G E R A L T - O F - G O T H E N B U R G
Details
Full Name: Geralt Baringer
Race: Kathar Avialae (Wingless)
Sex: Male
Age: 32
Height: 7'
Weight: 289 lbs
Birthdate: 85th of Frost, Year 87
Birthplace: Göteborg, East End, Kingdom of Lorien
Profession: Soldier, Businessowner of Valenbrech Military Academy
Housing: Gothenburg
Partners: None
Class: Celebrant
Titles: Heir to House Baringer, Baron of Valenbrech, Errant of the Argent Knighthood
Factions: House Baringer, The Argent Knighthood
Fluencies: Common, Koltoska
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
The one characteristic of Geralt that everyone who knows him will point out - before anything else - is the apparent and evident lack of wings. A tall and robustly shaped man like others of his race, one would look at him and expect the typical bearings of a Kathar, only for him to come up short. Geralt is, therefore, often mistaken by those unfamiliar with him as a very tall and muscular human, a rare specimen that can't help but draw the attention of eyes and ears where he treads. Geralt is a broad and powerful looking man, with well-developed arms and legs, a notably built chest and a fairly even physique. His skin tends to be clear in complexion; his face is without scarring or imperfections and he rarely allows his beard to grow out beyond stubble. His hair is almost always entirely shaven save for a minuscule length, and his skin is often tan due to his rigorous outdoor activities.
Geralt's hair, when it does grow, is a light brown and his eyes are a cool and unspectacular blue. Though most would consider him handsome, his heritage is largely human, and this shows in most of the ways it possibly could.
Personality
Geralt is a calm and studious man, known for his spontaneous and endearing sense of humor, and his compassion towards those less fortunate. A Baringer, altruism is a natural part of his being and even without compensation, he often likes to do generous things for those with little to offer. Of course, as a Lord much of this is a virtuous posturing of his; a game of catching the eye of others, drawing their gaze to his supposed benevolence. He enjoys being the hero, being well-loved and highly respected. Being valued. Like with all mortals, there is a dark undercurrent to these supposedly benign emotions, and Geralt is a man of many extremes. He can be incredibly angry at times; wildly furious to the point of no return. That calm, though it is enduring, vanishes once it has been sufficiently chipped. As the heir to a Duchy, he despises being questioned or disagreed with, and often considers such disagreements an attack on his honor and even his intrinsic characteristics.
Much of these behaviors - perhaps all of them, positive and negative - stem from an intense, existential dread at his own imperfections, such as his mutilated wings and the way in which he and his family have fallen out of public favor. Geralt, intensely idealistic and deeply in love with his Duchy and its people, fears that one day they will truly turn on him as they have other Baringers to the North. He is often rumored to be intensely paranoid, though these claims are overstated, if only somewhat. Perhaps more than paranoid, he is dangerous -- willing to destroy shadows before they jump at him, and dismember his foes before they can do the same to him. As they already have.
History
I was born in the desert.
My clutched eyes stayed shut for fear of the roaring sun. It was uncharacteristically cold; perhaps the only time I would ever feel the frost. I remember that, and nothing else, perhaps for the whole of the first year of my life. That initial moment, and then... everything comes shrouded by darkness.
Apparently, a lot of things happened during that time. Why was my family, the inheritors of a Rien Duchy, even there? A question good to wonder. My Lord-Father was not the Duke back then, only the heir. His wife, my mother, had an idea . . . that the two of them would never fulfill their destinies, that they would wander down south to Larissa Valley and engage with the Koltoskan clans that so loved them, that they would become one with that life and leave their Kingdom behind. The civil war was heated, more than it is now, and they were tired of fearing what their whispers might invoke. The flapping wings that lurched always in the shadows had begun to gnaw on them, as they did so many others from my Kingdom. They were tired of it. In characteristic Baringer fashion, they threw aside tradition and obligation and hungrily pursued their new life.
And so, in Larissa I was born, lain on a beaten cloth rug with a... poncho laid over me, or some other garish object known to the dryland dwellers of the south. I don't remember it, but we would always move, for that first year. My grandfather's enforcers would come to find us and return us to the fold, to bring honor back to the Baringer name and restore a modicum of stability to the realm. We would tag onto another caravan, concealed by my mother's magics that the people of my Kingdom are utterly poorly equipped to deal with.
But what we hadn't thought was that the Kindred themselves would come and find us. That they were willing to go that far to chase down their escaped rats. That their veiled, transcendent shadows could even flutter so ominously in the heart of the Valley, and that they would gleefully kill our caravan entourage. We were brought back home by the graces of rotting, mold-covered titanic birds, but not before they ripped the stem of my wings from their root in my back. Just like that.
I always hated them.
Those fucking birds... a blight on this land from the moment they were made. Death to the Revenlows for ever letting them free.
After that, I learned how to fulfill my role as the heir to a Duchy. With Lorien fragmented, I was almost like a prince; the moment my grandfather died I would be the most important youth in the land, catered to by many with a thousand sycophants tailoring their lives and schedules on my whims. I met my other grandfather, Lord Galbrecht, who was winged like I was supposed to be -- but he always treated me with disdain. Though his little girls were all deviously inclined to despise the Kindred, he was a true Kathar loyalist, beloved of the sodding birds as he knelt to the frost beneath their feet. Ever in love with being servile.
Not everything was bad. I truly did have a good, early life; before the other boys realized that I was a Kathar, intended to have wings, they treated me like the King that I wanted to be. I was taller than them, and stronger, and the son of the son of the Duke. I was the popular one that everyone crowded around, and so garnished in favor I was that I needed to learn humility in order not to die. My early years were fairly good, and in fact most of my developmental age. I was still crowded around. I got married young and had two sons -- both Kathar like me, Latham and Dorian, born with the ebony wings of bats. My wife wasn't particularly beloved by me, an arranged marriage to tie one of our vassal Houses closer to ours, and unsurprisingly she died at the culmination of a plot. Galbrecht, I assume. They wanted me to marry their daughter, and keep relations bright.
I unscrupulously joined the Knighthood, after that. The public narrative, perpetrated by my mother, was that I never wished to allow for weakness to fail my family again; that I would join the Argent to learn how to protect my House and all those aligned with us. Heroic. In truth, I despised the Omen and as an Avialae, I was forced to join one or the other. I chose beneath my class. My sons were sent to be guided by some House nanny or other; an adviser to train them in the many aspects of their role, as I was once assigned myself. I barely spent time with them, or with the Knights. Most of those years after my widowing were spent engaging in frivolties with the locals, bedding hundreds of men and women across the years and allowing the commoners to explore every facet of me, as I explored myself.
Only for something to eventually click. That this impossible, draining life would only ever culminate in something more if I made it so. That even as the men of the Knighthood scorned me for my scarred back and tattered honor, I would only continue to be scorned so long as I followed dalliances over something greater. I began to focus on my family again; on my duties and the Duke I will one day become. I focused on the lands given to me, my role with the Argent and the two sons I so scarcely offered my affections.
I didn't become a hero, then. I never was one. I'm still as pitiful now as I was, born in the desert beneath that glaring sun. But I've began, blade in hand, poncho upon my embroidered and regal back, with some idea of what I'd like to have: freedom.
