Elune Kardos

Personality:

• Easy going to a fault. He’s gotten very good these past few years of just letting things go so he can move forward. Maybe too many things.
• If you are playing chess he is the dog eating the pieces when you aren’t looking. Not all battles have to be won, or even fought really.
  • His attempts to solve problems can sometimes make them worse. He is not the best mediator.
  • Will readily diffuse a situation by clowning around
• Elune respects nature more than he respects himself. His self worth is low and it’s something he’s trying to salvage. Nature is cool though, my guy have you ever, like, seen a mountain? wild.
• Elune likes listening to people! You unravel a lot about yourself in the experiences of others. Also the other person. Probably.
• A Pacifist… but bad at it. He’s still figuring out philosophy and pondering ethics and the big questions. 
• Also: a disaster man just getting by and doing his best

Backstory:

Elune was born to a human mother and wood elf father in the poorer end of society in a coastal village in the western territories named Olarwake. The village was primarily focused on fishing with sailors often coming to and fro. Elune had a rough upbringing, the mainstay fish had moved on to better coasts at the time leaving the village to struggle with money and food. He was primarily raised by his mother with his father being absent. When he was old enough, he opted to leave with a mercenary company that stopped by port to restock. He could send money home while being one less mouth to feed.

That company was named the Ichneumon Company, run by several generations of holdovers from the dragon war and primarily made up of fighters, barbarians, and clerics. Your typical bread and butter kind of sellswords, they were the type of guys to fill a roster more than make big plays. They had just enough stand out soldiers to get them work.That was fine. Elune wanted money, not fame.

Elune fought with them from the age of 17 to late twenty to early thirty something. At some point they were hired by the Osmellan King’s army to bolster the defensive forces against the governor’s forces. These combats are more intense than the early jobs he was thrown into, and warfare is a whole new beast that a young man can never really prepare for. He meets Sara during this, she’s a reliable and steadfast comrade and I’d like to think her presence helped keep him from falling into the crueler pitfalls of armed combat. She’s with him up until Elune’s last job, near the turning point of the war there was a push to defend a key stronghold. Mercenaries were used to buy time, but the intel they were given was such that no one was quite sure of what awaited them. Elune was there when the governor’s forces came down on theirs, completely out matched. His squad was completely wiped out and he was injured and knocked unconscious.

By the time the battle ended he woke up and when the coast was clear, limped away. Anyone he was able to check on on the way out was dead. From experience and what he heard after, it had been clear that they had been treated as sacrifices, all for a battle the King’s side didn’t even win. What could he have done, why did they so readily throw themselves into this? Sure the people of Osmello had a stake. Sure the King was exploiting his constituents. Was it worth shedding blood over, and was laying down their lives and taking the lives of others worth that gold?  Why did he survive? He wasn’t anyone of importance. More importantly, what could he do now? He knew how to fish and he knew how to fight. He had no interest in crossing paths with any of the mercenary groups again.

Elune wandered off into the cracked grounds, hoping to get lost. Atoc found them instead, half starved and collapsed in the heat. Elune wasn’t much of a talker at the time given all that had happened. He hadn’t even reconnected with Ichneumon. He had no intention of connecting with anyone. But Atoc connected with him and through Atoc he connected with nature. What started as traveling together became studying beneath Atoc and at some point Elune decided to fully take up the Druidic path. 

In the present Elune has left Atoc’s side to seek their own understanding. He’s taken up adventuring primarily for coin for the interim. It's been a rough go! Turns out most people want you to fight things, which he’s not always against, but his creative solutions to get around that don’t always work out so well.