Kasimir (Lysander 3rd alt; complete)
Apr 30, 2017 22:22:19 GMT -6
Post by Kasimir on Apr 30, 2017 22:22:19 GMT -6
Name:Kasimir
Class:Swordmaster
Age:37
Born in: Northwest Ilia
Appearance:(Quick disclaimer: This slot should be open. Lysander has 30 posts and Adelaide has 24, thus making 54 posts between two characters. Let me know if this is somehow incorrect! Additionally, this is my first pre-promote, so let me know if anything needs more fleshing out!)
The first noticeable feature pertaining to Kasimir’s appearance is that he is, for all intents and purposes, albino. His hair is long, somewhat silken, and flowing, being so pale in blond pallor that it appears white even in darkness. His red eyes glint with much intrigue and often suggests a brooding impression, when in reality it is simply resultant of bearing such an unusually-toned iris. Aside from his two most distinguishable feature, he has a pointed chin and a prominent nose. His physique falls under the heading of skinny with a composition of muscle more befitting of a dancer’s body than that of a swordsman’s. He stands at around 6’1”.
Kasimir wears a heavy gray garb with a black overcoat that covers most areas of his skin in order to wick off the fierce Ilian winds. Decades of living in this wasteland have rendered his skin dry and waxy, so he also wears it as a result of minor vanity issues. His cloak’s collar has a gold-laden trim (color-wise, not substance-wise) and wears a black headband around his head. Finally, he wears soft-soled boots for ease of movement, improved traction, and overall furtive travel.
Personality:At first glance, Kasimir might not seem the most accessible of people. He is often classified as emotionally distant and eccentric; he speaks widely in metaphor and often hyphenates words randomly in conversation, as if trying to bend the boundaries of legitimate spoken Elibean. He does this for fun, however, as he is indeed well-spoken, if a bit prone to being bored with normal conversation. Additionally, Kasimir comes off as brash and arrogant, and is quick to boast about his prowess in both swordsmanship and wood-carving alike. In short, he has quite an ego, but this arises from an inferiority complex combined with prior childhood negligence.
Kasimir is an accomplished wood-carver and is mostly vegetarian save for fish.
History:Kasimir was born in the frozen mountain ranges of Ilia in a small village. While the village was not impoverished in the material sense since it often received aid from the mercenaries and pegasus knights that were used to deliver food and other essentials to the region, the treacherous terrain and near-perpetually cold temperatures made it difficult for excitement to flourish there. Growing up for Kasimir was a humdrum affair as a result. He was the youngest sibling in his family, being the sole male out of two older sisters, who both ultimately became pegasus knights.
It would not be unreasonable to assume that Kasimir would have found this frustrating; because his sisters were routinely returning home with distinguished rites of honor in their battalion, Kasimir was often overshadowed in his household. Additionally, the fact that he was albino did not help matters – in fact, it made him the subject of scorn among children and elders alike in the villages. Though it was a rare gene, it should not have been unheard of. Both this coupled with his feelings of ineptitude instilled within him at a young age contributed to his obsession with impressing others growing up.
Because Kasimir was often neglected, he had much time to himself. He began to fantasize about being a mercenary, and often pretended that the sticks that were formed from the winter pine branches every year were swords. He would spend hours bundled up in cold temperatures swinging sticks about, pretending that he was killing invisible opponents with them. He initially did this out of fascination with swordplay, but he ultimately did it because he wanted to be something greater than a village boy with no chance of earning the respect of his family or village.
Kasimir was eleven years old when he felt the cool weight of a real sword for the first time. His eldest sister, one of the few people who had defended and taken pity on Kasimir throughout his childhood, had found a discarded iron sword while patrolling on her pegasus and decided to give it to him. The first remark that he uttered was that the sword was too heavy, so he set himself the task of making his arms strong enough to swing it. Thus, in his daily play routine outside, he replaced the sticks he used to swing with the sword, slashing at nothing but invisible bandits and thieves. In time, he was able to swing it well enough, but he still knew nothing of swordplay.
When Kasimir was thirteen, he was taught by his oldest sister how to carve wooden figurines. He continues to hone this skill to this day, having made carvings ranging from simple wooden play weapons to ornate birds and other animals. That same year, a well-respected mercenary leader came to the village and announced that he would take one youth with him to learn the ways of the blade. The incentive that he gave was that he wanted to teach someone how to be a mercenary and give them a chance in this harsh winter wonderland.
While many burly young men ranging from adolescence and up gladly displayed higher skill with sword outright but stayed their weapons, Kasimir immediately rushed up to the man and challenged him to a duel. Amidst hysterical outbursts of laughter (including some from his own family save for his eldest sister, who facepalmed) and knowing nothing of formal swordplay, Kasimir was defeated within seconds before he could even complete a full clumsy swing with the iron sword.
As the entire village laughed at his humiliating defeat, the mercenary leader took pity on Kasimir. He promptly announced that Kasimir had precisely the “fire” he was looking for, and offered to take the fledgling boy under his wing as a trainee. Kasimir eagerly accepted despite protests from his sister, and he left home to live with the mercenary leader in a fortified dwelling outside of Ilia’s capital, Edessa.
While living with the mercenaries, Kasimir was put under a brutal regimen where he would be woken up before the sun rose and would train for several hours a day with little preparation beforehand, stopping only for brief meals. This continued for four years, with each day becoming easier than the last. Kasimir was specifically taught to focus on the footwork and choreography of swordplay rather than brute application of strength (which better suited his thin body type), and he eventually became a full-fledged myrmidon and member of the mercenary troop at the age of eighteen. He accompanied them on raids and missions, finally feeling like he had a place he could call his own. Over the next several years, he honed his skill against bandits, other mercenary bands, and overall insurgents, developing his skill with the blade in the process, with each and every battle granting him more and more experience.
At the age of twenty-four, Kasimir received a formal letter from Edessa that his eldest sister, the only one who favored him, was killed in action by an archer. She herself had sent a letter to him shortly before her demise with a small stipend of gold enclosed for him. This stipend was initially hers, but she felt that it would better suit her only brother. However, Kasimir soon found out that she had not been killed in any ordinary action; in reality, she had been assassinated by the archer of the very same mercenary band that Kasimir was part of. It turned out the entire band desired his stipend of gold, so they began to plot against him, having hatched a plan to mercilessly kill his sister in order to sabotage him into giving away the gold. The aforementioned “formal letter” informing Kasimir of her death had actually been a clever forgery by the mercenary leader. He learned this information by chance, through eavesdropping, and fled before he would be killed himself.
Indignant and grief-stricken, Kasimir fled the compound in a clandestine fashion and struck out on his own, lending his sword arm for those who desired it, electing to base himself in Edessa. He regularly answered tavern bounty boards and the pleas of locals, embarking on a streak of altruism in the process, though this to him was a guise that masked his individual desire to matter to others and better himself both physically and morally. He never asked to be thanked, only to be paid, then left alone.
This brought him many opportunities and enabled him to fight in a plethora of battles for over a decade and often led him outside of the province. He invaded small squadrons of Ilian bandits, fought alongside nomadic Sacaean archers-for-hire, crossed blades with pit fighters from Bern, and aligned himself with mercenary bands of various backgrounds, though he never permanently stayed with any of them. He eventually became a seasoned swordsman in due time, devoting himself to the art of swordplay every day.
In one such instance, when he was thirty, Kasimir thought that the odds were against him when he and a mercenary band of five he was traveling with was flanked by four rogue nomads on a Sacaean plain. He tried, in vain, to swipe at them with his blade, but their steeds proved too fast for him, and he suffered a couple of minor injuries after being grazed twice by short-range arrows. However, he hatched a plan: he was missing his strikes because he was aiming at the men on the backs of the horses rather than concentrating on the steeds’ movements themselves. Thus, he instructed his comrades to aim low and strike upward when the nomads closed in. This plan proved fruitful, and the unsuspecting nomads were unseated by the strikes and thusly killed.
Two years prior to present day, at the age of thirty-five, Kasimir stumbled upon his old mercenary leader in a tavern, now entering a venerable old age. While the latter seemed eager to patch up old wounds, Kasimir declined and challenged him to a duel, as he had done twenty years prior, this time with a remarkable amount of experience under his belt. The aging though still extremely skilled swordmaster accepted his proposal. For Kasimir, twenty years of blood, sweat, and tears had led to this moment.
The whirlwind duel took place in a field on a clear, cold winter day. First one to three hits would win, and the winner would strike the killing blow without any resistance so that they could die honorably. It commenced at midday’s light, and while there were no onlookers, the frenzied clashing of blades appeared like something of an intricately choreographed dance. Block for block, the two men nearly appeared to be gliding with their practiced footwork and the guided dance of their blades. The bout raged on for what felt like hours with both men appearing equally matched and possessing peerless skill. Neither landed a hit for an extremely long time, and when the first hit was landed by Kasimir, the wizened swordmaster quickly hit him back, thereby leaving the duo evenly matched for the remainder of the bout. It was an odd conundrum – Kasimir’s youth but less experience, and the mercenary leader’s greater experience but advanced age. Every ducked blow and each successive parry reminded him why he became a swordsman and why he had endured and persevered through hardship for all these years.
The hit count soon became two-for-two, and with both men beginning to show signs of exhaustion well into the afternoon, Kasimir feinted as a last-ditch effort, going in for a frontal blow but quickly retracting his blade at the final nanosecond. Though the elder swordsman had predicted this play, Kasimir’s younger, swifter limbs enabled him to dodge the swipe, and barely land a third hit on his former master in the nick of time. Had he stayed a split second longer, or suffered a lapse in judgement, he would have lost the duel. However, he won, albeit barely.
As per their agreement, Kasimir was permitted to administer the killing blow to his former master, but he showed mercy and instead slashed the tendons in his master’s dominant sword-arm. This ensured that he could never fight again, but also that he would ultimately live. This display prompted Kasimir’s former master to submit to him and proclaim him, finally, the better swordsman, and a promising swordmaster.
Kasimir is still unsure as to why he elected to spare his former teacher. He surmises that it is because a good swordsman ought to know when to stay his hand, or because he felt that his master could benefit from an epiphany or change or heart, or perhaps there is an ulterior motive that he has yet to address. In any event, with his vengeance exacted, Kasimir’s journey is still only beginning. He yearns to see the rest of Elibe and challenge opponents from increasingly diverse background. Thus, he continues to lend his sword arm to the less fortunate whenever he feels like, and above all, he goes wherever the wind – and his sword – take him.
NPC fight:This is an alt.
PC fight:This is an alt.
Class:Swordmaster
Age:37
Born in: Northwest Ilia
Appearance:(Quick disclaimer: This slot should be open. Lysander has 30 posts and Adelaide has 24, thus making 54 posts between two characters. Let me know if this is somehow incorrect! Additionally, this is my first pre-promote, so let me know if anything needs more fleshing out!)
The first noticeable feature pertaining to Kasimir’s appearance is that he is, for all intents and purposes, albino. His hair is long, somewhat silken, and flowing, being so pale in blond pallor that it appears white even in darkness. His red eyes glint with much intrigue and often suggests a brooding impression, when in reality it is simply resultant of bearing such an unusually-toned iris. Aside from his two most distinguishable feature, he has a pointed chin and a prominent nose. His physique falls under the heading of skinny with a composition of muscle more befitting of a dancer’s body than that of a swordsman’s. He stands at around 6’1”.
Kasimir wears a heavy gray garb with a black overcoat that covers most areas of his skin in order to wick off the fierce Ilian winds. Decades of living in this wasteland have rendered his skin dry and waxy, so he also wears it as a result of minor vanity issues. His cloak’s collar has a gold-laden trim (color-wise, not substance-wise) and wears a black headband around his head. Finally, he wears soft-soled boots for ease of movement, improved traction, and overall furtive travel.
Personality:At first glance, Kasimir might not seem the most accessible of people. He is often classified as emotionally distant and eccentric; he speaks widely in metaphor and often hyphenates words randomly in conversation, as if trying to bend the boundaries of legitimate spoken Elibean. He does this for fun, however, as he is indeed well-spoken, if a bit prone to being bored with normal conversation. Additionally, Kasimir comes off as brash and arrogant, and is quick to boast about his prowess in both swordsmanship and wood-carving alike. In short, he has quite an ego, but this arises from an inferiority complex combined with prior childhood negligence.
Kasimir is an accomplished wood-carver and is mostly vegetarian save for fish.
History:Kasimir was born in the frozen mountain ranges of Ilia in a small village. While the village was not impoverished in the material sense since it often received aid from the mercenaries and pegasus knights that were used to deliver food and other essentials to the region, the treacherous terrain and near-perpetually cold temperatures made it difficult for excitement to flourish there. Growing up for Kasimir was a humdrum affair as a result. He was the youngest sibling in his family, being the sole male out of two older sisters, who both ultimately became pegasus knights.
It would not be unreasonable to assume that Kasimir would have found this frustrating; because his sisters were routinely returning home with distinguished rites of honor in their battalion, Kasimir was often overshadowed in his household. Additionally, the fact that he was albino did not help matters – in fact, it made him the subject of scorn among children and elders alike in the villages. Though it was a rare gene, it should not have been unheard of. Both this coupled with his feelings of ineptitude instilled within him at a young age contributed to his obsession with impressing others growing up.
Because Kasimir was often neglected, he had much time to himself. He began to fantasize about being a mercenary, and often pretended that the sticks that were formed from the winter pine branches every year were swords. He would spend hours bundled up in cold temperatures swinging sticks about, pretending that he was killing invisible opponents with them. He initially did this out of fascination with swordplay, but he ultimately did it because he wanted to be something greater than a village boy with no chance of earning the respect of his family or village.
Kasimir was eleven years old when he felt the cool weight of a real sword for the first time. His eldest sister, one of the few people who had defended and taken pity on Kasimir throughout his childhood, had found a discarded iron sword while patrolling on her pegasus and decided to give it to him. The first remark that he uttered was that the sword was too heavy, so he set himself the task of making his arms strong enough to swing it. Thus, in his daily play routine outside, he replaced the sticks he used to swing with the sword, slashing at nothing but invisible bandits and thieves. In time, he was able to swing it well enough, but he still knew nothing of swordplay.
When Kasimir was thirteen, he was taught by his oldest sister how to carve wooden figurines. He continues to hone this skill to this day, having made carvings ranging from simple wooden play weapons to ornate birds and other animals. That same year, a well-respected mercenary leader came to the village and announced that he would take one youth with him to learn the ways of the blade. The incentive that he gave was that he wanted to teach someone how to be a mercenary and give them a chance in this harsh winter wonderland.
While many burly young men ranging from adolescence and up gladly displayed higher skill with sword outright but stayed their weapons, Kasimir immediately rushed up to the man and challenged him to a duel. Amidst hysterical outbursts of laughter (including some from his own family save for his eldest sister, who facepalmed) and knowing nothing of formal swordplay, Kasimir was defeated within seconds before he could even complete a full clumsy swing with the iron sword.
As the entire village laughed at his humiliating defeat, the mercenary leader took pity on Kasimir. He promptly announced that Kasimir had precisely the “fire” he was looking for, and offered to take the fledgling boy under his wing as a trainee. Kasimir eagerly accepted despite protests from his sister, and he left home to live with the mercenary leader in a fortified dwelling outside of Ilia’s capital, Edessa.
While living with the mercenaries, Kasimir was put under a brutal regimen where he would be woken up before the sun rose and would train for several hours a day with little preparation beforehand, stopping only for brief meals. This continued for four years, with each day becoming easier than the last. Kasimir was specifically taught to focus on the footwork and choreography of swordplay rather than brute application of strength (which better suited his thin body type), and he eventually became a full-fledged myrmidon and member of the mercenary troop at the age of eighteen. He accompanied them on raids and missions, finally feeling like he had a place he could call his own. Over the next several years, he honed his skill against bandits, other mercenary bands, and overall insurgents, developing his skill with the blade in the process, with each and every battle granting him more and more experience.
At the age of twenty-four, Kasimir received a formal letter from Edessa that his eldest sister, the only one who favored him, was killed in action by an archer. She herself had sent a letter to him shortly before her demise with a small stipend of gold enclosed for him. This stipend was initially hers, but she felt that it would better suit her only brother. However, Kasimir soon found out that she had not been killed in any ordinary action; in reality, she had been assassinated by the archer of the very same mercenary band that Kasimir was part of. It turned out the entire band desired his stipend of gold, so they began to plot against him, having hatched a plan to mercilessly kill his sister in order to sabotage him into giving away the gold. The aforementioned “formal letter” informing Kasimir of her death had actually been a clever forgery by the mercenary leader. He learned this information by chance, through eavesdropping, and fled before he would be killed himself.
Indignant and grief-stricken, Kasimir fled the compound in a clandestine fashion and struck out on his own, lending his sword arm for those who desired it, electing to base himself in Edessa. He regularly answered tavern bounty boards and the pleas of locals, embarking on a streak of altruism in the process, though this to him was a guise that masked his individual desire to matter to others and better himself both physically and morally. He never asked to be thanked, only to be paid, then left alone.
This brought him many opportunities and enabled him to fight in a plethora of battles for over a decade and often led him outside of the province. He invaded small squadrons of Ilian bandits, fought alongside nomadic Sacaean archers-for-hire, crossed blades with pit fighters from Bern, and aligned himself with mercenary bands of various backgrounds, though he never permanently stayed with any of them. He eventually became a seasoned swordsman in due time, devoting himself to the art of swordplay every day.
In one such instance, when he was thirty, Kasimir thought that the odds were against him when he and a mercenary band of five he was traveling with was flanked by four rogue nomads on a Sacaean plain. He tried, in vain, to swipe at them with his blade, but their steeds proved too fast for him, and he suffered a couple of minor injuries after being grazed twice by short-range arrows. However, he hatched a plan: he was missing his strikes because he was aiming at the men on the backs of the horses rather than concentrating on the steeds’ movements themselves. Thus, he instructed his comrades to aim low and strike upward when the nomads closed in. This plan proved fruitful, and the unsuspecting nomads were unseated by the strikes and thusly killed.
Two years prior to present day, at the age of thirty-five, Kasimir stumbled upon his old mercenary leader in a tavern, now entering a venerable old age. While the latter seemed eager to patch up old wounds, Kasimir declined and challenged him to a duel, as he had done twenty years prior, this time with a remarkable amount of experience under his belt. The aging though still extremely skilled swordmaster accepted his proposal. For Kasimir, twenty years of blood, sweat, and tears had led to this moment.
The whirlwind duel took place in a field on a clear, cold winter day. First one to three hits would win, and the winner would strike the killing blow without any resistance so that they could die honorably. It commenced at midday’s light, and while there were no onlookers, the frenzied clashing of blades appeared like something of an intricately choreographed dance. Block for block, the two men nearly appeared to be gliding with their practiced footwork and the guided dance of their blades. The bout raged on for what felt like hours with both men appearing equally matched and possessing peerless skill. Neither landed a hit for an extremely long time, and when the first hit was landed by Kasimir, the wizened swordmaster quickly hit him back, thereby leaving the duo evenly matched for the remainder of the bout. It was an odd conundrum – Kasimir’s youth but less experience, and the mercenary leader’s greater experience but advanced age. Every ducked blow and each successive parry reminded him why he became a swordsman and why he had endured and persevered through hardship for all these years.
The hit count soon became two-for-two, and with both men beginning to show signs of exhaustion well into the afternoon, Kasimir feinted as a last-ditch effort, going in for a frontal blow but quickly retracting his blade at the final nanosecond. Though the elder swordsman had predicted this play, Kasimir’s younger, swifter limbs enabled him to dodge the swipe, and barely land a third hit on his former master in the nick of time. Had he stayed a split second longer, or suffered a lapse in judgement, he would have lost the duel. However, he won, albeit barely.
As per their agreement, Kasimir was permitted to administer the killing blow to his former master, but he showed mercy and instead slashed the tendons in his master’s dominant sword-arm. This ensured that he could never fight again, but also that he would ultimately live. This display prompted Kasimir’s former master to submit to him and proclaim him, finally, the better swordsman, and a promising swordmaster.
Kasimir is still unsure as to why he elected to spare his former teacher. He surmises that it is because a good swordsman ought to know when to stay his hand, or because he felt that his master could benefit from an epiphany or change or heart, or perhaps there is an ulterior motive that he has yet to address. In any event, with his vengeance exacted, Kasimir’s journey is still only beginning. He yearns to see the rest of Elibe and challenge opponents from increasingly diverse background. Thus, he continues to lend his sword arm to the less fortunate whenever he feels like, and above all, he goes wherever the wind – and his sword – take him.
NPC fight:This is an alt.
PC fight:This is an alt.
