⛤The Mirror⛤
Kass' presence suggests he is larger than his physical frame permits. Broad shouldered with muscles carved from the icy mountains, built and broken in war and hunger. He carries himself like a spectre; a dead soul, the body not yet caught up. His pale skin is mapped with twisted scars, raised tales of tenacious perseverance, as if the land itself has tried to claw him apart. His left arm ends at the elbow, a jagged knot of flesh, usually wrapped tight with cracked, worn leather. His dark hair, streaked with premature grey, is worn in thick, disheveled braids; once the noble style of his forefathers, now disheveled. Once, Kass may have been considered handsome, with strong features, but now the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the deep set crease of the horrors he's seen, give him the same disconcerting aura of the phantoms that haunt him. Kass' eyes are the winter blue of a frosted morning and yet none dare meet them. The light behind them long since burnt to ashes, no longer reflecting the world around them.
⛤The Memoir⛤
Kass grew up in the village of Haldsvar, a days ride from the city. His life there was content, with him courting and eventually marrying the runaway daughter of a local jarl. To Kass, Tyri was the sunrise on a misty morning, though he claimed he never truly knew love until they were blessed with a child, a daughter named Asta. As her first summer grew cold, the trees turning gold into autumn, war broke out on the borders. Kass, alongside all the fit men of Haldsvar, was summoned by promises of glory. After several months on the front lines, limbs and spirits broken, Kass and his brothers in arms, ventured south, crossing into the Mistfen Valley; all went silent. The men never reached their destination and were assumed dead, lost to the cruel winter. That was, until a year hence, when the shadows of two men were found stumbling from the mountains, hollow shells of their former selves; Kass and his blood brother, Eiríkr. Kass' body was torn, but more was missing than just his left arm; the depths of his eyes were black and unending. Kass returned home, where he was met by the warmth of Tyri's kisses, as she wept for their future, once lost and now restored. This joy was short lived; within weeks of his return, Tyri's tears become blood as her fingers blackened with rot, bilious tendrils marbling across her skin. Asta succumbed first, the village and her mother shortly after, rending a hole in Kass' heart that would never heal.
Despite an attempt to follow his family, Kass found himself unable. Now he drifts, from taverns to battlefields to graves, seeking the winds that will carry his sins from him but, knowing they will never come, waiting for the cold, lonely death befitting of his damnation.
⛤The Muse⛤
Kass is brutally resourceful in the face of calamity and chaos. Given a broken bridge or a torn open wound, Kass responds with cold efficiency, but when met with kindness and warmth he balks. He is the kind of man to help a starving child steal bread, but have vanished with the shadows, his scent of sweat and woodsmoke still in the air, before thanks can be uttered. Kass feels the rot in his soul deep set, its roots enmeshed in his core and knows there is no redemtion for the damned.
Kass is a man of few words, knowing the loudest voice is in action; and his actions have wrought only misery. His voice is raw, the sound of a blade dulled by the dark, not from disuse but from the nights he wakes screaming like the monsters that stalk his nightmares.
⛤The Menage⛤
- Tyri Hallgrímsdóttir (deceased) - Wife
- Asta Kasvaldóttir (deceased) - Daughter
- Eiríkr Agnarsson - Blood Brother; the only other survivor the Misfen Valley
- Vigdis - Wolf companion; she found him after the events of Mistfen Valley
⛤The Miscellaneous⛤
- Kass travels with a monstrous beast, that might once have been a wolf before being warped by the nightmares, her own body as scarred and pitted as his. She responds only to Kass, who speaks her name as Vigdis. Vigdis is the only living creature Kass will willingly touch, with him showing her a cold tenderness.
- Loosely inspired by Fear & Hunger
