Played by: Jim Stevens
Name: Aedan Haleth VonHorst
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Race: Human
Hair: Dark Brown, slightly graying, reddish beard
Eyes: Brown
Occupation: War Priest
Known Skills: Kill “bad” guys, using Arnaths might in battle!
Birthplace: Northern Vandregon, southern edge of the Celestial Mountains
Appearance: Tall with glasses and a goatee, wearing heavy armor with a red tabard.
Notable Traits: Aedan has some deep seated anger issues, but he is deeply devoted to the tenants of his faith and maintaining the honor of his order.
Relationships: Part of “Boomhowlers Bastards” adventuring party, Crusader/”Lion of Arnaths Fist, growing friendship with Kragen Bloodmoon
Rumors: Since the first few days in Davins Reach Aedan has not been sleeping well. He also seems to get extremely agitated when a green Syndar is around…
Bio:
Hello, my name is Arden Haleth VonHorst, and this is the beginning of my story…
I was born twenty six years ago, while our people were still fighting to save what was left of Faedrun. My Mother was a disgraced former Priestess of the Light, disgraced because she had the temerity to join a man in his bed. Even during those dark days the Lectors took such things very seriously and she was tossed out of her Temple and thrown into the streets. The shame was so great that we were barely even able to get our daily bread ration in the town square. My Mother was a kind, profoundly gentle soul and losing her town, friends and even her family to one night’s mistake broke her. She was 24 years old when she died. No one in town wanted me, so the local Order Outpost took charge. Another recruit for the war.
By this time Arnath’s Fist, or more simply the Order, was pushing recruits through training and into the grinder as fast as they could, so I was pushed out the gates at sixteen. I have done my best to forget those days, but my nights are filled with nightmares and the faces of the lost, Honored Dead or not.
We received the evacuation order during the spring and my Company, with twelve of the original one hundred and fifty Crusaders, made it to the coast and the ships within the month. The voyage is a blur of storms and prayer, and the early days on Mardrun aren’t much better. The enormity of what had happened, and what I had seen finally hit me. I had seen cities that had stood for millennia burned to the ground. Families torn apart by their loved ones. The Livings armies smashed by our own dead. My wife and daughter…
Family: gone.
Home: gone.
Friends: gone.
We…
I had lost almost everything.
I wandered Mardrun for a few years doing odd jobs, just trying to survive. I reconnected with the New Order at Starkhaven and went beck into training as we had been shoved out the door well before we were ready.
Everything changed during December of my twenty-sixth winter. I was sitting in the local tavern on the anniversary of my Mothers’ death, minding my own business when the son of the local Magistrate, Elric VonHorst walked in. He had been one of the cruelest and most vocal detractors of my Mother back on Faedrun, and by some cruel joke he had survived. He was drunk, followed by some of his sycophant friends. He had always been a braggart, and as I said, a cruel man. He also hated me with a passion, as he thought I should have been tossed into the woods to die simply for being my Mother’s son. When he did next is predictable.
What I did was not. He had been dishonoring my Mothers good name for years. He had been egging me on for years. After ignoring him, and leaving the room he was in, and letting it go for twenty years…something changed that night. I still don’t know what, but when he started on his normal rant, I reached to my belt, drew my mace and bashed his skull in.
I was first taken before Seneschal Bubrinin, the leader of the Order’s local Chapterhouse. He promptly turned me over for judgment by the local Magistrate, after giving me a scathing lecture about how I had clearly not learned as much about the Path as I thought. I was then taken to the towns keep where Magistrate VonHorst, also known around the area as ’Boomhowler’, was waiting for me. He called me into his personal chambers before pronouncing the sentence. He told me that he had “known” my Mother, years before. He told me that he had been called away to set up the Northern Colonies here on Mardrun and had not known about what happened to us. He had never known about me. He also told me that the man I murdered was an ass and thanked me for solving his problem for him. He then gave me the deed to the farm that his son had run into the ground as an apology, as he wanted it to stay in the family.
However, there was a catch. Before I could have the land I would have to prove myself, as his other “sons” would soon be leaving to do.
We left for Daven’s Reach two days later.