer worlds.
For a while, that search took him back to Erilhall, where he worked in a small copper mill and discovered that he had an extraordinary aptitude with metals. But the work held little interest and left him too much time to think and to remember, and so Ev took ship for Eresiln, where he worked as an artillery officer on armed merchantmen. It quickly became known that ships on which he served, whenever they were attacked by pirates, never seemed to miss a single shot. And so, in time, Everard Mallow's skills became more in demand, and his customers shifted from armed merchantmen to Eresilnnean privateers, and he roamed very far from the shores of Gallia: to Garmiccia and Sahranjja and beyond. And at some point in his travels, amid the endless new vistas and strange cities and fresh wonders that he saw, Ev felt himself made new too, and he slept soundly for the first time in long years, and knew that it was time to stop hiding from his purpose.
And so, in due course, Everard Mallow went home. In 1775, twelve years after leaving Hexstead, he returned. The village was not as he had left it. The Watchtower Society, enraged by the pro-Elemental preaching of Everard's father, had badly beaten the old man and frightened the villagers away from the church. With silent steely fury, Ev set to work organizing a town militia. These were the first of what would become the famous Drakebacks of Driegdern. But in 1775 and 1776, they were modest indeed: a collection of woodsmen and aging war veterans armed with crossbows and handmade pikes. Yet in three local clashes, they held their ground against Watchtower - and even when the cultists returned with a gibbering monstrosity with too many claws, Everard Mallow shot it dead with a single bullet. His father preached one last sermon, and blessed his son, and died of old age a happy man.
No sooner had Watchtower been chased out of the village, though, then war broke out. Aurennia seceded, and called for Albrion to join it. The old fault lines of the Great War reemerged: in the east, where the Church's independence was jealously guarded and antipathy to the Federation's power was a matter of religious conviction, many welcomed the conflict. Everard grimly accepted the war as inevitable, as the next step in the gods' plan. Even before the Duke of Haventown joined the war, Ev Mallow raised a company of mounted militia from Hextead and the surrounding villages, and rode for Erilhall to try to contribute to the city's relief from federal siege. Instead, Ev's company became part of an ill-conceived early assault across the Eridern River, and were cut to pieces by federal cannon.
The next day, encamped in despair near Havencross after a twenty-mile retreat, Ev and his men witnessed beams of light split the sky and shatter the federal fleet in the bay nearby. In spite of all their lost friends, in spite of their humiliating retreat, the gods were with them. So Ev told his men, and they heard the sincerity in his voice, and believed the evidence of their eyes. Their war, they decided, was not over after all.
Over the next six months, as Haventown and Erillia finally entered the war, Everard Mallow's militia company received official recognition and funding from the Duke of Haventown. With the windfall of official resources, Ev re-imagined the new Driegden Regiment of Horse from the ground up. Breaking decisively from knightly traditions, they would be medium cavalry protected mostly by cuirasses and helmets rather than full plate, and they would use firearms as equal partners to the sword - making them as capable of a deadly caracole as of a shattering charge. Their discipline and endurance would be unprecedented, permitting them to outmaneuver any foe and strike deep into the enemy's rear. After months of recruitment and retraining, the regiment won several decisive victories against a steep numerical disadvantage in the bitter brush war between federal and secessionist Albrish troops. Because of the distinctive armored neck-guards of their three-barred helmets, which were thought to be reminiscent of a dragon's scales, they became known as the "Drakebacks of Driegden."
Impressed by the regiment's innovative tactics and successful record, Bismarke van Aurenheim assigned the Driegden Horse to the 12th Joint Army. While they did not participate in the original landing at Kriegport, Everard Mallow and his men were critical in screening the southern flank of the rapid advance to Fistforge: wherever Kriegen forces attempted to rally, the Drakebacks used speed and surprise to strike and scatter the foe before he could regroup. Conditions in the factories of the south sparked an old, cold fury in Ev, and soon industrial workers fled to the northern cavalry in the certain knowledge that they would be protected from retribution by their abusive employers. Twice, the regiment used a combination of horse artillery, caracole tactics, and a final tight-order charge to defeat hordes of Watchtower monstrosities sent to stop Ev's rampage behind federal lines. By the fall of Kriegseat, the Drakebacks of Driegden and their commonborn, gods-fearing commander had become one of the many minor legends of the Krieghold Campaign.
Ev's war came to an end at Champion Field, where the Driegden Horse helped to hold the extreme left flank of the allied army against a horde of Watchtower monsters three times the regiment's numbers. For eighteen hours, the two sides clashed, while Bismarke van Aurenheim and the White Rose fought far away at the battle's center. When it was over at last, Everard Mallow had led twenty-five separate charges, and his horse died of exhaustion in the night.
And then it was over. The Drakebacks of Driegden paraded through the streets of Villdernheim, and then began the slow ride home, escorting the thousands of factory workers that the regiment's whirlwind drive through Krieghold had liberated. Ev had fought his second war. He was proud of what he had done; he felt that he had served his purpose in the gods' plan, freeing his country and defending the Church and its anointed champions. But mostly, he just felt tired, and cold down to his very soul.
And from Ev's perspective, the victory was incomplete. Half of Albrion still remained in federal hands: its towns and villages exposed to demons and Watchtower cults, its churches threatened by rising hostility. Many of the regiment's former men found no rest or comfort on their farms; they came to understand that for them, the homes that they had left were gone forever. And some of them met in churches and taverns, and resolved in quiet voices to finish what they had started. Hard men slipped across the Albras River in twos and threes, there to defend outlying villages and stand watch over churches and quietly terrorize federal administrators: the last soldiers of a war that, for them, had never truly ended. Half insurgents and half knights-errant, the last of the Drakebacks now wander the country roads and back alleys of federal Albrion from Galabow to Carogne. And somewhere among them is Everard Mallow: hero of Fistforge, saboteur of the peace, loyal to his principles first and last, still wearily seeking the purpose the gods must, somewhere, have prepared for him.
Theme Song (Optional): Doxology
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:13 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:I was inspired by the English Civil War tactics, so I made a pseudo-Puritan.Name: Everard "Ev" Mallow. Formally, he is Colonel Mallow of the Driegdern Regiment of Horse, Albrasfont State Army - but the regiment was officially mustered out six months ago, and so the rank is theoretically honorary.
Sex: Male
Age: 41 (born March 12, 1740 G.C.C.)
Appearance:Ev looks every inch the new man of the modern, industrial North. He is of average height or a little more, trim but not thin, solid with workmanlike muscle. His forearms and wrists are unusually developed, a common trait among swordsmen. His hair is an unusual dark grey, the color of burnished iron, and he wears it cropped close to the head in a deliberately middle-class rebuttal to flowing aristocratic locks. The skin of Ev's face is an even pale tan, the sign of a man who spends most of his life outdoors, and his features are symmetrical but a little too strong and long and solemn to be conventionally handsome. He is clean-shaven, and takes care to remain so even on the road; there are fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. The eyes, though, are interesting: large, and the grey-green color of spring rain, and altogether too soft and thoughtful for the hard face in which they are set.
Everard usually wears a buff leather coat, tough enough to turn a sword-blade, and a heavy steel cuirass, over riding breeches and boots. The final layer is a grey wool traveling cloak. He wears a blue-green sash under his swordbelt - the distinguishing mark of the pro-Commonwealth Albrion regiments during the war - and carries a finely worked mortuary sword in its scabbard and a pair of wheellock pistols thrust through his sash.
Element: Metal, though his gift is not particularly powerful. For Ev, it most commonly manifests in a freakish accuracy with firearms: because he can subconsciously guide his bullets to their targets, he literally does not miss.
Skills:Physically, the colonel is an outstanding horseman, a deadly swordsman, and an impossibly, inhumanly perfect shot with carbine or pistol – especially from a moving firing position, like the back of a horse. He has a kind of explosive, whipcord strength – Ev might not win many arm-wrestles, but if he smacks you in the face, you will break bones. Service in both of Gallia's most recent wars has given Ev a grimly effective skill set: as he has risen through the ranks, he has gained an exceptionally solid grounding in tactics, logistics, field medicine, and the other exigencies of battle. Slowly advancing age has forced Ev to learn to push his body despite pain and fear and exhaustion, and this has given him impressive endurance and stamina. In battle, Ev fights with ruthless pragmatism, and the lessons of a thousand combats have taught him how to bring down a foe with a minimum of time and a maximum of brutality.
Mentally, Ev benefits from a swift intellect and a fine middle-class education. He is a naturally calm, rigorous, logical thinker, not prone to sudden bursts of inspiration but largely immune to the temptations of easy assumptions and flawed deductions. He has a remarkable ability to keep his head and think clearly under fire. As the son of a Helreskaffen priest, Ev's education was initially focused on the classics: he can quote vast sections of the scriptures and the ancient Gallian poets from memory, and he speaks, reads, and writes fluent High Gallish. His university education in Erilhall equipped him with extensive knowledge of history; gave him training in formal logic that allows him to organize his thoughts and plans with great clarity; and drilled him in classical rhetoric until he could turn a phrase and inspire a crowd almost without thinking about it. His interwar stint on a privateer has even taught Ev something about ship-handling, naval warfare, and getting along with people of other cultures.
He also has an unnatural facility for blacksmithing, machinery, and the precise deployment of artillery. While he never received formal training in the use of his Elemental gift, Ev is privately aware of it, and it shows through in his talent for metal-related fields.
Personality:Everard Mallow embodies many of the contradictions of the new North. Like his industrializing country, Ev is a man of ruthless pragmatism - a trait only exacerbated by years of war. Detail-oriented, patient, rigorous, and studious, he reveres competence, appreciates intelligence, and treats hard work as a primary moral value. His sense of humor is dry and sometimes dark. He is committed to dealing with the world as it is, and is accordingly practical and occasionally unscrupulous in his methods. He is, in many ways, a very hard man: he has killed some men, and sent others to their deaths, and he loses very little sleep over having done either. It takes a great deal of danger or excitement to elevate his heart rate.
But like his deeply religious country, Ev is not simply defined by ruthless efficiency. He is a still the son of a priest, raised in the Helreskaffen Church and steeped in its ethics and doctrine. He remains a personally, deeply pious man, for whom morality is largely defined by the ancient and sacred struggle of light and dark, harmony and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal, order and chaos. He recognizes a categorical ethical imperative to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and this endows him with a peculiar gentleness: he can see value in beauty and in innocence, whether or not they serve a practical purpose. Because he is loyal more to principles than to worldly institutions, he is also able to recognize virtue in his enemies and value in those who differ from him. This does not prevent him from hating them with righteous fury.
Finally, because of his faith, Ev is deeply aware of his own smallness in the cosmic tale of light and dark of which he is a part. He is at peace with the fact that a man may live a good life that contributes to society, and yet be forgotten after he dies. He does not yearn to leave his mark on history, or even to be the biggest man in the room. And paradoxically, it is this very humility that has inspired such loyalty in those who fight for him: Ev is trustworthy when lives are on the line, because he would no more waste them on his own reputation than he would spare them at the expense of the cause.
Weaknesses:Everard Mallow never received formal training in the use of his elemental gifts, and because metal is a fairly subtle and difficult element - one cannot simply project steel from one's palms as one might with fire or lightning - his facility with it is accordingly limited and largely subconscious. For the most part, Ev can only do with metal what other men can do with metal - he just does those non-supernatural things supernaturally well. Ev can also be quick to judgment and slow to change his mind when proved wrong: he is deeply suspicious of nonhumans, downright hateful toward Watchtower, despises the van Kriegen family, and is sharply condescending toward foreign religions. While a deadly swordsman on the battlefield, he is reliant on various dirty tricks, and when he can't use them - in a formal duel, for example - he is much less effective. Finally, on matters that he perceives as moral questions - which means most matters - Ev is utterly inflexible in his convictions, and fond of declaring that "One and the gods constitute a majority." He is not much interested in seeing the world from any perspective that challenges his most deeply held beliefs. This is one reason why he has largely rejected the peace that ended the Wide Northern War.
Equipment, if any:Clothes: soft doeskin trousers, a loose white shirt, and a black jerkin. Over this goes harquebusier armor: a coat and riding boots of heavy buff leather, thick and hard enough to turn a sword-cut; a steel cuirass; a steel lobster-tailed helmet; and a steel gauntlet and vambrace protecting the left hand and forearm. The helmet stays in his pack unless it is needed. He wears a sash of blue-green silk under his swordbelt but over his cuirass - blue-green is the traditional color of the Albrion rebels. Ev's weapons are a doglock carbine; two wheellock pistols; a skinning knife for various utility purposes; and a stout mortuary sword of fine steel. Ev had a hand in forging all of his equipment, and it is of extreme and even unnaturally high quality. He carries powder and shot for his firearms in a pouch. In the inside pockets of his buff coat are a whetstone for his sword and two small leather-bound books: one a volume of ancient Gallian poetry, the other the scriptures of the Holy Helreskaffen Church. He also has a coin pouch containing a considerable sum, a trusty cavalry horse named Sam, a roll of bandages, and saddlebags with camping supplies, canteens, and dried food.
Bio:Everard Mallow was born in the village of Hexstead, in the foothills of the Driegdern Mountains of eastern Albrion, toward the beginning of the Great Gallian War. His father was the village priest, a gentle man who believed that the Church was the guardian of the smallfolk against the power of the nobles and the state. He preached ferociously against the Federation's attempts to bring the Church under political control. From him, Ev inherited his steady piety, his belief in the endless struggle of light and dark, and his deep suspicion of the centralizing power of Villdernheim. To this day, he believes that the Wide Northern War was fought for these reasons - the Good Old Cause. From his mother, who died when he was young, Ev acquired something else: a sense that unnoticed and forgotten contributions were the most honorable, that the best of people sought no glory and soon would be forgotten by all but the gods.
In that impoverished rural village, the Mallows were one of the few middle-class families: they were literate and owned a small stone house, and Everard's stepmother had some money from the wool trade. The boy had a good upbringing, though the threat of the war was always present. Still, Ev spent his early childhood playing hide-and-seek in the hills and the forests, and his experiences with the other children taught him to wear his little local privilege lightly: he became convinced that there was no fundamental difference between master and servant, landlord and tenant – all had the same fears, hopes, blood in their veins. Ev would carry that lesson with him all of his life.
From the age of eight on, Ev was sent away to grammar school in Haventown, where he spoke nothing but High Gallish for several years on end, and was immersed in the ancient authors and in the scriptures. Much of this was rote learning, but it gave Ev the tools that he needed to teach himself history, law, and rhetoric – which he began to do from an early age, spending long hours in the library. The priest's son proved well-loved of his clerical teachers, and at the age of sixteen, they sent him along to their brethren at the College of Bracksbure. There, Ev received formal training in several foreign languages, the whole sweep of Gallian history, formal logic, and rhetoric. It was a grueling education, drilled into him by the rod – but it honed Ev's mind into a disciplined, razor-sharp weapon.
After he graduated from the university at the age of nineteen, the death of his stepmother brought Ev back to Hexstead to help his father with the administration of the local church. There, during the funeral, Everard Mallow experienced a religious epiphany. What had before been habit now became true and living faith; Ev came suddenly to believe with utter certainty that the gods had saved him from himself and prepared a humble role for him in their endless struggle with darkness.
But before Ev could act on that feeling, the Duke of Haventown's recruiters arrived in the village, drumming up men for the endless war with Galabow over control of the Albrion state government. Ev's modest family money and first-rate education secured him a junior officer's position in a cavalry regiment. He fought three pitched battles in the southern Albras mountains, against other Northemen: a brother's war, this, brutal and bitter and sad. And by the time it ended four years later - after endless nights of sleeping rough, and half a dozen bouts of dysentery, and panicked skirmishes on mountain trails in the dark - Everard Mallow was a changed man. He still had his faith - he always said that his faith kept him alive through the worst of it - but he no longer felt at home in his father's little stone house next to the church. The Driegdern Mountains had seen too much blood, and so had Ev. He left in search of newer worlds.
For a while, that search took him back to Erilhall, where he worked in a small copper mill and discovered that he had an extraordinary aptitude with metals. But the work held little interest and left him too much time to think and to remember, and so Ev took ship for Eresiln, where he worked as an artillery officer on armed merchantmen. It quickly became known that ships on which he served, whenever they were attacked by pirates, never seemed to miss a single shot. And so, in time, Everard Mallow's skills became more in demand, and his customers shifted from armed merchantmen to Eresilnnean privateers, and he roamed very far from the shores of Gallia: to Garmiccia and Sahranjja and beyond. And at some point in his travels, amid the endless new vistas and strange cities and fresh wonders that he saw, Ev felt himself made new too, and he slept soundly for the first time in long years, and knew that it was time to stop hiding from his purpose.
And so, in due course, Everard Mallow went home. In 1775, twelve years after leaving Hexstead, he returned. The village was not as he had left it. The Watchtower Society, enraged by the pro-Elemental preaching of Everard's father, had badly beaten the old man and frightened the villagers away from the church. With silent steely fury, Ev set to work organizing a town militia. These were the first of what would become the famous Drakebacks of Driegdern. But in 1775 and 1776, they were modest indeed: a collection of woodsmen and aging war veterans armed with crossbows and handmade pikes. Yet in three local clashes, they held their ground against Watchtower - and even when the cultists returned with a gibbering monstrosity with too many claws, Everard Mallow shot it dead with a single bullet. His father preached one last sermon, and blessed his son, and died of old age a happy man.
No sooner had Watchtower been chased out of the village, though, then war broke out. Aurennia seceded, and called for Albrion to join it. The old fault lines of the Great War reemerged: in the east, where the Church's independence was jealously guarded and antipathy to the Federation's power was a matter of religious conviction, many welcomed the conflict. Everard grimly accepted the war as inevitable, as the next step in the gods' plan. Even before the Duke of Haventown joined the war, Ev Mallow raised a company of mounted militia from Hextead and the surrounding villages, and rode for Erilhall to try to contribute to the city's relief from federal siege. Instead, Ev's company became part of an ill-conceived early assault across the Eridern River, and were cut to pieces by federal cannon.
The next day, encamped in despair near Havencross after a twenty-mile retreat, Ev and his men witnessed beams of light split the sky and shatter the federal fleet in the bay nearby. In spite of all their lost friends, in spite of their humiliating retreat, the gods were with them. So Ev told his men, and they heard the sincerity in his voice, and believed the evidence of their eyes. Their war, they decided, was not over after all.
Over the next six months, as Haventown and Erillia finally entered the war, Everard Mallow's militia company received official recognition and funding from the Duke of Haventown. With the windfall of official resources, Ev re-imagined the new Driegden Regiment of Horse from the ground up. Breaking decisively from knightly traditions, they would be medium cavalry protected mostly by cuirasses and helmets rather than full plate, and they would use firearms as equal partners to the sword - making them as capable of a deadly caracole as of a shattering charge. Their discipline and endurance would be unprecedented, permitting them to outmaneuver any foe and strike deep into the enemy's rear. After months of recruitment and retraining, the regiment won several decisive victories against a steep numerical disadvantage in the bitter brush war between federal and secessionist Albrish troops. Because of the distinctive armored neck-guards of their three-barred helmets, which were thought to be reminiscent of a dragon's scales, they became known as the "Drakebacks of Driegden."
Impressed by the regiment's innovative tactics and successful record, Bismarke van Aurenheim assigned the Driegden Horse to the 12th Joint Army. While they did not participate in the original landing at Kriegport, Everard Mallow and his men were critical in screening the southern flank of the rapid advance to Fistforge: wherever Kriegen forces attempted to rally, the Drakebacks used speed and surprise to strike and scatter the foe before he could regroup. Conditions in the factories of the south sparked an old, cold fury in Ev, and soon industrial workers fled to the northern cavalry in the certain knowledge that they would be protected from retribution by their abusive employers. Twice, the regiment used a combination of horse artillery, caracole tactics, and a final tight-order charge to defeat hordes of Watchtower monstrosities sent to stop Ev's rampage behind federal lines. By the fall of Kriegseat, the Drakebacks of Driegden and their commonborn, gods-fearing commander had become one of the many minor legends of the Krieghold Campaign.
Ev's war came to an end at Champion Field, where the Driegden Horse helped to hold the extreme left flank of the allied army against a horde of Watchtower monsters three times the regiment's numbers. For eighteen hours, the two sides clashed, while Bismarke van Aurenheim and the White Rose fought far away at the battle's center. When it was over at last, Everard Mallow had led twenty-five separate charges, and his horse died of exhaustion in the night.
And then it was over. The Drakebacks of Driegden paraded through the streets of Villdernheim, and then began the slow ride home, escorting the thousands of factory workers that the regiment's whirlwind drive through Krieghold had liberated. Ev had fought his second war. He was proud of what he had done; he felt that he had served his purpose in the gods' plan, freeing his country and defending the Church and its anointed champions. But mostly, he just felt tired, and cold down to his very soul.
And from Ev's perspective, the victory was incomplete. Half of Albrion still remained in federal hands: its towns and villages exposed to demons and Watchtower cults, its churches threatened by rising hostility. Many of the regiment's former men found no rest or comfort on their farms; they came to understand that for them, the homes that they had left were gone forever. And some of them met in churches and taverns, and resolved in quiet voices to finish what they had started. Hard men slipped across the Albras River in twos and threes, there to defend outlying villages and stand watch over churches and quietly terrorize federal administrators: the last soldiers of a war that, for them, had never truly ended. Half insurgents and half knights-errant, the last of the Drakebacks now wander the country roads and back alleys of federal Albrion from Galabow to Carogne. And somewhere among them is Everard Mallow: hero of Fistforge, saboteur of the peace, loyal to his principles first and last, still wearily seeking the purpose the gods must, somewhere, have prepared for him.
Theme Song (Optional): Doxology
Everard looks great, and his motivations definitely suit the plot threads I have in mind as the group goes along.Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Constaniana » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:47 pm
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Reverend Norv » Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:29 am
Constaniana wrote:Oh, one point I think I should mention: I changed the map of Galllia in the O.P's geography section when I posted this thread, but I noticed the country charts in the second post still have the old, sparser map in them. The Driegden Mountains can still exist as a subregion of the Albras range, like the Blue Ridge to the Appalachia, so that's not a problem. Carogne is on a separate island from the rest of Galllia now, although given that its proximity to western Albrion greatly helps the U.G.F in maintaining control there I'm sure you can figure out how to have Everard get there.
Constaniana wrote:"His interwar stint on a privateer has even taught Ev something about ship-handling, naval warfare, and getting along with people of other cultures."
That's very good, because I was about to have Lisoette ask how the heck they're all going to sail the pirate ship the group is currently planning to steal.
Accepted!
by Constaniana » Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:40 am
Reverend Norv wrote:Constaniana wrote:Oh, one point I think I should mention: I changed the map of Galllia in the O.P's geography section when I posted this thread, but I noticed the country charts in the second post still have the old, sparser map in them. The Driegden Mountains can still exist as a subregion of the Albras range, like the Blue Ridge to the Appalachia, so that's not a problem. Carogne is on a separate island from the rest of Galllia now, although given that its proximity to western Albrion greatly helps the U.G.F in maintaining control there I'm sure you can figure out how to have Everard get there.
I think everything in my app still works, but thanks for bringing me up to date.Constaniana wrote:"His interwar stint on a privateer has even taught Ev something about ship-handling, naval warfare, and getting along with people of other cultures."
That's very good, because I was about to have Lisoette ask how the heck they're all going to sail the pirate ship the group is currently planning to steal.
Accepted!
Great. Any recommendations on how to link up with the group? I understand that they are currently all down near the dock discussing how to steal a ship. Maybe Ev had a run-in with law enforcement and has to get off the island fast, and happens to overhear some of the conversation?
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
by Reverend Norv » Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:01 am
by Constaniana » Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:14 am
Reverend Norv wrote:Working on an IC post. Is Lisoette immediately identifiable as a daemonette? And would Ev be able to recognize Tristan or Eric from reputation alone?
Ameriganastan wrote:I work hard to think of those ludicrous Eric adventure stories, but I don't think I'd have come up with rescuing a three armed alchemist from goblin-monkeys in a million years.
Kudos.
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