Character profile

Malchus

Race:

Human

Gender:

male

Age:

in midlife

Currently offline

Description of the character

he mercenary Malchus is a brawny, middle-aged man of imposing stature, towering at a height just short of 2 m. His most striking feature is an eyepatch covering his right eye, which is crossed by a vertical scar.

A thin beard covers his square jaw, and his dark brown hair is trimmed to a messy tuft. He has the robust physique and healthy tan of a man who spends most of the day outdoors.

He often travels between Illarion's towns, offering his services as sword for hire, and is seen
wearing a blackened armour with a dark cloak, always carrying a sword or mace in his belt, the tools with which he makes his living and solves most of his problems. His manners and speech may appear crude and uncouth to more sophisticated people, and he speaks with an accent suggesting an origin from the western plains, but it's hard to place; is he Serinjah or from the Rough Lands?

An unscrupulous man whose primary skill lies in the application of force. His brutish appearance belies a wicked cunning. Those who get to know him better soon realise that he is obviously cruel, largely motivated by lust for money and power, not above resorting to violence and intimidation to get what he wants, and enjoying doing so.

Story of the character

he Serinjah are one of the few human peoples who live in frequent contact with the otherwise reclusive elves. While most Serinjah clans limit this contact to barter with the elves, one ambitious clansman devised a more profitable trade involving them.

Lured by the promise of gold and adventure, unscrupulous clansmen, outcasts, and outlaws rallied under his banner. Soon, word spread of a Serinjah warband harrying the forests bordering the western plains, ambushing elven trade caravans and raiding outlying villages. Captured elves were led to the raiders' camp at the shores of the river Erenin, corralled onto barges, and shipped downstream. An ill-fated slave raid cost their leader his right eye, when an elven swordsman slashed him across his face.

Prized for their rarity and unaging beauty, the elves were sold to debauched nobles, merchants, and establishments of ill repute as far as Albar and Gynk. By the age of thirty, the Serinjah slaver had a fortune to his name.

Unfortunately for him, his rise coincided with the prohibition of slavery in Gynk, where he was eventually arrested and tried. Convicted of banditry and slavery, he was stripped of his ill-gotten wealth and condemned to many years of hard labour on a prison isle. Out of sight, out of mind, the rise and fall of the Serinjah slaver were soon forgotten by the public, and his story ended there.

Years later, fishermen found on the open sea an emaciated, one-eyed castaway, clinging to some flotsam. They pulled him aboard with a net and dropped him off at Troll's Haven, where he introduced himself as Malchus, a shipwrecked mercenary from the mainland.