Eris Albrecht
Mar 7, 2016 14:54:17 GMT -6
Post by Eris Coulson on Mar 7, 2016 14:54:17 GMT -6
Name:Eris Albrecht Coulson
Class:Soldier
Age:20
Born in:Bern
Appearance:
Eris stands at 5'6 and weighs around 135 lbs. Her skin is fair, like most of her countrymen, but isn't so pale that it burns easy. She has long strawberry-blonde hair that she usually keeps tied up, either in a ponytail, a bun, or more commonly a “twin-tail” style, leaving most of her hair straight with two small tied tails on each side. Eris' eyes are a clear blue, neither too bright nor especially dark, though she currently wears an eye-patch around her left eye.
It is uncommon to see Eris outside of her armour and, even then, it is less common to see her outside of the tunics she wears beneath her armour. The armour in question is black with gold trim, complete with a padded green tunic. She wears brown or white slacks with it and sturdy brown boots. The set comes complete with a helmet, but Eris' vanity and general current lack of self-worth has her forgo it more often than not.
Outside of her armour Eris tends to dress in either blouses from her days of nobility, with revealing collars to support confidence and ego should she be feeling it, or simple and loose tunics for crummier days. She also owns a few dresses or skirts but keeps them mostly for sentimentality. Most of her clothing comes in purple, red, orange, yellow, green, brown, or some combination of these colours.
Personality Post Character Arc One: Eris is crass and rude, but ultimately tends to keep to herself if she can get away with it. No amount of outside validation can satisfy her in her current state, and so she does not necessarily seek out attention as she used to. While Eris does not go looking for conflict, or at least it's not her usually intention, she is not one to back down from a challenge unless her life is genuinely on the line. Despite everything Eris' still has the will to live on, though she's begun to question just why that could be.
While she appears to take a great deal of pride in her capabilities and even her appearance, Eris is actually fuelled by incredibly high standards she puts on herself and constantly feels as though she may be falling short. A rather insidious inferiority complex. However her inferiority complex has begun to kick into full gear. Eris' drive to improve has essentially vanished, and instead she simply continues to find fault within her own actions whenever she's forced to acknowledge any shortcomings. Even her good moments are marred and twisted in her mind.
When communicating with others, Eris prefers to tell things as they are and speaks her mind easily. This can, as you might imagine, be both a boon and a curse. Unfortunately sometimes she just can't help herself, and the thoughts and opinions she shares can cast a rather negative light on her. While at the army she used to hold her tongue for fellow soldiers and especially her superiors, now Eris curses more than ever before. She'd only keep her mouth shut if doing anything else would get her killed.
Eris currently lacks a proper focus. Survive, find a proper source of income. Her attention is firmly set on her more immediate needs, and they distract her from thinking too deeply on her situation and any deeper goals she may have. If she is given the opportunity to look into herself, however, she would find that she lacks a goal. A purpose. Even if she had a limited and unhappy goal back in the army she at least had something. Having put everything she had into her old life only to wind up spoiling it for herself leaves her feeling like a failure. Hollow and useless.
In the cold, harsh truth: Eris is now stuck in a deep depression. Her moods can be extremely volatile and shift easily, ranging from outright rage to painful sorrow. She's turned to drink more than before, and her self-worth is at an all time low. She feels purposeless.
Story: It is common knowledge that all noblemen engage in nightly activities with courtesans, common whores, and their women servants, yes? Perhaps not, yet it is not exactly uncommon regardless of where you go. Such was the fate of Eris' parents. Her father was Baron Varrick Albrecht while her mother, Aria Coulson, was one of his servants. While not the only servant that the married Baron had affairs with, Aria was among his favourites. Dutiful and polite, but experienced.
That said, he certainly hadn't wanted her to bear his child. In fact that possibility had been one of the few fears and regrets that kept him up at night...alongside their antics of course.
Yet that's precisely what happened. One quiet evening Varrick was stunned to have Aria nervously whispering about her pregnancy right in his ear. It would be a lie if he ever said that, in the heat of the moment, he hadn't thought about “accidentally” pushing Aria down the stairs right there. Some nights he would even regret not having the stones to make such a decision.
Alas, he had come to care for poor Aria beyond her prowess as a bed mate. That and she was among the more dependable servants in the first place. And to kill the product of his own seed? Bastard or not, the thought was enough to overpower his more selfish urges.
Aria inevitably decided to keep it, which Baron Albrecht had few qualms with, but he would not have the child legitimized. He would not publicly acknowledge this child, and just to be safe, he would scarcely address the spawn as more than the child of a servant even in private.
This, more or less, sums up the relationship between Varrick Albrecht and young Eris, who wasn't even allowed the Baron's surname as her own. Instead Eris was raised as Eris Coulson, daughter of Aria Coulson and some squire to one of Baron Albrecht's knights. Eris was told this man was killed in the line of duty whilst defending his sir. An honourable enough death, but in private Aria made certain that Eris knew the truth: Varrick Albrecht was her father. Bernese royalty was in her blood.
But this act of honesty may have been more cruel than generous. It was because of this knowledge that Eris, frustrated with the sheer lack of acknowledgement from the family she was technically a part of, would occasionally act out or snap in an utterly unprofessional manner. She would receive punishment after punishment, yet other servants had noticed that Varrick always seemed to dole out gentler punishments than another servant would received. Even others of Eris' young age would have faced harsher reprimands.
Eris eventually learned to bottle these frustrations, but they merely swelled and festered in the young girl's mind. She would have given anything to be called “daughter” by Varrick. The best she ever got was being addressed indirectly by him as “the girl”.
Despite knowing the truth Aria strictly taught young Eris to keep any relations and conversations between herself and any of Baron Albrecht's family; including himself, his wife Yuria, his two legitimate sons and legitimate daughter, strictly professional. As such she was forced to simply watch and serve whilst Varrick doted on his legitimate children. He had his expectations, and things were not often as flowery as Eris witnessed, but any deep contact with her father would have been preferable to the divisiveness she received instead.
One of Eris' primary tasks, likely some poorly thought out means of keeping contact with his bastard daughter, was to act as a servant to her older half-sister: Hera Albrecht. Hera did not know the truth: none but Varrick and Aria did. As such Hera treated Eris just as she'd treat any other servant. To her credit she was not awfully demanding or mean, but she was not especially kind either. More neutrality, from a sister Eris had wished she could have gotten close to.
In her pre-pubescent years she had some spare time during most afternoons. She'd usually spend it within watching distance of the Baron's training yards. There she would watch the squires study under their sirs, watch the knights and guards spar and practice drills. But that wasn't what she was interested in. It was when her brothers, Cyrus and Alexander Albrecht, sparred and practiced that she truly paid attention and watched for hours.
Combat seemed so much more interesting than the duties of a servant. Eris also noted that the Baron often had personal meals with his more decorated knights. He valued their service and the honour that they brought to his house. That ability wasn't something a servant had access to, but Eris would actually have to learn combat. She would have to prove herself worth investing time and resources into.
When Eris spoke of the idea to her mother she was, of course, met with resistance. In public Aria would simply ask if Eris wanted to go the way her “father” did. In private Aria chastised and dissuaded Eris. She could become the most famed warrior Bern has ever known and Baron Varrick would still never acknowledge her as his own.
But even being acknowledged as a powerful knight would be better than “the girl”. Anything was better than that.
Around age 13 Eris enlisted for squire-hood. While not ridiculed outright for her decision, other servants and even her half-siblings chuckled in amusement at her decision. Like a toddler pretending to be king, they simply went along with it but expected nothing. While this reality impacted Eris she was simply surprised that Baron Albrecht had allowed her to make this decision. Of course it was under the condition that instead of being his servant she would then become a knight under his banner, but still, she was allowed to leaver servant-hood for a shot at knighthood.
Eris seemingly lucked out when it came to her Sir. The “Sir” in question was a Sir Avery Willingham, a skilled cavalier and spear fighter, though her preferred horseback combat to battle on foot. Avery was initially a touch surprised that a 13 year old servant girl was to be his new squire, he was far from discouraging. In exchange he promised that he would treat Eris exactly as he would treat any other squire.
Fine by her, really.
The secret Albrecht studied and served Sir Willingham well enough. She was more than a touch obstinate at times, and quarreled with her Sir more than she ought to, which led to increasingly severe reprimands. Yet Avery did not have her reassigned.
When it came to testing her combat ability and choosing a martial area to study, Eris initially had chosen horseback combat. Her ideal path was to eventually become a Wyvern Knight, to fly with the best of the best like any proud Bernite ought to. Of course this was all in an effort to gain her father's approval. But first she would have to start with horses...
It did not go well, to say the least.
Eris had, what Sir Willingham described as, a naturally domineering aura about her. It either cowed horses into submission or enraged them to the point where they would violently buck her off of them. Either way there was no co-operation at all between her or any of her potential choices for a starting mount. The duo tried their best to work on and improve Eris' ability, but even the horses that would allow her to ride them she struggled greatly with controlling. She was far, far too forceful. At that rate it would have taken her years just to gain basic riding skills, and then they would still have to move on to combat.
Eris had to swallow that fact: riding wasn't for her.
However Eris seemed to have no problem when she was left on her own two feet. In fact she was rather good at moving about in training. The sword and spear suited her well, though a girl of her stature had predictable trouble swinging around a standard iron axe. Eris eventually settled on the spear, enjoying the range it gave her in battle along with the image of a “knight”.
Though she did receive good training actual combat experience didn't come for a few years yet. Though she was shocked to find herself fighting alongside her half-brothers, both of which leading their own personal knights while she was still under the command of her Sir. The idea frustrated Eris, but the battle at hand was far more important.
It was a relatively simple skirmish, in fact the Baron's forces were more or less overkill. It was a bandit raid on a town just within the Baron's lands, hardly requiring a unit larger than the number of bandits in the first place. Varrick intended it to be a show of force, a test of his forces' might along with a stern warning against future transgressions.
As such it was to be expected that the Baron's forces would sweep across the town with minimal casualties. While that turned out to be exactly what happened, Baron Varrick's zeal was curbed as his eldest son was counted amount one of the few gravely wounded. Cyrus' sword arm had taken the brunt of a heavy swing from a rusty old axe. Healers were able to save the arm from the initial injury, but dealing with the painful infection that came after took quite a good amount of time.
Cyrus would keep his arm, but it would be months before he could take to the field again.
Seeing Cyrus suffer such a brutal injury on what should have been a simple assignment shook both Alexander and Eris, though the two didn't speak to each other about it. Alexander's confidence dropped with his role model and primary sparring partner out, and his performance in spars and drills dropped as a result.
It was only then when the rather disappointed Baron Varrick took note of his bastard daughter's progress. Her performance grew better and better with each passing day, in just about every regard. It was noted that she had attitude issues when it came to other squires and sparring partners of her rank, she was diligent in her training and completely threw herself into battle.
In three years, when Eris was 17, her squire-hood came to an end. Sir Willingham happily gave Baron Varrick a solid recommendation and overall progress report. Aside from her attitude towards peers, she was a good soldier who followed orders from superiors...for the most part. Her solid combat proficiency and skill outweighed her occasional outburst.
Baron Varrick was completely fine with Eris being enlisted as a full-on soldier under his banner, but he actually went and took things a step further. His daughter Hera had grown lazy, spoiled, and complacent. At the rate she was going it would prove irksome to arrange a good marriage for her. Cyrus was considered “damaged goods” but was not beyond repair, yet he had fallen into a state of depression and suffered mental trauma from his injury. Alexander had grown nervous and self-doubtful. His legitimate children, at that point in time, were all disappointing. They needed motivation, lest his bloodline fall into such feeble and incompetent hands.
So he made a public announcement that Eris Coulson was, in fact, Eris Albrecht, shocking just about everyone in the family, but especially shocking Eris. He actually went and admitted that she was his daughter. To take things one step further, he put the work in to have her legitimized. It wasn't as though she would be a top candidate for marriage, and instead could now walk into battle with the name “Albrecht”. A name she could be proud of.
At first, Eris truly believed she had accomplished what she had dreamed of for years as a child. But everything around her changed...noticeably. The way her peers treated her changed. Some became more obstinate and almost snooty, while some became shy and quiet. Most of her superiors treated her the same but there were a few who would mumble and mutter under their breath. Even when Eris called them out on it she was simply reprimanded like any other soldier, and going over Baron Varrick would simply prove herself some sort of “daddy's girl”
As for her family itself, her mother worried for her more than ever. The way she saw it more bad came from being legitimized than good. Her siblings, who used to look at her like any other servant or soldier, now regarded her with varying degrees of scorn. Cyrus saw her as some sort of usurper rival, but this emotion did help to hasten his recovery. Alexander, in turn, was equally motivated. Hera regarded her with the most scorn, and went through swings of scarcely hidden depravity to reshaping her lifestyle habits to be a model noblewoman.
All of this was harder on Eris than she would ever admit, but the absolute worst part was that not a single thing had changed between her and her father. Varrick only spoke to her when he absolutely needed to, especially once his other heirs started to come to their senses. He still regarded her with disinterest and made no effort to get to know the girl. It was as if she was just some tool to spark up her half-siblings. It made her hate him, and yet, she still wanted his attention and his approval.
So she threw herself in further into her training and duties. As a soldier she could drown out the pain and negative emotion. She couldn't hear the screams of her heart over the sound of spears striking shields.
When the rebellion started to pick up in 1294, Varrick was quick to send a good portion of his forces to aid in it's cause. He saw a restored Bern as the inevitability and wanted to make sure he would earn good favor with the nation's heroes and following rulers. Eris was downright ecstatic to be among the chosen to serve the rebellion's cause. It got her away from home, even though Cyrus had also been chosen to serve.
It also gave her the opportunity to prove her worth and rise up in the ranks. Or so she had hoped...
UPDATE 1: With the rebellion ended, Eris was ecstatic at the rebel victory at first, but soon she began to feel hollow. The rebellion had become her whole life. Her efforts to rise through the ranks had bore only small fruits, and she was left bitter and envious of any she knew that were able to rise higher than her. However her brother Cyrus had it worse and bore deep resentment towards Eris for it, slowly going mad with the same emotions that Eris was suppressing.
One night Cyrus actually made an attempt on Eris' life, nearly ruining her left eye in the process, but was ultimately defeated by Eris. He was mad, emotional, unstable, and wounded, so he never had much hope of winning. However he managed to provoke Eris into killing him, not only her older brother and true heir to Baron Albrecht, but a fellow soldier. Eris' younger brother saw the whole confrontation and told their father and his superiors, but not before Eris fled Bern...
Class:Soldier
Age:20
Born in:Bern
Appearance:
{Spoiler}
Eris stands at 5'6 and weighs around 135 lbs. Her skin is fair, like most of her countrymen, but isn't so pale that it burns easy. She has long strawberry-blonde hair that she usually keeps tied up, either in a ponytail, a bun, or more commonly a “twin-tail” style, leaving most of her hair straight with two small tied tails on each side. Eris' eyes are a clear blue, neither too bright nor especially dark, though she currently wears an eye-patch around her left eye.
It is uncommon to see Eris outside of her armour and, even then, it is less common to see her outside of the tunics she wears beneath her armour. The armour in question is black with gold trim, complete with a padded green tunic. She wears brown or white slacks with it and sturdy brown boots. The set comes complete with a helmet, but Eris' vanity and general current lack of self-worth has her forgo it more often than not.
Outside of her armour Eris tends to dress in either blouses from her days of nobility, with revealing collars to support confidence and ego should she be feeling it, or simple and loose tunics for crummier days. She also owns a few dresses or skirts but keeps them mostly for sentimentality. Most of her clothing comes in purple, red, orange, yellow, green, brown, or some combination of these colours.
{Spoiler}
Personality Post Character Arc One: Eris is crass and rude, but ultimately tends to keep to herself if she can get away with it. No amount of outside validation can satisfy her in her current state, and so she does not necessarily seek out attention as she used to. While Eris does not go looking for conflict, or at least it's not her usually intention, she is not one to back down from a challenge unless her life is genuinely on the line. Despite everything Eris' still has the will to live on, though she's begun to question just why that could be.
While she appears to take a great deal of pride in her capabilities and even her appearance, Eris is actually fuelled by incredibly high standards she puts on herself and constantly feels as though she may be falling short. A rather insidious inferiority complex. However her inferiority complex has begun to kick into full gear. Eris' drive to improve has essentially vanished, and instead she simply continues to find fault within her own actions whenever she's forced to acknowledge any shortcomings. Even her good moments are marred and twisted in her mind.
When communicating with others, Eris prefers to tell things as they are and speaks her mind easily. This can, as you might imagine, be both a boon and a curse. Unfortunately sometimes she just can't help herself, and the thoughts and opinions she shares can cast a rather negative light on her. While at the army she used to hold her tongue for fellow soldiers and especially her superiors, now Eris curses more than ever before. She'd only keep her mouth shut if doing anything else would get her killed.
Eris currently lacks a proper focus. Survive, find a proper source of income. Her attention is firmly set on her more immediate needs, and they distract her from thinking too deeply on her situation and any deeper goals she may have. If she is given the opportunity to look into herself, however, she would find that she lacks a goal. A purpose. Even if she had a limited and unhappy goal back in the army she at least had something. Having put everything she had into her old life only to wind up spoiling it for herself leaves her feeling like a failure. Hollow and useless.
In the cold, harsh truth: Eris is now stuck in a deep depression. Her moods can be extremely volatile and shift easily, ranging from outright rage to painful sorrow. She's turned to drink more than before, and her self-worth is at an all time low. She feels purposeless.
Story: It is common knowledge that all noblemen engage in nightly activities with courtesans, common whores, and their women servants, yes? Perhaps not, yet it is not exactly uncommon regardless of where you go. Such was the fate of Eris' parents. Her father was Baron Varrick Albrecht while her mother, Aria Coulson, was one of his servants. While not the only servant that the married Baron had affairs with, Aria was among his favourites. Dutiful and polite, but experienced.
That said, he certainly hadn't wanted her to bear his child. In fact that possibility had been one of the few fears and regrets that kept him up at night...alongside their antics of course.
Yet that's precisely what happened. One quiet evening Varrick was stunned to have Aria nervously whispering about her pregnancy right in his ear. It would be a lie if he ever said that, in the heat of the moment, he hadn't thought about “accidentally” pushing Aria down the stairs right there. Some nights he would even regret not having the stones to make such a decision.
Alas, he had come to care for poor Aria beyond her prowess as a bed mate. That and she was among the more dependable servants in the first place. And to kill the product of his own seed? Bastard or not, the thought was enough to overpower his more selfish urges.
Aria inevitably decided to keep it, which Baron Albrecht had few qualms with, but he would not have the child legitimized. He would not publicly acknowledge this child, and just to be safe, he would scarcely address the spawn as more than the child of a servant even in private.
This, more or less, sums up the relationship between Varrick Albrecht and young Eris, who wasn't even allowed the Baron's surname as her own. Instead Eris was raised as Eris Coulson, daughter of Aria Coulson and some squire to one of Baron Albrecht's knights. Eris was told this man was killed in the line of duty whilst defending his sir. An honourable enough death, but in private Aria made certain that Eris knew the truth: Varrick Albrecht was her father. Bernese royalty was in her blood.
But this act of honesty may have been more cruel than generous. It was because of this knowledge that Eris, frustrated with the sheer lack of acknowledgement from the family she was technically a part of, would occasionally act out or snap in an utterly unprofessional manner. She would receive punishment after punishment, yet other servants had noticed that Varrick always seemed to dole out gentler punishments than another servant would received. Even others of Eris' young age would have faced harsher reprimands.
Eris eventually learned to bottle these frustrations, but they merely swelled and festered in the young girl's mind. She would have given anything to be called “daughter” by Varrick. The best she ever got was being addressed indirectly by him as “the girl”.
Despite knowing the truth Aria strictly taught young Eris to keep any relations and conversations between herself and any of Baron Albrecht's family; including himself, his wife Yuria, his two legitimate sons and legitimate daughter, strictly professional. As such she was forced to simply watch and serve whilst Varrick doted on his legitimate children. He had his expectations, and things were not often as flowery as Eris witnessed, but any deep contact with her father would have been preferable to the divisiveness she received instead.
One of Eris' primary tasks, likely some poorly thought out means of keeping contact with his bastard daughter, was to act as a servant to her older half-sister: Hera Albrecht. Hera did not know the truth: none but Varrick and Aria did. As such Hera treated Eris just as she'd treat any other servant. To her credit she was not awfully demanding or mean, but she was not especially kind either. More neutrality, from a sister Eris had wished she could have gotten close to.
In her pre-pubescent years she had some spare time during most afternoons. She'd usually spend it within watching distance of the Baron's training yards. There she would watch the squires study under their sirs, watch the knights and guards spar and practice drills. But that wasn't what she was interested in. It was when her brothers, Cyrus and Alexander Albrecht, sparred and practiced that she truly paid attention and watched for hours.
Combat seemed so much more interesting than the duties of a servant. Eris also noted that the Baron often had personal meals with his more decorated knights. He valued their service and the honour that they brought to his house. That ability wasn't something a servant had access to, but Eris would actually have to learn combat. She would have to prove herself worth investing time and resources into.
When Eris spoke of the idea to her mother she was, of course, met with resistance. In public Aria would simply ask if Eris wanted to go the way her “father” did. In private Aria chastised and dissuaded Eris. She could become the most famed warrior Bern has ever known and Baron Varrick would still never acknowledge her as his own.
But even being acknowledged as a powerful knight would be better than “the girl”. Anything was better than that.
Around age 13 Eris enlisted for squire-hood. While not ridiculed outright for her decision, other servants and even her half-siblings chuckled in amusement at her decision. Like a toddler pretending to be king, they simply went along with it but expected nothing. While this reality impacted Eris she was simply surprised that Baron Albrecht had allowed her to make this decision. Of course it was under the condition that instead of being his servant she would then become a knight under his banner, but still, she was allowed to leaver servant-hood for a shot at knighthood.
Eris seemingly lucked out when it came to her Sir. The “Sir” in question was a Sir Avery Willingham, a skilled cavalier and spear fighter, though her preferred horseback combat to battle on foot. Avery was initially a touch surprised that a 13 year old servant girl was to be his new squire, he was far from discouraging. In exchange he promised that he would treat Eris exactly as he would treat any other squire.
Fine by her, really.
The secret Albrecht studied and served Sir Willingham well enough. She was more than a touch obstinate at times, and quarreled with her Sir more than she ought to, which led to increasingly severe reprimands. Yet Avery did not have her reassigned.
When it came to testing her combat ability and choosing a martial area to study, Eris initially had chosen horseback combat. Her ideal path was to eventually become a Wyvern Knight, to fly with the best of the best like any proud Bernite ought to. Of course this was all in an effort to gain her father's approval. But first she would have to start with horses...
It did not go well, to say the least.
Eris had, what Sir Willingham described as, a naturally domineering aura about her. It either cowed horses into submission or enraged them to the point where they would violently buck her off of them. Either way there was no co-operation at all between her or any of her potential choices for a starting mount. The duo tried their best to work on and improve Eris' ability, but even the horses that would allow her to ride them she struggled greatly with controlling. She was far, far too forceful. At that rate it would have taken her years just to gain basic riding skills, and then they would still have to move on to combat.
Eris had to swallow that fact: riding wasn't for her.
However Eris seemed to have no problem when she was left on her own two feet. In fact she was rather good at moving about in training. The sword and spear suited her well, though a girl of her stature had predictable trouble swinging around a standard iron axe. Eris eventually settled on the spear, enjoying the range it gave her in battle along with the image of a “knight”.
Though she did receive good training actual combat experience didn't come for a few years yet. Though she was shocked to find herself fighting alongside her half-brothers, both of which leading their own personal knights while she was still under the command of her Sir. The idea frustrated Eris, but the battle at hand was far more important.
It was a relatively simple skirmish, in fact the Baron's forces were more or less overkill. It was a bandit raid on a town just within the Baron's lands, hardly requiring a unit larger than the number of bandits in the first place. Varrick intended it to be a show of force, a test of his forces' might along with a stern warning against future transgressions.
As such it was to be expected that the Baron's forces would sweep across the town with minimal casualties. While that turned out to be exactly what happened, Baron Varrick's zeal was curbed as his eldest son was counted amount one of the few gravely wounded. Cyrus' sword arm had taken the brunt of a heavy swing from a rusty old axe. Healers were able to save the arm from the initial injury, but dealing with the painful infection that came after took quite a good amount of time.
Cyrus would keep his arm, but it would be months before he could take to the field again.
Seeing Cyrus suffer such a brutal injury on what should have been a simple assignment shook both Alexander and Eris, though the two didn't speak to each other about it. Alexander's confidence dropped with his role model and primary sparring partner out, and his performance in spars and drills dropped as a result.
It was only then when the rather disappointed Baron Varrick took note of his bastard daughter's progress. Her performance grew better and better with each passing day, in just about every regard. It was noted that she had attitude issues when it came to other squires and sparring partners of her rank, she was diligent in her training and completely threw herself into battle.
In three years, when Eris was 17, her squire-hood came to an end. Sir Willingham happily gave Baron Varrick a solid recommendation and overall progress report. Aside from her attitude towards peers, she was a good soldier who followed orders from superiors...for the most part. Her solid combat proficiency and skill outweighed her occasional outburst.
Baron Varrick was completely fine with Eris being enlisted as a full-on soldier under his banner, but he actually went and took things a step further. His daughter Hera had grown lazy, spoiled, and complacent. At the rate she was going it would prove irksome to arrange a good marriage for her. Cyrus was considered “damaged goods” but was not beyond repair, yet he had fallen into a state of depression and suffered mental trauma from his injury. Alexander had grown nervous and self-doubtful. His legitimate children, at that point in time, were all disappointing. They needed motivation, lest his bloodline fall into such feeble and incompetent hands.
So he made a public announcement that Eris Coulson was, in fact, Eris Albrecht, shocking just about everyone in the family, but especially shocking Eris. He actually went and admitted that she was his daughter. To take things one step further, he put the work in to have her legitimized. It wasn't as though she would be a top candidate for marriage, and instead could now walk into battle with the name “Albrecht”. A name she could be proud of.
At first, Eris truly believed she had accomplished what she had dreamed of for years as a child. But everything around her changed...noticeably. The way her peers treated her changed. Some became more obstinate and almost snooty, while some became shy and quiet. Most of her superiors treated her the same but there were a few who would mumble and mutter under their breath. Even when Eris called them out on it she was simply reprimanded like any other soldier, and going over Baron Varrick would simply prove herself some sort of “daddy's girl”
As for her family itself, her mother worried for her more than ever. The way she saw it more bad came from being legitimized than good. Her siblings, who used to look at her like any other servant or soldier, now regarded her with varying degrees of scorn. Cyrus saw her as some sort of usurper rival, but this emotion did help to hasten his recovery. Alexander, in turn, was equally motivated. Hera regarded her with the most scorn, and went through swings of scarcely hidden depravity to reshaping her lifestyle habits to be a model noblewoman.
All of this was harder on Eris than she would ever admit, but the absolute worst part was that not a single thing had changed between her and her father. Varrick only spoke to her when he absolutely needed to, especially once his other heirs started to come to their senses. He still regarded her with disinterest and made no effort to get to know the girl. It was as if she was just some tool to spark up her half-siblings. It made her hate him, and yet, she still wanted his attention and his approval.
So she threw herself in further into her training and duties. As a soldier she could drown out the pain and negative emotion. She couldn't hear the screams of her heart over the sound of spears striking shields.
When the rebellion started to pick up in 1294, Varrick was quick to send a good portion of his forces to aid in it's cause. He saw a restored Bern as the inevitability and wanted to make sure he would earn good favor with the nation's heroes and following rulers. Eris was downright ecstatic to be among the chosen to serve the rebellion's cause. It got her away from home, even though Cyrus had also been chosen to serve.
It also gave her the opportunity to prove her worth and rise up in the ranks. Or so she had hoped...
UPDATE 1: With the rebellion ended, Eris was ecstatic at the rebel victory at first, but soon she began to feel hollow. The rebellion had become her whole life. Her efforts to rise through the ranks had bore only small fruits, and she was left bitter and envious of any she knew that were able to rise higher than her. However her brother Cyrus had it worse and bore deep resentment towards Eris for it, slowly going mad with the same emotions that Eris was suppressing.
One night Cyrus actually made an attempt on Eris' life, nearly ruining her left eye in the process, but was ultimately defeated by Eris. He was mad, emotional, unstable, and wounded, so he never had much hope of winning. However he managed to provoke Eris into killing him, not only her older brother and true heir to Baron Albrecht, but a fellow soldier. Eris' younger brother saw the whole confrontation and told their father and his superiors, but not before Eris fled Bern...
