Kib Absold

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Character Stats
Farr absold.jpg
Level 12
Race Human
Class Professional 6, Fighter 2, Field Marshall 4
Armor Natashial's Grace
Weapon(s) The Standard, The Draglet Fortress Captain's Warhammer
Hometown Farrandon, Odessa

Kib Absold is a (not-so-)recently unemployed Odessan soldier. He was one of three recruited to help out the town of Draglet, explored its environs with his three tiny compatriots, Thed, Thoven and Gilerl Gilerlson, and with the more average-sized Anise. After discovering what there was to discover in Draglet, they moved on--his sister Tana caught up to him, as well as an Oracle named Marwynn. After a brief vacation on an archipelago in the Hakni Sea, they are on their way back to Odessa, to discover what has happened to Kib's father Garn.

Short Description

A fairly large Human man, with dark, close-cropped hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Clean-shaven and orderly. Wears a light grey uniform with no insignia. Carries a guisarme (strapped to his back when not needed), with a warhammer at his belt. His voice is loud and commanding, but not harsh.

Description

Kib Absold is 6'2" and 195 lbs, with dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. He is handsome enough, in a classically Odessan fashion. The tone of his voice, however, instantly attracts attention when sounded, at once both commanding and certain.

His straight hair was worn loose at about shoulder length, kept out of his eyes by a simple leather band, in the current style preferred by Odessan officers. However, he has recently resorted to trimming it short, as the demands of an adventuring lifestyle leave no means through which to maintain the more aristocratic look. Kib reckons that if he cannot be fashionable, he will at least be tidy.

He and his equipment are clean and in good order, with the due diligence born of his military training. His face is always clean-shaven, a state maintained by the razor-sharp edge of the dagger he keeps on his person.

Kib prefers the sensibility of adventuring clothing, but has been known to wear the more fashionable attire suiting his former rank, and is equally comfortable in either state of dress. Currently, his wardrobe consists solely of the two pairs of Odessan grey battle-dress he possessed when discharged (without insignia). Whatever he wears, he endeavors to keep it clean and in good repair.

Kib is used to command, and he habitually speaks in a tone meant to carry long distances. His bearing is open, but can quickly become very intimidating. He tries to make and execute his decisions as quickly as possible--while he recognizes the value of considering all possibilities, he is used to dealing with time-sensitive situations that demand a decision, and overdue deliberation invokes his rare impatience.

Kib gets along well enough with all sorts of people, and is generally willing to allow people their way if they do not impede his progress. He has entertained and considered the merits and pitfalls of all sorts of outlandish ideas, and he is never so fundamentally attached to a notion that he will dismiss competing ideas out of hand.

Kib stays generally within the framework of Law when he can, but less from conviction than from convenience--he is not overly bothered about breaking a rule if the benefit is worth the legal consequence. His immediate superiors are sometimes put off by this attitude, but to the ranks above, the results speak for themselves.

Background

Pre-Military Life

Kib was born to a family of lower merchant class, the seventh of nine children, in Farrandon, Odessa. His father, Garn, was a stonemason and a keen businessman whose professional and political acumen brought him enough clout to obtain a noble title, and all the rights and privileges granted therewith--the first such title awarded in hundreds of years. Kib was thus born and raised as a nobleman, and groomed for a life in the service of His Majesty King Aden as an officer in the military.

Military Service

Kib served for three years in Odessa's armed forces. After receiving training for his commissioned rank, he was assigned a platoon attached to the 36th Regiment out of Cebridon. He spent his first year on campaign with a peacekeeping force in Alexia that was tasked with managing dissident elements in that country, following a series of tariff reforms that have come to symbolize the final nail in the coffin of Alexian sovereignty. There, the action focused mainly on policing activities, and never in pitched battle.

As events quieted down in Alexia, Kib's platoon was reassigned to the 74th, to fight in skirmishes on the Celstian/Odessan border. It was here that Kib saw his first real battlefield action. He earned a reputation for breaking with orders when it suited him to do so, but since this more often resulted in better outcomes than not, he generally received commendation rather than approbation from his superiors. Although those immediately above him on the chain of command saw him as unreliable, the higher-ups thought of him as a man who could get the job done. After a year and a half in Celestia, Kib was on his way to a promotion, when his career was dramatically interrupted.

Family Scandal

While Kib was in Celestia, the Absold family began finding itself under pressure at home. After a series of events that Kib was not around to witness, Garn was charged, tried and sentenced for crimes ranging from bribery, corruption, tax avoidance--nearly anything short of treason and murder. The Absold family was stripped of its short-lived noble title, and Garn was tossed into jail. Kib found himself transferred to Gildenhome before he even knew of his family's fate, and while there he was summarily discharged and left to his own devices. He decided immediately that he would use any means necessary to find his way home and restore his family's reputation.

Current

Kib has spent the last couple of months following various leads to a disturbance in Draglet. He and his party (dubbed Gnob's Folly, following the death of a short-lived Servitor companion) spent a while side-tracked in Kred, dealing with a (possibly related) threat, but finally made it to Draglet Fortress, where they found the mysterious object that, upon crashing into the ground, was the apparent source of all the terrible events of the past few months. Unfortunately, Diamon Pegg arrived shortly after and managed to secure it for his own purposes.

Gnob's Folly has since been working its way to Odessa. It was blown off course onto an archipelago in the Hakni Sea, where the party grappled with Sahuagin and parleyed with a lich. Concluding the latter, they were whisked away to Vargain, where they spent just enough time to say their last farewell to Gildenhome on the way to Nia-Agliare. There, they hope to encounter Kib and Tana's brother Levan, to learn more information on Garn's fate and to hopefully recruit his help for their cause in Odessa.

As Kib continues, his party insists that he is becoming more and more fatalistic, and are ever more reluctant to press on into the dangers that surround them. To Kib, this is a calculated risk, a path that will more quickly earn him the status and wealth he requires to solve his own, personal mysteries, but whether his confidence in the abilities of himself and his party is overestimated has yet to be seen.

Tactical Philosophy

The Odessan infantry mainly makes use of the longspear to support its longbowmen, but while in Alexia, Kib picked up a respect for the skilled use of martial pole arms, and has adapted their use into his own arsenal. He also carries a shield and warhammer for close quarters, and has training in all of the common weaponry of the Mainland. He is also a fair hand in a fist-fight, and makes good use of a mount in combat.

In general, Kib prefers compromise to combat, but he has spent enough time in dangerous situations to be willing to rapidly engage his foes in battle when necessary. He knows the value of live prisoners, and he carries a respect for his opponents' goals and lives, even when they are at odds to his own.

He strives to kill only when necessary, which, to his distaste, is far too often. He is unwilling to kill helpless prisoners if he does not perceive them as a threat.

Goals

Kib would eventually like to see his father's reputation and title restored. He is convinced that nothing that his father was accused of could have happened, and knows he must hurry, before Garn's time in Cebridon's prisons takes its toll.

Kib's immediate goals are to find enough work to get him enough money to start finding the information he needs to find. He knows that a regular job won't cut it, and stories of the vast riches recovered by soldiers of fortune and adventure-seekers have given him hope. More recently, though, with the troubles in his current location, accumulating enough wealth to get back has become a far secondary preoccupation, as the dire circumstances have brought forth Kib's essential desire to do good. He realizes this, and rationalizes that becoming well-known for his deeds is to accumulate another kind of wealth, one that may take him further than mere riches would alone.

After the happenings in Kred, Kib has begun keeping a journal of his travels, to consolidate ideas. In it, he only mentions his real goals in obtuse, roundabout ways, to prevent the casual reader from learning about, in particular, his family's plight--he does not think about this, but if he did, he would surmise that he has some interest in keeping at least part of his identity hidden. The journal is also filled with notes of his linguistic endeavors--most notably, it contains the orthographies he has developed for Goblin and Kobold, and notes to aid his study (vocabulary, grammar rules, and so forth).

Career Notable Victories

  • King Mab, a Kobold Sorc 3/Fighter 1, in single combat. NOTE: NOT A REAL KING (slain).
  • The Masked Gnome, with Thed, Thoven and Gilerl (subdued and captured).
  • Swingin' Dan and The Professor, with Thed, Thoven, Gilerl, Zealeus, and a valiant band of Kred's finest, who stood their ground to their last (if only because death came too quickly for them to even scream).
  • ZOMG HOLY CRAP SO MANY KOBOLDS.
  • A mind-boggling array of undead creatures.
  • Four Scrags, including a deadly Scrag Hunter.
  • A lighthouse.
  • Grimm Gallant, Bloody Kate and The Headsman, three of the four former capos of Nia-Agliare and environs
  • Arekson (also known as Mantatlus), the once-foe of the Silverwalkers that had been pursued by the Azure Geeze since before Wydmoor's demise.
  • Kiew Ragland, also known as the Rag-Man, a fell necromancer terrorizing the new inhabitants of a monster-occupied [Fresia]]

Contacts

  • Captain Kleptinax, of the Kred city guard, has seen first-hand what Kib and his group can do, and has also received from him a gift in the form of a dozen Wydmoor coins, rare in the East, for his collection.
  • Everyone in Kred knows who Kib is, and anyone who would have something to lose from a Kobold invasion, and isn't a (fairly short-sighted) smuggler, probably likes him.
  • Heston was an Alexian adolescent who lived near Kib's camp while he was on duty there. Originally, he would provide information in exchange for food and coin. Eventually, Absold become good friends with him and his family, often sharing meals under their roof, and covertly supporting them when they needed assistance.
  • Uldern Garrolea, a distant cousin of the Absold family, is Kib's closest childhood friend, whom he has not seen since beginning his military career. When Kib last saw Uldern, he was studying to become a Journeyman blacksmith, following his father's trade.
  • All the men in Kib's squad became very close to him, but Cartil Durrendon, as Kib's right hand, became doubly so. A towering giant of a man, eschewing the more traditional longspear and in favor of his family's zweihander, he had a cutting wit and an enormous capacity for drink. In Alexia, he was a good companion with whom to chatter away the dull hours on sentry. In Celestia, he was an invaluable asset, and in the year and a half spent skirmishing there, both managed to pull each other out of scrapes that would have been their untimely deaths at Celstian hands.
  • Kib Absold has six siblings (out of nine--two died shortly after birth, the other after sixteen months of life). He is the last of three boys, and much younger than the other two. Growing up, he was closest to Lea, his immediately older sister. Last he saw, Lea had completed her Primary Measure in Histories, and was beginning work on her Secondary Measure.
  • In his group during training for commission were twenty-three others of noble birth. All in that group know each other with more than passing familiarity, and most are still inhabiting various commissioned ranks within all of the various branches of the Odessan military.
  • There is a lich on the archipelago who is grateful to Gnob's Folly for removing his suppression. That gratitude extends at least as far as providing a teleport to the Vargain environs (the limit of his ability)
  • He and the rest of Gnob's Folly helped bring Marwynn to power in Nia-Agliare. Even they aren't sure this was a great idea, but decided it was better than the alternative.

*SPOILER* Kib Absold's Character Sheet