Knight-Commander Aric of Eventell (Ah-rik)
Knight-Commander Aric of Eventell (a.k.a. Silversword)
Aric of Eventell was born to Aeosas of Eventell and a Goliath woman named Vekia. Reports say that Aeosas was on his way back to Kiver from the town of Pey where he had taken a regiment of soldiers to fight the scourge of the Deathless. The Goliath tribe took him and his soldiers in and cared for them for a dance, and the shrewd young Vekia seduced the king with the carnal freedoms that all Goliath enjoyed and laid with the king for an evening.
Aeosas thought nothing of the liaison and returned to his capital and his new wife. But a babe grew inside the Goliath woman, and she started to plot.
She left her tribe when they roved close enough to the capital and made a traitorous week long journey to Kiver. There she confronted the king and demanded recognition as a concubine, and her son to be put into the royal line. Aeosas refused at first, but after the babe was born with no outward Goliath features, and indeed the blond hair and fair eyes of the royal lineage, he started to change his mind. He even gifted the boy the name Aric, a common name within the royal house. The years went by and the queen was unable to conceive, resulting in three miscarriages. The stress bore on the king, and every day he thought of the healthy, strong boy working in the palace that was his and could just as easily secure Aeosas's legacy.
Eventually, Aeosas told the boy of his true parentage, and privately started negotiations with his mother about her demands. Vekia refused to budge, and Aeosas eventually grew tired of the woman audacity and had her quietly taken care of. He started to make preparations to put Aric into the royal house. Months flew by while the kind wrestled with himself, the conflict pulled tighter by the fact that Queen Silana was pregnant once more.
This time, the birth finally produced an heir, if a sickly and early-born one. The babe teetered on the edge of death for a full summer before making a miraculous recovery come winter. However, Aeosas did not abandon his plans to name Aric heir over his newborn son Alistair. Aric was four years and several months older, was healthy and spry, and was already showing himself to be interested in sword and horses and the knights that rode them. Aeosas saw a warrior-prince in Aric that he did not see in his younger son.
He made the mistake of revealing Aric's parentage to the Queen in a drunken stupor one night, and from that moment forth, Queen Silana blackmailed him into keeping the matter quiet and not putting the boy on the throne. She even tried to get rid of Aric several times, and every one ended in failure. The royal family was locked in a hidden struggle that often distracted the king and queen from ruling their kingdom, and this was at the tail-end of a great war that saw many conscripted, and now many turning to banditry to earn an income due to the financial ruin the Deathless War put the land in. The king gave up more and more money to the Guardians and The Tower to deal with various bandit troops that cropped up, strengthening the name of the two mercenary companies and filling their coffers while putting the crown into more and more debt.
Meanwhile, the two half-brothers Aric and Alistair grew very close, often seeking each other out in hidden rooms in the palace to play games. The presence of the Guardians in the palace also started to draw Aric's interest. The boy had a true love for the sword, and he often listened in on the bawdy tales the Guardian soldiers that dined in the palace would pass around. The succession struggle his father and step-mother were involved in did not go unnoticed by the ten-year-old, and he still remembered what had happened the last time anyone challenged the king about something he wanted to do. He had the intuition to know that neither the king nor queen would stand down from their sides until this spilled into a civil war or one of them succeeded in killing the other.
With this foresight, which often came to him in dreams, Aric snuck away from the castle after months of planning, and made the trek all the way to Guardianholm in the mountains to ask the Knight-Commander, who had seen a time or two in the palace, for entry into the Guardians of the Realm. He thought, logically, that since the Guardians were forced to give up worldly ties, this would be the only place that his damning birth couldn't reach him.
Waldemar the Mutt took one look at the boy at his door and said to have had a laughing fit that lasted for minutes. Aric did not let that deter him, asking to be put under whatever trials the Knight-Commander needed to see to be shown that Aric was worthy. The Knight-Commander, who was known as a man who took great risk in order to have great reward, told the boy that if he could pass that year's Commander's Gauntlet, he would be let in.
A prodigious swordsman all his life, Aric accepted the challenge. He was allowed to train with the graduating class for only three months before the Gauntlet was held. He placed 1st in swordplay, 9th in wrestling, and 13th in archery, but had little success in the areas of parade march, and his troop didn’t do well in cohesion and leadership drills. However, his overall score did see him complete the Gauntlet at the head of his class, and he was given the honor of challenging anyone in the Guardians to single combat. He chose to challenge Waldemar, the Commander himself, and won the almost 13 minute duel by spilling first blood.
Thus, from that moment forward, Waldemar saw the boy as a threat, and tried to get rid of him via any means available to him besides outright assassination. They all failed, for Aric's foresight had grown in power every year, and he now did not even need to sleep in order to catch glimpses of the future.
Meanwhile, Aeosas was insulted by Aric's brazen escape from Kiver and from what the king thought of as his legacy, and made increasingly desperate attampts to track down Aric. Waldemar pinned him a letter telling him Aric's location, with the hope that the king could rid Waldemar of the problem.
Aeosas, enraged by the gall of both Waldemar and Aric, took a regiment of soldiers and rode up to Guardianholm to take the boy back, by force if necessary. They made camp outside the gates, and rebuffed all of the runners that Waldemar sent to ask them their business. Finally, after a night and a day of camp, Aric came to his father's tent in the dead of night and demanded that the king leave. No one knows how the talks between the two ultimately went, but Aeosas was invited to breakfast with both the Commander and his son that morn, and by the afternoon Aeosas's troops had cleared from Guardianholm.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Aric betrays his Half-Goliath heritage in only a small amount of ways: his heigth being one of them. At 6'6", he towers head and shoulders above most and catches the eye whenever he enters a room. He has an impressively square jaw line, with healthy, almost bronze skin that stays smooth regardless of how weather-beaten it gets. Unfortunatly, Aric's hair started loosing its color prematuraly, greying when he was only 30, and fifteen years later not a speck of it's former lushious golden blonde remained.
Special abilities
Aric has demonstrated, though never spoken of, a sort of queer forsight of many events. Unfortunatly, since he is now dead, the world will never get the answer of wether his gifts were given by the Saints or by demonic forces. He also showed the ability to speed up time itself in a certain way during the Battle of Blackbottom, but if this is a different power from his foresight remains unanswered.
Relationships
History
The brothers have always been close from the moment Aric held Alistair's swaddled form in his arms as a babe and swore an unbreakable vow to always care, love and protect his little brother.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
The brothers enjoy games of chess together as well as a shared love of novels.
Shared Acquaintances
Aric is very close friends with Queen Danisa, who he rescued through happenstance and later on helped to set up with his brother, knowing the two would be perfect for one another. Danisa and Aric still have a strong friendship outside of their shared relationship with Alistair, often writing long letters to each other filled with hopes, hapinesses, fears and inside jokes.
The 55th Knight-Commander of the Guardians of the Realm, Aric was also raveled after his death to be the bastard first son of the former king of Eventell, Aeosas. He died a slow, prolonged death after exhausting his magical power at the Battle of Blackbottom, and was buried with ceremony on the Argos Ocean.
View Character Profile
Alignment
Lawful Good
Current Status
Deceased
Date of Birth
11th Late Spring 968 AC
Date of Death
18 Deep Summer 1013 AC
Spouses
Siblings
Alistair of Eventell
(Half-brother)
Children
Sex
Male
Gender
Man
Eyes
Bright blue
Hair
Golden
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Deeply Tan
Height
6'6"
Weight
279
Belief/Deity
Saint Gaeleath the Librarian
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