Shanks

Home Plane:  Granzia
Birthplace:  Luxenburough

Shanks was born to a single mother, an Eladrin called Larnael. She was loving, kind, and supportive of Shanks throughout his childhood and early adolescence. His father was someone he only knew through stories and reminiscing by his mother. Kal was a strong and valiant man, a Wild Elf, who was a protector of the sister cities of Luxenburough and the Forest Bastion. They had met one fateful night and fallen in love, but their destinies had pulled them apart. But not before Shanks was conceived, a gift from the gods to mark their short time together. Shanks would grow up in the city of Luxenburough, where he would develop a love of art, alchemy, and spending time with his mother.

While his life was mostly happy, being the son of a single parent and of mixed parentage was taboo, and he knew it. His happiness wouldn’t last, as in his early teens, he would find his mother deceased in their home. It would be a few days before his uncle Kaelen would appear to take him to his father. Kalgar was a Warden and a war cleric for the Elven god, the Hunter. He was strict and dogmatic, forcefully imparting his teachings to Shanks. The young man found a penchant for archery and began to focus all of his efforts on becoming the best to gain the love of his domineering father. However, tragedy seemed to follow him. On his first mission with his father’s unit, the Wolf Pack, he was left with some of the other recruits to guard the camp. They were attacked and his father, nor his unit, would return.

What followed was an odyssey of self-discovery and trauma through which he fought against fiends and demons with a war band known as the Hell Riders, seemingly being a catalyst in the war between the Goliath Tribes of the Ridge and the Sister Cities. Found and lost the love of his life, Dona Takal, having sent her on a mission that she did not return from. Abandoning the Hell Riders, he became a sniper for a multiplanar assassin’s guild called the S8. Tragedy would befall him here as well, pushing him to the brink. Broken and disillusioned by the dynamics of his life, he was found and hired by me, allowing him to right the wrongs of his past and gain control of his fate.

Early on, Shanks was more of a watcher than a full participant in the party’s exploits. That quickly changed as the circumstances evolved. Things took a dramatic turn when one of the surviving members of the S8 arrived unannounced in Barovia. This visit almost ended in Shanks’s death, had it not been for the quick reaction of his party members. After Barovia, he separated himself from the group, only to find himself reunited with the party and a new patron, Elrin. This bond would be a sticking point for not only Shanks but Arguile and the rest of the party. He would find out that Elrin, or rather Arioch, was woven within his life far more intricately than he could imagine.

With revelations that his mother was, in fact, not dead, nor his father, Shanks did everything he could to break his pact. With the help of the party, he was successful, but he was not free from the grasp of the Archdemon. Throughout their exploits in Sloane and Iwi, Shanks found himself more and more. Taking advice from an Orcish mentor, Jrehg, seeking guidance from the Hunter and Matron of Ravens, and finding his own balance in the world. The Elf of two cultures, two worlds, has found himself in the middle, seeking justice and peace. Whatever those happen to be for him.