Attrebus Arthago

Attrebus Arthago (a.k.a. Blue Sky)

Attrebus is a tall human man with sandy blond hair, a short cut beard, and striking blue eyes. He has broad shoulders, like he would have a muscular build but seems rather skinny for his size. He is missing his right arm and bears a few visible scars on his face. He wears tight fitting and well made leather armor, over that a series of bright fabric sashes with various designs on them, a cape over his right shoulder and back, and has a series of throwing daggers. A shortsword rests on his hip and he is followed around by an Astarte Shepherd dog with sleek black fur.

Attrebus Arthago was born the fifth son of a noble house in the The Astarti Imperium, His family were high-ranking government officials in one of the many integrated peoples of the Imperium known as the Children of the Sky or Sta’kalel in their now defunct native tongue, his father and mother were the governor and governess of a northern town/city in the Imperium. His father was a strong wizard with a penchant for necromancy and enchantment, and when Attrebus was born and found to be lacking in connection to the weave his father wanted it was decided they would find some sort of institution to send him off to whether that be a religious cloister or the illustrious Astarti Legion. Attrebus was raised with his brothers and sisters until the age of eight when he was sent to a training camp for the Legion which generally prefers younger initiates whom they gather usually from orphanages. Although he was always destined to go to the legion Attrebus actually did spend time in the city in which he was born and fell in love with the melting pot of the Astarte and Sta’kalel culture, he was even eager to one day partake in the Sky Marriage ceremony though he never returned at complete the ritual. Due to his family status, he was given preference in officer training and was chosen as the leader of his group in training at the age of eighteen achieving the rank of Centurion, responsible for one hundred other soldiers inside a legion.
During his training and through his time in the legion he had three people important to him. From a young age, he was trained by a Tabaxi legate named Gale-of-the-storm, who saw much potential in the angry young boy and fostered him acting much more like a stern mother figure than his actual mother ever did. Attrebus spent more years under her tutelage than he did within the family of his parents and the bond they formed was closer than any he ever had with his own family. Another member of the legion, another human named Keval, who was taken from an orphanage, was the same age as Attrebus and placed in the same training squad. They became fast friends and spent every time in training and out together. Oftentimes they would get into trouble, which Attrebus would do his best to talk them out of, often to poor results, but rarely they would get away with things. Attrebus excelled on the tactical side of his training, becoming a personal assistant to Gale-of-the-Storm the Legate of a newly formed Legion assigned to the war with Alyria. When he was asked to join her legion as the centurion of a rookie century, he requested that his friend Keval join him. Kevl and Attrebus joined the legion as reinforcement troops in training along with two other Centuries also working as reinforcement troops. It was here he met Zelfine, the two of them seventeen years of age. Zelfine was a stern half-elven centurion that swiftly became rivals, they each had their centuries compete against each other, and since every centurion was a member of a council to the legate, Zelfine was discontented to see Attrebus also acting as personal assistant outside of matters of the council meetings. It wasn’t until the news got into an open fight, and were relieved of duty, that Keval suggested to Attrebus that he thought the two had an attraction they were not acting on and they needed to talk things out or else Attrebus would get demoted. Attrebus, firmly rebuking the claims of any attraction went to talk to Zelfine in private and though their discussion was heated it did swiftly become intimate and the two began their love affair which persisted until Attrebus’s injury in the underdark.
After his century reached the majority age of 18 they were pushed into active duty, absorbing veteran members from centuries that had suffered in battles, and splitting off some of their own members to to reinforce the already standing centuries. The centuries in training turned from three to two and the legion itself maintained its twenty centuries overall with the reassignment of soldiers resulting in an over two thousand strong army. During the next few years the Legion finally moved into an offensive position against the Alyrians and so nearly every day they were either fighting or marching to the next engagement. Times were stressful and some of the friends Attrebus knew his entire life died at his side. Since Centurions are given their own private tent it was at night when Attrebus and Zelfine met one another. It was during these hard times that Attrebus was given the name “Blue Sky”, partly due to his Sta’kalel heritage, but mostly due to his attitude that always seemed to exude an optimistic positivity that some found grating but most found comforting. It was this optimism that helped his Century grow into the large family that the Imperium encouraged of their soldiers, with the popular saying being “The blood of battle is thicker than the water of the womb” to mean the bonds you forge with fellow soldiers are stronger than even family. It was through his guidance that his century honored him by adding blue sashes to all of their armor and pauldrons, colorful sashes being a motif of Sta’kalel culture, and the color blue as a sign of their leader Gale of the Storm was initially hesitant to allow such a change of standard uniform until she realized such familial bonds would only allow these soldiers to fight even harder together.
Attrebus and his century fought hard against the Alyrian’s and it was those one hundred soldiers under Attrebus that led a famous charge through a mountain pass that had become a death trap to all others who tried, and captured a fort in the mountains between Alyria and The Imperium. The taking of the fort was a bloody affair with only a handful of the Alyrian’s who could get to their horses surviving. The Legion moved into this fortified position and began construction on Alyria facing defenses. From here many strikes and raids were sent into Alyrian territory and although Attrebus and his century were mostly involved in the defense of the fort due to their loses in the attack, these raids were blamed on him and his legate, with their faces appearing on propaganda posters throughout Alyria, and several bounties being placed on his head by the Alyrian government and wealthy nobles who lost family at the Fort. It was at this time that Gale of the Storm started to meet with an enigmatic visitor and not soon after a few weeks of their meetings Attrebus’s Century alongside Zelfine’s were sent on a mission under the mountains of Alyria and into the underdark, to try and scout out alternate entrances into Alyria and to see if they were trying to find allies among the harsh species that lived in the lower kingdoms.
The underdark was different than anywhere else in the world that Attrebus had ever been, and every tactic he had ever taught his soldiers became useless in those dark tunnels. When enemies could come from the ceiling and the widest a line could get in many places was two to three strong, the intense training and battle standards of the Imperium became a weakness in those dark halls, not to mention the majority human regiments found themselves only useful in the light of torches, which shone like a lighthouse to all the species of the dark to the location of the thundering boots of two hundred and two strong soldiers marching down into the dark. On the surface many feet above them Gale of the Storm sat contemplative, she had just sent two hundred soldiers down into the dark, into depths many would not come back from, just on the word of a celestial who claimed the future would be brighter if only this sacrifice she made. Down in the dark, far away from the contemplation of their Legate, Attrebus and Zelfine let their soldiers through the winding tunnels of the underdark, marking their way with chalk. It was not too soon after their first week in the dark that combat struck their band of soldiers. It was always fast, always killed, and always happened when they were getting ready to sleep. Dark beings that seemed to eat the light of fire and torches, barreling through soldiers and leaving their corpses unlike any sort of predator they had seen before on the surface. These attacks went on for days until Zelfine came up with a plan. She had a battlemage for the group set up glyphs of warding around a fake campfire, charged with ice magic, so that when these light eating monsters came to call the next night, they were obliterated. A strange side effect of the monsters was that a great feast was called to partake in the kill and all who supped on their flesh were granted the ability to see in the utter darkness of this realm. Realizing this useful ability they began to hunt these monsters until they stopped coming around, until all of these had plenty of darkvision magic from their meals. The centuries stayed together down in the dark and although they never did find further passages to the surface that would allow the imperium a hidden route into Alyria, they did decide to go deeper, to try and meet the Duergar in the region and to determine if them and the Alyrian’s had any sort of military alliance against the Imperium.
Of the two hundred and two men and women that began the expedition by the time they arrived into the lands of one of the clans of Earthroot they numbered one hundred and seventy eight. They never got much information from this clan, and the more diplomatic nature of their talks were short lived. Even probing questions suggesting they may be allied against the Imperium were taken as a great insult by these dark dwarves, or Deurgar as they’re called. Not too soon after initial talks with the Duergar by a diplomat that the two legions brought along with them is when hostilities started. One night while Attrebus and Zelfine were planning their next moves and about to head to bed together, a single duergar, initially invisible slipped into the tent and revealed themselves, dropping the severed head of their diplomat on the floor between them. This duergar summoned a blade of pure energy around their hand and informed the two that none of their soldiers would leave the underdark, and the blatant aggression and rampant expansion of the Imperium would stop here. A fight broke out between the three of them, while surprised initially, the duergar soulblade assassin found themselves hard pressed and then swiftly defeated by the two Centurions. By the time they finished their foe and burst out of the command tent, their encampment was in chaos. The legion was known for their quick fortifications and it was potentially what saved them in this instance, the large cavern where they made their tent had large mushroom stalks and boulders rolled into defensive fortifications at every entrance, at all of the posts there was combat breaking out. The two centurions went into action, barking orders at their troops to form up, with battlemages supporting every entrance and archers baking up the rear. The enemy was held at bay for nearly ten minutes, in the throes of combat such a hold can seem like an eternity, then one of the tunnel entrances broke, duergar and their constructs rushing in, they attacked one of the other entrance areas. With two of their battle lines breaking it was Zelfine who first ordered the retreat, with Attrebus quickly backing up her decisions, ordering their soldiers to start a staggered, fighting route from the battle. Attrebus called for Zelfine to lead the centuries while he took up the rear with his most veteran fighters, Keval included. During this mad rush through the tunnels, into the dark recesses of the underdark, many legionaries were lost, although Attrebus did a commendable job securing choke points and holding back the pursuit for as long as he could. It wasn’t until a duergar, wearing the skull plate of a human stepped out of the shadows and unleashed a burst of psychic energy upon Attrebus did his defense fall. He managed to hold off this assault for some time, all other soldiers around him either getting killed, taken away, or retreating back to the main force. Attrebus stood, his plate armor holding strong against blows that could kill a normal man, but it was the psychic barrage that left him vulnerable. It didn’t matter how many duergar he cut down in combat, he couldn’t seem to get to this psychic, it was then that two more of these skull wearing duergar appeared and Attrebus was helpless. One of the duergar took this moment of weakness to strike in with a glaive that seemed to glow with fire, it drove in to a weak join under his pauldrons and severed Attrebus’s left arm, just as the centurion’s blade drove into their throat, followed shortly by a sudden barrage from the psionicists. Psychic blast after psychic blast slammed into his mind, he was driven to the floor and still it came in, until his eyes bled red and his eardrums burst. He would’ve died there on the ground, his mind being ripped to shreds by duergar psionicists but suddenly one of these skull masts exploded as an arrow slammed through the bone, driving deep into the skull of the duergar wearing it. Two more arrows whistled out through the dark, one hitting another psionicist in their arm, the other ricocheting off the rocks near the head of the other. Still more arrows came in, one after another as Zelfine rushed into the room. Despite the many wounded or dead legionaries around the room Zelfine dropped her bow and grabbed Attrebus’s broken form, running back to the remaining group.
Only fifty soldiers made it out of the underdark relatively unscathed, they carried with them twenty bodies of fallen comrades, and twenty more injured beyond the ability to walk themselves out of those dark depths. Over the next few days as the injured received medical aid, some passed but most survived, and of the over two hundred individuals that went down into the underdark, seventy two survived the ordeal. However survival didn’t always mean intact, and the injuries Attrebus suffered went far beyond his body, his mind was nearly destroyed by those psionicists, and even as they carried him out of the underdark Attrebus slipped into the depths of a coma, and it was there he lay when he was returned to the surface. Zelfine visited him for some time, and spoke with him at length about the journey and the idiocy of the entire expedition, she delivered the sad news that Keval was lost somewhere below, body unrecovered, and she begged him to wake up, to help her deal with the loss of friends she man in her century over years, she even told him that she had come to love him over the many years the two had known one another. This daily ritual of talking to him at the medical tent continued for two months, until the cleric who ran the operation said it was unlikely he was going to wake and that while they would keep him alive for as long as was feasible, it may be best for her to accept that he may never come back to her. Zelfine, devastated by this news and horrified by the sheer amount of loss that had come crashing into her life all at once, went to her legate and requested immediate reassignment, and though it broke her heart to go, she felt she couldn’t handle watching Attrebus wither away and die a slow death in front of her. She said her goodbyes to him as if it was his funeral, and the last time he heard her voice was one of tearful remorse.
Attrebus remained in the coma for nearly a year, and after a series of bad losses that pushed the legion back out of Alyria and to the fort where Attrebus was receiving attention, the mounting injuries led to there being little room left in the tent to maintain a man deep into a coma. Due to the triage method they used in the facility they decided it would be best to discontinue the magical support they had afforded Attrebus. When the nurses came to essentially ‘put down’ the injured centurion a blast of mental energy seemed to throw them back against the wall, and rising out of the bed seemingly carried by invisible hands, rose Attrebus, his eyes wide awake for the first time in many months, an intense new psychic energy having blossomed from the scars left behind in his brain from the psychic assault that had put him into the coma he found himself in. Although, with his missing arm and coma withered body, along with the trauma from the failed expedition to the underdark, he was found unfit to return to service, but Gale of the Storm saw fit to discharge him with honors befitting his station, even allowing him to keep some of his centurion gear. Attrebus didn’t know what to feel about his best friend being dead in the underdark and his love having left to go somewhere that his legate would not tell him. So he left and joined up with the Freeswords Guild, using his unique powers to guarantee his position in their ranks as a useful asset, he tried to begin a new life separate from his past, even if the memories may haunt him forever.

Social

Religious Views

Attrebus is a worshipper of Ziadreor, Talatorius, Eolas, and Bas.

Hobbies & Pets

Attrebus keeps a pet black dog named Inko.

Attrebus Arthago is the last born son of a noble family. He spent time in the imperial legion before an injury got him discharged. This same energy awakened psionic energy within him.

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Alignment

Lawful Neutral

Current Location

Osyca

Age

28 years old

Current Residence

Zyra's Drift

Gender

Male

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Dirty Blond

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Fair

Height

6'0"

Weight

180

Belief/Deity

Talatorius, Eolas, Ziadreor, and Bas

Other Affiliations

• Freesword Guild