Description: Of average height but the sort of build that suggests one of his parents was a brick outhouse, and moving with the gravitas of a man whose usual outfit is made of metal, Sir Taranis Grayhope is a heavyweight in more than one sense of the term. With skin and eyes several shades darker than his reddish hair he's a study in contrasts; young, but with the air of a man who's travelled widely, his gaze is too knowing for any attempt at innocence to succeed.

Personality: Sir Taranis is one of those irritating people who greets every piece of news with a smile - on the surface, at least. There's been an attack of shavs? Smile. His horse ran away? Smile. The Palace is on fire? Smile. Taranis finds humour in even the most dire situations, without a care for how others might feel about it. As such, he's usually a boost to morale in the direst circumstances, even if that is because after the fight to see who gets to throttle him, whatever's coming can't be that bad.

While he might seem like the most irreverent man out there on the surface, Taranis is actually a deep thinker. It's just that he has a keen eye for the little absurdities of life - and for all sorts of other things, too. Being a devoted follower of Death just means he has a different perspective to most.

Background: Raised mostly at the Murder of Crows, and taken out on the road with his mother for the spring and autumn caravans, Taranis Grayhope was a blithe and lively spirit with a fondness for learning weapon-play and horsemanship. Taranis grew into a sturdy lad, and when he reached his majority joined Meranthe's caravans as a guard, soon achieving her trust. Knighted in the aftermath of the siege of Bastion, in which he distinguished himself by saving civilians in front of a nobleman, Sir Taranis was rather bemused by the whole thing but took it in stride. The recent upheavals in the Grayhope family's fortunes has brought him back to Arx with his mother, pitching in where he's needed to help out.