(Thought I wouldn’t be whitelisted so I wrote this app up but on joining the server I wasn’t a soul? The last time I played properly was about 7 years ago but if that’s all good then you’re free to just delete this app.)
William, known to his friends as Will, was born to a peasant family known as the Sunfeathers on the outskirts of Haense, but was raised by the village and its trials as all children were. From a young age he had to learn to fight to keep what he had, battling over morsels of food and scraps of clothing. He was as proficient as any other peasant boy, with no special talent for it one way or the other, a weakness he acknowledged. As he grew older, he more and more saw strength in his sense of ambition. The strongest boys in the village were clearly enjoying their little scuffles over food, their forays into the dirt, but not Will. His father had told him that hundreds of years previously, the Sunfeather name was far less tarnished, and that back in Asulon one of his forefathers used to write for a living and was known throughout the region for his poetry that he published in his newspaper, the Asulon Herald. This forgotten forefather was friends with people in high places but was a sworn enemy of the nobility, and the actions that he attempted to take against Godfrey I were directly responsible for the dirt that Will now slept in.
These actions made Will curse his line and curse the man known as Hyperio that had tarnished it so. As a teenager, Will scorned the brashness of his ancestor and toiled over decisions that he was said to have made, while also coveting the life that Hyperio was said to have lived. Will wanted nothing more than to wax philosophical all day, his own talent for language going almost entirely unnoticed among the people of his village, but instead he was to constantly bring his fists, and later his sword, against enemies that threatened to diminish the contents of his stomach. His interests in language and in the wonder of the arts, particularly of the magic variety, and this all consuming ambition, led him to change his name as a teenager and begin training himself for a new future, a future of adventure and escape. He took the name of Goldfeather, wanting to remain feathery and verbose, as Hyperio had been, while acknowledging his desire for greater things.
This training involved many attempts to improve his swordsmanship, which were less successful than the improvements he made to his overall fitness. What he lacked in finesse with a blade he made up for with stamina and force, and by his mid twenties he personally considered himself a force to be reckoned with, although this claim was surely similar to his ambition in that it was greatly overblown. He also developed a keen interest in magic, although had no idea where to go to learn it or who could teach it to him, subsisting only on whispers uttered throughout the village and from what little books he could hide away in his hut. Eventually he decided that he had trained enough, and assuming that what he had heard of Helena made it an optimal place to begin his quest to bring honour to his new name and the name of his future progeny, he set out on the only road he’d ever known.
Edited by hypercrit
His gaze of captivation at a trader selling some scaled sea life, previously unknown to him, had been most rudely interrupted. He peered through eyes drawing shut with the gravity that lengthy sea travel creates at a man of proud stature and proud attire and a smile too full of pleasantries to exist naturally. Not wanting to seem too enamoured by the affluencey being brutally displayed, but also deeply coveting the silky material that clothed the man and that gold that fell from his wrists, William grunted back with a tired voice, “A wealthy elevation through adventure, as all men truly desire in the recesses of their hearts.” Always with the poetry, William thought, faux-critically of himself. The man seemed to understand, his smile thinning into a natural state as he replied, “Of course, a man after my own heart. I’d like to give you a tour of the city and discuss a certain adventure that may interest a man of your character.”
The afternoon sun was now boldly stating its presence in the sky, its deep orange rays penetrating the canopy of the clearing that the two men of juxtaposed attire had temporarily claimed as their own. The discussion had been ongoing for some time, and the general details were now clear. The man was a noble of honest but resilient character, a type of man that William so desperately wanted to be, and this man, Severio, had been stolen from by a group of thieves that he suspected were in the employ of another noble family. “The job will be difficult, they will expect somebody, and that is why I waited at those docks for my instincts to pick someone such as you from a crowded ship, an entity unknown to my enemies. I see a lot of myself in you, Will, and should your work be successful, you may find yourself regularly under my employ. Will was all too ready to except, and now found it harder to hide his admiration that had been growing for the man under the rays of the afternoon sun. He took money from Severio for supplies, but he trusted the steel of his blade, forged in the suffering of the slums and of an isolation from a presumed birthright, would be all he needed as he set off for the camp of bandits.
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