PnP RP: Mice and men and wizards, oh my.Follow

Aurora Calwen
Early Life: Born the only child of Duke Calwen, Aurora was raised as a young lady of a noble house, taught courtly manners and other skills related to that station. But as an only child, she was also trained from a young age in the skills necessary should she be required to take up her father’s place in the Taldan Imperial Guard, a largely ceremonial wing of the Taldan military.

She took to that training with zeal and by the age of 15 was an expert rider and proficient with a half dozen weapons, She favors the saber and cavalry double sword, a massive weapon meant for use on horseback, though she has become fairly proficient in using it while on foot. She is also well versed in military strategy and history.

Arranged Marriage and Running Away: At the age of 16, Duke Calwen arranged a marriage for his daughter to Patrician Allemand, a man more than three times her age. The marriage would have cemented an alliance between the two houses, but Aurora would have nothing of it. After learning of the arrangement, she waited until late that night, packed a traveling bag, donned her armor and rode off into the night on her trusty steed, leaving Oppara behind.

When her father found out about Aurora absconding from her duties, he was livid. He sent a unit of Taldan’s finest cavalrymen to capture her and bring her home. The eight men finally caught up with her a few miles from Maheto, a city in the northern foothills of the World’s Edge Mountains. As their encounter began, the first rumbles of a thunderstorm could be heard a few miles off.

They ordered her to surrender and return quietly to her father, but she had other ideas. She drew her cavalry blade from its sheath and bore down upon the men who had come to capture her. Her first charge felled two of the men before they could even react. The second charge met with a more measured response and she only slew one other man, while at the same time being knocked from her saddle. Alone and on foot against five mounted men, she carefully measured her response and began cutting the horses out from underneath them as they rode against her until she was now only outnumbered four to one – one man was knocked unconscious by his fall - with neither side having the advantage of mounts. The men tried to swarm her, but quickly learned the folly of their actions as she brought down each of them with measured blows to the weakest spots of their armor.

Blackmoon’s Blades: Unbeknownst to Aurora, her fight with the soldiers had been witnessed by Marcus Blackmoon, younger brother and second-in-command to Coren Blackmoon, Captain of Blackmoon’s Blades, a mercenary company that operated out of Maheto.

After taking time to clean her weapon and armor and tend to some minor wounds her horse received, she rode into town and sought shelter at one of the local inns, the Stone Hammer, a dwarven establishment. It was there where Coren Blackmoon approached her. He was a kind albeit stern man, and projected something of a brotherly quality to all who he spoke to and soon she found herself filling him in on the details of her situation. He listened quietly until at last she had finished, at which point he immediately offered her a position with the Blades. She accepted immediately, having no idea until this point what she planned to do beyond fleeing her father.

A natural leader and skilled soldier, she rose quickly through their ranks until a few years later she found herself as Coren’s trusted lieutenant and commander of the Blades’ cavalry, behind only Coren and Marcus in rank within the Blades.

War with Qadira: Long standing tensions between Taldor and its neighbor Qadira flared into war again when Qadira laid siege to Zimar, one of Taldor’s greatest military strongholds. The army was mobilized, but was not enough to break the siege, suffering heavy losses in the ensuing battles.

With the army unable to break the siege, Grand Prince Stavian III ordered the hiring of every mercenary company within Taldor in order to shore up the flagging military might of the nation. The Qadirans had planned for this and had inserted spies within every single company. They allowed the rejuvenated army to bring down some of their smaller forays into the nation. However, when the Taldan army attempted once again to break the siege, they found themselves suddenly without their allies as the spies killed the leaders of each mercenary company. Even Coren and Marcus Blackmoon fell to the spy within their ranks, though Marcus took the spy with him as he died.

Disorganized by the sudden assassinations, all looked lost for the Taldan forces until a lone horn sounded and runners from Blackmoon’s Blades began delivering new orders to the scattered remnants of the other mercenary companies. Desperate for someone to be in charge, anyone, the mercenaries all fell in line behind the Blades and organized for a counter attack against the forces that had been slaughtering them. So it was that Aurora Calwen, eighteen year old daughter of a noble house, found herself in command of the largest force of mercenaries Taldor had ever seen.

Unprepared for the sudden organized retaliation, the Qadirans realized that the only way to survive was to take the city once and for all. They massed for a push at the gates all at once. Mercenary forces crushed them against the northern and western gates while the remaining members of the regular army fought them along the eastern gate. The forces along the southern entrance fought uncontested and finally broke through, only to find the remnants of Blackmoon’s Blades and several other mercenary companies waiting for them inside the city.

The battle was short but extremely fierce. The Qadirans were wiped out, but so were the mercenaries. The only survivor was an extremely exhausted and injured Aurora Calwen, now blind in her left eye as a slash to her face had bit through her winged helmet’s visor and pierced it.

Flight from Taldor: After her wounds had healed, Aurora was brought to Oppara, where she was honored by Grand Prince Stavian III for her heroism. In addition to the honors, one of Abadar’s clerics healed her eye, though the scar across her face will always remain.

Unfortunately, at the ceremony, she was recognized by Patrician Allemand, who demanded she be clapped in irons and brought up on charges for fleeing her arranged marriage. She immediately challenged him to a duel. When he refused and ordered his men to arrest her, she drew her saber and cut down several of his guards before running him through.

Now a wanted criminal in Taldor, she once again fled to seek her fortune elsewhere.


Wandering the World: Fleeing Taldor, Aurora set out to make her fortune. As she traveled, she sought out like minded people, seeking to find the camaraderie she had enjoyed in Blackmoon’s Blades. However, wherever she went, she brought trouble to those she would join. Just as she would find herself settling in to a new mercenary company, bounty hunters or lawmen from Taldor would catch up with her.

She would fight valiantly, as would her new comrades, but inevitably too many of her allies would fall, spelling death for the company. Eventually, she gave up on finding a new place to call home and continued wandering alone, stopping only to help small villages with things like goblin infestations or Orcish raids in order to make enough to replenish her supplies.


The Wizard’s Knight: Her wandering had gone on for over a year when things changed once again for Aurora. The morning was like many others. She had awoken, broken camp, slew half a dozen bounty hunters…nothing unusual. Then as she set out, she heard the sound of gunfire, followed by a startled scream.

She gave her horse, Starbrite, a kick and charged in the direction of the sound, drawing her massive cavalry blade as she did so. As she rounded the next bend, she saw a man in a black coat wrestling with a pair of goblins. She also spotted even more goblins rushing at him. A light pull on the reins directed her steed towards the approaching group of maniacal monsters.

With swift and terrible blows, she rode through the creatures like a scythe through a field of wheat. It wasn’t long before a great number of dead goblins littered the ground around her. She then turned her attention to the man.

He had managed to draw a dagger and slay one of the two creatures, but he and the other goblin were now struggling to see who could choke who to death first. Aurora stepped off of her steed and walked over. She gave the goblin a swift kick to the face, knocking it away from the man and then sliced it in half.

The man stood up and retrieved his hat and gun. “Thanks for the assist,” he said to her. “Damn gun misfired and I didn’t want it to explode, so I couldn’t risk firing it again. Not that it mattered, since that damn goblin knocked it out of my hand before I would have had a chance to fire anyway.” He surveyed the gore on his jacket and shook his head. He then held the gun tight and spoke the words to a spell, cleaning his clothing in moments.

Aurora had heard that there were a few wizards who used guns, but she had never met one before. Guns were pretty rare anywhere but the Mana Wastes, so seeing a wizard with one shocked her a bit. She said as much to the man, who she suddenly noticed was over half a foot taller than she was.

He laughed. “It’s a bit of a long story. Don’t mind sharing it, but first let’s take care of this.” He waved his hand and her armor and blade were clean. He then did the same for Starbrite. He studied the horse for a moment. “He seems to be favoring his leg. I think he has a bruised hoof,” he told her. “I’ve seen it before when visiting my uncle’s ranch.”

Aurora inspected the hoof and found that the man was correct. She cursed the fact that she would have to rest a bit, but it couldn’t be helped if she didn’t want to risk hurting Starbrite any further. They sought a defensible place for a campsite and the wizard, who introduced himself as Kyle, applied a salve to the injured hoof.

Kyle didn’t seem too upset by the delay in travel and decided to remain with her, at least for a day while the hoof healed. He attended to camp setup and set some traps to try catching something for dinner. Aurora did what she always did when she had too much free time to think. She tried to forget.

By noon, she was into her third bottle of Dragon Punch Whiskey and things were a bit blurry. The wizard, back from setting traps, found her in this state. He could smell the foul tasting liquor from at least ten yards away and said as much. “Leave me alone,” Aurora said to him.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he responded. He walked over and picked up one of the empty bottles, giving it a sniff. “This stuff isn’t even fit for degreasing engines. Besides, your problems won’t go away just because you crawl into a bottle.”

“Go away. You don’t know what it’s like to be unable to be thousands of miles away from home, unable to go back.” He stared at her for a moment and just laughed. She felt more than a little insulted. If she could figure out which one of him was the real one, she probably would have punched him.

“I don’t know what it’s like? Tell me something. Do you know what it’s like to be so far from home that you could walk for a thousand lifetimes and wouldn’t have covered a fraction of the distance to your home? Do you know what it’s like to be the only person who knows who David Bowie is? Ever break out into a rendition of ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’, knowing full well that no one around you even knows what a Hun is? Listen, we’ve all got problems. But I don’t mind telling you about mine, if you’ll tell me about yours.”

For some reason, Aurora decided to tell him everything that had happened. He listened intently while eating some of his travel rations for lunch. She talked for several hours and he asked clarifying questions as she did so, seemingly intent on knowing everything he could. After she had finished telling him about her past, he took a short break to check the snares. A few minutes later, he returned with a fat rabbit for dinner.
As he prepared the rabbit, he told Aurora his story. She wasn’t sure that she could believe it, but he was so sincere as he spoke that she found herself believing in spite of herself.

After he finished his story, he thought for a moment. “You know, I may have a solution to the problem of these people hunting you.”

“What do you suggest?” she asked.

“Come with me. Help me find a way to return home and I’ll take you with me. Somehow I suspect that if you travel halfway across the galaxy, no one’s going to bother following you. Besides, in many of the stories I’ve read, the wizard always travels with a knight who can protect him while he brings his semi-phenomenal, nearly-cosmic power to bear.”

It was either that or continue wandering until she drank herself into an early grave. She rose and grabbed her cavalry blade, then knelt before him. “I swear my blade into your service. I vow to protect you on your journey in hopes that one day I may travel with you to your homeland, out of the reach of those who pursue me. Please do not turn my blade to dishonorable acts.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t dream of it, though I must admit my sense of honor may be a bit different than yours. I do have one immediate request and one question, however.”

“Name it.”

“If you’re going to drink, at least drink something that doesn’t smell like turpentine.”

She laughed. “Done. What was your question?”

“Since you’ve sworn yourself to my service, does that mean I get shared tent privileges now?” His voice was filled with innuendo and his grin was mischievous.

Realizing what he meant, Aurora was almost filled with anger before she caught that he was joking. “Sorry, that one takes a different kind of vow,” she said, laughing in spite of herself.

“Ah, well maybe we’ll discuss that a different time,” he said with a wink. “Rabbit’s done. I cooked it with a bit of applejack and some cinnamon, so it should be a winna, mon.” He seemed amused by some joke she didn’t quite understand.


Motivations: Despite years of hardship, Aurora still retains a desire to help others. She is utterly devoted to helping Kyle get home, and has even gone so far as to make his arcane mark the symbol on her banner, though she still doesn’t quite understand the significance of the skull design. When it comes to choosing between these two goals, she looks to the wizard for a way to accomplish both.

Edicts:
I will make myself the shield between my charge and those who would harm him.
I will aid those in dire need, save when it puts my wizard at unnecessary risk.
I will trust in my wizard to help keep me on an honorable path while we seek to accomplish our shared goals. Even when we must do something distasteful, I will trust that greater good will come of it so long as he tells me so.