indiana105

Born a child of Norlandic peasants, Robert has never known riches, nor has he attained even the smallest taste of glory. Rather, the majority his life had been spent toiling away in his father’s smithy, driving his hammer into steel as he forged scores of nails, horseshoes, and other mundane items. This manual labour, coupled with his naturally larger Highlander build, led to Robert becoming quite a physically formidable man. However, despite his strength and experience, much to his father’s disappointment, Robert is a mediocre smith at best. The fires of the forge had never been able to keep his interest for long, as he found it more enjoyable not to smith a blade, but to wield one. As a child, he’d often run off, nicking a sword from the smithy as he set off to terrorize both scarecrow, and small mammal alike. Later in life, he’d enlist the help of various vagabonds and mercenaries drifting through his village, forking over the few coins he’d made from his time at the smithy, in return for lessons in swordsmanship. As he furthered his skill, he become somewhat arrogant, believing himself to be a more formidable duelist than he truly was. In a drunken stupor, he challenged a wandering Hedge Knight, in an attempt to impress the women at the local tavern. He was beaten, swiftly, a cut to the back of his left knee sending him collapsing to the ground. Humiliated, and now crippled, Robert became increasingly bitter as life went on, developing an extremely short temper, becoming known for his outbursts of brutal violence. It came as a surprise to no one, when he smashed his forging hammer into the head of an unsatisfied customer, swiftly securing his banishment from the village, leaving him a homeless vagabond, drifting from hamlet to hamlet. Wearing an ill-fitted suit of armour, looted from the corpse of a slain brigand he’d found on the roadside, Robert is a man without purpose, limping along the roads in search of something greater.