Kithul

“Strength is not found in the hardness of one’s skin, but in the softness of one’s heart. Laws and chaos mean nothing when others are in pain. We are defined by our actions, by the compassion we show, and by the justice we seek. In every step I take, I strive to be a force for good, a protector of the innocent.” – Kithul

Background

He was born to human parents in a small village, with granite skin and emerald gem-patterns set around his green eyes, and nobody in the village could account for either. His parents loved him. His face brought difficulty on them and on their neighbors all the same, and he left home young to spare them any more of it.

He went out alone into unsettled country, knowing nothing of borders, and crossed mountains, forests and open plains. He learned to live off the land over those years and found the empty places easier company than the full ones.

What he was looking for was where he had come from and somewhere he could belong. He found neither. The travelers he fell in with along the way left him with a sympathy for anyone else looking for the same two things.

Appearance

Just shy of seven feet, and heavily built. Bald, with granite skin and emerald gem-patterns across his face like tattoos, and green eyes under them. His lower jaw juts out a little, though his teeth do not. The nose is small and round and does not match the rest of him. He dresses in brown cloth robes, a wide leather belt, sandals and leather hand wraps.

Personality

He is grim and stern to look at, and people meeting him for the first time are usually intimidated. Underneath that he is awkward in company, gently so, from all the years he spent without any.

He puts other people’s safety above everything, and puts compassion and justice above the law and above order of any kind. He will break a custom or a rule without much argument where keeping it would cost somebody.

Relationships

He left his family to spare them pain and has carried the guilt of it ever since. He thinks they probably miss him, and the thought sits on him. He is cautious with everyone else for the same reason, expecting his presence to cost them something. The people who get past that are the ones who looked at him and saw further than the stone, and with those he goes deep quickly. He prizes honesty, loyalty and kindness, and attaches himself to people who have them.

Current Role

For years he protected people and moved on, spending his strength on whoever he came across and going out of his way to find places and people that needed defending. He never settled anywhere, and never stopped looking for somewhere he belonged. The helping was what he had instead of the finding.

Campaign Updates

He fell in with the party underground. They met him in the Mól ruins outside Loshev, where he had come following the whispers of danger he travels by, and he walked with them briefly before leaving again. There was a keep north of Ridh he meant to look into, and he went to look into it.

The keep was Wraithblade Keep. He found it intact and full of goblins, pulled back, and went into Haudh-Gwenn to find somebody who would help him take it. The man he asked was Whent. Days later a crew of six jumped him near the keep, tied him, put him in a soil-covered pit and left him for dead. He dug himself out and walked until Dwayne, traveling with the party at the time, found him half-dead on the road and got him to the Chantry. They put him back together, and he has traveled with the company since. He suspects Whent and cannot prove it, and he warned the party not to tell the story where it could be overheard, Whent being the guard-captain’s own creature.

Beyond that he has not said much about the years he was away, and nobody has pressed him. He hears whispers in Mól stone, and by the time he came back the party had learned what Mól stone tends to be built over.