Arrec (prime)

Arrec Winter, as rendered by MAZEIKISJ

Arrec Winter is a half-elf ranger who has in recent years come to call Solhaven home. He currently maintains a modest cabin in Cypress Walk in Marshtown. He is a Squire of the Order of the Azure Sun, a devout of the Order of Voln, and a member of the Ranger's Guild.

History

Hailing from Bourth, Arrec was born in 5052 to Dea Tallhart, human daughter of a Gallardshold innkeeper. The product of a single night's passion between the young woman and an elven trader from the Wyrdeep Forest, the half-elf grew up knowing nothing of his father save that he never returned again to trade in Gallardshold.

Outwardly, the family wore the single hawk feather that signified support for the elves. In practice, this was little more than a business maneuver; the inn's proprietors cared little for elves but loved coin, and their location meant that it was frequented by elves and Falcons. Still, though the same could not be said for the rest of his family, Arrec was loved by his mother. In his early years, Dea saw to it that he was educated and well-read. In his adolescence when he'd taken to disappearing into the wood seeking solitude for days at a time, she was his sole comfort. Were it not for her, it is likely that he would have left Gallardshold long before.

In the summer of Arrec's seventeenth year, Dea took ill. The nature of her sickness was unknown, but no treatment alchemical or empathic proved effective in combating it. When she succumbed to her malady the following winter, her grieving family seized the opportunity to drive Arrec out. They blamed him for her death, said that she'd been cursed by his birth. He wondered if they were right. Regardless, the young man knew his place was no longer with his mother's family.

My requests for a more detailed account of events immediately following Dea's passing were met with scorn. What the half-elf was willing to share with this chronicler is that some time later he made for the city of Krestle to the south.

Arrec had a natural, if unrefined, talent for the short bow from childhood. He put it to good use shortly after arriving within the baronial capitol, plying trade as a trapper dealing in furs and, when his own stores were full, meats of various game animals. One such kill - a great large-antlered stag - gained him the attention of a local unit of Falcons - he had unknowingly wandered into the Baron Caulfield's own hunting grounds. Catching him unawares in his camp, the half-elf had little choice but to surrender and allow himself to be taken.

Had this been any other, Arrec might have been brought back to Krestle in chains to face justice for his crime, unwitting though it may have been. But this group was led by the so-called "Quarter-Elf" Edric Dundragon, a jovial old Ranger whom, in his own words, preferred justice of a more poetic sort: Arrec would be put to work for his band. In truth, he had witnessed Arrec's kill and had been impressed by the fresh-faced lad's marksmanship, seeing in him a potential Falcon with the right training and discipline.

And teach Arrec he did - not only in the longbow and in woodslore, but some of the particulars of Imperial nobility that would later be refined during his time with the Order of the Azure Sun. "If ye would serve a lord, 'sbest you know who in the hells ye be serving," Edric told him during one such lesson. The younger man chuckled. "Mayhap. But I serve no lord." The old ranger could only smile. "We'll be seeing about that."

Arrec's relationship with his unlikely mentor grew as the months passed, eventually coming to see him as something of a father figure. He patrolled with the Falcons, sometimes fighting alongside them against the odd group of highwaymen or orcs. It was Edric, too, who after they'd come upon a group of lesser ghouls, first set him on the path of the Order of Voln. Arrec's memory was most vivid when recounting the old man's reasoning: "Bugger me sideways, I'd rather get my damned head ripped clean off by a Deader than have some thrice-damned Cleric havin' to chase me around on arthritic feet t'keep my arrows blessed for me. Self-sufficiency! That's the rule of the day." This was sound enough logic for Arrec to agree.

Years passed and though he never formally joined the Falcons, Arrec came to be accepted as such by Edric and his unit. They, and those within the Voln monastery, were the closest thing he had found to family since his mother passed. In 5111, when Edric was finally forced to retire - "Not even in my hundredth year, bugger their eyes," he protested - the rest of the unit was scattered to the four winds and assigned elsewhere. But Edric encouraged his protégé to find his own way. "Whole world out there, Tallhart. Way things're goin' it's utterly buggered, all of it, so better see all of it while ye can."

Taking this lesson to heart, Arrec shortly made his way north, his heading the Voln monastery in the Dragonsclaw. During that pilgrimage of sorts, the ranger spent some time in Wehnimer's Landing among the frontiersmen, but ultimately came to call Solhaven home. He currently drifts between the two towns, helping to patrol the Cairnfang trail. Considering it a first step into a new life and seeking to distance himself from the family that would not have him, he took on a new surname, "Winter," for reasons that were rather pointedly not revealed to this chronicler.

In the years since, Arrec has been esquired by Sir Aydan Mursillis to the Order of the Azure Sun, whom he has served in faith. -- from "Hathlyn and Ordlyn of Solhaven and Vornavis," Scribe Jaymes Maab, 5113.

Appearance

You see Arrec Winter the Pathfinder.

He appears to be a Half-Elf from Bourth.

He is taller than average and appears to be young and robust. He has piercing blue-grey eyes and lightly tanned skin. He has nape-length, wavy black hair just visible under a voluminous woolen hood sporting a short liripipe. He has a thin layer of dark stubble on his chiseled, angular face, a pointed nose and well-muscled shoulders and arms.

He has a spreading network of roots on his arm.

He is in good shape.

He is wearing a muted grey-green cloak, a rounded laje symbol, a knee-length brown suede jerkin over a six-in-one chain haubergeon girded with steel plates, an interwoven silver and alum band, some ebon leather gloves backed with steel plates, a wide ebon leather belt, a roan suede survival kit, a silk-lined leather gem pouch, a hawk-crested leather belt quiver, a pair of undyed doeskin pants with leather ties, some black leather boots tooled with elven scrollwork, and a pair of silver spurs.