Kyrian Greenwood, Half-Elf Ranger

[thenucleus]

KYRIAN GREENWOOD

Half-Elf Ranger

APPEARANCE

As befits someone who spends much of his time outdoors, Kyrian dresses practically in comfortable clothing of drab colours and designs. He has long brown hair that he sometimes wears tied back to stop it falling into his eyes. Despite his ancestry, he has has few overtly elven features, and appears human to most people. He has a habit of staring intently at those who he is listening to, as if his hazel eyes are boring into their soul, which others find equally captivating and unnerving.

 

PERSONALITY

Kyrian is someone who prefers to listen rather than speak, and is a man of few words. He is calm, softly spoken and never appears rushed or flustered, as if he already knows how an event or incident will turn out. He sometimes gives the impression that he is aloof and cold, though in truth he has the ability to detach himself from a situation and view it as if from afar, which gives him a sense of perspective that allows him to remain measured and calm. He maintains a strong sense of justice, however, and is a champion of the poor and downtrodden, valuing the toil of the peasantry as far more valuable to society than the pomposity and excess of the wealthy.

 

Despite spending much of his time alone, Kyrian does value company and enjoys nothing more than returning from a hunt to spend an evening at a local tavern, listening to the tales of the locals or, if he is lucky, a travelling performer.

 

BACKGROUND

Kyrian’s parents were well-regarded elves (his mother was in fact a half-elf) from East Faerûn, who were caught on the wrong side of a conspiracy against their queen. When their part in the conspiracy was discovered, they fled for their lives across Faerûn with the elven queen’s soldiers always just behind them. In order to save their infant son from a terrible fate, they left him wrapped in a blanket on the doorstep of a poor woodcutter in a hamlet in the Dales. Whatever became of them has never been learned.

 

The child was raised by the woodcutter and his wife, who named him and nurtured him in the ways of their small woodland community, yet he grew to possess the spirit and beauty of his elven forebears. When he was old enough, he began to assist his father as a woodcutter, and he grew quite strong hewing logs for the people of the village.

 

Kyrian’s life might have been a happy and contented one, except that the village was administered by a tyrannical officer of the Lumber Consortium, a man named Soldred Craan. Craan bribed, blackmailed and extorted the villagers, who lived in poverty while he wallowed in relative luxury, surrounded by the fruits of his ill-gotten gains. Craan was protected by an ex-mercenary known only as Gran, a brutish half-orc who did the overseer’s dirty work and was feared and hated even more than his employer.

 

One winter’s day, Kyrian was delivering a load of wood to the family of a sick friend when Gran stopped him and demanded that he give up the wood he was carrying for use in Craan’s kitchen. Kyrian tried to explain that the wood was going to help the needy, but Gran only laughed and struck him in the face. Something snapped in Kyrian and, leaping up, he seized a log and attacked the half-orc. Gran had been a mighty warrior in his day, but he had grown soft bullying and terrifying the poor peasants of the village. Even so, he managed to fend off Kyrian’s initial assault, but he could not stand the half-elf’s ferocity for long; soon he fell dead, his skull crushed like a melon.

 

Flushed with success, Kyrian cast aside his log, seized Gran’s sword and marched to the home of Soldred Craan, followed by a throng of cheering villagers. There, they broke in and found their oppressor cowering under a table. The crowd wanted to lynch Craan, but Kyrian refused to take another life now that they were free of the man’s tyranny. Instead, Craan was given warm clothing and rations for a week and ordered to leave the region. With his horded wealth, the peasants had enough to see them through the winter.

 

Only a week passed when soldiers arrived in the village looking for Kyrian. Craan, it seemed, had fled only as far as the nearest town, where the Magistrate - a halfling in the pocket of the Lumber Consortium – had promised swift retribution. Stonewalled by the villagers, the soldiers departed empty-handed, but with a promise to return and ensure that justice was done.

Kyrian knew that his presence was endangering not only his own life, but that of every villager. With a heavy heart he packed a handful of belongings and, after a tearful farewell with his adopted parents, left town that very night. His father’s last gift to him was the bow that he had owned as a boy, and with which Kyrian had learned to hunt.

 

For months, Kyrian travelled with no destination in mind, wandering from place to place and often making his bed in the wilds. He knew that he had his elven instincts to thank for his survival, but also that he missed the comfort of a warm bed. Thinking that he had travelled far enough that he need not fear being hunted any more, he resolved to settle in the next town that he came to. That town happened to be Greenest, where he has spent the last few weeks making a living from hunting in the surrounding area. Curiously, though, his recent wandering lifestyle has given him itchy feet, and when he heard of the caravan heading south he thought it might be interesting to tag along.
 

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by thenucleus (see edit history)

[thenucleus]

I think Kyrian is all done @Colin. Let me know if anything needs changing.