Lord Jozef Blackram
I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.
Description: Large and expressive brown eyes sit on a rugged face of swarthy skin as his short, dark brown hair meets a scruffy beard at the bottom of his face. He is a tall man with broad shoulders and a brawny combatant's frame. His hands are stained with coal and look beaten and leathery with callous, which he proudly presents. Between the uniform of a blacksmith, his knight's armor and whatever silk he can find that actually fits him, he dresses very conservatively.
Personality: When Jozef was born, his future was decided for him and he was content in the role he played. He leads a very traditional life, adamant about following a code of conduct. A trait that alienates him from his libertine cousins. He never seems to stop working and is considered aloof and an introvert that takes too much of his work home.
Background:
His father is a noble man known for his skill with forging blades, a skill he had to put aside once he became more known in the court, from Sanna in Redrain who married a Valardian lady from Blackram in the Oathland. When Jozef was born they moved south to Cloudspine, where he was raised, learning their customs and religion in favor of his father's. With a bright education from a university in Artshall under his belt, Jozef became a squire of Duke Edmund Laurent, serving under the man for many years, and eventually becoming a knight himself. Then his mentor died from illness and Jozef, stricken with grief, left Artshall and the Oathland to never be heard from again. He fled north where he took on his father's trade, as a blacksmith, and camouflaged as a courtier inside the Sanna court.
During his time in the north, he met a Patheon missionary and the two came to be close friends. The priest helping him practice their religion. Jozef also learned about the stars from the priest. He became obsessed with the notion that stars could fall on Arvum, that he wanted to see one himself. So much, in fact, that he left home for a second time, this time though to chase falling stars. The wilderness was cruel but Jozef had to learn to live off it as the clans do. After many years in the wild, looking up for falling stars, he returned to the court to look for his priest friend, and hearing that his friend was among the clans, trying to convert them, he ventured to track him only to encounter what was carnage left behind by wild shavs. His priest friend left on a cross for the birds to eat him alive. The sight was so intense that it buried an image into his mind. He brought the priest down, giving him a proper burial.
Nowhere else to go, he came back to Cloudspine, his mother's house, to face her and his father for the shame he brought when he left the service of house Laurent. He swore vengeance through duty and to appease his family, offered himself as a potential bachelor for house Blackram to dispose of in an advantageous marriage.
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