Raikh Jaeden

Email: epeeduelist@dragonmount.com
==Description==
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Black
Height: 5'9
Weight: 152
Age: 16
Place of Origin: Shol Arbela, Arafel
==Stats==
Rank: Trainee
Weaopon Score: 3
Philosophy: Not Choosen Yet
Primary Weapon: 
Secondary Weapon: 
Tertiary Weapon: 
==History==
Raikh Jaeden grimaced at the face before him. The waters around the island of Tar Valon reflected a young man far different from the youth who had set out from Shol Arbela so many weeks ago. Reality had etched its mark in the hardness around his jade eyes, the close-cropped ebony hair that would never again wear the belled braids of his people, and locked away his voice with a single act of desperate violence. Atop the plow horse that had brought him from central Arafel was a wiry form, toughened as much from deprivation as his brief training with the Nightwatch. 
 His mind skittered away from that thought. A dark stain on his past, the blackest moment of a terrible journey from northern Arafel, he knew that to think too long on that night would be to lunge once more into its depths. Wet blood between his fingers, its acrid bite in his nose, that feeling of life giving way beneath his hands, it was too much to bear. No matter that he had not sought that death, it had come to him, and the responsibility was his alone. Perhaps it was that the bandit could easily have been a certain young man from Shol Arbela trying to survive the ill-conceived notion that his family would prosper with just one less mouth to feed.
 Thoughts of family brought the whole weight of guilt and depression crashing down on Raikh?s shoulders. He nearly fell from his mount, racked by a pain far deeper than any physical injury could ever be. Brown gelding blurred before his eyes as his body shuddered under the assault of his shame. At the worst moments, he felt failure was stamped clearly on his brow. Never had he been able to accomplish the tasks before him the standard of that voice inside. It was this voice his father had called duty, but often as not, it was simply his father?s voice. A voice filled with condemnation and disappointment. Not that Raikh felt he deserved approval. After all, it had been he that had not been deemed worthy to continue the family clothier?s trade, even before his elder brother?s triumphant return with his Andoran education and seamstress wife. He had even been forced to leave his training for the Night Watch after bare months in order to care for his younger siblings. 
 Putrid bile burned in his chest at that recollection. He remembered the frustration, the rage that had poured into him when his father had demanded he yield his place to another ?better suited? candidate. Raikh was needed at home. Never mind that he had been the first of his class to achieve the state of ko?din. Well, it had only been for a few brief moments, but he had been the first. Never mind that guards of the Night Watch were always amused by his enthusiastic maintenance of practice blades (the only ones he was allowed to handle). Never mind that his father?s ailing health was more attributable to a lazy disposition than genuine illness. Raikh?s life belonged to his family, how could he ever be trusted to make his own decisions? So he had left.
 Not left his family, not yet. He simply left the practice yard, the barracks, and the identity he had finally begun to mold for himself. Not that those things were important. Not that those things could be important to someone has inept as Raikh Jaeden. Raikh the imbecile. Raikh the slothful. Raikh the disappointment. Raikh the man responsible for Aric?s death. It had been his inattention that had let the 10 year-old leave his twin sister and wander into the road. Raikh never saw the horseman that ran his little brother down. He never wanted to. He didn?t want another death on his hands. Two were enough, and were he to meet that foreigner; it would be but moments before the blood of another stained his soul. The guilt from that lapse in attention, all the worse for having been watching the young men train in the practice yard, had permanently driven a wedge between him and his family. So when the bad trade season had happened and things got tight, there was never much question of who should leave. Not that anyone in his family would say it, but the knowledge and accusation in their eyes had burned it into him. No words, however heated, could have made him more conscious of their desire. So he did his duty. He left Arafel and his family?s accusations behind.
 Duty was heavy as a mountain, death as light as a feather. All who lived near the Blight recognized this truth, and Raikh was sure the first was, in fact, true. Duty was heavy as a mountain. Yet the desperate rage, the explosion of violence when his life had been threatened that murky evening beside the road, had convinced him that his body rejected the second as false. Death was the enemy. He knew it in his bones.
 So he had come here, to the White Tower of Tar Valon, the one place that would train him to fight that enemy as no other could. And when he had mastered the blade, when he had mastered the fear of death that chained him, he could return to the North. Only then would he let his braids grow long again, only then could he face his father that last time, that last time before he fed himself to the Blight. Not that he would admit this was his plan, not even to himself except in that secret corner of his heart that was shared with no other. For now, he had simply come to train and defend the Light. That was all. 
 With that final glimpse into his past, Raikh reined his horse around and headed over the bridge into Tar Valon and the fate that awaited him.
Category:WS 3
Category:Trainee
Category:Biographies
Category:Warder Bios