Chas Agustin
NPC Type: Traditional
Name: Chas “Horn-Breaker” Agustin
Race: Human
Birth Year: 274 A.C.
Location: Fort Diaman in the Eastern Steppes.
Profession
Bandit leader of the Wightlers.
Languages
Speech: Common – Fluent, Rigarian – Conversational
Reading: Common – Fluent, Rigarian – Conversational
Writing: Common – Fluent
Skills
Core
| Skill | Level |
|---|---|
| Husbandry | Journeyman |
| Innovation | Journeyman |
| Investigation | Expert |
| Intuition | Expert |
| Physique | Master |
| Survival | Expert |
Combat
| Skill | Level |
|---|---|
| Weapon: Axes (Two-Handed) | Master |
| Weapon: Daggers | Expert |
| Weapon: Bows (Traditional) | Expert |
| Weapon: Throwing Blades | Journeyman |
| Unarmed Combat | Expert |
Knowledge
| Skill | Level |
|---|---|
| Wilderness Survival (Plains) | Master |
| Wilderness Survival (Forest) | Journeyman |
| Decryption | Journeyman |
| History (Humans) | Expert |
| First Aid | Journeyman |
| Riding (Horse) | Journeyman |
| Tactics | Expert |
Appearance
By reputation: Chas is towering figure between 6’ 3” and 6’ 7” with wild, shaggy dark hair and a thick, bushy beard and mustache. He walks around with a bare chest that is crisscrossed with scars from weapons or burns. Thick are the muscles of his arms and chest. The clothing he wears are often tattered. Always at his side is a large two-headed axe with a haft with various hues of red. The haft is made from the horns of all the hellbends he has killed.
Actual Appearance: Chas is 5’ 9” with very short black hair. His face is clean shaven and smooth except for a single scar on the left side of his face that goes from the jawline to the side of the bridge of his nose. The ridge of his nose is crooked from being broken several times. Light brown is the tone of his skin with a constant coating of grime upon him. Old, severe, burn scars cover the outside portion of his right forearm He wears a full set of leather armors into combat. Otherwise, he is dons mundane clothes, which sometimes have old bloodstains. He carries a greataxe that has no distinguishing features and five daggers on his belt that are small and light enough to be thrown, but long enough to be useful against an armed opponent.
Personality
Chas enjoys meeting new people, but its never done with a smile. Idle questions like asking a person where they live, or what flavors of food do you prefer, are of little interest to him. He seeks to understand the person’s ideals, their morals, and discover the things they won’t do. Each question he’ll ask and appear very engaged, because he is, if you’re human. Seeing a stranger in need, he provides whatever aid he can lend them so long as he has not written them off as someone that opposes them. And if you’re not with him, there’s no doubt that you are against him.
While he has a reputation for murder, and being a brute, Chas mostly displays a calm disposition. People that look into his eyes can see the intellect behind them. And they notice that it is constantly in motion. He looks at ways to mold people into his allies, regardless of the form his coercion takes. But he doesn’t take the effort if someone outright opposes him. Chas wants people to want to help him rebuild the world.
He treats Hellbends with the same level of respect that an angry farmer treats a miss-behaving beast of burden. They cannot be trusted because they lack human understanding. Chas sees them as large, dangerous, and sometimes clever, beasts that threaten their existence. All Hellbends, whether hostile or ally, will hinder human potential. Their very existence is disrespectful to him. Chas shows no hesitation in harming and killing Hellbends of all ages. Each hellbend that he personally kills, he cuts off both horns with his axe. After a raid, or skirmish, Chas goes through and collects the horns so that he may give them to his dogs as chew toys.
Background
In the Great Plains a few days north of Brickwell was a growing settlement, Vutesgi. It was one of the first settlements cofounded by humans and hellbends, back in the year 206. Chas was born in Vutesgi and had spent as much time around hellbend children as he had human children. What he remembers are the hellbend bullies. Chas recalls them tormenting all the human children because they were smaller, weaker. One day when Chas was eight, he was playing in the fields outside of the town with several others. It was an aggressive game of Catch and during an effort to catch one of the hellbends, their horn cut Chas across the left side of his face.
It was a defining moment in his life. Because he remembers how the hellbend looked down on him after it happened. Without remorse even as a piece of his flesh hung from the horn’s tip. Worse than that, the hellbend boy was smiling. It was the first seed of true fear to be planted within Chas’ mind when it came to the race of red giants. During the following days everyone tried to quell his anxieties by stating it was merely an accident. In his heart, Chas felt that it was not, and all attempts of reassurance only made him more certain that it was not.
The years immediately following the incidicent, Chas acted timidly around them. Fearful that he would do something to incite their wrath and be gored again. To help him focus less on his fears his parents took in a stray dog. They gave Chas the responsibility to care for it, hoping to bring out the nurturing side of him that they saw. Chas named the dog, a shaggy gray furred beast that grew to sixty pounds, Timpa. Chas could not be found without Timpa at his side. It made the dog a natural target for the troublesome hellbend youths.
When Chas was eleven, his peers grew fixated on becoming warriors. They imagined exploring the world and slaying fictitious creatures to become legends. One of the hellbend boys was already a foot taller than the rest of them, and more a physical peer to a young adult human. He often “pretended” to oppose the imaginary heroes in their adventures. While children could sometimes grow enthusiastic with enacting their imaginations, the Hellbend, Urrai, was consistently rougher than necessary against his smaller peers.
During a game of pretend, Urrai struck Chas across the face with enough intensity to drive the young human to the ground in a bundle of tears. Timpa retaliated on Chas’ behalf by digging his teeth into the bones of Urrai’s ankle. Injured and angry, Urrai kicked the dog off him before attacking him with the heavy stick that had been his imaginary weapon. Chas heard Timpa’s whimpers and grabbed a sharp rock. He leapt on Urrai’s back and drove it into Urrai’s shoulders repeatedly. He was smaller and weaker than the hellbend, and wasn’t able to cause any serious injuries. But he grabbed a horn to hold onto as he cut up the base of Urrai’s neck and shoulders.
When the adults came to pull them apart it was too late to convince them it was Urrai that had been overly aggressive. Even Timpa having a lame leg didn’t convince them. Timpa’s disability festered in Chas’ mind long after the dog had passed from old age. He became less courteous to the hellbends of the town during his teenage years, while taking hard jobs that would make him stronger. If he ever needed to hurt one, he wanted to be capable do doing more than scratching them. Chas answered any call for labor help, which mostly was to assist the lumberjacks harvest more wood from the forest. Chas did his fair share of cutting and hauling. And was pleased with the money he was getting from the work.
One day he was coming back to Vutesgi with the other lumberjacks when they saw black smoke rising from their village. Dropping their haul, they all rushed back to assist in extinguishing the flames. But the fire had already spread beyond the ability to control by the time they got there. Chas then focused on saving the people rather than the buildings. The fire struck harder on the congregation of human homes. Chas managed to clear a few homes when he realized that his home was completely ablaze. Terror blinded him to risk as he charged into the flames to find his parents.
The smoke was a thick orange miasma that blocked his vision. He called out and heard his mother reply. She was kneeling over his father who had fallen unconscious. Chas took up his father onto his shoulder and started leading them out when the house collapsed with them inside. His father’s body protected him from the worst of it, but a burning beam had pinned down his right arm. Chas pulled and kicked to free himself from the rubble around him. What little air he was able to breath he spent on calling out to his mother. Calls that were never answered. Even as the fire bit his flesh he called out to his mother rather than scream.
Chas felt his thoughts began to slow as his body decided to stop struggling. Before passing out, he felt several hands grasp his body and pull. When he regained consciousness, he was laying on his back in the fields surrounding Vutesgi. His right arm was a thick mass of bandages with heavy staining on one side. Other parts of his body ached from cuts and bruises, but his right arm perpetually screamed pain. It was so constant and intense Chas could not verbalize the discomfort. Tears ran down his cheeks and the simple action of getting up required all his focus.
Smoke continued to rise from the town which was less than half its normal size. Chas called out for help, for his parents. In the chaos it took time before someone stopped to address him. Chas brushed away any of the hellbends that tried to help him. Another human finally gave him attention and explained what had happened. A young hellbend caster lost control of their fire and set their own house aflame. Before their instructor could take control of it, the fire had already leapt to several more houses. Chas asked about his parents.
“I’m sorry Chas. Your mother was crushed when the house collapsed. And your father… was pierced by broken timber. Had he not been over your shoulder, the timber would have pierced you instead. You’re very lucky.”
But luck was not what he felt. It was the last thing that Chas felt. He could not recall the following days when help arrived to support the survivors and to talk about rebuilding the town. While they had all gathered, Chas spoke for the first time in days. While it felt like he was back in his burning home, the way his anger seethed at the underside of his skin, Chas spoke with a calm, projecting voice. He declared that there was no saving the town. That the buildings could be rebuilt but not the hearts and memories that had been turned to ash. Chas stated that it was no longer safe for the humans to stay there. One hellbend “accident” destroyed their families. And it was only a matter of time before another “accident” would happen again.
He indirectly accused the hellbends of arson by asking why it was mostly the human homes that had been burned down, while the hellbend homes were only damaged. People replied that the hellbends had been attempting to regain control of the fire, with magic, but could not get to the human buildings. Chas turned the argument against them. Pointing out that the hellbends looked after their own, and left the humans to burn. They did that knowing the humans did not posses the same means to save themselves. Hellbends’ denial convinced the humans that Chas’ words were sound truth. Chas convinced the humans to abandon Vutesgi because it was too dangerous for them, and that they should return to Lysium.
Vutesgi still stands, but no longer as a biracial community.
When Chas arrived at Lysium, he was glad to be surrounded by humans. A strange new urge to protect them motivated him to enlist with the Lysium Military. After several years he had ascended to the rank of Vetrarn and was given a platoon to command. The responsibility came with organizing patrols for a small portion of the city. Chas was efficient, but there were issues with his outcomes. While the soldiers under his command respected him, there were complaints of bias against Hellbend citizens. The first couple of occurrences had been explained away. But as more and more complaints arose, it could not be dismissed.
To those that did serious digging through the archives, they would find that Chas Agustin was dismissed from the military to pursue personal goals. The higher command kept the real reasoning from public record. Chas was prejudice which led him to framing hellbends for crimes they should have had no affiliation with. Feeling betrayed by the very humans he sought to protect, Chas left Lysium and survived on the plains by himself as a roaming hermit.
In the later end of his mid-twenties, a small bandit clan approached his camp. They threatened to kill him unless he gave over everything he had. Chas could see through the bravado, as a ploy for the leader to gain more respect from his followers. Making a show of harassing a hermit. Chas gave them a counter offer. They could have all his possessions if they allowed him to join their little clan. Thinking Chas was a defenseless and harmless hermit they refused. Chas made an effort to not kill any of them, though he gained a few scares on his back for doing so. He had managed to impress them with his combat skills and decided to accept Chas’ offer. He was brought into the Wild Skulls bandit clan.
Chas enjoyed their company. Not because they were human, although that certainly was a factor. But because they were true to themselves and did not adhere to the absurd moralities and political maneuvers of the Lysium humans. But he did cause some strife when objecting to hurting humans in the Great Plains. The bandit’s current leader felt threatened by Chas. Both by his skill and his intellect. The leader of the Wild Skulls sought to dispose of Chas during a raid on a small hellbend settlement on the western side of the forest. The leader attempted to backstab Chas, literally, only to fail. Chas dragged the barely living bandit leader back to camp after the raid and asserted his control of the Wild Skulls.
He took the clan through the forest to the Eastern Steppes. Where there would be far fewer humans to get in the way, and they could be as violent as their impulses drive them. But they were not the only bandit clan in the Eastern Steppes, and were certainly not the largest. Seeking to build a fresh reputation, Chas renamed their clan as the Wightlers and set his sights on a lager clan known as the Five Cuts. Utilizing his experience in the military, the Wightlers diminished the Five Cuts’ numbers through ambushes, advantageous position in battles, and surprise tactics. Before the Five Cuts’ were eradicated, Chas extended an invitation to join the Wightlers. Faced with complete defeat, many of the bandits accepted.
While the Wightlers sought to conquer or assimilate other bandit factions in the Eastern Steppes, they worked on constructing a home base. Chas saw how roaming the plains was unsafe. Someone only needed to outthink him once to strike a serious blow against him. They needed fortifications. Chas took his growing clan inside the White Wood Forest and began chopping down trees to form a clearing. It was an exhaustive process that caused many disputes among his followers. When they were not raiding, they were in the dangerous woods building. At times the Wightlers dwindled to dangerously low numbers, but their intimidating reputation spared them from other, stronger clans. That, and the other clans did not know where to find the Wightlers.
It took years to drive away the dangerous beasts, cut down the trees, carve them, and erect them into a wooden fortress hidden within the White Wood Forest. Fort Diaman. But the accomplishment became a demonstration of power to the other bandit clans. Chas altered his tactics to take as many prisoners from a skirmish as possible. So that he could bring them to the fortress and awe them with the Wightlers accomplishment. What other bandit clans have a fortress to protect them, he would ask. Their ranks swelled in the following years, causing them to expand their base and their reach of influence.
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