Jyre

=Appearance=
A tall, brown-toned stature Stygian man, who seems to have a youthful face, save for the large scar across his nose. He has a short-cut hair which is usually messy and a deep mahogany red color. His legs are well built, having constantly used them throughout years of foraging and hiking through the wilds, still doing so. 
=Personality=
Usually silent amongst crowds of people and the exact opposite when around familiars. A complete womanizer to the core, he's been living in the wild without earthly desires for quite some time. Perhaps he's making up for those years, now back into society. Despite all of his attributes, one that could be noted is his sense of command. He has an acute mind when dealing with disturbances within moments of a situation such as a raid around a local village and mostly swift to construct a plan. And if all else fails ... he's not weak-minded enough to enemy's interrogations, or so they say...
=History=
[Jyre's history is not recalled through the spoken tongue as more than 2 decades have passed for the nomadic hunter. Fragments will be recalled through his dreams.]
It was not but two nights ago, a fairly recent clash of broken arrows and the weavers of foul magick sufficed from southern Kheshatta, beside the city and lair of the infamous overseer of the red barren lands, Thoth-Amon. This time, one of the Black Ring cultists proved more than just a mere fight for the nomadic dark-brown toned hunter. He swiftly moved on through the hot desert air, dodging one cluster of black venomous vapors after another, laughing quietly under his breath.
Feeling too giddy and thrilled from hearing the magi-wielding drones shout their incantations, he looks higher over a wall to find a wide-eyed figure, growing with anticipation to strike him aflame … or at least give him a severe case of skin deterioration. 
“You’re not exactly… going to use those fists of yours, are you?” says the hunter in a sneering gesture.
 
With a low bellow at start, the black-robed man begins chanting louder, causing other cultists nearby to glance back towards them. Fortunately for the hunter, being dark scholars; they are more devout and steadfast in dealing with their own demonic sermons than dealing with one more wanderer in their sacred adobe. 
“Andharookh… Andharookh gemel ... Andharookh gemel...” he begins to pant ever increasingly.
The cultist subjugates himself into a slow prayer, rocking back and forth in a sudden motion, the swaying of his robe revealing numerous streaks and stretch lines from his knees below.
“It’s not a day that I don’t see more of you, and the number of scars increasing every time” the hunter’s chest and shoulders move up and down frequently, his stamina fading from every dodge he makes. One burning cloud of black nearly hits him, nearly...
“So your own demons whip the lash at you, huh?” says jokingly, although losing much fatigue in his game.
He settles his shoulder against a sandstone wall, taking an immediate firing stance before he reaches for the feathered end of his arrows and brings it around in a half-circle. His focus points toward the robed figures’ chest until a grain of sand gets caught in his left eye; he shoots not taking a second more to hold back.
The arrow ripples through the air, making a sharp whistle before lodging into something with a yelp.
“A-ANDHAROOK… Khhuuuu”, a slow gurgling sound spurts out of his broken chants, the familiar choking for air. The hunter’s arrow has pierced the jugular of his target. 
The cultist did not fall though, no. He struggled with the long arrow in his throat, trying to tug violently without knowing what would happen if ripped out. The arrowhead is jagged with sharp sickles. 
The hunter notices the cultist squirming violently as the dust clears around his view. Without two takes of his surroundings, the expression of his face abruptly shifts, pupils dilating… savage. He unlatches his thick iron belt with a resulting thud over the ground, small clouds of red sand dissipating around the air. After three strong leaps, he scrambles onto all fours, almost animal-like before jumping into the air with a quick squat and landing over the Cultist, gripping the shaft of his arrow with both hands only to drag it down his neck. The arrow, at first staggering through the various muscles of his throat, he tightens his grasp and drags the bloody arrow straight between his collar bones, coming to a stiff halt. 
The cultist long and dead before the dark hunter was consumed with barbarism; he lowers his gaze over the bald, fallen man and slams his head once, then twice against the forehead before lifting the back of the now battered cultist’s head once more, giving a final head butt to his chin, feeling the jawbone loosen. It was too savage to bear witness of this man’s ways of killing but if there was a method to his momentary madness, he did not want to … remember. Would you?
The hunter stands up slowly, crouching at first over the cultist with his dimmed hazel-green eyes, most of his face: forehead and cheeks smeared with blood. He lowers his gaze slowly, many strands of deep mahogany hair, hanging over his face. The onslaught is over.
Although…
 
All but one of the Black Ring cultists’ spells managed to skim the side of his abdomen. The black vapors seep into the threads of his leather-patched vest like festering black ants looking for a new mound to call home. He took note of it but had no time to work over the burning and crawling sensation during his fight. 
As he walked out of the demonic town, his stature grew weary and lazy in appearance until shortly past the entrance, he decides to sit down and back up against a red stone wall. With a firm hand, he grips the damp area of his wound before leaning back in silent pain, closing his eyes to grasp at the image of a sunny afternoon. The hunter drifts off into an unconscious state. 
(Note to reader: Take into mind that Jyre does not remember anything before the age of six. He’s fortunate enough to even remember parts of his childhood and you’ll see why…)
Another dry and dusty day, a brown-skinned boy with tattered clothes, dry dirt and a few red smeared over his shirt and shorts bumps his nimble self through busy streets. He walks towards the bazaar, swarmed by the daily morning vendors and mixed ethnic buyers of the crowded street in Sukhmet. The hustling and bustling of the traders can be heard among the rasp frying sounds of steaming pots and pans, fumes of spicy and sweet delicacies fill the air on one side; the clattering of metal against metal farther inwards through the market street. The boy looked around, his gaze less than astonished. It’s not the first time he’s been around this part of the city but something would be different today. Hints of black clouds moving in from the northern sky. 
This time the boy did not follow the air of savory dishes but instead a rattling. As he turns to walk away from the direction of the warning sound, he bumps into a wooden cart, a bundle of spiked and fat fruit, Jackfruit, tumbles over the dirt; some rolling under the wheel and others being squished on by other children, running amok. The boy goes to pick up some of the fruits, struggling to hold up two of them, [the size of his head] and begins trembling with a worried gaze, while he looks up at the cart owner, Meed, a long-nosed and fairly bald trader, save for a few single hairs sticking out of needle-like scalp. He remains mute until Meed picks him up by the collar; the man not only mocks the boy’s trembling like a mime, but lifts him up and throws him towards the direction of a nearby snake peddler. 
A rattle is heard. 
It’s not from the snake peddler but from one of his snakes. The little boy has come to fear one snake in particular, since it had bitten his heel due to his curiosity. The snake with a large oval shaped rattle, Shapet. The peddler arrived with a caravan of many other devious faced figures, all black robed with bright golden shells around their neck. They appear to come from the sister city of Kheshatta, another trading region of Stygia. 
This was not the boy’s day, no, not to run but to face his fears. As the peddler rolled out one basket after another, the size of the baskets grew larger until a circle of serpents, all coiled around the peddler to fill the area around him. It was the time for him to find some sense of bravery, or at least he thought so, until someone grabbed his dirty mahogany hair and flung him forward with one whisper “A great sacrifice … for the world. Set wills.” He stumbled forward, only to catch himself staring up at a terrifying figure, expecting to find the peddlers’ grinning face but it was something else. A large snake, no, a serpent, it was not as small as the local peddlers’… and he was left staring straight into its reptilian pupils. He stares almost hypnotically before muttering his name, his frail cheeks sucked in [petrified], “Jyre... my name is Jyre..” The snake did not care much for introductions; its mouth opened and in one swift move, snapped its fangs over his face. The boy shouted, trapped in the maw of the large snake and flailed his hands around wildly until he felt a soft and pulpy, slimy orb. Without thinking, he grasped his small digits against it and tugged once, feeling it move before *yanking* it out. The snake’s eye was in his hand and its mouth gaping wide open; it fell over to the ground in a large thud, squirming around over and over. The boy threw away the perfectly orb shaped eye towards the snake. 
It was an awful sight, the boy could not control his nimble and thin limbs from shaking, and he tried standing still, but trembled on his own. No one to pick him up or hold him, blood trickled down from his nose. The absence of warmth left him among the deserted street, with no one around but the snake peddler grinning, his eyes closed.
16 Years Later… (a flash, further into Jyre’s memories)
A taller figure now but not as tall and well-built as the other Stygian men around, he only reached 5’10” in height, nonetheless, Jyre has been spending his days well with a woman he met. Her name was Fahevre, an apprentice under one of the local seers in the small town of Gazal, south from Sukhmet. He never experienced more bliss than to be inside their shared house, built from hard work within a rural forest, separated from the rest of the town. Both of them might have seemed like outcasts from society, but having no home or parents to call to, they shared a close-knit bond, swearing to keep each other company for one thing that both of them yearned for since childhood, warmth. (Now… warmth can mean a good number of things, let your mind wander because all of it could apply in one way or another.)
Having earned his own place and respect among the wilderness of the forest, the neighboring animals even gave him room when taking a drink from the stream. While looking over the water, he occasionally has short flashbacks of his childhood in Sukhmet, none of them all too pleasant, but mostly when the large gashing scar left across his nose gives a stinging sensation, every so often. Though the remedy for his scar is not from the herbs he collected or any other natural tool he produced but the woman, Fahevre. It was the well-endowed woman who was only a summer older than him, who tended to him and gave him comfort whenever he would need it, which, most of the time he would reluctantly deny. But warmth did not only flow through one direction, no. For Jyre, it meant for him to look after her and keep the house tidy, as well as doing all of the physical labor. The land was not made and prepared for him though by some kindred forest spirit. 
He plowed and cultivated a fairly large portion of land, since he had nothing but time; a small garden, a smooth and flat perimeter filled with sand and grain bordered with blunt wooden boards, all over the previously muddy earth (for what? recreation! physical training), and the most important, shelter, built from leftover deposits of stone and clay of which laborers left piled from the nearby town. Now, how he flattened the ground… is where Fahevre came along the wild-like man, after all, Jyre was not a bad looking man to her, save for his long, outgrown and unkempt hair.
There were times where things appeared much larger than Jyre could handle with just his bare hands, like a boulder blocking the path to a coconut tree. That was when Fahevre blossomed, he would watch as cryptic letters of red appeared over her, almost seeming ominous in nature, but quickly overshadowed by her alluring amber eyes, the short and straight black hair that ended up just above her shoulders, but most of all, her fair complexion, much, much lighter than he was. It was foolish for him to not consider if she had borne of mixed blood, perhaps of Aquilonian or Cimmerian. At any cost, her spells were much needed to him as his strength and physique was to her. A fair trade-off. 
''
Although, living in the forest was the pleasant of days for both of them, a sense of calling pulled over Jyre whenever he would watch Fahevre practice her magicks. It was not that she was oblivious to him when delved into the arts; actually she wooed him teasingly with her ragged and cut apprenticed robe, specially made for him. Whenever she’d cast a spell correctly, the nearest object would shoot up high into the air and burst into flames. There were more to her spells than just blowing things up though, each unique from the next. It would be to Jyre’s distaste if he didn’t seek to learn anything she had picked up from her daily learning’s. 
Still…there was a purpose to his growing curiosity.
Since his days, concealed away from the towns and locality of other people, he had seemed to lose morality and occasionally allowed himself to become consumed with animosity, when he would find Nemedian or Vanir raiders and looters, scavenging for profit among his small but hard-earned plot of land. If any of them appeared while Fahevre was around, Jyre would do his best to suppress his outbursts, which could only be seen as bloodlust over time. Some days he’d find trouble through his daily foraging. She would return from class sooner than usual and he would be caught beating something fiercely behind thick vegetation, most likely a Vanir. By now, she has seen how hard working he was so the worst of assumptions were far from her. He could have been chopping up one of those overgrown lizards, for all we know. He did well to conceal the aftermath of his bloodlust, shoving the bodies into a large dug pit, never to meet the eyes of his only friend and companion, Fahevre. 
Indeed, one can say that time have grown harsh on this solitary boy to manhood, prior to the meeting of Fahevre. Once a daring orphaned boy in Sukhmet, now, the dense and vast forests in which he lives, cast him into a strange but wild figure, consuming him. 
One quiet but cloudy evening, dusk had just fallen, and it was when Fahevre had returned from her lessons to find Jyre, bruised and limp over their thrashed garden. She was late but wanted to bring him something special. A bag of silk garbs, and it surely… wasn’t for him to wear. Her face turned, erasing the grin of excitement into awe of terror. She dropped her hands, letting loose scrolls of notes and the present, rushing towards Jyre. Little did she know that Nemedian raiders were not only watching her every move but planning when to capture her. She tried desperately to muster up any spell to seal the deep wounds on his body before coming to realize that he isn’t breathing anymore; all she could do was pant and tell her profusely that she loved him [as he would whisper to her every night.]
Fahevre wasn’t being herself [who could blame her?], broken and trembling over Jyre’s still body and it was then that one of the Nemedian raiders, tall and husky, lifted her up by her wrists and squeezed around her one bangle that Jyre had made for her. The fiends were not any easier on a woman, stripping her clothes down to a tattered loin cloth that revealed her womanhood. All the while, she was staring down at Jyre, praying for him to get up. It was only after a long moment of torture from whips and lashes until they began to move in a more sensual way with her. The ever-resisting but frail bleeding body of Fahevre, played among savages. 
Rain started to pour in a flash of lightning. 
The rain was as merciless as the beatings that the Nemedians have given to Jyre and Fahevre, but it was not until many drops of rain over Jyre’s closed purple eyelid, did he move. The Nemedians were just beginning to have their fun on the nimble-bodied woman, spreading her legs and carrying her now loose body, her beautiful face laid over the hunched shoulders of a Nemedian while her bare buttocks were spread for them to all spit over. They still haven’t come to notice that Jyre was now behind of their men, crawling over his bloody hands. The expression on Jyre’s face was un-imaginable, stuck between madness and loss. He pierced one of the Nemedian’s necks with a wooden pike, becoming fully enraged with the same bloodlust he had considerably hid from Fahevre for all these years. He flung forward like a hungry wild dog that has caught first sight of prey, only to appear a second later behind the heavy and tall man who held her. Watching the only person he has ever cared for and having it returned ten-folds, his arm swung violently around the Nemedians’ neck, bringing him to the ground with towering slam. Jyre did only one thing before losing full control of himself and that was to find a safe spot for Fahevre’s brutalized and nude body to lay upon, her body smeared with blood and soil. All this time, the Nemedians were pushing their largest man [perhaps a leader] around until realizing that he is dead; blood flowing out the back of his dirty-blonde long haired head. Jyre finds a thatch of assorted soft grasses that he knitted together for both of them to sit over… but now, it served as a temporary resting place for her desecrated body. 
Jyre had nothing but the intent of killing every one of them, blinded by rage. While they scouted around, thrashing pots of their stored berries and seeds, he drove a long pole [formally used as a pole vault for swinging to the other side of a wide stream] into the remaining three. He drove the pole with such force and speed, that the skin of his hands peeled and bled while thrusting it through the chests of the staggering Nemedians. His bloodlust showed when he fixed them over to a hole in a tree, and reached for each of the Nemedians’ arms, pulling them down in one swift thrust, to dislocate their shoulders. Leaving all the restraint that he veiled from Fahevre’s eyes, he hammered their impaled bodies with jagged rocks. The result of rage and carnage of the man, who only adorned one thing, punished the five band of raiders. Each being killed by severed arms or legs but nonetheless, dead and left in a bloody heap close to one another; the earth filled with red.
Without a second thought, Jyre cried into a cynical laughter, his mouth hanging wide open. He was not done. His blood boiled even through the torrential rain, the only option he could search for was around the nearest… Nemedian camp. Through blind rage, he used the fires of the gate torch to set all of the huts ablaze, not aware if any women or children were inside. He burned every last Nemedian he found escaping before he grew weary, exhausted from his bloodlust. 
The world shattered right before his eyes, when he turned around to find the shocked expression of a woman, completely nude; trails of red tracing lines all over her thighs and arms. 
“Fahe..”, Jyre barely musters up his voice, choking on his words, or perhaps the heart-stopping view of his woman. 
Jyre stumbled pass the front of the gate, reaching a hand toward her before she shrieks loudly, her scream striking his chest like a cleaver. He shook his head desperately, dragging himself to her before she turns around, only to run away. As far as she could from him. 
Left alone in the rain roars of thunder over the background. The broken air of silence, his eyes sink deeper into their sockets while he watched his only love, run off into the stormy night. Jyre having drained his body of all the energy he had, falls forward. Within the seconds of his fall, his world froze in brief flashes of lightning, glimpses of Fahevre running deeper and deeper into the dark distance. Tears, the earth is drenched with tears. Black.
One morning later…
Jyre overlooks a waterfall near the place where he lived, now all but a broken, raped land. As empty as he had ever felt, he plunges forward into the rapid waters below. Clouds of foam, shortness of breath that should be his last… 
It was not.
Dissipation of time, no recall…
(In continuity with the introduction of Age of Conan, where all characters are found working as slaves, rowing.)
The slaver Saddhur finds Jyre awash the shores of Khemi, barely alive and breathing. He brings Jyre to some treatment, at least enough to get him into working condition so he could join the rest of his slaves in rowing the ship. After weeks, perhaps months of working and scarce food [sometimes no food at all] for the inhuman slaver, the man once known as Jyre is but a slave; features hardened, grizzled, and a… fraction of what he was. He was not all alone, though. Through his enslaved days, an old Aquilonian man tried to befriend the lifeless Jyre, but little heed did he pay to his tales of old and venture.
Right until they were attacked on a stormy night en route to the nearest docking port, the isle of Tortage, Jyre manages to finally break his withered state and plan an escape. Pieces of gravel broken wood shoot dangerously through the air, the slave ship under heavy cannon fire. 
Through all the mayhem, he manages to find Saddhur, standing defiantly on the board-walk, preparing to lower himself along with a few select slaves down to an escape boat. With all strength that Jyre can muster up, he slides a few barrels, mostly filled with wine onto its side and pushes it with his heel to the fat-bodied slaver. The slaver having already little balance falls to the boat behind him in one hollering yell; the boat already filled up over the limit, the pulleys rip, swinging the boat wildly from the already rocking ship and turn over the slaves along Saddhur into the crashing waves. Every other slave looks around helplessly, many of them elderly, save for a dozen young men, all from the scattered nations. Unfortunate for them, he could not aid them in any way in such dire situations but he did manage to grab an elderly scribe, the one who spoke with him tirelessly and kept him company throughout the binds of cold chain. With not much faith, he jumped off into the waters below, the ship tilting its massive frame after him and slowly sinking to its demise.
After a while, Jyre is seen rowing his arms fiercely through the waves, although his movements thwarted easily by the rising and falling of waves. Row after row, his arms begins to stiffen and cramp… until he catches the glimpse of land, a shore in the distance. Spitting out water to gasp in excitement, he used the brief adrenaline to push himself sideways, using the waves to his advantage. 
“Old man ... we’re almost there. Hold on.” Jyre moves his head back briefly to check if the old Aquilonian scribe heard him, a splash of water smacks against his face as the old man laughs. The wave nearly drowned the two struggling men, but Jyre re-surfaced still steadfast on his goal to reach the shore through all of this; the old man mutters another tale. For the first time in months, Jyre smiles from the scribe’s tale, both of them laughing hysterically throughout a few points of the story. Laughter eases the coming of an end.
Time has passed over the swim at sea and the words of the man over Jyre’s back have faded long since. 
Only moments before reaching the shore of Tortage.
“Goodbye… friend.” the touch of thin parched lips slide away from Jyre’s ear. The man’s head drops forward over his neck, grey and old. 
A sudden feeling of guilt washes over his mind, Jyre’s eyes water, his gaze never faltering from ahead. Through the rest of the time rowing both the old man’s body and himself, Jyre continues to speak to the man, choking on seawater countless times. Idle words fall on deaf ears. 
Hours have passed. Time is irrelevant, at least now.
'''
Jyre has managed to salvage the only one scroll clasped tightly in his dead, but frail hand. After giving the old scribe a long and quiet burial, he begins to read the worn-out papyrus. Day by day, he finds more written scrolls wash onto shore. He decides to settle temporarily onto the beach. The waves can be heard in the distance. 
4 Years later…
Time and tide waits for none.
A dark-toned hunter appears reaching over a cliff and pulling himself up, a bit grizzled in features around his jaw line, but he has no long hair, it’s short cut and messy. Jyre? He overlooks the lush green and mountainous landscape of the Wild Lands of Zelata. Staring ahead, his hazel-green eyes gleam sharply but at the same time calmly. He reaches a hand into a quiver, pulling out a small tightly wrapped piece of mutton and unfolds. 
Still, wild and rather rude in his motions, Jyre pinches off a piece of the carved red meat, chewing and mumbling words in between. Holding the piece of paper flat over the stone ground, he reads a scroll, ripped along the edges. It’s a wanted sign and it’s a perfect job for a roamer like him.