The man unsheathed his short sword, his eyes wild with panic and recklessness.  He was a small, gangly man, likely in his mid thirties and largely malnourished, such was the way of many of these bandits and criminals.  With a wild cry, he charged forward, the blade coming down in an a left to right diagnal swipe. His oponent, however, had seen the attack coming from a mile away.  Stepping outside of the blow, he lowered his stance and, with expert precision, grabbed onto the man's wrist with his compartively massive fist. He pulled the man's arm back and over his head, causing the attacker to cry out and drop his sword to the groun with a clang.  He pulled back his free arm and launched a haymaker right into the bandit's face, sending him to ground unconscious, his nose broken and oozing blood.  The victor in this confrontation knelt down and reached into the man's tunic, pulling from it a small, brown pouch.  The large man's gaze went to the would-be victim of this brigand, a portly merchant of middle-class origins.  Rising to his full height of six feet eight inches, he tossed the pouch to the flabberghasted merchant.<br/>He was an imposing figure indeed.  Towering over all but the tallest of men, he had a body rounded to perfection by years of intense physical hardship, with particularly long arms and legs.  His black hair was shaggy and unkempt, covering half of his ears and hanging just above his icy-blue eyes.  His features were prominent and masculine, lending themselves to at the least a faint degree of attractiveness.  Still, it was quite apparent that this man was not entirely of human stock.  His features, though human enough, were oddly feral.  He had lupine ears, and his high-bridged nose was upturned ever so slightly.  These features, however, could be found on any sufficiently irregular human being.  What most gave away his lineage as not entirely human was the greenish tint to his skin and the two prominent canines (a rude man would call them tusks) that were just barely protruded from beneath his lower lip. He wore peculiar garments.  He wore a dark gray, sleeveless tunic and silk leggings with a black cloth belt wrapped tightly at his waist, and a pair of moccasins on his feet.<br/><br/>"T-thank you, young man!" The cried, his composure still shaken by the incident. "Please, allow me to reward you!"  The man merely shook his head and raised a hand to decline before turning and walking further on along the dirt path.<br/>"Don't bother, I'm fine" came his calm reply.  This was the third time in his journey that he'd encounters bandits of some kind.  It was most disturbing how dangerous things had become.  Even odder, the roads were so very empty.  When he'd last walked these roads nearly a decade ago they were bustling with trade caravans and merchants of every kind.  Now, it was rare to see one.  This may have largely been due to the icreased presence of bandits in the area, but it also smelled strongly of political trade embargos and increasing isolation.  Still, this increasing political conflict felt very far away to him at the moment, he was, at the moment, heading home, heading home for the first time in nine years.<br/><br/>He was going back to Banur.