Character Name: Dram Strongarm
Place of Birth/Raising: Amador slums, Amadacia.
Age: 18
Description:
Hair color: Blonde
Eye color: Blue
Weight: 210 lbs
Sex: Male
Nationality: Amadacian
Skin color: white
Height: 6’ 2”
Outstanding features: Extensive scarring
Dram Strongarm stands tall at just over six feet, but this is not the reason that people find him imposing. He has an aura about him, an aura of arrogance and invincibility, some people remark as if it is almost like he is challenging them, silently shouting out “Come and try me”. But maybe this arrogance is not unwarranted, for in complete honesty Strongarm possesses a charismatic presence that some people find hard to challenge. He is well muscled from years of physical exertion, and from his early childhood days, he eschewed the company of children his age, and rather preferred to spend his spare time with caravan guards and soldiers in the local taverns. This left him with an ideology and mind set of a man twenty years his seniors. This is not to say that Dram is without flaw, his facial features, although not hard on the eyes, are in no way good looking, despite his short cropped blond hair, and stunning blue eyes. As well, Strongarm possesses many scars, a number of them on his face, from an abusive step-father early in his life. Overall, when people first see Dram, they can sum him up in one sentence: “That boy’d make a good soldier”.
Character History[]
The first the world saw of Dram Strongarm was a silent wide eyed newborn infant, sitting silent in his mothers arms. Strongarm was born in a dirty back alley, outside the rooming house that his mother had just been evicted from. This was the first Dram saw of the world, and this dirty slum district of Amador was to be his home for the next nineteen years. As the years passed, Dram shortly grew out of infancy and into childhood. He lived a simple life with his mother, who worked as a fishmonger on the streets of Amador. While his mother was working he spent his hours sitting by the fire of the local tavern, eagerly listening, fully immersed in the tales of the local guards and soldiers. This tavern was to become his haunt for years to come, he would learn boxing in the yard out back from a drunken gypsy, he would lose his virginity in one of the spare rooms the inn had to offer, and ultimately he would decide to enlist with the children in the common room of the tavern. But all of these aforementioned things occurred later on, in Drams teenage years, and although they shaped his life in small ways, no act was as portentous or momentous as the one that occurred on his tenth birthday.
Dram stepped through the door, and shook the rain from his sodden body. The weather was horrible outside, sleet and rain, interspersed with lightening and thunder. And it took almost all of the ten year old boys strength to close the door of his and his mothers small home. As soon as he entered the kitchen and took off his boots, Dram knew something was amiss, the house was too silent, and where his mother should have been cooking dinner at the stove, there was no one, and the stove was cold. He felt cold with fear, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “Where was his mother” he asked himself. Moving slowly and silently, Strongarm approached the only other place in the house where his mother could be; her bedroom. As he neared the door, Dram stopped, he could hear something, a slow panting interrupted by soft wails of pain. He knew something was wrong, and he knew he had to act quickly. Dram ran up to the door, and flung it open, standing horrified at the site that greeted his eyes. His mother was in the bed with another man, and at first Strongarm was confused, but then as realization dawned on him, he became embarrassed and said slowly “Sorry mother, I didn’t know what was happening”. His mother just stared at him, and the man eyed him angrily, seeing nothing else to say Dram closed the door and went into the kitchen to collect his thoughts. After only a short time sitting at the kitchen table, Strongarm heard footsteps echoing down the hallway, looking to see who it was, he saw the man who had previously been with his mother, shirt off and a violent gleam in his eye. “ You little bastard” the man started “I'm to be your bloody stepfather” The man moved swiftly to knock Dram off his chair, and the young boys world exploded in pain.
This beating at the hands of his stepfather, changed Drams life forever. The beating lasted several hours, and eventually Strongarm began to relate with the pain, and memories came to mind; never knowing his father, living a life of poverty. And soon Dram took solace in the pain, so that when the beating ended late at night, and his stepfather rejoined his mother, Strongarm did not begrudge him, but rather felt indifferent to the whole situation, in all actuality dram realized that he enjoyed pain more than he disliked it. And in the years following he realized as well, he enjoyed giving it, almost as much as experiencing it. A fact he found out, when participating in a local boxing match in his seventeenth year. From his tenth year to his eighteenth Dram led a life of relative simplicity, he worked odd jobs, spent time at the tavern, trained in boxing ( a sport of which he was becoming quite proficient in ) and lived with his mother and stepfather. Dram had very few friends, and no female friends, when he felt the need he hired a prostitute, he wished no further complication that stemmed from a relationship with women. It was on his eighteenth birthday, that dram made the choice to enlist with the children. He had been celebrating with some of the old guardsman that spent most of there time at the tavern, when one of them exclaimed “So, dram me boy, blood and ashes, what are you going to choose as your calling? You cant go on living this life of dilly dallying forever”. Previous to this, Strongarm had never really considered what he would do for a living, he certainly knew he could not go on living with his mother, so he asked his guardsmen friends for advice, and there response was almost unanimous; “Boy, we seen you grow up here, and we know exactly what your suited for, go join the children boy, they are the greatest of the great, and you deserve the honor of serving with them”.
The next day, dram went to his mother and told her of his plans, and within the hour, he had all his worthful possessions packed, and was walking purposefully along the road to the Citadel of the light.