Post by Brandwyn on Sept 24, 2010 9:43:57 GMT -5
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Profession: Ranger
Appearance:
Gender: Male
Profession: Ranger
Appearance:
Bunt is a very tiny man standing at barely 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighing only 83 pounds. He is thin and wiry, almost to the point of being skeletal, but he has amazing arm strength for his size, given that he has pulled his 80 pound longbow for the last 40 years. He has dark brown hair that falls straight and neatly to the middle of his back and green eyes with crow’s feet at the corners. He has a grizzled looking face and often there is a shadow of razor stubble on his chin and jaw. There is a very old scar running from his left eye down his cheek and back to the base of his ear in the distinct shape of a large horse shoe.Personality:
He wears black or dark brown linen pants with an alternating long wool tunic that goes to his knees, normally worn over a dark blue or green long-sleeved under tunic with a high neck line. Often he wears a white linen shirt under the tunic for warmth. He always looks like he is cold, even in the heat of the summer.
He wears the usual ranger gear and weapons along with a small double barrel crossbow and a long black quarterstaff carved by his hand from a black walnut tree. The staff has runes and primitive-looking animal carvings its entire length and each end is encased in bronze up to about 3 inches from the ends of the staff. Most often he uses it for walking, but it is actually his weapon of choice if he is forced to fight in close quarters. He has a holster for it slung over his back that attaches to the quiver so he can carry it while still using his bow. Normally he will have either the bow or the staff in the holster and the other weapon in his hand.
He generally has a very serious look on his face, some would even say a sour face and he often walks like a weary old man just so no one will know that he really can move like lightening when he needs to.
Bunt likes to keep people guessing about him and his intentions. As he has gotten older, he has really played on the “old man” look and often tries to depict himself as being closer to 70 years old. He makes people think he is a crotchety old man who is very bitter and looks on most everyone as a nuisance. He talks very little, often just grunting or saying as few words as possible, but his eyes can convey volumes, especially to someone who is pestering him. Occasionally one could hear him muttering under his breath when he is displeased about something. He appears to be absorbed in his own little world, oblivious to what is going on around him.History:
In reality Bunt is very quick witted and observant. He hardly ever misses anything that is going on around him. He makes a note of something and can remember it to the most minute detail months or years later after having only glanced at it once. He has always been very reserved and quiet and does not interact well with people outside of his professional ranger demeanor- meaning he does not socialize when he is not on duty. In his mind he is always on duty.
He is fiercely loyal to the Ranger Corps and secondly to Araluen and the King. He is suspicious of most women upon meeting them at first, but there are certain ones he has come to know that he would trust with his life. This suspicion comes from having his heart broken when he was in his twenties by a beautiful fiancé. So he has a tendency to believe a man over a woman in most arguments brought before him.
As he neared adulthood and it became apparent that he was not going to grow any taller, he was teased mercilessly by his siblings and their friends and so he withdrew from people, tending to adopt his mentor’s way of hiding in the background and going unnoticed. He learned to keep people at a distance and therefore he does not make friends easily.
Despite that, he is very caring and sensitive and a giving individual – once a person gets to know him. But he is very reclusive and withdrawn so getting to know him is not an easy task. He also has a sweet tooth, loving confections and since he cannot seem to put on any weight no matter what he eats, he will avail himself of sweet cakes and confections whenever they are available.
He is leery of most horses, with the exception of his own ranger horse, which is the third one of his career, having lost the other two previous ones – one to old age and the other to a mountain lion attack. He also is not fond of heights and hates climbing. He is deathly afraid of scorpions and not all that fond of spiders or most other insects for that matter. Water predators like crocodiles and water moccasins also un-nerve him.
Bunt was actually born in the southeast of Araluen to a family that raised horses and named Timothy Jarvis Levinsson. His family, the few who are left, still calls him TJ for the most part. He earned the nickname ‘Bunt’ from his oldest brother and his friends when he was 11 and got kicked in the head by the family plow horse. The kick nearly killed him, breaking his jaw and cheek bone and nearly caving in his skull. But he recovered from the kick with only the dreadful looking horseshoe shaped scar on his face to show for it – and the nickname Bunt his brother gave him for getting bunted in the head by a plow horse. Much to his dismay, the name stuck until everyone but his mother and sister were calling him Bunt and he eventually accepted it as his own.Additional Information:
At age 13, his father started putting him on race horses because he was so small and lightweight. He won many races for his father and increased the value of their breeding stock considerably over the next two years. However he did not like being around the horses since he had developed a fear of them from the near-death experience, so he declared his intention to seek an apprenticeship at the age of 15. His father was against it, but in the end his mother persuaded his father to let him attempt it. Neither believed a trade would accept him as an apprentice and felt he would return and resume his duties on the horse farm.
At Choosing Day, he was just as surprised as his parents when the local ranger agreed to test him to see if he had any potential as a ranger. He had never seen a ranger before and only heard stories about them being sorcerers and such and so was not very happy with the selection. He had been hoping to get into the battle school but figured he didn’t have much chance of that.
As it turned out within a few weeks he was happy with the ranger training and his mentor was able to work around his fear of heights and horses to mold him into a ranger with keen observation skills. He picked up the use of the bow easily as well as the knives. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for using weapons and his mentor often commented that it was a shame he was so small or he might have made an excellent knight.
He made friends with a battleschool apprentice named Bill Temple and learned enough basics with a sword to be able to pick one up and use it, though he is not skilled with the blade. When he was twenty-three he ran afoul of a gang of outlaws, one of which trounced him good with a quarterstaff. They captured him and held him for three days before he managed to escape. Once the tables were turned, and he had the man who had beaten him so badly in his control, he made a deal with the outlaw that if he would teach Bunt how to use the quarterstaff, then Bunt would let him go with a fine and a warning that if he were caught again, he would go to prison. He spent three months then going to the outlaw camp and learning the finest points of the quarterstaff until he became nearly an expert with it. During that time he actually befriended many of the outlaws and was able to get jobs for many of them and restore them to productive members of society.
Although some of his ways were rather unorthodox at times, he excelled as a ranger and soon had gained the confidence of the Ranger Commandant and his peers. He has been assigned to several different fiefs over the course of his career and trained many apprentices, though he has never stood out in the Ranger Corps as being remarkable in one area or another. He is content with the lifestyle and proud of his career and plans to die wearing the silver leaf, never retiring to the gold.
Bunt’s ranger horse is called Low Belly because the horse loves to eat. Unlike his master, though, Low Belly has a tendency to gain weight, especially in the spring and fall when the new grass comes up. Bunt usually calls him LB or Low Ball and they trust each other implicitly. Bunt constantly has to pull LB off the grass or out of a manger full of hay.