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@rose-colored-fancy

Well, in my real work when I actually know the characters, I use it constantly! It’s one of my favorite poetic devices to convey atmosphere and backstory. Depending on the character and their voice, I can even go slightly overboard with it XD

However, in this case I know nothing about the character, so it was random for once.

Yep, I figured. I just have a tendency to read into things nowadays.

The only thing I could have conveyed better is that he’s a noble himself. In fact, he out-ranks the other character, even though she’s in charge. Otherwise, everything is correct! I don’t know too much about him yet, but he’s probably one of my favorite characters so far!

Oh, yeah, I wouldn’t have guessed that. Now I’m confused and intrigued on why in the world he is acting the jongleur.

Gilded Blood has thoroughly cured me of series for the time being

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. Everytime I have a new idea, I’m always torn between series and stuffing it in a stand alone for my work load’s sake. xD

@joelle-stone

Thanks for the response Joelle, and that’s totally fine. 🙂

@emma-walker

You got the first place prize?

😉

 

 

Alrighty, here are a couple more of my characters:

 

Character 1:

The ring of steel. The screams of dying men. The putrid scent of gore.

They were the signs of justice being delivered upon the wicked. The signs of the world being cleansed of the filth that tainted its fair soil.

Mareth brought his long blade down on an opponent’s neck, and with a gurgled scream, the man fell on his face in the early morning dew, his life blood seeping into the crisp grass.

Another rotten tree felled in the forest of humanity. Another grain of chaff removed from the wheat. Another murderer ended.

Mareth swung his gaze across the chaos in the surrounding area. Soldiers in the blue and yellow uniforms of Henry the Young King’s retinue fought all around them. But they were retreating before the wrath’s fury.

Or most of them were.

Two soldiers charged Mareth, their swords glinting in the young rays of a new sun. Fire filled his veins, heating his blood until his limbs were bursting with it. A malevolent smile crossed his lips as the furnace roared throughout every part of his body. Fools. The wrath would consume them all.
The first soldier fell with two swift blows. It was like chopping wood for the winter, but its purpose was so much higher.

The second soldier blocked his attack, but the wrath didn’t have time to play games.

Mareth knocked the soldier’s sword away with his own, and seized his throat with a crushing grip. Raw power seemed to seep from his fingers, sending a tremble through his limbs. The soldier’s choking gasps lasted mere moments as the wrath shut off the air from his body.

The wicked tainted the air with their breaths. But they would no longer.

“They’re retreating! What are your orders?” Baycar shouted over the tumult as he kicked a corpse off his sword.

Mareth scanned the backs of the retreating scum. The fire roaring through his veins, his mind, his very being, did nothing to dull his senses. A leader, no matter how humble his background, thought his actions through so as to attain his purpose with bold confidence. But there was little thought needed for this. The wrath allowed none to escape.

“Kill them all.”

Character 2:
Life was one big fight for survival. Nothing more, nothing less.

With a grunt, Drastan sent the Almohad flying backwards to crash through the damaged wall of a wattle-and-daub building. As dust motes puffed into the sunlit sky, fragments of wood spiked up in every direction, stabbing the air like a cat’s hair standing on end.

Instead of springing up to fight like the tenacious Saracens had a habit of doing, the fellow scrambled away, blinking dust out of his eyes and gripping his turban like it was a noble’s crown.

Wise of him. Drastan had no desire to kill the man, but he would do what it took to survive. All men did. That was the only way to make it in life.

Lamar, his mercenary captain, wouldn’t be pleased to know he had let a man escape, but it wasn’t as if this was some battle for glory and honor, so Lamar could go kiss a hog. Drastan had lost track of who was attacking who and why, but it didn’t matter. Neither did it matter who was the evil, and who claimed to be in the right. War was war, fighting was everywhere, and forgetting everything except survival was the only way to live.

Three Saracens burst out from a sturdy wood building further down the beat-dirt street with arms full of loot. Drastan couldn’t blame them. If this wasn’t a Castlian village they were fighting in, he would be doing the same.

Hefting his war hammer, he charged the three Almohad soldiers. Shouts rang out as the three  dropped their loot and drew scimitars. Such puny weapons. Swords demanded delicacy and thought, and Drastan failed to see the point of such things. A warhammer or a fine bec de corbin and some brute force would do the job much better.

Bone cracked and a scream rent the air as his warhammer smashed through the scimitar guard of the first soldier and sent him sprawling to the ground. The other two charged Drastan with Arabic and African battlecries that he had heard countless times.

As their scimitars sliced through the air, Drastan found himself on the retreat. Charging in like that may not have the best idea, but all situations could be turned in your favor with another force. Besides, planning an action out was a waste of time and no safer than running headlong into a fight.

A billhook caught one of the scimitars, yanked it to the side, and then planted its spiked head in the Almohad’s chest. As the man screamed, his remaining compatriot ran off, loot forgotten.

“What in the bloody skies are you doing?” the billhook’s owner, Rodan, shouted as the thunder of hooves filled the air. The Castilian knights must be coming in to clean up the stragglers.

Drastan slipped his warhammer into a loop on his baldric and swiped a sweaty strand of his curly midnight hair back behind his ear. “I do as I please. Go bother someone else.”

 

Upon looking back on these two, I found that I broke my ‘don’t use too much introspection’ rule, quite badly. xD