Rhys Warde▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
Nickname ● Phantom of Nuvian
Age ● 18
Gender ● Male
Height ● 5 ft, 8in
Race/species ● Human
Romantic preferences ● Heterosexual
Role ● ex-Assassin
Kingdom ● Ishgar
Allegiance ● To his friends and patients
Occupation
● Physician:After his escape from Ishgar as a slave, as well a personal assassin, Rhys would leave his life as the "Phantom of Nuvian" to exercise his practice as a healer, using his knowledge as a physician he learned from his master to help others, instead of killing.
Hobbies
● Swordsmanship: Although he gave up his desire to kill, Rhys still practice swordsmanship from time to time.
● Botany: Due to him living with the Sonul tribe, his master had taught him all about plants in the forests, and their effects.
● Fishing: Fishing keeps his mind at ease, and helps him meditate to calm and focus himself from his memories.
The Personal Things
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Personality ● Rhys can be mischievous, crude, and unpredictable in his behaviour. He often has low tolerance on something he wants, usually causing those around him to become upset. Furthermore, he is rather childish and gullible at times, believing when somewhat seems genuine but only for some mischievous reason, which usually end with him getting pick pocketed. Despite his aloof and often idiotic personality, Rhys can be quite cold and very serious when the situation requires it. He has a very low tolerance for weak-spirited people, having little motivation to help those wanting to commit suicide. This is mostly due-in-part because slaves like Rhys hasn't had the chance to experience a full life; often times dying from evil masters, from war, or at the hands of another. When Rhys used to be a young assassin, his cold and dark personality was born from countless acts of murder and to steel himself from the weight and guilt of felling soldiers, innocents, and nobles alike. Such a personality was born in the face of becoming the tool of death without say in the matter and the ignorant folly of denying the truth of reality of the act of murder, embellishing such awful acts as an exceptional and undeniably justified need despite its ultimately grim and miserably cruel nature. In turn, while this allows him the ease to take life without hesitation, so does throwing himself into this form of himself named "Phantom of Nuvian", this selfishly justified wickedness and holding the lives of his foes as worthless leads into the tainted and corruptible ground of thought that nears the idea that life too is nihilistic and meaningless, and for Rhys, the idea that his own life is worthless as well.
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Strengths
● Swordsmanship: Rhys has learned the techniques of most bladed weapons such as swords, knives, and spears during his time as an assassin within the guild. There, he would learn to strike quickly and effectively, going for weaknesses.
● Stealth: During his time as an assassin, Rhys would learn the art of camouflage. Hiding in plain sight, blending in with your environment, to slow one's breathing and footsteps to the point of not even being heard.
● Medicine: Rhys was most interested in learning the art of medicine, and what each and every plant, or even ingredients could do to both human and elven people.
Weaknesses
● Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Although he gave up the way of the sword, he still holds his master's blade, that was forged for him. This blade causes Rhys to relive the horrors that he committed as an assassin, and the many people he killed, both innocent and not. Merely touching a bladed weapon will have Rhys relive those moments.
● Naivete: pertaining to women and children, anytime someone were to ask a favor, he wouldn't usually pick up on the notion that this is just an elaborate plot to exploit Rhys in some fashion.
● Hesitation: Even when holding a blunt object as a weapon, Rhys still focuses on whether or not the action he's doing when battling is in self defense, or as murder, when the reality of the situation calls for it. this effects Rhys to the point of using a fraction of his original knowledge.
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Biography
● Rhys' birth was from a sickly woman used for prostitution by a man named Harrison, who eventually happened upon the grisly site, presuming the infant to be stillborn when not seeing him move. When the baby began wailing, to the surprise of Harrison, the woman who was Rhys' mother immediately took to the child and came to his aid. Harris allowed the woman to keep Rhys for her own personal consolation, despite the circumstances of his birth being considered ominous by his cohorts. Three years later, Rhys' mother fell over coughing out blood from her sickness, dying as he watched on. Three more years later On the night following Rhys' sixth birthday, a mercenary ambushed Rhys in the middle of the night, trying to fight him off and killed him with an unexpected knife to the neck, finding out that he was to be sold to the mercenary as a slave for coin. When Harrison lost his leg from the mother's same disease, his relationship with Rhys immediately deteriorated. From verbal to physical, Rhys was subjected to various forms of degradation before Harrison eventually made an attempt on his life in a drunken rage. Possessed of the notion Rhys was the reason for his misfortune, Harrison revealed he did indeed sell him out to the mercenary, voicing his disgust for the boy's existence. Heavily disheartened by this revelation, Rhys retaliated and killed his assailant – the closest thing to a father he had ever known. Consequently attacked by Harrisson's men and branded a killer, Rhys was taken into slavery. With his life turning for the worse, he was taken under the custody of a man who held onto four orphaned children who were fellow slaves, and grouped together to take care of him in the face of being a child slave. Later on, the slave-traders' caravan was attacked by bandits who killed all of the peasants except for Rhys, who was saved by a skilled swordsman named Hroldir.
Killing the bandits, Hroldir suggested to Rhys that he travel to a nearby Sonul village and start rebuilding his life. Hroldir traveled to the same village, but after spending an evening there and hearing no news of Rhys' arrival, he assumed the boy committed suicide. He returned to the site of the massacre with the intention of burying the bodies of everyone who died there. When he arrived, he was shocked to find that, not only had Rhys not committed suicide, but he had spent the previous night burying the bodies of everyone at the site, including the slavers and the bandits. Impressed by the boy's gentility and kindness, Hroldir honored the gravestones of the young women who gave their lives to save him, and adopted Rhys. He then informed his new ward that he would teach him everything he knew in terms of education and swordsmanship, giving him the surname Warde. At the age of Fourteen, Rhys would leave the village in the forest to try and rebuild his new life. Instead, his actions against Harrison was seen by the Ishgar military where they would instead recruit Rhys with the promise to bringing peace in the kingdom, when in reality it was just to satisfy a lunatic King. There, he would show his skills with a sword, where he was assigned the role of an assassin. Within the first six months of his career, he killed over 100 people, and eventually became known as the "Phantom of Nuvian" As time passed however, Rhys began to grow disillusioned with his role in the war. Instead of ushering in a new era of peace, he eventually came to realize that he had simply become an extremely skilled murderer, and that the killing that he was engaged in didn't seem to be doing the good, or any significant difference, that he had hoped it would. Nevertheless, he continued his role as an assassin.
Within time, Rhys would be sent out to assassinate the leader of a small group of peasants, who once stood against the knights of Ishgar. Rhys was given the briefing that these people were out killing innocent citizens of the kingdom for supporting the King. Rhys went into their meeting grounds, and would begin to slice and cut down all those who resisted, before assassinating the leader of the group. It was then at this point where the turning point in his career had began. The rest of the knights would bring out the wife and child of the incursion leader, where they were to be executed for their husband's crime. Rhys questioned this, but was forced to obey and kill the two. The glare of the boy's eyes still haunts Rhys to this day, as he would execute the boy through decapitation. The wife's cries and screams were also echoing through his head, as he would execute her too. Later in his downtime, while drinking at a pub, he recalled a lesson from his master, noticing that the ale that he was drinking tasted like blood, to which it shouldn't. As a pair of drunken men loudly boasted upon barging into in the pub for free favors, claiming themselves to be nobles, before harassing a young woman, Rhys angrily confronted them and told the two to get lost even though they weren't talking to him. Afterwards, Rhys departed the pub, inwardly concerned about the fact that the two men had managed to bother him to the point of anger. He came to the conclusion that all the killing that he had been doing had started him down the road to madness, and reflected upon Hroldir's warning not to get involved. However, he was unable to discern the reason for Hroldir's warning. As he walked, the two men from the pub who Rhys had humiliated attempted to ambush him, but before they had an opportunity to attack, they were slain on the spot. In the midst of this grisly scene, the woman whom Rhys had seen earlier at the pub appeared just as Rhys cut the men apart. Shocked to see her, Rhys momentarily toyed with the idea of killing her; having seen him, the young woman was now in a possession to potentially compromise his identity. Before Rhys could make a decision, the woman fainted from lack of food, as she was a slave of the pub owner and Rhys found that he was unable to bring himself to kill her. Instead, he took her back to the inn that he and his fellow Ishgar soldeirs were operating out of. Once she awakened the next day, Rhys learned that her name was Nora.
She was still kept as a slave, but was a servant within the Ishgar stronghold. For two years, Nora and Rhys were almost inseparable, as she would follow him around on his free time, and would watch him train. She was pretty talkative, while Rhys was more quiet and reserved. He began forming feelings for her, and would soon begin to get intimate with her one night. Some time later, all that would change, as he would return from a joint mission with the knights, as Rhys would return to the stronghold. There, he would find a scene that would break Rhys' psyche. At the General's base, Rhys would find that Nora was held down against the floor crying for help and in pain as the General and his men would violate her right in front him in a drunken stupor. Drawing his sword, Rhys would command him to stop, just for the General to pull a blade out and pierce her skin, killing her in front of Rhys. At that point, Rhys would go into a blind rage, to the point where he blacked out. As he came to, he would see the room completely drenched in blood, gore, and dead bodies everywhere. It was the very same scene with Harrison playing out all over. Confronted by the rest of the soldiers, Rhys would begin to fight through, running to escape. He was close, until an arrow pierced his side, as he would fall near the river, passing out from blood loss, believed to be dead.
Waking up on the side of the river, it was a miracle that Rhys was alive, as he would crawl out of the water and onto dry land. Seeing the sword that he took with him since the start of his journey, He contemplated suicide, as he would hold the blade to his chest ready to plunge it through. Instead, Hroldir's lesson finally would reach to his mind, reminding him of everything. To use his sword for self defense, and to carry his life as a free man. At that point, Rhys would vow to never draw his blade ever again, tying the sword tightly shut to it's scabbard with rope and Nora's ribbon, in memory of his late love. Escaping the Ishgar kingdom, Rhys would stow away on a merchant ship, under the disguise as a traveling medicine man, hoping to rebuild his new life.
