Bayul Dobrunov

Bayul is a Loxodon Fighter, trained to command as a Battle Master. He was formerly the leader of infamous mercenary company 'The Indomitables', before he was betrayed and led himself to exile in disgrace. A stern warrior whose only people skills involve commanding and an axe, he is approaching the archaeology mission with all the open-mindedness he can muster in order to regain his self-respect.

## **Backstory**

SWOOOSHOOSHOOSHOOSH! Bayul didn't see them launch, but knew that the array of trebuchets had fired their flaming projectiles in almost perfect unison, just as they had been instructed. He watched as the blazing balls arched over his head, reducing once proud walls to charred rubble in a single fell swoop. Over the past months, the defenders had held stalwartly, weathering the storm of his protracted siege. But this was his coup de grace. The months of patience had delivered threefold. It allowed him chance to wear down the walls slowly, to construct far mightier siege engines in secrecy far behind the lines, and most importantly to lull the defenders into a de-sensitised state, where every day was repetitive and there was no foreseeable end to the siege. He sighed as the walls crumpled and his troops surged through the breach, seeing disorder spread like wildfire along the shocked sentries. He felt equal parts satisfaction and melancholy. A multi-year campaign drawn to its glorious climax, and yet another unworthy enemy objectively crushed. Work as commander of the notorious mercenary company 'The Indomitables' paid well, but Bayul would have done it for free if necessary. It was all he had ever known, and all he cared to. If only he could find a rival to challenge his strategic prowess.

Suddenly, his ears, bigger than the heads of most of the soldiers surrounding him, pricked up. They had always been his principal battlefield sense, and his soldiers were on guard immediately, having long since learned to trust those big flappy bois. A great rumbling approached. That would not normally be an issue, but it was an unplanned-for rumbling. A glint of silver emerging from the nearby slope was all he needed to see to confirm his suspicions. THAT TREACHEROUS BASTARD. His lieutenant Radomov, who should even now be sweeping around the back of the city to cut off the escape, barreled over the rise atop his mount, both clad in full glistening plate armour. His steel knights flooded like a metallic wave behind him. They crashed into the first of the artillery pieces almost before they could react, cutting down the defenceless operators - men and women they had known.

But Bayul was a master of the battlefield, not to be surprised by a mere rear charge, and his anger gave him clarity. The troops remaining outside the city, trained to think and act as individuals (though of course in the way that he had trained them to think) in any given scenario, knew what to do. Though naturally he also gave them a mighty trumpet from his trunk to reassure them that he remained strong and ready to retaliate. His reserve legion rallied to him and formed into a sturdy phalanx in seconds, their shields overlapping to form one continuous wall of metal bristling with spears. They would repel the treacherous cavalry.

That's when something else felt wrong. The victorious yells of the troops as they swarmed the breach had turned to surprise and even fear. Some even started scrambling back out. Those were perhaps the wise ones. As Bayul glanced over, a piece of masonry the length of 2 Loxodon trunk to elephanty-toe-thing landed dead centre of the breach, turning tens to a bloody pulp as it rolled along and throwing countless more backward. A colossal shadow formed in the smoke. Dumbfounded for an instant, Bayul gawped as the figure began to reach for yet another piece of the former wall. It wasn't that he had never seen a giant before. It was that there was one here that simply didn't exist in his perfectly formed plans. Processing this new variable rapidly, he realised now that the only option left was to somehow prevent a full scale route in which they would all be slaughtered. This time his trumpeting was truly necessary, and he repeated it thrice. The retreat was not an order he commonly gave, but gave it he did.

The fighting retreat of the company was a messy business, and few were left alive from the joint hammer and anvil of a giant and their own cavalry picking at their flanks. Bayul himself sustained grievous wounds, even his tremendous strength nearly broken by the giant's barrage. It was perhaps the desire to protect their leader that held the centre so strongly for those desperate minutes. Even so, the phalanx was on the edge of utterly crumbling when they finally reached the tree line, temporarily safe from the predations of their merciless pursuers. What followed was days of playing cat and mouse. Bayul managed to turn the situation on its head numerous times, planting counter-ambushes and plucking small victories from defeat. But he had lost too many good soldiers.

When they finally made an escape to friendly territory, Bayul was disgraced with himself, and a shadow of his former physical and mental state. He left his men despite their evident loyalty, brooding in taverns for months on both his own hubris and his lieutenant's extremely vexing betrayal. He objectively recgonised that brawls and booze were a short-term, if satisfying, way to forget his misfortune. Eventually however, he began to see the strategy within even tavern brawls. He found himself actively kicking them off, then subsequently stepping back and directing bottle-wielding drunks as he used to command entire legions. It was on one such evening, just as he was coming up with the best way to provoke a group of orcs, when one of his former men (or indeed, gnomes) suddenly appeared next to him. Gimble, a former infantrygnome, and survivor of his final battle. "Sire?...Sire, is that you?" Gimble asked, looking deeply troubled. Bayul realised he must be a sorry sight, stooped over and suspicious where once he stood straight and proud. Were it not for his signature trunk-ear-tusk combo, he would probably have been impossible to recognise. He muttered something about not knowing what he was talking about and made his exit.

He never did see Gimble again, but the look in the gnome's eyes was enough to remind him who he was. He would regain his honour in the only way he knew how. But first, he would cease to see himself as a God of War and more as a student. Reading in depth on military history while working as a bodyguard and general tough guy, Bayul soon secured himself a gig that combined both; Part muscle, part military expert for an upcoming archaeology expedition that promised lost knowledge and perhaps even a cheeky conquest or two along the way...