Asher Levin, Disgraced Korvosan Guard

[MysteryNo1]

Profile

Name: Asher Levin

Race: Human

Alignment: Neutral Good

Gender: Male

Class: Fighter

Role: Frontline, Support

Homebase: Home between Northpoint and New Korvosa, Citadel Volshyenek

Appearance

A brown mohawk, bearded, burly man of above average height in customized, fortified traveling garbs in matching color, complimented by protectives consist of silver steel shoulder pads and brown leather bracers. While having a hale but stone face, his eye scars hint a seasoned warrior or someone who has been in a battle and lived to tell the tale.

He carries a long object, wrapped and obscured by dark covering, strapped to his back. After the incident that caused him to be suspended from the Guards, he wears a brown hood on top of his clothing.

Personality

Asher is a family man. He is devoted to his family and is protective of them. Unless he is under a spell, he is not distracted by the natural charms of the opposite sex or committing adultery as he is a faithful husband. He extends this protectiveness to friends, the innocent, civilians and children though his family takes priority. It reflects in his fighting style and his choice of weapon. His bulk provides the strength to swing the weapon. His mind and skill ensure the purpose of those swings.

Asher is more than a brute and a fighter with finesse. He has Cheliaxian blood in his vein, embodying one of Cheliaxian's qualities: intelligence. Battles fought with abandon is tantamount to dying a dog's death or being gutted like a rabid animal. He picks his battles and if there is a cause worth fighting for, plan for them. Not impressive but above average, he pales when compared to driven Chelaxians. He could contend with some clever ones but stands no chance against the superlative. That was what could have been. 

Family life dulled the edge, his other positive traits mellowed out the ruthlessness he held. Loyalty and duty are his strongest suits. Those attributes and wanting to give back to the city were why he joined the Korvosan Guards to protect the innocent, civilians and children whom he designated as the city and on his list of protections: a passion strong as his duty to family. Without the people, Korvosa is just shelter. That is to say the structures are not irrelevant. He does his best to minimize the damage to retain the habitability. 

Some people find it hard to trust a guard who has an intimidating stature. The payoff is worth it. Once they get past his stoic face, he is a softie. He is patience, hard to anger, fair and reliable. As someone with a strong sense of justice, he hates injustice. He would disregard the law and risk his badge to follow his heart to set things right. Not that he does not respect the law and authority figures. He respects his superiors as long as he is able to do his job. Those pedestals are broken. 

Beaten, drugged and framed by a crime lord for crimes he did not commit, prevented from duty, suspended from his job, his child lost are enough to lose faith in these aspects to strike out on his own. One thing that can make him lose his calm and act recklessly is his family in danger or under threat. He becomes overprotective, tensed, and has a one-track mind to save his family and dole out justice, his positive attributes muted. His former and current self does not kill. 

He will ask his enemy to yield first before he decides their fate. He will knock out the weaponless and helpless. He will resort killing when he is doing it out of self-defense, his foe is threatening his family, or his foe is irredeemable. His time in the Shingles was responsible for fostering this lenient outlook as well as his other positive traits. He also tends to view halfling in a favorable light and joined the Korvosan Guards due having been adopted and raised by one.

Background

Asher was descended from Chelaxian settlers and lived in North Point. Other than being groomed to Chelaxian customs by his parents, his childhood was dull until he got himself lost in the Shingles. The wolves took advantage of his naive nature to rob everything he had on person and put him in his place. To survive from being trampled further at his lowest, he used the lessons he learned to fight back with ferocity. He won some, lost some. The battles he lost, he ran, recovered, observed, and retaliated by small pettiness if he could. Just as he acclimated to the Shingles, Asher got cocky, resulting him in getting ganged up by thugs and left for the dead. 

A motherly halfling by the name of Adara saved him and nursed him back to health. Although Aster felt indebted to the halfling and promised to repay that life debt, he expelled that oath from his mouth with venom at their parting in the short time elapsed. The two started off in a high note and could have forged a bond if not for the truth of their heritage coming to light early. Asher's Cheliaxian blood and Adara's hatred for Cheliaxian and their oppression on halfling through slavery clashed, making them incompatible beings in that moment, repelling each other from respective lives. Normalcy of life resumed for Asher from the point he halted.

He returned to scrapping for necessities, avoided the bigshots in the underbelly and made alliances with the like-minded impoverished to stay alive: his planned routines after getting a foothold in the Shingles. No events noteworthy happened except two. The first was the reunion with Adara where Asher repaid his debt by saving her with the limits his untrained body could offer. The second meeting was an improvement over the previous. They gained mutual understanding of their differences, learnt from each other, and got the opportunity to deepen their bonds to utmost, dispelling hostilities displayed prior. At the zenith of their relationship, Adara adopted Asher. 

Trouble constantly coming, yet Asher would not trade a fulfilling, exciting life for an unexcited one. The second was a bump with a runaway. Similar and wary of the other in their first encounter, both would bond and be smitten. Sadly, Asher's chapter in the Shingles was complete in the near future as his parents found, identified and retrieved him from Old Korvosa. He learned that ten years had passed since that faithful day of his folly while he reintegrated himself back into society. Tried as he might, he was unable return to the Chelaxian he previously was. The Shingles changed him. He walked a new path. 

Unfortunately, indecisiveness and uncertainty clouded him. Asher sought strength to pave open many roads as he could to see what works best for his future and to fall back on in the event his chosen road was unsatisfactory in addition to combating helplessness and his feeling of it. He muscled up and educated himself. He then found combat teachers ranging from a retired knight to a former cutthroat to train him in the ways of the weapons. As he honed his skills to mastery, he did not forget to visit Adara and his friends in the Shingles. He reemerged as a member of a Korvosan Guard five years later, his adoptive mother and the conditions in Old Korvosa impacted him to join.

By that time, Asher had faced tragedies and happiness. His adoptive mother and most of his Shingle friends were killed by drugs and enforcers of a crime lord despite his efforts to prevent them which he grieved and moved on. He married the runaway he met, had a daughter and had his adoptive brother join his household. This road was the road he chose, and he had yet fall back on other options. He served the Guards for a year though his commitment that equaled his passion for his family caused tension with his wife as he worked long hours in his occupation and juggled between the two.

It was at this period everything went to hell. Asher poked his nose on an illegal activity of a crime lord. He fought his way out to report this incident. He failed, leading to him being robbed and beaten up by his underlings but left alive. He returned to headquarters only to hear he was suspended from his job by the Guards for an investigation into the crimes he did not commit. He returned home only for his wife to informed him that Lora, their daughter, went missing. Lora missing was the last straw that prompted him to risk it all to go after Gaedren Lamm, a crime lord he suspected have his daughter, framed him and whose name he wringed out a fisherman witness by intimidation.

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:47 PM by MysteryNo1 (see edit history)