Last Name: Loire
Appearance:
Race: Human
Age: 26
Height 5'10
Weight: 160
Eyes: Green
Hair: Dark brown
Facial Hair Style: Relatively clean; some stubble
Personality Profile:
General Health: Very good
Deity: Tyr
Initial Alignment: Lawful Good
Profession: Traveling swordsman seeking a cause
Base Class & Proposed Development: Favored Soul; mostly favored soul with splash of paladin (within the rules)
Habits/Hobbies: Somewhat quiet at first, friendly, tends to stare at things that interest him, a bit absent-minded at times. Has an intense and passionate side that comes out especially in conversations about what is the "right thing to do."
Languages: Common, Elven, Orcish
Weapon of Choice: Longsword
Background:
Born to a merchant family that was constantly moving along the length of the Sword Coast, Kaeladin experienced a relatively normal, albeit mobile, childhood. One week, he would be playing with children around the farm fields of Baldur's Gate. Another week, he would be skipping pebbles while perched on top of hay bale in Candlekeep. In fewer words; it was an average life in the day of a human child growing up along the Coast.
Unfortunately, the average life in the day of a traveling merchant family can take a sudden turn for the worse. In Kaeladin's case, it was a goblin raid. While his parents were no stranger to combat, and could handle the odd crossbow or short blade, there were too many swarming in all at once in the middle of the night. They came wielding torches, crude daggers, and terror. The last thing Kaeladin remembered of that night, at the tender age of eight summers, was his mother screaming at him to run to the nearby settlement of Beregost, its lights still visible from the hill their wagon and the family and had chosen to rest at for the night, and to find help. Feeling incredibly small and helpless, Kaeladin did just that as he spared one last glance at his normal life, now a scene of shadows, screams, and fire.
Tragic as it was, it was not out of the ordinary. Traveling the roads between cities always posed a risk, and the fate of Kaeladin's family could have been chalked up to another unfortunate roll of fate's dice. When Kaeladin came back with the site of his family's merchant caravan, accompanied by traveling paladin whom the pleas of a tear-stricken, terrified child stirred to action, he recognized only the burnt husk of a wagon that had long been his home amidst a scene of dead goblins, blood, and other tell-tale scenes of a horrific raid. In short, Kaeladin's old life lay shattered in front of his eyes and the uncertain future of his new one was just beginning. The paladin, an older man with steel grey eyes and a stern visage tempered by years of combat, took the young boy by his hand and led him away from the site.
As the paladin, a member in good-standing with the Order of the Radiant Heart and now his foster father, took him as his charge, it seemed that Kaeladin would be groomed to become a knight. However, Kaeladin was always restless throughout the course of his training. He took to the sword relatively well, but he was not the strongest arm in training. He was not necessarily the most intelligent amongst the other squires-in-training, although he was not stupid by any means. Nor was he the most naturally talented amongst his peers, as he had to work hard to stay on par with his peers. In other words, Kaeladin was very much a normal young man growing up who would have been deemed ordinary in every respect, except for one thing; he was determination and perseverance personified. Whereas every other squire would long retire to their quarters after their training was over, Kaeladin would continually practice his swings on the training dummies, read over the tenets of his paladin's patron god Tyr, and dream of treasure, glory, and justice throughout all the realms.
That opportunity came sooner than expected, when word reached Kaeladin that his foster father had gone missing during an investigation into an unusually organized ogre raid that had resulted in several merchant caravans gone missing. Wasting no time, Kaeladin took up blade and pack, snuck out of his quarters in the dead of night, and went to find his missing sire. From that impulsive, yet pure, purpose started Kaeladin's adventure...
Goals:
- To find his missing foster father
- To become a great knight and uphold the tenets of Tyr
- To bring justice and peace to the realms (Kaeladin's views of the world are somewhat naive and single-minded at times; he views the realm as rife with opportunities to be a hero, and has a rather narrow focus on this goal)
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
- As Kaeladin's departure from the Order of the Radiant Heart was rather sudden and impulsive, there could be friction between his seniors or fellow squires due to said departure. Kaeladin believes himself to be leaving for a noble goal, and therefore justified as well as indirectly supported by the Order, but this may not prove to be true...
- Kaeladin cannot help but take up "quests" to better the lives of the realm's inhabitants. As such, Kaeladin views people in need much the same way fire tackles kindling; irresistable.
- Kaeladin has a rather unusual contradiction in his personality; his single-mindedness in pursuing his goals, along with his narrow view of the world, also means that he has a difficult time understanding the "grey" of morality (he has below-average wisdom), but he absolutely despises being deceived or tricked into doing something he shouldn't do, and so has trained himself to read people's body language and intonation to see if they are trying to deceive him or not (he's fully trained in sense motive to the max cap at every level). This does not mean that he possess tremendous insight in the world around him, but he is attuned to the notion that people may try to deceive him with honeyed words or trickery, and tries to be vigilant towards that aspect of interaction.
- He's the classic do-gooder who sees in black and white, without much understanding of the grey, and is shaped by a tragic past, along with never being the paragon of any particular natural talent, to always persist and never give up. I hope you all have as much fun with him, and his evolution over time, as I do!
