Granth, Bandit King

NAME: Granth
AGE: 35
GENDER: Male
NATIONALITY: Unaffiliated (Bandit)

APPEARANCE: A gruff man with a haggard look about him, Granth has leathery skin worn from years of hard work. He's fairly tall and surprisingly muscular due to long years of training with a longbow, and his body is lean and tough. He is not a handsome man, but few can ever see that due to the masks and hoods he favors so. His voice is of average pitch but hard in its edge, and there's often an underlying tone of threat to his words.

Granth favors rugged traveler's clothes, and his garb has clearly been stitched back together by hand several times. Most of his gear is makeshift... except for his weapons, which he takes careful, loving care of.

PERSONALITY: There are few who have kind words for Granth, even those he would call friends or confidantes. He is a harsh but efficient taskmaster to serve under, and his view of the world is pragmatic and based on what he can observe. He cares little for morals save for when invoking them benefits him; he cares even less for honor and other high-minded principles. Philosophy is a waste of time. He cares only for his grim work before him, his means of putting food on his table and gold in his coffer: banditry.

It would be inaccurate to say that Granth is a wholly wicked man. He is definitely some shade of evil, of course; he's killed, plundered, and robbed plenty in his time. But Granth only kills when he feels it most convenient. It's not something he does for sport. That may not seem like much of a silver lining, but at least his goal isn't to hurt people. It's just that hurting people tends to be the easiest way for him to achieve his goals, especially since his skillset is pretty much limited to committing violence and bossing other people around.

Unfortunately, Granth's greed is matched by his very tactical mind. This makes him dangerous, as he tends to know when he can take risks and when he shouldn't. And if he does overestimate a risk, well... Someone else usually suffers for his failure, because Granth makes sure he's not the one that gets caught.

HISTORY: Granth's history is pretty typical for a bandit. He started life as the son of a poacher outside of Eclipse City, and like his father hunted in areas that were specifically meant for the Moon Elf nobility to hunt. After all, those areas had all the best game. When his father was caught, Granth was too young to support both himself and his younger sister. She starved to death. He survived.

Alone in the wilds, Granth was lucky enough to be taken in by a group of bandits. The bitter youth learned very quickly that people could be felled much the same way as animals, and by the time he was sixteen had a frightening number of kills notched on his bow. By the time he was twenty-five he was considered his gang's best marksman. By the age of thirty he was a lieutenant among his group, perhaps to become the future ringleader of the group.

Unfortunately, when bandit hunters slaughtered his band and captured the survivors, Granth found himself bound in chains. He was dragged off to a prison in Eclipse City, awaiting his execution for his crimes of murder and banditry. That is where his story begins.