Name: Noah Garod Age: 26 Gender: Male Nationality: Plegian Allegiance: Has pledged a shaky allegiance to Plegia, but is currently gathering more data to make a more solid decision. Class: Tactician Level: 14 Weapon Levels: Light Swords: D 4/5 Anima: C 3/5 Weapons: Old Ironsides: A wholly-unremarkable blade with a single edge, dulled and enchanted to ensure that those struck by it are not irreparably scarred. It is so plain, in fact, that it could easily be mistaken for a training sword, but it is his bread-and-butter weapon when a fight breaks out. [Non-Lethal Iron Katti] Quiet Fang: A knife used for the few occasions that Noah resorts to lethal force. It isn't terribly intimidating, being quite small as compared to a regular weapon, but it seeps with specially-brewed poison and is made of glass. It is much more a precision weapon than a forceful one. [Poison Glass Combat Dagger] Earthen Defense A spell used to make the earth surge upwards as a wall. Its effectiveness typically varies with the soil's composition, but magic can be used to densely pack the dirt and rocks. It can also be surrounded by a thin magic layer to increase durability. [Defensive, Potency, Attuned, Anima Spell] Thrice Struck A slightly-tweaked thunder spell, which allows Noah to shoot lightning at foes, which he can somewhat control to make it branch out into three smaller streaks of lightning. While he takes great care to limit the damage, and set restrictions on it so it cannot kill, it is still, due to lightning's nature, unpredictable and can sometimes do far more damage than expected. [Non-Lethal, Complex, Killer, Anima Spell] Appearance: Short, roughly 5' 4'', and with a small frame. His hair is wiry and dark brown, and his eyes a piercing green. Despite his small and not-altogether impressive stature, he takes things very seriously and demands to be treated with respect. Has a tendency to wear hardened leather vests, with similar greaves and vambraces, over black shirts and dirty trousers. Under that, he wears a locket from his family. He has rounded iron pauldrons, though they tend to not be seen much due to his deep brown cloak. None of this is colored anything beyond brown, as he doesn't enjoy standing out. Personality: Cold and quite businesslike, Noah tends to be quite to the point and oftentimes blunt. This isn't actually from any sort of misanthropy so much as it is his obsession with efficiency. He takes his job very, very seriously and as such sometimes clashes with others because of it. In addition, he particularly hates being interrupted. Other than that he is very quiet, believing he would waste air if he said something unnecessary. That said, the good points he has are that he is slow to anger and will indeed listen if his associates can properly explain their behavior. Still, while he has donned particularly jaded glasses and is often too busy fretting details to show much emotion, he does, once in a blue moon, perform some action to let the others know he cares; lecturing others on the importance of proper sleep and nutrition, giving a bit out of his own pocket for special occasions, and the like. Despite his occupation and apparent knack for politics and tactics, he does not seem to enjoy it all; this is because he is particularly averse to killing and especially war, which spares no victims. As such, though he still harbors a deep grudge towards Ylisse, he is put at considerable unease by King Gangrel's aggressive policies. Backstory: Noah had been the son of a soldier for six years without knowing exactly what that entailed. Six years and he knew only that his father hefted a spear and wore armor and went to war if need be. How noble it had seemed at first. How heroic. It wasn't. Nothing about war ever is. It was horrible and heartbreaking and sad. He had to bear witness to that himself. His village was close to the border. The war had just begun. His father was deployed to a fort disquietingly nearby. He wasn't sure what he was thinking. Maybe he wanted to see his father fight. Maybe he had to give him the family locket to bring him back safely. At any rate he stole into a supply cart and rode his way there. He climbed out while no one was looking and ran off to find his father. He never did. Horrible noises grew closer, and he was running, and everything became a blur as one soldier told him to hide. He did so, locking himself in a detainment cell. And the awful noises only got louder and louder in a hideous crescendo of violence and screams, until it was replaced by silence. The silence was not comforting in the slightest, and it gave way to the sound of a legion's worth of footsteps. There seemed to be some misunderstanding. They thought he had been incarcerated here by the Plegian soldiers. When they asked him, he could only blubber inelegantly about his father and how he wanted to see him. No one knew how to react for a moment, but he thought he saw something resembling pity in the soldier's eyes. Misplaced pity. But he was six and had no idea how to explain, or to understand, or anything of the sort. He tried to explain that he came from a village a little ways from here, and that his father was a soldier, and he had to see him to give him a good luck charm, but between the tears and the panic he ran all the sentences together and it became utterly unintelligible. In the end, he stayed with the soldiers for a little while, not knowing what else to do. He traveled with them for the rest of the day. When night fell they were reasonably close to his home. He slipped out in the dead of night, and though he was caught by the night watch, seemed to sympathize with his situation now that he could articulate properly. He even went with him to find it. What was left, anyway. In the days after the battle, it had been evacuated and eventually the buildings were ravaged. He knew it was not the Ylissians. He had been with them. But without a guard, the little town was easy prey for scavengers and bandits. He led the man to his house, but the man told him not to go in. He would check instead. Noah waited with bated breath, but the man looked crestfallen upon return. He shook his head and told him not to go in. Told him his mother was gone, probably stayed looking for him. Noah didn't understand. Gone? Gone where? How could she be gone? Someone had to wake up his father... Silence. He could not offer him answers. He just sighed and said it was hard to understand, but she wouldn't be able to wake him up. One hour. One hour was the time Noah was given to look around his ruined hometown. He didn't know why he even bothered, it was foreign and difficult for him to comprehend anything that happened. As he approached the edge of town he heard gargantuan wingbeats. He looked up to see a wyvern rider above him. Apparently, a scout. Noah explained as best as he could. He then asked him to take him with him, without giving thought to the soldier who'd brought him. As they took off, he asked to be stronger. His logic here escaped him; perhaps he just thought that as his father had fought, it only made sense for him to fight. Perhaps he thought if he were strong enough he would be able to bring everything back to normal somehow. At any rate, the member of the Wyvern Brigade told him to wait until he aged more. So he did, and he asked every year for seven years until finally his surrogate father (who had hired a servant to raise him) gave in to have him educated. His frame made learning the ways of the sword difficult, but he put in extra effort to compensate. He had a bit more success in magic, though he insisted that he be physically fit to make his family proud, and refused to specialize in one or the other. Tactics was also something he studied, and he studied hard. There were things that brute force would not achieve for him, especially as he could not use much of it. So he learned to be crafty. Using trickery, accounting for terrain in war and waging indirect wars became second nature. But when Gangrel began harassing the new Exalt, he balked. He had been young when the war had taken him from his old life, and he had no desire to see it happen to anyone else. Spoiling for a new one struck him as particularly unwise, As the provocations eased, Noah was relieved... and filled with a sense of dread. Grudges did not die so suddenly. Something was going to happen. What sort of something, he could not know. But if it involved war, he had to stop it in the process, or at least minimize the damage. With his adoptive father's blessing, he set out traveling, to expand his studies... and perhaps learn what the king was up to. Timeline: To begin his journey, Noah traveled to the remnants of his old town, only to find it swarming with bandits. Upon meeting some other weary travelers, he banded together with them and managed to drive out the brigands who occupied his town, and briefly before they parted, they happened upon a small treasure stash; presumably the reason for the bandit presence. Some time after, Noah departed for the border, hoping to gain some insight into the tensions between his country and Ylisse's. Though somewhat unnerved by the charged air, he stopped at a village to rest, and had a chance encounter with a former performer, befriending the once-Merry Maven and teaching her something of the written word. Approved by Blonde Panther. Edit: Added Weapon levels gained from Lotteries.
