Aiken Brudenell
No picture atm
No picture atm
| Age | 20 (Born 1744) |
| Species | Stoat |
| Gender | Male |
| Height | Above average. |
| Weight | Light weight for his height, striking a reasonably slim figure. |
| Rank (Skill Rank) | Deceiver: Experienced Scholar: Experienced Swordbeast: Experienced Brawler: Rookie |
| Rank (Official) | Son of Willard Brudenell, in many ways the former ruler of the Imperium |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
As a stoat, Aiken sports mostly brown fur, with a black-tipped tail and white underside. He retains the noble, well-bred visage of his father, and is usually well-groomed, as would befit a male of his station. Those unfamiliar with the stoat may also see some of his father's meekness in his slender form, but Aiken has spent a lifetime training for his family's return to the cloak-and-dagger world of Vulpinsulan politics and so sports a body at least strong enough to defend itself, hidden beneath his finely tailored clothes. Often chasing the latest fashions of Tully Shore, and then Bully Harbor, the stoat nevertheless dresses practically when it suits him, and doesn't shy away from getting his paws dirty. For appearance as well as combat, Aiken tends to sport a sword, either a rapier or a sabre. It is rare to see other weapons visible on his person, though that's not to say they aren't there.
INVENTORY AND REAL ESTATE
Aiken is still a young adult, with little that is truly his own, the much-diminished Brudenell business empire still in his father's hands. More often than not, his only personal possessions are his clothes or his swords, stashed in whatever establishment he can find himself to be housed at - the stoat's wealth is not so great as he tries to make it appear. Despite this, he finds himself still able to call upon many former contacts of his father's regime, and material assistance from his father - though he would hate himself to call for it - is only a Missertrosse away.
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Beneath the veneer of well-born dignity, kept under wraps more by self-preservation than self-respect, there is a boiling spirit. With every polite remark, every thoughtful, reserved question, under each careful breath, the beast within fights to escape, to throw off the mask it has been forced to wear, to lash out with all its bitter, vengeful hatred. Behind his cold, piercing gaze there exists a mind and a soul with but one purpose - to control and shape the world into one of his liking.
Passionate, fearless, and utterly incorruptible, the young stoat is nevertheless beset by bouts of incredible doubt and self-loathing, only surpassed by a more pointed disgust for those he view as traitors to his father's cause - selfish opportunists and misguided adventurists all - who he constantly feels surrounded by.
STRENGTHS
Aiken is a master manipulator. Charismatic and ambitious, he deliberately portrays himself as so much richer, so much stronger, so much more capable than he actually is. One day, this might leave him in a situation beyond his capability to rescue himself from, but there is no time for fear - he simply does not let doubt interfere with his goals, whatever they may be.
WEAKNESSES
For a beast to have come from so much history in so few years, Aiken was quickly convinced that world, and near everybeast in it, despised him as much as it despised his family. Every small setback was a plot, every indifference an insult. His paranoia and neuroses are only kept in check by his terrible ambitions, but he is only a good crisis away from endangering friend and foe alike with bouts of fury and resolve.
HISTORY
Born Frimary 1st 1744 to Willard and Emilia Brudenell, arguably the two most powerful beasts in the Imperium at the time. The Brudenells, only recently married, had just prevented revolution, seeing the plots of foreign cults and domestic reformers play against one another, and coming out on top in a field finally free of enemies. Aiken had a beautiful future ahead of him, a whole empire to inherit. It was not to be.
The dark times began in 1748, before he could have remembered anything different. As the months of worry turned into years of bloodshed - the country ripping itself apart for the third time in as many decades - Aiken watched his father destroy himself, trying to hold it together. Lonely son of a lonely son, Aiken grew up with little more to do than follow his parents to their meetings with officers and officials, or - when he was not allowed to come - stay at home and wish he was with them.
The war ended in 1755. Victory, but at a tremendous cost. Exhausted and disillusioned, it was only a matter of time before a new enemy came to try his or her own luck, and push Willard off the throne. Eleven years old, Aiken would never forget the last days of the regime. Being pulled away in the night by loyal soldiers, his mother and father staying behind, overseeing the destruction of the elaborate MinoWar headquarters they had spent so many years holding onto, with all its vast archives. The building that had been, for so much of his life, a home. Shipping out of the harbor on a dark, black-sailed SDS schooner, not knowing if he would his parents alive again.
The years that came after brought the death of the Brudenell government - but not the Brudenells. Living - in exile, but living - off Willard's old family property in Tully Shore, the latter half of Aiken's childhood brought stability and security that he had not yet known his whole life. But the fear remained, that at any time his family's enemies may return for them, and so Aiken could not relax. Nor could he forget what had happened - that his father had united the country once more, only to have it taken away, to have a legacy of hard-won peace and returning prosperity stolen from him.
His parents tried to make up for the years of neglect the war had created. They tried to pretend that things were fine - that they were better this way, they they enjoyed this new life, and spending time with him. Aiken didn't believe them. It was hard to, when so often one or the other would wake up screaming and crying in the night. Eventually Willard retreated into a form of supposed scholarship, locked away in his study with his books and bottles. Family life was never truly the same afterwards.
It was not long after Aiken came of age that he decided to travel to Bouillabaisse - to Bully Harbour. Alone again, but freer than he'd ever been, the young stoat set out to reestablish the Brudenell name, to avenge his defeated father, and to find his own destiny.
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