Ghosts of Guidain (Scholars)

[Dreamshell]

Scholars:

Post your Scholars here, not in the Sign-Up or Lexicon threads, please.

Scholar/Side-PC Profile Skeleton: (Don’t worry about being as extensive with Scholar backgrounds as with the regular PCs)

Name [Created by X]
Sex:
Age: (When they started/became famous for their writings)
Race: (Goblinoids (orc or goblin only) allowed)
Nationality: (Defunct nations/kingdoms are allowed)
Personality/Bias: (Personality shapes their viewpoint (I.e. pessimist/optimist, pragmatic/romantic (or perhaps Taurinic, in this case), etc.); Bias is what world power/ideology they’re inclined to support)
Field(s) of Expertise: (There can be several)
Background: (Especially relating to their education & anything they did in their lives to advance their studies)

Akos Argyris [Created by Pandarsenic]
Sex: Male
Age: 38
Race: Centaur
Nationality: Early Taurine Republic (c. 1500 years ago)
Personality/Bias: A Taurine Knight to the core, Polemarch Akos was unashamedly patriotic and prioritized honor above even his own personal safety.
Field(s) of Expertise: Polemarch Akos wrote the book on chivalry. Literally wrote it. He was a warrior who honed himself by talent and training into a deadly living weapon, revolutionized centaur combat doctrine as an officer, and transitioned in the later years of his life into a gentleman-scholar. Both as codifier of the concepts of honor and nobility and as the first military leader of the new hybrid nation, he was closely tied to the Taurine Republic's rise to power and (years after his death) the start of its Golden Age through the military might its knightly orders demonstrated to all who opposed them.
Background: A centaur merchant's child from Equos, already a city-state but still relatively alone and vulnerable in the world, that frequently skirmished with goblinoids and elves alike, Akos became a sort of squire and later an informal pseudo-knight under the burgeoning city-state's leadership. They soon devised a plan to take their "military" to a new level - in recognition for the martial prowess Akos and a few other exceptional other centaurs in Equos had worked for, they would be the fist of the soon-to-be Republic, a steel-gauntlet-clad right hand to strike against their enemies. He would have authority to train up a local militia alongside the other pre-knight warriors in Equos, as well, but a dispute soon arose between Akos and another Equine warrior about the matter of "honor." Akos believed that a code of conduct was necessary, not only among friends but towards enemies, or they could hardly claim to be better than the cowardly goblinoids or power-mad Empire of the Eternal Forest. His counterpart, a member of the Equine nobility, disagreed - the city's protection demanded they cast aside honor when it conflicted with pragmatism. They came to blows, fighting with each representing the tenets of their position. Akos easily disabled the combat pragmatist, then promptly helped him up. "For honor, we must drive ourselves to be better," scholars quote him. "We shall overcome the craven orcs and the wicked elves by being better - in every way." That centaur he defeated was the almost equally famous Anastasios (later taking the surname Argyris as a show of devotion to his commander, who had picked up the name by then), who became Akos' most trusted lieutenant, a paragon of Equestrian knightly virtue, and Equos' ambassador for many diplomatic missions.

Organizing a local force who fought on his own honor-focused terms and with almost the same skill, Epihipparch Akos and the soon-formalized first Equine knightly order revolutionized combat under their new name: the Equestrians (literally, "Riders for Equos"). While leading the first cataphracts (heavily armored cavalry) in the world, Akos acquired the name which many would come to know him by - Argyris, "Silver," for upgrading their armor from simple leather to metal. While many didn't think it a practical move, Akos showed otherwise: while most of the force was clad in plates of interlocking but flexible bronze, already increasing their durability immensely, Akos personally managed to acquire a set of (at the time, quite rare) iron armor, with which he led every charge. Those who had doubted soon were silent, as the cataphracts won battle after battle. The region's most disciplined and trained fighting force, Argyris' Equestrians, changed from militia to army in an impressively short period. They soon approached the other hybrid city-states of Minos, Capras, and Cornos seeking to form a league, a temporary cessation of their hostilities to present a unified force against the elves and their Empire of the Eternal Forest.

Anastasios himself temporarily left Akos Argyris' fighting force as a diplomat to seek the cooperation of the other city states. Here, Anastasios met his famed friend Spyridon, a faun polymath who (besides becoming distinguished on his own merits in the fields of philosophy and engineering) helped Anastasios pioneer the field of combat alchemy. Spyridon was quite friendly to the idea of a permanent Republic and began to travel with him. He and Anastasios began to plant the seeds of that new idea - a Taurine Republic, a permanent alliance of the city-states with representatives of each acting as extensions of their people's will. Together, they could drive out the elvish incursion, crush the goblinoid tribes, and become the masters of their world. Nothing came of it at that moment: a league to drive off the elves was necessary; a permanent republic was not. For now, their goals were smaller - secure their borders against the Empire of the Eternal Forest.

Soon, Anastasios and Spyridon returned to Argyris' Equestrians. By this time, "Equestrians" was referring less and less often to ordinary Equine soldiers and much more often to the warriors of of the Argyris' Equestrians unit. Around this time, having Anastasios available again and with iron becoming more frequently available, Argyris began to recruit his knights. They were the best of the best: strong, swift, and honorable beyond reproach. A common joke of the time was that with all their armor and training, Argyris' knights had the value of three regular soldiers and weighed as much as four. They were the spearhead at the tip of every Equestrian formation whose superior equipment allowed them to break the enemy's lines, allowing the shaft of the bronze-armored cataphracts to follow.

Spyridon introduced many new ideas to them. The military was his playground, and the his second-most-famed invention, the War Chariot, soon came to be. A bladed-wheeled cart drawn by two Equestrians with faun bowmen atop, the War Chariot was a terrific invention. It inspired much terror. His most famous invention, was, of course, Taurine Fire, a synthesis of engineering and alchemy: Taurine Fire was an incendiary substance that would be immensely dangerous if not for the containers Spyridon devised. When exposed to air, it would ignite with a crack of thunder and release thick black smoke. The smoke was searing hot and, if it reached a high enough temperature, could undergo a secondary ignition. Spyridon, however, was always most proud of his medical advances, allowing many wounds that would have led to amputation or death in the past to be treated safely and creating the first homunculi (not strictly medical, but "So near as makes no difference," in his own words). Homunculi took up support positions throughout the army, particularly alongside minotaurs in the manning of powerful catapults loaded with containers of Taurine Fire.

Beyond the Equestrian-specific title of Epihipparch, Akos Arygris took on the additional temporary rank of Taurine Polemarch - "war leader" - and set out for his final major military campaign, leading a combined force of the hybrid races against the elves to drive them from the future Republic's lands, where the Taurine Fire came into play heavily. The undisciplined young of the elvish forces could not stand against them. The vain elves were terrified of the substance: if it touched an elf, that elf was as good as dead, as it would cling to fabric or skin and suffocate them in burning smoke... unless it reached its secondary ignition temperature first, covering the entire body in the secondary explosion's burning aftershock, cooking them alive in seconds. If it landed too close to them, the burning smoke would begin to melt skin, then fat, then muscle, causing permanent disfigurement to those unlucky enough not to die to a secondary ignition. The prospect of death or disfigurement - in a large area, no less - was a huge fear for the elvish forces. Spyridon devised a way to abuse that fear - igniting turpentine on spear points or swords would not damage the weapon as it burned at a much lower intensity than Taurine Fire, which could literally melt the armor off someone, and it had nearly no smoke, but the elves had developed a healthy fear of both iron armor and fire; to see someone clad in iron armor bearing down with flaming weapons would often instigate a rout before the first charge hit their lines.

The army of the Empire of the Eternal Forest, it's said, never truly recovered from what Argyris' Equestrians did to them. Stories of the budding Taurine Republic (as Argyris' force had presented itself), of its fearsome ironclad centaurs, of War Chariots, of Taurine Fire deployed by grenade or catapult, of being driven from conquered land like cattle by an enemy who knew neither mercy nor pity for the elves, spread like a virus that infected all echelons of elvish society. Never again would they be able to gather an army willing to face the hybrids. One apocryphal quote read "Argyris may eventually die, but they will still have Taurine Fire." It's suspect on account of being unsourced, having no way it could have been recorded, and using the name Argyris (which the elves could not have likely learned), but reflects one essential truth: from the final day of Argyris' campaign, wherein the border forests had Taurine Fire launched into them and "Never return" was scorched into a nearby cliff face before their army left, all the way until the end of the Taurine Republic, no elvish army attacked the hybrids again.

Afterwards, Akos Argyris was overwhelmingly elected as one of Equos' representatives to the new Taurine Republic, the creation of which was near-unanimously supported by those who had served in Argyris' Taurine army (helped along by the naming of Taurine Fire). Anastasios Argyris carried on leadership of Argyris' Equestrians as the new Epihipparch. The Equestrians became a knightly order of the Taurine Republic itself. The iconic term "Equestrian" came to be the title for the Taurine Republic's elite riders: knights exceptional in combat and in conduct. Akos Argyris returned briefly to initiate Euphranor the Faun, the first non-centaur member of the Equestrians. He spent the rest of his days recording his exploits and campaigns, writing books of military or chivalric theory, deferring his governance to subordinates more suited to those matters, and from time to time leading units of Equestrians against local problems like goblinoid raids. At his scholarly height, just past the age of 40 he was made no secret of having one more campaign in him, alongside his longtime friend and companion Anastasios (who had extended the republic's borders substantially) and the greatly aged Spyridon, should an enemy present itself.


Sara Gunnel [Created by Konrad]
Sex: Female
Age: 50
Race: Unknown
Nationality: Unknown
Personality/Bias: Sara is best known for her skepticism and scathing reviews of notable figures previously viewed as great and/or infallible, or conversely, promoting the virtues of infamous individuals. Generally speaking, she finds men underwhelming and direly hypocritical. Furthermore, she finds people are far too gullible for their own good. She works to undo the myths of Guidain's heroes and idols, even if it means destroying the hopes and dreams of the average person in the process. Likewise, she works to unravel and demystify the folktales that paint many a creature as evil and sinister.
Field(s) of Expertise: History, geography, anthropology.
Background: Sara's venomous voice first found its way onto paper shortly after the dissolution of the Eternal Forest and the rise of the Taurine Republic. It challenged the honor of Polemarch Akos by contrasting him against the tenets to which he claimed to adhere. Her name was not easily forgotten thereafter. Her works repeatedly went against the grain: describing the 'heroism' of one orc Khan and the admiration his people held for him; hypothesizing the dwarven isolationism and caste system to be a power-play by an ancient Council of Stogorakh; an essay on the atrocities that lead to the usurpation of human clans and the creation of Andarth; how the treachery of certain nobility and the disorganization and division of Thungria were in fact blessings on Guidain. The list goes on.

What eventually transpired was doubt. As centuries passed, the name Sara Gunnel persisted. The tone was maintained; the topics were all so very similar, and addressed in a rather routine format. And yet, what woman could live so long? And if she was elvish, what would she care of human or hybrid or goblinoid matters? The possibility of a legacy nom de plume circulated. After a time, Sara Gunnel became as much a field of study for some scholars as the events her writing entails.

Sara Gunnel's scriptures continued well into the future, outliving the Taurine Republic and continuing well after the Free Island of Minos is birthed. Her last essay was written forty years ago, although some claim she had written a book as near as thirty to thirty-five years ago. Intriguing about these rumors is that the book is claimed to have been a viewing of elvish culture from an elf's perspective. Since that time, the name Sara Gunnel has not again appeared in print.  

[Dreamshell]

Dr. Giovanni Risona [Created by javeharron]
Sex: Male
Age: 35 (approx. 300 years ago)
Race: Human
Nationality: Stivali
Personality/Bias: Cynical and snarky, with half-rambling diatribes. However, once issues of interest arise, the writer launches into a detached, academic description.
Field of Expertise: Medicine (mundane and magical healing), necromancy, types of undead, causes of death.
Background: Giovanni Risona was trained as a field medic and doctor in the Republic of Stival during a disastrous naval war with Andarth. He was a ship’s surgeon, and got to experience firsthand the myriad of ways to die at sea, and the grotesque and horrid weapons inflicted on Stivali sailors. To cope with it, he became increasingly detached, depersonalizing patients. After the war, he published a controversial manuscript known as the “Chasing Death,” advocating the study of the dead as a way to benefit medical techniques for the living. While some of the techniques were controversial, some were readily adopted. They included ways to measure the decay of a body (used to estimate time of death), preservation of tissues (useful for funerals), and preventing infections through hot water and alcohol (adopted in field hospitals across Guidain, preventing many wounded soldiers from losing limbs).
Studies on dead bodies were illegal in Stival at the time, so he left to the more liberal (at the time) society of Andarth and eventually the Hermetic College. He studied texts on necromancy there, saying he’d be extracting any useful medical knowledge from them. It is not known if he was directly responsible, but sometime after this began, necromantic texts of a similar writing style began to circulate. They listed the most effective techniques for reanimation of certain types of undead, as well as the proper wards and spells to use to protect and control oneself.
Over the following years, he toured Guidain, studying various cultures and their stances on necromancy, medicine, and death and recording them. His distinctive appearance, clad in the outfit of a plague doctor with a brace of pistols, helped his fame spread. He compiled magical and non-magical healing techniques into thick volumes, becoming known simply as “Doctore.” He would often compare certain similarities between healing magic and necromancy, noticing things were only separated due to tradition and taboo.
Being known as a great healer was a side effect of Risona’s chief objective. Risona’s chief work, in his mind, was “Transcending Mortality,” a thick tome listing all the ways to achieve some kind of immortality or cheating death. They including transformation into undead beings, various alchemical methods, the concept of making physical bodies that a ghost might use, and more exotic things (such as the techniques used for making reanimates). For all of its content, the book barely attracted much controversy due to its relative obscurity. It was already overshadowed by the medical compendiums that Risona was famous for.
Risona’s behavior became more erratic at this point, some forty years after publishing his first major works, caiming he would undergo a ritual where he would finally “shed his mortality" by attempting to merge himself with a pocket dimension of the Sorcerous Plane itself. Other members of the magical and academic communities began to whisper of his descent into true madness and he turned increasingly reclusive. The only remaining description of his fabled ritual is from a damaged notebook, almost completely burnt in the resultant explosion. Few necromancers have attempted to replicate the ritual, given the results are mostly frequently spontaneous combustion or inadvertently exploding oneself.