Azas Mortlock



Age: 26

Alliance: Neutral

Appearance
Azas is of medium-height, but is stocky and muscular. He has close-cropped, dark hair and tan skin. He has several burn scars on his hands and forearms from his tenure as a blacksmith's apprentice.

Personality
Azas has a strong moral code, and believes highly in honor, rules, and traditions. He is hesitant to befriend people, and hides behind an overwhelming dedication to his work. Of his true friends, Azas would lay down his life to protect them or their honor.

Backstory
As the son of a travelling sell-sword and a local working girl, Azas' sudden appearance into the world was less than purposeful. As it was, the responsibility of taking care of him bounced around his mother's pleasure-house from one girl to another until no one had the time or interest to look after him. It was at this point that he was left in the street to die. This is exactly what might have happened had the town's blacksmith not been going for a walk that evening and seen the poor infant on the ground. The man took the child to his warm home, where he and his wife took care of it as their own.

Azas' early life progressed as any other child's would have; he was lovingly taken care of by his foster parents. At the age of 6, he began taking an interest in his father's work. While still too young and weak to physically work metal, he began helping with trivial tasks such as cleaning and sorting tools. As he aged, he grew and was able to take on additional tasks. It was at this point that he became his father's full-fledged apprentice. Azas began leaning everything from forging ingots from ore to creating intricate weapons and pieces of armor. His work was crude for the first few years, but as he progressed his pieces became more elegant and refined until his and his father's work were nearly indistinguishable. It was fortunate that his skill progressed the way it did, because it was not soon after he matched his father's skill in blacksmithing that his father was stricken with a disease. This disease was like nothing anyone in his village had seen before; it moved swiftly and furiously through the man's body. He went from a a lively individual to a comatose man covered in sweat to a lifeless pile of flesh, all within two days.

While Azas and his mother grieved for the death of his father, there were still people requiring the services of a blacksmith. Azas took on the responsibility, and dove headfirst into the work. He relished the oppertunity to spend hours upon hours working with the metal and not thinking about anything else. It was his method of coping with his loss, and a way to block out all of his other thoughts sans those involved in creating weapons and armor. As he spent more and more of his time in the blacksmith workshop, his skill continued to increase until people were travelling from farther and farther away to enlist his services. One of these people happened to be a high-ranking officer of the King's army looking for a ceremonial sword to be made. When he received his weapon, he was impressed to the point of telling Azas that if he ever wanted to move to a more populated area that there would be accommodations made for him in New Triton should he wish to blacksmith for the King's army.

Now, Azas resides in a small home and smithy in New Triton. While not a soldier in the army, he actively serves them by fixing armor, swords, and spears as well as creating new suits of armor and weapons when needed. He has been offered a position in an army platoon multiple times, but has declined in order to continue honing the craft that he loves.