Marquis Geraint Blackwood
We stand beneath the storm, and stand unmoved. Do you think yourself stronger than the storm?
Obituary: While leading a force of two hundred men towards the Lodge of Petrichor, it was attacked and wiped out by forces unknown. The western part of Blackwood lands was heavily forested, but almost all the trees had been uprooted, and most of the soldiers had been torn apart or crushed under a great weight. No attacker could be found.
Description: This man stands tall, with the bearing of one born to authority and rulership; his back straight, shoulders squared, rarely seen to slump or slouch. A wild thatch of dirty blonde hair tops his head, once-long locks shorn to a shorter style to more readily fit in with those he now deals with. The same hair spills down his jawline and cheeks, surrounding chin and mouth in a short beard and mustache that he refuses to shave. Though not bent of age, youth is in the past; lines creep around deep brown eyes and across his brow, the worry-lines of a leader.
Personality: There was once fire in his blood, but time and the death of his first wife has banked those fires. There is a calmness to him now; he listens often, speaks carefully, but to think this timidity would be folly. It is the calm of the storm, and when the time has come for action or he is finally moved to anger, he does so decisively and without hesitation. There are few who see him at ease these days, or who can speak to how he acts when at such ease; the wounds of past losses, perhaps, have not yet healed.
Background: In the bleak climate of the stormwall, the Blackwood tribe has ever stood betwixt other tribes of Abandoned, holding the peace by strength of arms and sheer determination. It was to these people, in the shadow of the blackwoods trees, that Geraint was born. The blood in his veins was that of a ruler, his father the chieftain at the time, but it afforded him little softness or coddling - unlike the nobles of some 'civilized' lands, he was expected to stand as strong as any of their warriors or laborers, and faced as many hardships as they had to test and temper his body and resolve.
When time came for war, he was expected to take up arms and prove himself the leader he was born to be - and he did, time and again, blood shed by his hands earning him the respect of the warriors and his people. He wed a woman by the name of Angharad, their first daughter born early in their marriage, and their fiery relationship was as vibrant and heated as the rest of the life that he lived.
When the time of his father's death came, he was ready to step up to the task, with his aging aunt Barbrey to advise him and his people behind him. He ruled the tribe in peace - and in war - and life was good, for a time, and the tribe prospered. It was only with the birth of his third child, a son, that things began to darken rather than the celebration it should have been. It was a hard birth, and Angharad did not survive - and to compound his sorrow, the old shaman spoke that it was an ill omen of times to come.
It was the shadow that lingered still upon his brow that made him listen when his eldest daughter Ysbail came to him, when she spoke of a dark time coming for the tribes, of fire and blood and slavery that would rain upon them. When she spoke of the nigh-unthinkable - bending knee and joining the Compact that their ancestors had turned their backs on.
Her foresight led the tribe to be ready when Brand's forces marched, and despite his pride he knelt to their Crovane neighbors for protection as Prodigals. With the aid of his daughter, after the Siege of Arx, they united what remained of the tribes and clans surrounding their ancestral lands, and he was named Marquis of Stormarch - and led his people into a new future.
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