Aubrey Corrigan (Finished)
Jul 19, 2014 18:47:56 GMT -5
Post by Harbor on Jul 19, 2014 18:47:56 GMT -5
Pb: Kevin Durand, will add picture when I have proper Internet again.
Full Name: Aubrey Corrigan
Race: human
Side: neutral
Birthplace: Dras-Leona
Age: thirty-six
Gender: male
Birthday: late fall
Eyes: average blue
Hair: cropped short and rarely evenly
Weight: 180 pounds
Height: 6' 7"
Magic User: no
Preferred Weapon(s): halberd
Appearance: Aubrey Proudly owns to a height most men would find awkward to grow into, but he wears it comfortably and is not above using it to intimidate those whom he believes require intimidation. Since being in the army, he keeps his hair as short as he can without making himself look bald, and most of the time he's got the scruff of a beard starting, simply because he doesn't like to bother with the fuss of shaving, but as soon as it starts to itch it doesn't stay long. He has average blue eyes--not deep or striking or piercing--which out of habit tend to flick from one side to the other as though expecting an invasion. Since being discharged from the army on account of the knees he shattered on separate occasions, which cause him to limp most days, he's returned to his preferred occupation of blacksmithing, so he's usually got soot and scorch marks all over his leather apron, if he remembers to wear it, or his clothes, if he doesn't. Though he no longer uses it, his halberd always stands watchfully in the back corner of his forge, just in case, and always well-polished. He was one of the handful of men in the army who could successfully wield one.
Personality: Aubrey isn't the sort to consistently butt into others' conversations; mostly he'll prefer to keep to himself. Men he typically allows to take care of themselves if there's a squabble of some sort, but harass or disrespect a boy, girl or woman, and he'll stand up all slow, stretching out every six and a half feet of himself, loosen his arms in their sockets, and fix you with a gaze that may seem sleepy and placid enough, but can then as hard as slate if you give it reason to. Somehow, he'll even manage to do all of this in a polite and pleasant manner, but if course you won't think so if you're on the receiving end of his discipline. Some people call it crass, the way he so effortlessly uses his size against others when the average man has to defend himself with lesser products, but Aubrey only shrugs. The only people he takes advantage of with his bulk are the ones who deserve it and who met him. No honest man is frightened of another honest man, regardless of size.
Despite his absolute determination to hold everyone in his line of sight to the same level of respectability as he hold himself, Aubrey is a cheerful enough fellow. Rarely does he then down an offer to get drunk--though now that his daughter Tueli is old enough to know the difference he has begun to ease back a bit on the tankards--but whether or not he does you can be assured that you, he, and all your companions will have a story to tell and to laugh about by the next morning. For the most part, Aubrey is a laid-back bloke. Turn anything but a respectful eye on his daughter, though, and you're courting catastrophe. Aubrey made her mother a promise--Tueli will live happy and die old. No one will ever hurt her.
--->Likes: metal smithing, the occasional good brawl, watching Tueli put other people in their place
--->Dislikes: upstarts, people who disrupt the natural order or hierarchy of things, giving orders to groups
--->Strengths: a level temper, physical strength, adaptability, resilience
--->Weakness: fear for Tueli, fear of breaking promises, the uncertainty of living in a city run by a man he doesn't trust but fearing Tueli wouldn't survive the pilgrimage to anywhere safe
Family: A mother, father (deceased), three younger sisters, and their respective husbands and children, Tueli.
History: Aubrey was always glad to be born and raised common--it gave him the freedom to nearly always do as he wished. His mother often had a thing or two to say about what he chose to do with said freedom, but he was always careful not to exasperate her too far; she was the one who did all the cooking, after all. The eldest if four children, when he was young, still growing faster than new cloth could be spun, he was constantly tripping over his younger siblings until he learned the grace and nimble feet that would later allow him to stomp up and down fully laden tavern tables, as drunk as a bear in springtime, and not spill a single tankard or nudge a single platter. No instrument had ever been brought into the vicinity of his wide hands that Aubrey could learn to play, and since he can't carry a tune in a rolling wagon he never much minded; but he sings (some would say 'bellows') with the tavern musicians as if he is certain he can. He'll even do it while dancing on his hands if the mead catches him with his belly in the right mood.
Aubrey was big enough by the time he was fifteen to enlist in the army, which at those times was pestered more with bandits and Urgals than Surdans or rebels. The district commander took one look at Aubrey's tall frame and wide shoulders and jerked his chin toward a rack of halberd a and maces. "Think you can handle one of those?" As it turned out Aubrey could, and well, once he'd had the training and practice. When, after four years of excellent service--if anything in the army can be called excellence--his commander tried to promote him to a minor captain position of his own, Aubrey, the commander, and everyone in the camp learned loud and learned fast that Aubrey preferred deflecting the orders of others than handing them out himself. Occasionally bossing others around when he decided they required correction was one matter; directing groups in an organized fashion was not something he enjoyed, let alone thought he could do effectively. In under a week the sheer amount of bellowing done by the men under Aubrey's command and largely by Aubrey himself--who had always had an impressive bellow--caused the commander to demote Aubrey back into his more comfortable position as a common soldier.
Aubrey wasn't fond of killing, or of battles or wars or blood in general, but he would never say that the army ruined him. He had been born a patriot, and his unwavering belief in their cause never left room for any emotions other than those that propelled him through the brackish mud where others had lagged or faltered. In his eleven years of service, his resolve, his confidence in his own service, never wavered.
Except once. Aubrey was twenty-one when h and the rest of the company he'd lived and died with for the pas six years entered a village that was already half-burned when they reached it. New fires were still springing up on their own, spontaneous and vicious, and nearly every resident was in some stage of between death and dying. A select few who hadn't been in the town when it was sacked were digging either frantically or hopelessly through the scorched rubble in search of survivors. Their company sheathed the majority of their weapons and did the same. Aubrey was part if a team that began dragging first the half-alive and then the dead from a common house that was on the verge of collapse, the fires had so weakened it. The last woman was nearly out, one man supporting her with an arm around her waist, hers over his shoulders, a quiet infant clutched to her heaving chest, when the last of the building came down.
A falling beam killed her savior the instant it thumped down through the back of his neck. Aubrey heard the woman's bones crack as the second floor piled down on her but she had been close to the door when she fell, and he rushed forward to catch the infant she thrust toward him. He could hear her sobbing inside. He called for more of his men to help, and none came, but it took only a few seconds to see why: a small band of Urgals was rushing through the village, as intent upon finding survivors as the army was. The woman could see them too, over Aubrey's shoulder. She screamed for him to go, slapped at him when he tried to dig her out, and begged him to take her child away so at least one member of her family could live. Aubrey refused, holding the infant to his shoulder with one large hand and hauling at the blackened beams pinning her inside the rubble. But as the woman's screams grew more shrill, and the pound of inhumanly heavy footsteps thudded closer, he realized that he--who had been known to juggle small boulders just to prove he could--was not strong enough to save the young mother.
That was the only time he ever ran away from a fight. And later, when looking upon the quiet child's pale, ash-streaked face, was the only time he ever considered abandoning his life in the army.
His district commander, upon realizing that the child had nowhere else to go and Aubrey wouldn't stay on the front lines if he was determined to keep his promise to the girl's mother, sent Aubrey into the reserves. He traveled to a nearby town and lived in a small house with three other men about his age, with the girl, where they more or less went about the same daily lives as regular townspeople. Their only call to action was when marauders worried at the town's fringes, taking advantage of its isolation and the country's thinly spread soldiers. He hired a local woman to help him learn how to care for the girl, eventually calling her Tueli--at the woman's suggestion, since he had no confidence for name-giving--and took the girl with him wherever he could. He also wrote daily to his mother and sisters--one of whom had a small child of her own by now--begging their advice. His father said that little girls were tough and she'd basically be able to raise herself, but Aubrey was certain she'd fall out of a window or be run over by a horse or choke on one of the fingers she always seemed to have in her mouth.
And this Aubrey and Tueli grew up. Tueli was five when Aubrey was discharged on account of his frequently damaged knees, and Aubrey immediately took her home, where he established a house and a living of his own. He didn't even know her mother or father's names, or the name that they had given her, but the girl was his daughter now, there was never any doubt. On occasion people would ask about her mother, and just to keep her and his life simple, he would quietly state that she had died, and wouldn't gladly offer any further explanation. An I married man raising a daughter did raise a few eyebrows, but mostly the sympathetic sort. Not a month went by that one of the wives or daughters of the men he made horseshoes and nails for offered to help him raise her--through various means and with various intentions--but with his sisters living nearby he likes to think he did a well enough job on his own.
His sisters told Aubrey he learned tact overnight when Tueli turned eleven and he turned her over to them for a weekend so they could explain the meanings of womanhood to her. This was one conversation Aubrey had never remembered to prepare himself for. The girl took it better than he had when he finally discovered what actually went on inside women's bodies and his own, but then, raised by an ex-soldier with little hysteria to spare over anything not worth the drama, Tueli had grown up almost more of a boy than he had. Some days she even wore trousers when she was out and about or helping him in the shop. Aubrey knew that would alter others' perceptions if her, mostly for ill, but he'd also raised her to be tough, to defend herself, and she knew the consequences of her actions just as well as he did. For the most part, he let her do as she wished; she was smarter than he'd been at her age, for all that he'd had the right intentions. And where her smarts wouldn't do for her, her sass certainly did. But that was another upside of being common--women weren't expected to be ladies. And Aubrey hadn't raised her to be a lady, he'd raised her to be a person. Whether she wanted to dress or act like a girl or boy didn't matter to him--they were all human in the end.
Now Aubrey is a respected, if still intimidating, blacksmith, raising a daughter of fifteen who isn't his by blood but whom he will still shed blood to protect, and he's wondering why the back of his neck still itches every time he turns his back on an open stretch of plains. He suspects Tueli has been hiding something from him the last few months, but isn't concerned, since he trusts her to be clever enough to know to ask for his help when she needs it. He hasn't even considered that she might have found she can use magic.
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