EDIT: Rewritten as requested.
Name: Jakob Aidler
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Appearance: A slender giant of a man, Jakob is both uncommonly tall and uncommonly slim for a nobleman, standing roughly a head taller then most men of Calradia. The sharp aristocratic features of his face are dominated by sunken swamp green eyes and an enormous forked black beard and moustache, giving him a permanmently tired, brooding look. His hair is the same colour as his bard and is cut short in a manner befitting his military upbringing and his skin, normally of a pale complexion thanks to his noble Swadian birth, has been tanned by the heat of the Sarranidian enviroment. The most distinguishing feature Lord Aidler possesses-other then his height-is a clubbed left foot, a legacy of an ambush by bandits in his earlier years. While not severe enough to require the use of walking aids, Jakob cannot run as quickly as others nor is particularly agile: an interesting situation given the man's preference for fighting on foot.
Personality: Jakob Aidler is a Swadian aristocrat through and through: contemptuous of his lessers, paranoid about his fellow nobles and their insidious designs and utterly convinced of his own superiority; be it with blade, intellect or blood. Calculating and mistrustful, Jakob suspects treason and plots at every corner and while he is usually adept at maintaining a calm facade, sometimes his paranoia gets the better of him and can cause fits of violent temper as he lashes out at real and percieved foes: an expensive education has only excacerbated this trait as the man is convinced the same coups and conspiracies of history can happen again.
Notable Skills: Jakob is a skilled if unexceptional swordsman, highly trained and well experienced in the use of sword and shield. Although he is a competant rider, he only uses his steed for travelling purposes and dismounts when combat is afoot. Jakob's other expertise lies in commanding others as he is well versed in tactics and possesses a forceful charisma born of complete self-conviction that enables him to dominate the lower orders.
Equipment: Left almost completely destitute by the fortunes of war, Jakob can only boast a few score Denars to his name and is equipped with merely a simple arming sword and the tattered clothes of a Khergit captive. However, he is determined to rise again......
Location: Outskirts of Jameyyed castle
Bio: The Aidler family had served as margraves of the Swadian-Khergit border for many generations when Jakob was born in their ancestral castle at Rindyar. His was a privileged upbringing: the only son of a prestigous family, he was afforded the best martial training and education money could buy since he would not only assume the position of Margrave of Rindyar when fully grown but he was also vital to the continuation of the Aidler bloodline. As might be expected, Jakob grew up relatively spoiled and became used to the idea of inherent lordship over all, an idea reinforced by frequent trips accompanying his father to conscript local peasants and passing mercenaries for the defense of the border.
In spite of any personality flaws, Jakob soon assumed responsbilities in his family's fiefdom in his teen years and was often charged with leading small patrols around its territories, on the lookout for Khergit forces, outlaws and simply anyone the young lord didn't like the look of. It was during one of these patrols that Jakob experienced a defining moment of his life: spying an infamous outlaw of the region, Jakob gave chase at once, racing ahead of his surprised comrades. It was only when the first javelin whipped past his head did he realise he'd been lured into an ambush. Seperated from his horsemen and having foolishly followed the outlaw into the wooded border with Tilmaut fied, Jakob was forced to fight for his life alone and against a dozen bandits-worse, attempting to dismount, his horse was brought down by more javelins and pinned him to the earth by his left leg. Though his party arrived in time to scare off the bandits and drag him free, Jakob was left seething from what he saw as the humilation of being outwitted and outfought by common peasantry, even after his leg had been set at Rindyar and the outlaws caught and hung. He vowed that so help him gods, he would never be outmanoeuvred again.
The next decade saw Jakob orphaned by a thankfully minor outbreak of plague and fighting in the seemingly endless border wars with the Khanate, chasing off raiding parties and crossing the border to raze villages. It was here he excelled, showing a ruthless enthuaism for plunder and little quarter to the enemy. The Rindyar garrison saw off numerous Khergit attacks but it was never employed as the starting-off point for a serious counter-attack: something that increasingly infuriated Jakob. He petitioned Praven again and again for the right to launch a campaign against the Khanate, to conquer their lands and ensure the safety of the margrave but again and again the royal court refused. To add insult to injury in Jakob's eyes, he was constantly invited to feasts and tournaments even as his fief wrestled with invaders! Strategically frustrated, convinced that the lords who attended the feasts were mocking him and viewing King Harlus as a weak man incapable of decisive action, Jakob took action and mustered everything he could from Rindyar for his own assault on the Khergit.
When Calradian scholars talk of the greatest military defeats of modern history, the Battle of Halmar features most prominently.
Jakob's campaign against the Khergit targeted the town of Halmar, a key trade point for the Khanate and no doubt a wealthy source of plunder, not to mention that the capture of such a prize would prove to Harlus and his court that Jakob had been right all along and would galvinze them into true war. But the campaign ended in disastor: despite initial success in raiding nearby villages and destroying small enemy parties, the campaign ground to a halt when Jakob committed his men to a seige of Halmar, despite the advice of his lieutenants. Barely a few months into the seige, a relief force arrived, greatly outnumbering the Swadians-investing the town, they could not escape the fast moving Khergit horsemen and were brought to battle. It was a slaughter: Jakob personally fought with ferocity but his arrogance had doomed his men from the moment they had arrived at Halmar. His army was destroyed in short order, cut down by lancers and horse archers with the few survivors taken prisoner, including Jakob who had tried to organise a last ditch defense when the Khergit infantry approached to mop-up the remnants of his forces. Had his captors recoginised his heraldry they might have lopped off his head there and then, great was the hatred the Khanate bore for the latest Aidler but as luck would have it, his coat of arms had either been hacked from his armour or was so rent and damaged by blows it was impossible to decipher, giving Jakob the dubious fate of imprisonment in the town he had sought to capture.
The new few months in captivity brought further ill-tidings: Jakob learnt from his captors that another great victory had been achieved by the Khan's warriors and that the castle of Rindyar had fallen, leaving him dispossessed and penniless. Before long he was taken from his cell: he feared that his identity had finally been discovered but it was not so-instead he was to be taken to the slave markets of Narra to see if he could fetch a fine price for his foes. Stripped of his title and family holdings and destined for a life of slavery in some distant Khergit pit, it seemed Jakob's saga was coming to a ignominious end-however fate smiled on the man.
The prisoner caravan was halfway to Narra when it came under attack by a sizeable force of deserters and brigands garbed in the manner of Rhodoks-surely the remnants of some army defeated by the Sarranids, whose border was only a day's travel to the south. Volleys and counter-volleys of arrows and crossbow bolts flew across the plains as the caravan guards fought with their assailiants and in the confusion the ropes binding Jakob came loose and he was able to free himself, pausing only to grab a sword some food from a fallen guard before fleeing the fight on a stolen horse. The caravan a distant object and hidden inside a copse, the nobleman took stock: his holdings in Swadia were gone and with them his wealth and worth in the kingdom. To stay in Khergit lands was a death sentence: even if no-one recoginised him as the Margrave of Rindyar he was still an escaped prisoner and lords paid just as well for the heads of such individuals as they did for the whole body. There was only course left to Jakob and so he took it, making his way to the Sarranid border with the intent of regaining his status in this world at any cost.....
(There! Re-created my in-game character and his epic story)
