Estevan Valmiro

Name: Estevan Valmiro
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Nation of Birth: Plegia
Height: 5'11
Weight: 213 pounds
Handedness: Right
Birthday: October 9
Religion: Grimleal
Allegiance: Plegian Army.

Class: Wyvern Rider
Level: 10
Weapon Level: Axes B (0/5) (5 points from Ylissean Lottos 3, 12, and 13)


Weapons:

Scorpion - Mediumweight War Axe. Crushing, Steel*, Breaking.

Named for the fearsome arachnids that roam the desert sands, Scorpion is an equally fearsome single-bladed axe. Awarded to Estevan after he set a squadron record in a wyvern racing drill, Scorpion has a brass-coloured shaft and a heavy cutting edge that can make short work of armoured breastplate and parrying blade alike given enough momentum, making it an ideal weapon for an airborne knight.

*Upgraded after Lotto 13.

Appearance:
*

With strong limbs, a broad chest, and skin that has been slightly-tanned by the desert sun, there can be little doubt that Estevan is a man used to physical toil. Combined with his short, unkempt mop of blood red hair, his small, roguish moustache, and the chin fluff that masquerades as a beard, Estevan would be easy to mistake for a scruffy rascal. His eyes, which share the same hue as his hair, are bright and large. In general, Estevan is a very expressive individual, wearing his heart on his sleeve. From his signature grin of confidence to his wide-eyed gasp of horror, he unconsciously telegraphs his mood to all those in his presence.

When Plegia calls upon him, Estevan dons an orange breastplate, complete with pauldrons and gauntlets, in addition to a shield, white trousers, and leather riding boots with thick metal spurs attached. The centre of his chestpiece is adorned with a stylized depiction of Grima in flight, a design which Estevan employs as a talisman of sorts, believing it will imbue him with strength and luck in war. When granted leave, Estevan prefers light, simple clothing that is well-suited to hot climates.

As a member of one of Plegia's airborne brigades, Estevan has been issued his own wyvern mount, a large female specimen known among his unit as the Sunset Princess for her domineering attitude as well as her brilliant scarlet hide and orange underbelly. Although ill-tempered and stubborn, the Sunset Princess is a truly ferocious creature when forced into combat, her yellow eyes seeking out prey before lashing out with her teeth and claws. Estevan is glad to have her as an ally rather than a foe, though the relationship between man and beast can sometimes seem to be a vitriolic one to outsiders.

*Thanks again to Senpai for his amazing art~

Personality:

Above all else, Estevan is a patriot. His heart swells with pride when he gazes upon Plegia's banner, and he has no greater desire than to serve and protect his countrymen. Indeed, while he remains a faithful subject of King Gangrel, his true loyalty is to Plegia itself. As a soldier of his nation, Estevan takes his duties very seriously and values military discipline, to the point where some might consider him a brown-noser. He holds a very idealistic view of what it means to be a warrior, utterly enamoured by military concepts like uniforms and camaraderie. Still, he does not relish combat itself, and longs for a day when Plegia's warriors will reserve their marching for parade routes instead of war.

Although a bit on the boisterous side, Estevan has a big heart, being generous and fair in his dealings with his fellow Plegians. He follows the laws of chivalry without question, even in the heat of battle, though his hot-blooded recklessness compels him to right wrongs, sometimes leading to hasty judgments and embarrassing results. In contrast to many Plegians, Estevan bears only a minor grudge against Ylisse for their invasion fifteen years ago. He recognizes that they too are human, capable of mistakes like any other, and that they suffered greatly in the last war. The deaths of his family at Ylissean hands weigh heavily on Estevan's mind, but he firmly believes that violent vengeance is not a proper answer. Still, these misgivings have no place on the battlefield, and Estevan will engage any enemy of Plegia without question.

As with many Plegians, Estevan venerates the Fell Dragon, Grima, as a deity. He has a deeply spiritual side, having been raised in the foster care of the clergy for a time, and shows the utmost respect for the priests and priestesses of the Grimleal. He always has time for a sermon, prays to Grima on the eve of battle, and invokes His name when battle is joined. However, Estevan is unsure of what to make of Naga, the patron deity of Ylisse. The temples have named her Grima's enemy, and if Ylisse's past invasions are any indicator, She clearly promotes wanton destruction. But then, why would so many dedicate their lives to such a being...? In his heart, Estevan wonders if the feud between the two great dragons is perhaps a misunderstanding that could be resolved.

When off-duty, Estevan enjoys heading to the nearest pub with his army buddies, swapping stories and playfully boasting of future accomplishments while sampling the local alcohol. He is also fond of recreational flying, but military regulations regarding the use of regimental wyverns prevent him from doing so often.

Biography:

Estevan's early years aren't something he speaks of often, with good cause. The younger of two brothers, Estevan was a naturally energetic and mischievous child, unable to sit still for any great length of time. As his father was the town jeweler for a nondescript settlement nestled within Plegia's mountains, the boy often found himself shooed from his own home to play in the streets, his parents fearing that his rambunctious nature would otherwise lead to broken merchandise. At the same time, however, he was given a stern warning never to wander too far from the confines of the community.

Bandits alone would have been reason enough to keep a child from venturing into the wilderness, but when Estevan was only three years old, a new, even greater danger had presented itself to the citizens of Plegia. Ylisse, the nation which occupied the southeastern portion of the continent, had marshalled its army and launched a crusade into Plegia, condemning the desert nation's traditional worship of the Fell Dragon and naming every last one of its inhabitants a heretic fit only for the executioner's block.

Without mercy, the Ylissean host carved deep into Plegia, slaughtering any who stood in their path. Misery and terror ruled the lives of many Plegia's commoners, who had little defense against these foreign invaders. Yet amidst the suffering and violence, Estevan's hometown went mercifully untouched by the shadow of war. The mountainous terrain of the region coupled with the remote settlement's lack of strategic value meant that it was exceedingly unlikely the Ylisseans would care enough to take it, at least until there was nothing else to conquer. For Estevan and the other children, the tragic reality that they were at war might have been lost on them entirely, were it not for the hushed conversations between adults that were occasionally overheard. Still, the revelation that there was an ongoing conflict merely drove Estevan and his friends to play and roughhouse among themselves, each boy claiming to be a mighty champion of Grima who would banish the Ylisseans from their lands. Estevan in particular had a tendency to start mock brawls that quickly got out of hand, and he eventually drew the attention of his mother, who clucked her tongue, shook her head, and told him that his energy would be better spent protecting people, before giving him a good paddling for his trouble.

It was a lesson that he would not soon forget.

Several years passed, and Estevan grew into a healthy lad who knew his town like the back of his hand. Being forced to play outside had strengthened both his lungs and his limbs, and he had become the undisputed champion of hide n' seek within his circle of friends. One of his favourite hiding spots was a thick patch of foliage near the local church, where he would emulate the prayers he saw the adults make. But while they prayed to Grima for the continued safety of their home, Estevan asked the Fell Dragon to shroud him in darkness and conceal him from his playmates' eyes. Given his talents, it was inevitable that Estevan would aspire to be a town guard, especially in light of his mother's words. His elder brother was more level-headed, and could take over the family business himself, or so the young Estevan believed.

It was during this time that the people of Plegia began to feel hope once more. The Ylissean Exalt's advance had been blunted, his forces being pushed back to the border on all fronts by ferocious Plegian counterattacks. Although the resulting stalemate cost countless lives on both sides, there was no shortage of conscripts, Ylissean and Plegian alike, men freshly-plucked from their homes and thrown into battle. Even some of the men in Estevan's village were forced to answer the call to arms, but his father was able to evade the drafts by bribing the recruiters with his jewelry. As the conflict drew nearer to its inevitable end, it seemed the Valmiro family would escape unscathed, unlike so many of their Plegian brethren.

Alas, it was not to be.

In the dying days of the war, just months prior to Estevan's eighth birthday, a Ylissean unit stationed at the border made an unprecedented push into Plegia. Although they were quickly overwhelmed by a wave of Plegian reinforcements, their avenue of retreat led them straight to the settlement Estevan called his home. Trapped in a desperate situation, the Ylissean commander ordered his troops to sack the town for supplies. Fearing pursuit, he also decreed that the inhabitants were to be massacred to guarantee their silence.

The Pegasus Knights were the first to arrive, swooping down from the skies to deliver judgment to the hapless townsfolk below. Estevan, who had unsurprisingly been ushered outside by his parents yet again, witnessed the opening attack firsthand. He immediately fled to his usual spot beside the church and hid. From there, he watched and waited. He watched as the town guard were cut down in the streets, unable to put up more than a token resistance against the Ylisseans. He watched as those who survived the initial assault were rounded up and burned alive for the crime of worshipping Grima, including his childhood friends. He watched as his father, mother, and brother were brought forward and added to the pyre. Tears filled the boy's eyes, and it was all he could do to keep from crying out. The only thing that kept him alive were the very same instincts that had made him the champion of hide n' seek.

At last, satisfied that they had looted everything of worth and left no loose ends, the Ylisseans moved on. When the Plegian relief force arrived, they found a smoldering ruin containing a single sobbing child. Horrified by what he saw, a Grimleal priest who had accompanied the detachment strode forward to comfort the boy. He told Estevan that his friends and family were with Grima now, and that Grima must have ensured his survival so that he might perform great deeds in His name. The priest then took Estevan into his care, spiriting him away to a monastery that offered shelter to children orphaned by the war.

Estevan spent the next two years of his life at this temple. The caretakers at the monastery were eager to convert the children entrusted to them into new recruits for the Grimleal, and they spared no expense in educating them in the various intricacies of the Fell Dragon's faith. Estevan was no exception, his young mind easily swayed by the Grimleal's honeyed words. But although he took solace in the comfort that his worship of Grima offered him, Estevan soon discovered that the more earthly aspects of being a priest were not to his tastes. Having barely had time to adjust to the change in his surroundings and lacking the patience to pour over dusty tomes detailing ancient rituals, he had a difficult time fitting in with his peers. As a result, he often got into fights with the more studious children. The Grimleal overlooked his behaviour for a time, but after they noticed one too many orphans were missing a tooth or sporting broken noses, they confronted him. Unable to reconcile Estevan's impulsive nature with the devotion required to master dark magic, the priests decided to send him to a place where his particular brand of talents would be of more use to Plegia: The army.

Transferred to a military camp in the desert as a page for the local garrison without much fanfare, Estevan was immediately issued an axe and put to work. Shipments of lumber from the more fertile areas of Plegia routinely arrived at the camp, intended for use in the ongoing construction of military forts in the area. And so, each and every day for three years, Estevan chopped wood. He vented all of his anger and frustration on the logs brought before him, imagining them to be Ylissean heads. Yet despite the fact that his relocation to the camp had been intended as a punishment, Estevan flourished in the military environment. The other children apprenticed to the soldiers in the camp were cut from the same rough cloth as he, and the countless hours of swinging an axe did wonders for his muscles. He applied every ounce of his strength to his daily tasks, earning him a reputation among his superiors as a dependable, hard-working young man.

As he toiled through the years leading up to his adolescence, Estevan had a revelation. In becoming a soldier, he could live up to what his mother had taught him. In a manner of speaking, he would be a guard... Just, all of Plegia would be his jurisdiction, and all its people his charges. There would be no more hiding. This realization filled him with purpose, but it also begat another lesson. As he pondered the role a soldier played in defending his nation, his thoughts drifted to the enemy, the wicked Ylisseans. Did they see their soldiers as protectors, too? Or were they merely tools with which to carry out Naga's crusades? What of their families? Their children? It suddenly occurred to him that, given the tales he had heard regarding the staggering death toll on both sides of the war, that there might well be a Ylissean boy just like him, who had lost everything to the war. The more he thought about it, the less he began to hate the Ylisseans, instead channeling his passion toward protecting Plegia.

At last, on his thirteenth birthday, Estevan was promoted to the rank of squire, marking the beginning of his formal training in the arts of war. In an unusual twist, the boy volunteered for service in one of Plegia's wyvern brigades, a prestigious post in the desert nation's military. The way he saw it, it was the aerial units who were best-equipped to respond to sudden, unexpected threats, able to travel vast distances at speeds foot soldiers could not hope to match. By joining an airborne squadron, he could truly fulfill his dream of keeping Plegia safe.

Secretly, the allure of soaring through the skies also appealed to his impulsive, daredevil nature, but he didn't mention that aloud.

The following decade was one of rigorous combat exercises and constant flight maneuver practices. The proud wyverns procured by the army were rarely pleasant toward those they deemed unworthy, and the number of lessons dedicated to taming them and earning their obedience equaled those spent teaching the prospective recruits how to fly in formation and fight from atop their mounts. Still, Estevan surprised many by how quickly he grasped the basics. He wasn't afraid to wrestle unruly wyverns, regardless of their size, nor did he panic when he took to the air for the first time. By the time he was seventeen, he had been knighted as a full-fledged soldier and granted his own wyvern mount, giving him leave to participate in actual operations. During his six years of real service, Estevan continued to hone his skills while patrolling the desert and rooting out bandit strongholds. Fuelled by his love for Plegia, he proved to be a skilled and courageous fighter in battle. His prowess and dilligence earned him the nickname "The Finest Trooper in the Regiment" among his comrades, half out of genuine respect for his discipline while half mocking the fact that Estevan's complete lack of talent for tactics promised to eternally consign him to the rank of Trooper.

When war broke out once more between Plegia and Ylisse after fifteen years of tenuous peace, Estevan viewed the conflict with mixed feelings. He dreaded the inevitable suffering war would bring, but a part of him knew that the two countries had unfinished business with each other, that might finally be settled at last. At first, his unit was held in reserve to guard the homefront during the clashes at the border, and Estevan's spirits rose as he heard of Plegia's initial success, crossing the border and capturing Ylisstol as well as the Ylissean Exalt in a matter of days. However, his hopes for a swift end to the fighting were dashed when a Ylissean army led by Prince Chrom marched on Plegia Castle, intending to retrieve their ruler.

As King Gangrel's host sallied forth to meet the invaders, Estevan's unit was deployed on Gangrel's right flank, charged with preventing Ylissean and Feroxi reinforcements from encircling the King's army. On that day, Estevan fought Ylisseans for the first time. As always, he led the charge, first swooping down amidst their armoured knights to break up their tightly-packed formations and softening them up for the Plegian infantry, before engaging the Ylissean cavalry. The battle went according to plan, and when the Ylisseans broke ranks and fled, Estevan's unit fell upon them, cutting down the routing soldiers to further demoralize them and keep them from returning to the fray.

Although Estevan took joy in King Gangrel's magnificent victory over Prince Chrom, he took far less in what he saw when he surveyed the aftermath of the struggle he had taken part in. The sands were soaked in blood, littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying. He could hear the mournful cries of the mortally-wounded, many of them Ylissean in origin. It confirmed the suspicion that had been brewing within him since his youth: The Ylisseans were men, just as he. They fought, bled, and had loved ones like any other human beings. As he reflected on the Ylisseans he had personally slain in the heat of battle, Estevan looked skyward, higher than he had ever flown, and wondered.

The only certainty about the coming days was that they were sure to be uncertain... Would any good ultimately come of this war? Though he did not share his misgivings with his comrades, he prayed to the Fell Dragon that it would be so...

Notes: N/A.

Approved by Blonde Panther​