Cernos
Race: Human
Alignment: TN
Class: Ranger (though possibly later grow into a PrC if the RP goes that way)
Age: 40ish
Languages: Common, Elfish, and Animal (Not actually speaking to them but knowing the various calls and their meanings.)
Deities: All really. But special favorites Kithairien and Branderback (In his role of self-preservation (and greed to an extent))
Old Cernos the Trapper doesn’t know his age but guesses about 30 winters have past since he started counting them. He has been living by himself in the Greypeak mountains since forever. Yes, he remembers his childhood, if that is what you call those years when people don’t care to listen to you, only that you listen to them.
He grew up as an orphan at a small temple of Toran. They were good to him and kept him fed. He learned letters, numbers, and of course, theology from the priests there.
His parents were a matter of mystery at the temple. Some tutors claimed that he was demon-spawned because of his malicious shenanigans. The most reasonable explanation was he was the son of an unwed mother who feared prejudice and left him as an infant to the care of the brothers.
Well, about the age of 10, the brothers started to think about the child’s future. It was unanimously decided that he would be sent to a larger temple to don vestments and join the clergy as an acolyte of Toran. This idea didn’t sit well with the already headstrong young Cernos.
He left the temple as mysteriously as he had arrived, unannounced in the night and bearing nothing but the clothes on his back. He wandered the roads near Hlint, begging for his meals or going hungry most of the time. In the nearby foothills of the Greypeaks, he started trapping muskrats and small animals/birds for food. He also learned that the passing merchants on the road would pay for a good skin or colorful plumage.
As the boy became the man, so his skills grew as well. The taller he stood, the larger his prey became. He began to earn a decent bit of coin from selling pelts of elk or wolf and game meat that he could forage. He learned to pan gold from the rivers when he had idle time. He was happy alone in the mountains, never a need nor a want for the city or those who lived there. The mountains gave him the things he needed. He could trade with the passing caravans for the rest.
Now it is true a man can live in solitude for a long time, but old Cernos wasn’t the only thing that walked on two feet living in those mountains. Elves, orcs, and all sorts of other critters lived there.
Orcs, they were just downright foul. The big brutes were sons of pig-stickers in Cernos’ lexicon. If you were lucky to see just one, then a rock dead between the eyes was enough to scare it off. But more often than not, they came by the dozens. Cernos learned early on that it was better to be unseen or in the company of decent folk when the green skins got into a party mood.
The elves, Cernos found, were good people that just had a funny way about them. Like Cernos, they didn’t care for the towns much either. Lucky for Cernos, they cared for the orcs even less. During the worst times, he shared their camps and managed to pick up a few of their words. Over the years, the elves even held a bit of fondness for him and sometimes teasingly said he must be a half-breed because he knew the mountains so well. Heck, Cernos didn’t know his parents, they could’ve been right, he supposed.
Cernos lived for many years never wanting nor needing. That suddenly changed one evening in the mountains. A group of adventurers had made a camp near the lake and squatting that Cernos called his home. On that evening, Cernos saw a lady who traveled with them take a bath in the lake. Cernos felt a hitherto unknown feeling, desire.
He wanted a woman. Headstrong since youth, Cernos decided to go down into the cities and see if he could buy a wife.
