<div class="floatright">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/20/bc/97/20bc97048809affe21f8b85efb5215e3.jpg)</div><hr/><div align="center"><strong>Kargus Brightband</strong><br/>Level 2 LN Human Gunslinger (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1486756)</div><hr/><br/><em>Description</em>:  Eyes the gunmetal grey of clouds that threaten rain stare out of a face weathered by the sun and wind to an ageless tan; crows feet extend from the corners of those ruthless eyes and fainter lines extend from the sides of the aquiline nose to the corners of the thin mouth.  A shadow of dark stubble lays across the gaunt cheeks and chiseled jawline, the salt and pepper matching the thick, too-long hair the color of raven's feathers.  Inexpertly and infrequently trimmed, the dark mass curls over the collar of the well-worn, oft-mended hide shirt at the nape of his neck.  He stands quite tall and unbowed, his shoulders broad and waist slender, the chest beneath the shirt showing signs of lean feeding and long hours in travel.  A pair of mismatched pistols sit comfortably against his slim hips, their holsters old, oiled and strapped in place with thin rawhide laces that tie around the muscular thighs.  The belt looped through the waistband of his faded dungarees holds several pouches and a powder horn, and a bandolier of pouches crosses his chest from his right shoulder to his left hip.  He's slightly bow-legged, but his booted steps barely seem to stir the dust, as if his travels have taught him to leave no trace of his passage.<br/><br/><em>Personality</em>:  Kargus is a man who keeps himself to himself.  Years of solitude, traveling the empty miles between settlements, have left him comfortable with his own council.  He is more likely to hold a conversation with his horse than another person, but this doesn't mean that he's become socially awkward.  Too formal, perhaps, for casual interaction, but still well-versed in the social niceties drilled into him by his mentor.  He takes pleasure from watching the easy interactions of others, like a blind man seeing a masterpiece for the first time, he marvels at the beauty of a friendship in this harsh, bitter world.  He carries books with him, on every sort of subject, having bought them where he could find them or salvaged them from the remnants of the world gone by.  It's his habit to stretch out after dinner and read by the campfire as he smokes one of his hand-rolled cigarettes.  Not especially good at thinking creatively, he is nevertheless an intelligent man with a breadth of knowledge that would surprise most.<br/><br/><em>History</em>:  Born under a thumbnail moon in a squalid shack on the outskirts of a settlement run by lawless men who took what they wanted and killed when it pleased them, Kargus was the offspring of an assault by one of these men; a child his mother had not wanted and could not feed.  She had only carried him to term under the advice of what passed for the settlement's resident doctor, an old woman who was one part witch, one part mid-wife and entirely out of her mind.  When Kargus' mother came to her to get rid of the baby she carried, the old woman refused and warned her that to kill this child would be an evil act that would curse her.  According to the witch, who'd performed plenty of other such procedures in her time, this child was special.<br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/bf/1b/96/bf1b9625203e94452ae06231e7282085.jpg)</div><br/>Having done her part, Kargus' mother felt she was no longer obligated to the babe, and delivered him to the old woman the day after he was born.  He frightened her in his perfect silence, despite the fact that he'd not yet been fed.  She was glad to be rid of him and fled from his calm, inquisitive blue eyes.  The old woman fed the baby and kept him for but a few weeks before handing him off to a trader who traveled the wastes between settlements in a rattling cart pulled by a skinny, fly-blown mule.  She paid the trader to take the child to the orphanage the next settlement on, and warned him if he cried off and left the child in the desert, there'd be dire consequences.<br/><br/>Years later, a sixteen year-old boy, long of limb and handsome of face, returned to the settlement of his birth to find it in ruin and nearly reclaimed by the wild.  Walking silently through the tumbled ruin of buildings that were once homes, he made his way like a beast back to the shack at the edge of town where he'd been born.  The tar-paper roof was half-collapsed and the walls leaned drunkenly, but it was mostly intact.  He bent to slip inside and found the woman who'd abandoned him dead and mummified on a pallet of straw on the packed dirt floor.  As the burning sun sank toward the horizon and the sky turned red, he determinedly hacked and dug at the parched, rocky ground beside the shack, the withered body wrapped in a thin cotton blanket beside him.  Then, with the horned moon rising steadily overhead, he laid his mother to rest in her freshly-dug grave and covered the corpse without comment.<br/><br/><hr/>