'''Name:''' Karo Argand
'''Age:''' 33
'''Race:''' wick
'''Place of Origin:''' Brunnhold, Anaxas
'''Occupation:''' criminal

!!!Backstory

Karo is the only child of brief union between an Anaxi wick named Terrol Argand from the Black Hand and a witch living and working in Brunnhold. A very, very brief union. His mother, Esae, raised him alone from then on. Karo has always known that his mother was the daughter of a Hessean galdor lady and a human, and was abandoned as a baby as far away from her birth mother as possible, which weighed hard on her. She took to living in Brunnhold as it was a bastion of galdori; for a reason that Karo never fully comprehended, she had a thought that she might one day encounter her galdor mother.

Despite this one delusion, Esae was very practical. She worked as a cleaning woman in various establishments, but encouraged Karo to follow his heart and study. She also encouraged him to supplement the family income through practices ranging from simple begging to outright theft, sometimes with a group of likeminded human and tsat children, more common in those days. Although she could not read, she knew her son was remarkably clever and paid a man on the sly to tutor him a bit in reading, and Karo did the rest. Karo learned soon, though, that he would never be able to use his skills, or even able to openly utilize them without suspicion or fear of arrest.

When he was a grown man of fifteen, he was afflicted with his father’s wanderlust (and disillusioned and bitter and sick of living in a town of learning that would not let him learn), and with his mother’s blessing he went out into the world. In twelve years, Karo found his father’s tribe and left it, sailed the sea, visited Hox, Bastia, Mugroba and his mother’s native Hesse, finding all of them lacking and sometimes outright inhospitable.

He was drawn back to Anaxas by a letter from his mother, who claimed to be ill; by the time he made his way back to Brunnhold, she had already passed away quietly. Karo has yet to forgive himself for this.

Karo fell into a wicked class of people during his time under his father’s influence, around the age of sixteen (he participated, almost by chance, in a highway robbery of a heavily laden Bastian convoy executed by his father’s “friends.”. His father believed him to be in on the scheme, and Karo was smart enough not to contradict him.) The association was facilitated by his record of petty crime as a child; he faced very few moral quandaries during his descent into criminality, other than his first outright murder of another person, in Hesse. After that, it got easier.

He is very close-mouthed about the remainder of those last years abroad but one can assume he just fell further after that. Although Karo very delicately terms himself “freelance,” he has done contract work for the Bad Brothers, and for anyone with the money and the desperate need for a thug. And always, he has never been above simple robbery.

!!!Personality

Karo has always been too observant and curious for his own good. Precocious as a child, he keeps his wits keen. If he had not fallen into a bad crowd, and if not for the unfortunate truth of his birth, he might have made a great scientist or scholar. As is, Karo keeps up his reading when he can, and consults his Almanac daily although he is hardly a grand magician.

Keeping his dignity is paramount to him. Karo is infinitely calm, but not very patient and rather direct in asking for things; keep him waiting and he’ll take aim at your kneecaps. He has even less patience for galdori. His is a very quiet, cold anger, when it is roused, and like vegetables in an ice-box, it will stay fresh for while.

In more everyday matters, Karo is dry and unsentimental and has an annoying habit of using large words. He has very little pity for the world and even less for the people in it. Galdori he hates for their excess and their arrogance; humans he dislikes for their passivity and weakness. If he has met passives, he never knew it, although in his mind if a parse is still a wick, a scrap is still a golly. Other wicks are neutral ground, and must prove themselves to be worthy individuals. Not very many are. Karo has a low opinion of himself, even, for perpetuating the stereotype of a criminal, lowlife wick. Interestingly, his measuring stick for virtue is his mother, who is in his eyes purer and more sacred than Alioe on a mountain of clocks.

Despite his uncouth appearance and profession, Karo has a taste for more sophisticated things. The only good things about gollies are their scientific research and their literature. He tolerates Tek, as his father spoke it exclusively, but does not speak it himself. Although he can cast a few spells, Karo has always preferred the straightforward and impersonal nature of guns, as well as the artistry involved in making them. He dislikes animals in general, but in particular he hates whice with a burning passion.

His opinion on the Resistance is divided; he admires the work of Jon Serro and would be sorely disappointed if the rumors were true and he was indeed dead. Otherwise, he despises the infighting, the lack of focus and what to him is plain and unaccountable cowardice.

!!!Physical Description

Karo’s inheritance from his Hessean mother is sizable and includes unusually large ears, an abundance of freckles on a dark complexion and uniquely wide-spaced single-lidded yellow eyes, which appear to be crossed. From his father he has received a tiny, narrow nose, dark brown hair and a scowl. Between his tall mother and his short father, Karo has settled at an intermediary height of 5’7”. His near-vision has somewhat declined as he grows older and he is obliged to wear spectacles when he reads. Karo dislikes them immensely, because the spectacles are large, round and comical. He doesn’t take kindly to snide remarks about them.

Like most wicks, he is lean from his hard and nomadic lifestyle, although he abhors anything acrobatic beyond taking a fall well. This has nothing to do with his lack of coordination in such activities as dancing or athletic contests, he swears. He is realistic about his own physical prowess, and is a bit lacking in a hand-to-hand altercation, due to his lighter build and aforementioned natural clumsiness. It may be because of this that he tends to bring guns to fistfights.

Karo bears more than a few scars from his various misadventures. His dominant hand, the left, is missing his littlest finger; he won’t talk about it, especially the part where his grip is diminished for it. He will not talk about his tattoos, either, which cover his entire upper body between the neck and the waist including the arms and hands, and depict various mythical beasts and such motifs as crows, hawks, rooks, and sparrows in full color.

He dresses as a typical wick might, despite his distaste; it is a good practice to appear as people might expect any wick to look, and besides that, his overlarge patchy gray-green greatcoat can hide a variety of arms. Under the coat, Karo wears two double-barreled pistols, though he rarely uses the both at once for the sad truth of recoil versus his body, and knives, kept strapped to his wrists and thigh as well as the larger one on his belt, worn as a precaution. Karo does not particularly trust himself with a sword, but his aim with projectiles has always been reliable.

The rest of his clothing is a typical wickish mockery of a Brunnhold professor, similar in cut, but not in style. He tends toward green, another discreet stab at Brunnhold. The only exceptions to this are his boots, which are standard wick fair going to the knee, and have the advantage of being both ugly and comfortable.

All his other possessions he carries in pockets or his ridiculous magenta-and-blue paisley carpet bag (his mother’s.) It is easily the ugliest and most wick-like thing he owns.

!!!Inventory

*ugly carpet bag
*pistols, matched
*knives
*the clothes on his back
*a change of socks and underwear
*spectacles
*a bit of money
*Spoke’s Almanac, heavily annotated
*an installment of Sagra of the Wastelands, read to death
*pencil and notebook
*fake Viendan writ of residence

!!!Skills

*projectiles and guns
*comprehension of the sciences
*basic use of wick spells
*reading/writing
*maths
*relieving people of their possessions
*a pronounced willingness to fight dirty
*speaks a bit of Mugrobi from his time there

!!!Goals

Surprisingly, Karo is writing a book about the condition of modern-day wicks. He doesn’t expect it will be published, ever, but he likes to think that he might try one day and it helps him deal with his overwhelming bitterness. It doubles as his diary.

Karo is considering joining up with something bigger than himself; the only options seem to be the Resistance, the Bad Brothers or the opposing faction of the latter, the Drain. It’s a risky game to play, but he’ll side with whoever gives him the best offer.

He has a minor obsession with doodling ideas for new and improved guns; he has an idea right now that might work if only he could find a blacksmith willing to pull it off.

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