Alvar Nerinan

“We’re mercenaries. We do what we’re told so long as the money is talking. Nothing more, nothing less.”
== Appearance ==
=== Physical Description: ===
Age: 89 (20 physically)
Height: 6’1’’
Weight: 160 lbs.
Species: Knull Elf
Gender: Male
Skin Pigment: Dark Tan
Hair Pigment: Dirty White
Eye Pigment: Jade Green
== Skills and Abilities ==
* Skilled warrior, experienced in multiple forms of combat.
* Survival skills
* Navigation through land and sea
* Combat Advisor
* Escort and Protection
* Cooking (to a certain extent)
== Early Life ==
=== The Jade Cobra ===
Alvar Nerinan was born in a stable village within the vast deserts of Interra Gloria. His parents were professional warriors, tasked to defend the village walls from any and all threats they encountered. At a young age, Alvar was taught how to wield a sword and managed to strike a lethal blow on a husk during his time training under his father’s wing. Soon, Alvar quickly rose up the ranks and became one of the top ranking fighters within the village, besting most of his senior mates in several duels. Eventually, he became known as the "Jade Cobra" due to his great skills as a warrior and being able to go up against the best of the best in his village. 
== Recent Life Events ==
=== The Peculiar Merchant ===
One day, while Alvar was patrolling the borders of the village, he met a peculiar young man riding on top of a camel. The man appeared to be a travelling merchant and appeared to be one who sells all sorts of goods from across Interra Gloria. When Alvar approached him, he noticed that the young man was heavily dehydrated from travelling across the deserts and seemed to have ran out of water. Alvar quickly carried the young man back to the village and brought him under the roof of his home. The young man woke up to Alvar, who was busy preparing food and water for him.
"W-who are you..? W-where am I..?" 
The young man softly spoke, which prompted Alvar to quickly turn around to see him sat upright on his bed. 
"Oh good, you're awake. Please, take this." 
Alvar said before he handed him a flask of water and a bowl of rabbit stew. 
"Th-Thank you.." 
He softly said before he carefully ate his food. Alvar noticed that he struggled a little bit when eating his food and, after observing his body for a second, saw that he had a wound on his right arm. Alvar quickly got a long cloth on a drawer and soaked it in water before he wrapped it around the young man's arm. The young man was initially startled by Alvar's sudden gesture, but allowed him to continue until the wound was fully covered up. 
"You seem to be struggling with that. Here, let me help you out." 
Alvar noticed and grabbed his spoon and slowly fed him with it and allowed him to drink water every now and then. 
Alvar never noticed how, despite him appearing dirty and sweaty from travelling in the desert, the young man appeared to look captivating and attractive to him. His heart was slowly racing the more he fed him. After he finished the rabbit stew, Alvar set aside the bowls and quickly fetched him new clothes. After Alvar returned with new clothes, the young man asked him:
"Who are you? Why did you help me out there?"  
"The name's Alvar Nerinan, one of the chief guards tasked in protecting the village. You didn't seem to be around here, but I knew I had to help you out after finding you battered and dehydrated out there." 
"Heh… Thanks for that. My name's Kieran Yavanna, a Prostor travelling merchant hailing from the borders of Xadia." 
"So you're a travelling merchant, huh? Well that would explain the camel and all the goods. The camel is currently at the village entrance right now protected by our boys until you recover from your injuries. You should head back now."
Alvar wanted to push away any and all desires he had and placed duty as his first priority. 
"... I feel like I should stay here for a bit, if that's alright. The sun's setting and I don't feel too safe out there at the moment." Kieran told Alvar. 
"You're right, the sun is setting. In any case, you can stay here for the night, then." Alvar said before leaving Kieran in his home in order to finish up his work in the village.
=== Unforeseen Events ===
As soon as Alvar made it to the gates of the village, a loud horn sound could be heard across the whole village. The rest of the guards were confused on what that sound meant, but when they went to their posts, they were immediately greeted to see a large group of bandits armed with weapons charging straight to the village.
“EVERYONE, GET TO YOUR FORMATIONS! WE GOT ATTACKERS OUTSIDE!”
Alvar shouted before he made his way straight to the frontlines together with some of the senior members of the village guards as the bell in the village sounded, which caused the villagers to be aware of what had happened. 
It didn’t take long before the bandits encircled the whole village and started entering through the weakened flanks. Alvar and the other guards fought valiantly and managed to defeat dozens of the bandits, but eventually some of the guards would fall due to their sheer number. Alvar had to arrange and organize an evacuation plan in order to escort all of the villagers out of the village safely. 
He quickly instructed the remaining guards to open up one of the rear openings of the village and allow the villagers to escape through there. They did as they were instructed and soon, most of the villagers were able to escape through the exit. But Alvar noticed that Kieran wasn’t part of the crowd. Knowing that he could be in danger, he quickly went back into the village, which was already set on fire and crawling with bandits, and looked for Kieran who was supposed to be in his house. 
After defeating a couple of bandits on his way, he made it to his house and checked everywhere for Kieran, only to see that he wasn't there. 
“Shit… Where the fuck did he go?” Alvar muttered to himself, desperately trying to find where Kieran went.
After a while of searching, he noticed that there was a struggle that happened in the house and quickly went outside in hopes of being able to find Kieran. Before he realized it, all the bandits that were once there were suddenly gone. He tried to chase after them through the entrance but upon reaching there, he couldn’t find a single soul. The village was completely ransacked by the bandits, although it appears that there were almost no casualties within the villagers. All except Kieran, who suddenly went missing after the raid, and a few rookie village guards.
Nobody knew what happened to Kieran, and his sudden disappearance affected Alvar more than it should’ve. He only developed a tiny crush on him, yet he failed his duty as a guard and couldn’t protect one of the few people that he ended up caring about.  Alvar told himself that this incident will never happen again and in order to do that, he would need to train much harder for the sake of his people. 
After some time contemplating and discussing with the other village guards, he decided to leave the village and take on the life of wandering in hopes that whenever he gets to return home, he would be a lot stronger and be more proficient at being able to protect the villagers. He also hoped that somehow, in the middle of his journey, he would be able to find Kieran at some point.
== Present Life ==
=== Stalker ===
During his travels as a wanderer, Alvar came across a ruined machine found near some abandoned ruins in the forests of Interra Gloria. The machine was in terrible condition and hasn't been active in a long time, so Alvar thoroughly investigated the machine. 
After some time, he noticed what appears to be the core of the machine on the ground near the machine and fits into an empty socket found in the ruined machine. Instead of discarding the core and leaving the machine the way it is, he instead inserted the core into the machine, curious as to see what would happen. After some time, the ruined machine didn't seem to react one bit. Disappointed, Alvar decided to leave the ruined machine and continued with his journey.
As he continued his wandering, Alvar continued to get the feeling of constantly being watched by someone, but he doesn't know who exactly is watching him. He knows he's been laying low ever since he stepped outside of the deserts of Interra Gloria, so he has no clue who could be watching him and what they want. 
Rather than pursuing it though, he decided to leave whoever was watching him alone and continued his journey almost as if he didn't know anybody was watching him. He sensed that whoever was watching him had no ill intentions against him and wasn't that big of a threat to him. 
=== Strange Foreigner ===
After having journeyed for some time, Alvar saw  a strange man wandering by himself. His clothes were torn and stained, he had bloody bandages wrapped on both arms, and looked like he was going to pass out in the middle of the field. Rather than leaving him vulnerable, Alvar  approached the man and brought him to a more secure place, where he set up a small camp to nurse the strange man. Eventually, the man woke up and was startled as he saw himself in a completely different area next to a man he had never met. 
"W-who are you?!" the strange man said to Alvar, almost backing away from him while he was preparing a fire. 
"Quit moving around too much, your arms are still healing." Alvar bluntly told the man after having replaced his bandages with newer ones. 
"You haven't answered my question. Who are you and why am I here?" 
“Sigh Alright then. Name's Alvar Nerinan, a wanderer around these places. You don't look like you're from here judging by how you look. Where did you come from?" 
"Right, my name is Keil- Keil Danillan. I guess you can say that I'm also a wanderer, just not from these places. It's very complicated, you wouldn't really get it."
"Well whatever, Keil. Here, let me prepare you a bowl of rabbit stew. Just make yourself comfy over there." Alvar said as he continued to fire up a pot above the campfire. 
=== New allies or foes? ===
The two stayed silent while Alvar prepared both of their meals for the night.
"You know about this region, Alvar?" Keil asked Alvar, breaking the awkward silence between the two. 
"I'm a wanderer who came from the desert area. Though I know most of what's in the desert, I have no clue what's over here. If anything, I'm as clueless as you basically." 
"Is that so? Well my backstory is a lot more complicated and how I got here would take a while for me to explain. So I'll probably start off with-" 
Keil was cut off by a tree branch snapping somewhere in the forest behind them. Both Alvar and Keil were startled and Alvar drew out his sword immediately. 
"Show yourself, asshole!" Alvar yelled into the shadows of the forest with his sword in hand. 
"God damnit, I’m fucking sick of ambushes." Keil said, who believed they were under attack.
"This guy's been stalking me for a hot fucking minute. Only now did they decide to give themselves away. Stay back if you don't want to be involved in this." Alvar continued to keep his eyes and body on guard, anticipating for any threat to come out. 
Suddenly, sounds of metallic movement can be heard in the forest, followed by a figure that resembled that of a ruined machine emerging from the shadows. Alvar moved forward to lunge at this figure but saw that it was the same ruined machine he discovered before during his journey. 
"Please, don't attack! I don't mean harm!" the machine pleaded with its hands raised in the air. 
"The fuck? Who the hell are you supposed to be?" 
"I-I don't know either. All I know is that my name is Jack Gunslow and that you were the one who assembled me after all these years, so thank you." Jack said in response. 
Alvar's questions were answered, this ruined machine was the same one he saw back then and gave its core back and was also the same one who stalked him throughout his journey. 
"Tsk. Another guy for me to babysit, huh?" Alvar muttered to himself. 
"Oh I'm not here to do any harm, in fact I want to assist you in your travels!" Jack seemed to be fairly enthusiastic about all of this. 
"I don't need anyone to help me. I can already help myself pretty well." 
"Hm, actually. If you're willing to help me, here's your first order: you'll be protecting this guy and helping him with whatever he needs." Alvar said, making sure that Jack's attention is on Keil instead. 
"Wait, so you're gonna leave me with this thing?" Keil said in response to Alvar's proposal. 
"Hey, it's not like I'm gonna be leaving you. I just don't want Tin man here to be on my ass everyday. Plus, it'd benefit you more than it would benefit me. So, what do you say?"
"Well, if you say so." . 
"Alright, then it's settled. We'll leave by morning and head in that direction. Heard there's a city there that we can stay in for a while."
"That sounds good." Keil said in response, with Jack nodding right after. 
The three then move on to explore more areas of Interra Gloria and, with more people joining their party thanks to Keil's unique "influence", they would soon form a mercenary faction in Interra Gloria known as The Tide Striders.
== Personality & Quotes ==
“Who the hell do you think you are? Stay back unless you’re itching for a fight.”
“You son of a bitch- I’LL BURY YOU!”
“I-It appears I’ve been bested… Looks like I’ll need to train harder next time…”
Alvar Nerinan appears to be a brutish and arrogant mercenary within the Tide Striders. Oftentimes he would speak whatever is in his mind when the time comes, but chooses not to participate in conversations. Deep down, however, he is someone who can be genuinely caring and supportive for people he values, whether it’s his clients or people like Kieran.
=== Life as Warrior ===
Alvar Nerinan was known as the Jade Cobra back in his days in his hometown due to his great combat abilities. These experiences fed into his ego and he grew more and more arrogant overtime, wanting to fight those he deemed to be strong fighters across Interra Gloria. Despite his arrogance, he doesn't wish to actively participate in conversations unless it has something to do with his mercenary job and, although uncommon, he becomes humbled really quickly and lets go of his arrogance once he gets faced by a truly strong opponent and is bested by them in a fight. 
=== Life as a Mercenary ===
Alvar joined the Tide Striders in hopes of giving him more battle and combat experience, as well as giving him the opportunity to travel around the world outside of his desert homeland and potentially mend any unresolved problems in the past along the way. 
Although he does view Keil as his boss, there are often times where he believes that he’s too dependent on him and the rest of the crew and is simply leaching off of them. Nevertheless, he still chooses to follow his orders. 
He's also often present to do escort and protection jobs, or anything that has to do with combat in order to broaden out his experience.
Despite being in the same mercenary group as them, Alvar never really enjoyed the company of most of them and would much rather be on his own than work with them, especially Erde as he finds him to be “too arrogant and talkative”. He's also willing to treat any of his clients as a friend, so long as the pay is good. 
== Fun Facts! ==
* Alvar used to buy many different goods from a travelling merchant during his travels as a mercenary. 
* Alvar knows the ins and outs of the deserts as well as different ancient ruins he found along the way. Perhaps these ruins will lead to unforeseen events occurring.
* Although he may not seem like it, Alvar is REALLY fond of cats.
* Alvar’s least favourite weapon is the trident.
* Alvar also can’t stand the cold weather and would mostly refuse any jobs that involve the icy regions of Interra Gloria, unless the pay is really good.
* Alvar is a very heavy eater and often takes up most of the bill when paying for the Tide Striders’ meals.
* Alvar swears like a sailor and can't seem to hold back on it even if he tries to. 
* (Not part of the lore) Outfit is heavily inspired by the outfits of a mercenary faction called the Eremites in Genshin Impact.