<div class="floatleft">(http://th08.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2013/204/4/0/saladino__centaur_colt_by_iririv-d6erg2b.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Lark</span><br/><strong>Class:</strong>Bard/Knight/War Chanter<br/><strong>Race:</strong>Centaur (reskinned Bariaur)<br/><strong>Sheet</strong>(http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1082729)<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Background</div><div class="spoiler_body">It was really all Merna's doing, but the villagers of Belwyne were used to that. The smith's wife was a touch odd. She'd always been a bit touched by the spirits of nature and the sun...In a kindly way, mind you, and it was that which had gotten her apprenticed to the village midwife when she was but seven. When the old woman passed along, Merna became the midwife, and in short order when the town's wise-woman died, the herbalist as well. When she made clear her plans to marry the Smith of Belwyne, and lightning struck a tree behind the hetman's wife who was trying to insist that midwives didn't marry, well...Merna ended up marrying the Smith, making her quite the power in the little village.<br/><br/>So when Merna insisted that the centaur caravan was late and they needed to search the road in the middle of the night in an early blizzard, the townspeople did it.<br/><br/>And when they found the massacred centaurs, who'd come through trading once a year in early winter for as long as anyone could remember, it was Merna who noticed the dead pregnant mare whose belly moved, and Merna who cut the still-warm mother open.<br/><br/>And when Merna, who'd had four stillborn children (which the townsfolk insisted was the price of her powers) insisted on adopting the little gangly-legged baby (or was it a colt?), who of the village was going to argue?<br/><br/>The old midwife and her husband called the strange youngling Lark, and either was quick to glower when other villagers tactfully made noises about trying to find some other centaurs to return him to. It wasn't as if centaurs were common thereabouts, and who was going to travel off to where they were? The midwife? The smith?<br/><br/>By the time he was a year old (or is it yearling?) he'd charmed half the village, anyway. There might've been something fey about him -- the centaurs had sometimes traded in charms and wonders, the hetman's wife herself had a necklace which seemed to have a bit of starlight caught in it -- or perhaps he was simply that bonny a lad. The eyes above his freckled cheeks were wide and soulfully bright with laughter long before he could speak; a shock of unruly hair like golden cornsilk and a hide white as fresh cream made him seem like some wild vision of the sun. And the boy (colt?) sang. He sang every song he ever heard another sing, only better. And when he wasn't singing the songs he'd learned from others, he made up songs of his own. Before he hit his mid teens, his boyish good looks were developing into a handsome brilliance that made fathers warn their daughters.<br/><br/>They needn't have worried as much as they thought; although he was strong as any might expect, helping with his aging father's ironwork, young Lark wouldn't have hurt a fly. At least, that is, until the raiders came.<br/><br/>The folk of Belwyne would have thought of themselves as Valondean, had anyone bothered to ask, but they were on the border of Valonde and Eirion; wars and such matters of great national state were things they heard about remotely. At least, that is, until a war-party of Barisean nomads snuck up the Eirionian border to swing behind the watchtowers and keeps meant to discourage them.<br/><br/>As it happened, they didn't do much harm. Not for want of intent, of course. But they hadn't been quite so sneaky as they thought, so it was barely a half hour after they started trying their hand at pillaging the village that the cavalry showed up, quite literally. Mercenary horsemen hired by the Valondean merchant princes, they cut their way through the Barisean war-party in short order.<br/><br/>At least, those members of the Barisean war-party who were still standing. A trio had been disposed of by young Lark's hooves and hammer after his foster-father was knocked down. The boy had never met his true parents, but his foster parents hadn't shied from telling him about what had happened, and to Lark the idea of bandits attacking his home was a childhood nightmare come true.<br/><br/>He panicked, and he killed. And while there were few wounds that day which the mercenaries couldn't heal, the rift of mistrust he saw now in the eyes of the people he'd grown up with was something Lark couldn't bear.<br/><br/>The smith of Belwyne had made shoes for warhorses before, but he'd never expected to make such a set as a going away present for his son. The horse-soldiers were all too happy to recruit a centaur squire who'd proven his mettle, and quite a few of them had become white-shields because of their own fallings-out with their homes.<br/><br/>Three years later, the boy still sings, though more of the songs that pass his lips are songs of battle, and fewer are songs of romance or simple enjoyment of the beauty of the world. The knight he served has been killed, and he himself has been knighted on the field of battle, but the band he was a part of has had a high turnover, and it too is under new leadership...Leadership whose principles he does not agree with, so like some of the other knights he has gone off on his own, searching for some better way to protect those he is sworn to protect.<br/><br/>The missive from Lahearth brings an end to a year of aimless wandering about, defeating small monsters and bandits, taking the occasional job that didn't seem unnecessarily cruel. <br/><br/>With a renewed sense of purpose, young Lark turns his head towards Eirion.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Appearance</div><div class="spoiler_body">Lark's a rather small and thin centaur, certainly he hasn't reached his full growth. Boyish or coltish, however you care to frame it, he's still big-hoofed, lanky and gangly of limb. His human bits (alright, and some of his horse bits, too) are pink and freckly and his hide is creamy white, and his hair, tail and fetlocks are all the sort of long, fluffy golden blonde that defies any amount of combing and brushing...Anyone can tell just looking at him that five minutes after being brushed and curried he'd be wandering around with cowlicks in his hair and leaves in his tail anyway. Armored up, he's a bit more intimidating, and, odd as it may sound, his youth is a part of it. Draped in a wealth of well-used mithral and carefully maintained weapons, he looks just the sort of young lad who's sure that death is something that happens to other people and who isn't given to questioning orders.<br/><br/>It's a deceptive appearance. He knows right from wrong. There are orders Lark won't take.<br/><br/>I fancy he's a bit of a just-post-puberty-sounding Irish countertenor, perhaps a touch like Cait O'Riordan <br/>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt4y4fH938 <br/><br/>*Yes, I know Cait's female, but she's singing as a young man, in the soprano/countertenor range*</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Personality</div><div class="spoiler_body">Lark is 17, puckishly brash and cocky and entirely too outgoingly cheerful for anyone's good...especially since you can't put pants on him. Despite a couple of years as a mercenary, he's been lucky enough and damnfool enough to still think life is all going to be a great adventure. He can be surprisingly naive at times, or at least he acts that way, and there's a hint of country bumpkin to him that no amount of mithral and silk can mask. Lark enjoys the simple pleasures in life: good food, good company, song and sex (not necessarily in that order). While he bears the white shield-cover of a mercenary, he has a habit of doing "the right thing" without seeking pay for it, and he won't accept a job that requires him to hurt the innocent.</div></div><br/>(http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs9/i/2006/039/a/e/Centaur_by_korone.jpg)<br/><br/>(http://fc05.deviantart.net/images3/i/2004/086/7/5/Centaur_on_glass_sketch.jpg)