Personality

Tall, silent and inexpressive, Duke is often mistaken for a common piece of dumb muscle. He is all too eager to use his imposing strength for compensation, whether it be lugging goods or smashing heads. He's largely disintrested in people, largely seeing them as obstacles or nuisences, though he's been known to hold a few exceptions (namely Sorcha).

Duke has an immaculate attention to detail and a long memory. His favored use for this is playing at cards, much to the chagrin of many a tavernkeep. No amount of explaining what "counting cards" is or why it's "frowned upon" has seemed to get through to him, but his love for the game runs so deep that he's memorized just about every card game in Ivras. He's even begun to collect every unique deck he can find, often carrying his most favored ones on his person.

Duke is rarely known to speak outside of grunts of affirmation or denial. Those few who've heard him describe him as deep, monotonous, and an utterly humorless bastard. He has an slight habit of cribbing (Equine Form) or chewing (Human Form) when he's bored, which is often.

[Is visibly Autistic but like, really sexy about it]

(201 WC)

History

CW: Implied ableism towards autistic people, and slight violence

Born in the rural fringes of Nymene, Anna Mae McCreary was the youngest of ten siblings. An odd, quiet child, she was left mostly to her own devices on the edge of her families farm, chasing vermin and collecting interesting rocks.

She rapidly outgrew her siblings, and word of the McCreary girl's unusual strength spread through the town. Eventually, the words hit the ears of a traveling ringmaster, who took a particular interest in the now ten year old Anna Mae. He gave the struggling family an offer they couldn't refuse, twenty gold pieces to purchase the girls "skills". Having never been all that attached to their youngest, they accepted, and Anna Mae was shuffled off into the care of strangers, kicking and screaming the whole way.

For ten years, he was paraded around Nymene, performing great feats of strength for gawking onlookers. For a gold piece you could watch him lift a boulder twice his weight, or crush a melon like it was an orange. He must have made the ringmaster a fortune, and he knew it, too. He watched the man pamper himself in luxuriant clothes and expensive liquor, while his fellow carnies toiled day in and out, usually sleeping on the ground while their employer lounged in feathered beds. After ten years of servitude, he'd finally had enough.

When the other carnies awoke one morning, their strongman was nowhere to be seen. They found the Ringmasters tent in shambles, coffers half emptied and the Ringmaster himself laying along in the center of the room, with his skull crushed like a watermelon.

For a while, he ran. Eventually, he found a place in an amateur wrestling ring on the other side of Nymene. Finally, somewhere he could use his strength with real purpose. They even gave him a new name, "The Duke", and he liked that one a lot more than Anna Mae. But that sort of work couldn't come without making some enemies, and when Duke's new employers found the mute was getting too difficult to control, they found a suitable way to get rid of him.

He was arrested in broad daylight, accused of witchcraft for his "unnatural" strength. Before he could even question what was happening he was shoved onto a ship and deported to Ivras as a mage. He arrived in Namarest to the confusion of many a mage scholar, who confirmed that this man indeed didn't have a single magical bone in his body. Before they could even ponder what to do or how to return him to the Iron Empire, Duke was gone, having broken the door to the room they'd left him in and simply wandered out of the Mage College.

If anything, he was excited. He'd had enough of Nymene for a lifetime. Here was a place he could have a new start.

(433 WC)