Koro

Koro

"I assume we won't have any problems you and I? What with this being a collaborative effort and all."

Relatives	Unknown
Affiliations	The Shepherds, Snobbite
Aliases	None
Marital Status	Single
Date of Birth	115 PR
Place of Birth	Unknown
Date of Death	TBD
Place of Death	TBD
Species	Genasi (Air)
Gender	Male
Height	5'8
Weight	130 lbs.
Eye Color	Dark Gray

Koro is an Air Genasi raised in the kingdom of Snobbite on the continent of Pteris, but is now employed by a nomadic group of Shepherds to act as a guard during their journey to the Arboretum at the center of the Western Badlands in 136 PR. With a nonchalant attitude seemingly unbefitting of the Kensei arts he wields, he brandishes sword and bow against the forces of the Abyss.

Physical Appearance

Koro is a young man possessed of sky-blue skin dotted with white patches of vitiligo, as if a snapshot of a cloud-filled sky was plucked from the air and made flesh, topped with similarly white hair pulled into a tight bun and secured with a wooden clasp. He wears tan robes cut such that the right half of his upper body is uncovered, while his left side is adorned with a black leather pauldron sporting silver accents with his left arm's robe sleeve being fastened with leather straps. Koro is somewhat shorter than the average humanoid and not all too muscular, and so he attempts to travel light to keep himself ready to execute swift combat maneuvers at a moment's notice.

Personality

Koro outwardly wears a nonchalant and casual attitude in most situations, even coming off as cocky in some instances. He touts the mantle of a man who is free; wandering wherever the whims of the wind happen to take him and being unbound by binding oaths of loyalty or station, taking on jobs for whatever Badland faction he happens to align with in the moment. It is a delicate facade however, able to be cracked and seen through if uncomfortable situations arise, and even at his most confident his eyes are the one thing he has yet to master veiling beneath his veneer. Dark and stormy gray, they betray a similarly rumbling anger within the man that seem to haunt his every motion. When stress begins to mount on the battlefield, when insecurity begins to seep into the mind, when his experience and skill are questioned, that anger can thunder to the surface. Koro's attacks become aggressive, or his words biting, like a crack of lightning these moments are swift and vicious but also vanish just as quickly. Rarely helpful on the battlefield, certainly hindering off of it, one is led to wonder how truly free a man with such a trait is?

History

The way Koro understands it, he was dropped on the doorstep of an old Hobgoblin swordsman's doorstep in Snobbite when he was just a newborn. His parents' identities, why they did such a thing, and where they went after are all mysteries that remain unsolved to this day, and Koro has no intention of solving them any time soon as a consequence of the upbringing he subsequently endured.

The Hobgoblin swordsman seemed a combat veteran, his small home decorated floor to ceiling in Realm War I memorabilia. He raised Koro in strict accordance with Snobbite wartime culture, seemingly more intent on being a boot camp commander to a cadet rather than a father to a boy. Koro did not take to this lifestyle well, especially at a young age he had no interest in grueling training regiments or reading antiquated military tactics handbooks cover to cover, but the swordsman wouldn't have any of it. He would threaten to withhold food from the boy if he didn't participate in the swordsman's plan for him: "The only people worth more than the dirt on my boot in this land are warriors, and everyone knows it. The food in this house only feeds soldiers, and the roof only houses fighters. If you think you got something better to do with your life than fighting for your country, then it ain't worth the gold it takes to feed you. Anyone else in this kingdom will tell you the same boy, so either get back to it or get out."

In Koro's teenage years he actually did test the hobgoblin's conviction and refused to train or work, and indeed the swordsman refused to feed him and threw him outside. For days Koro did not back down, sleeping outside the home exposed to the elements, but the hobgoblin never checked on him, never said another word, seemingly fully expunging Koro's existence from his mind without guilt. It seemed he was stalwart in the fact that if Koro died out there, it was his own fault for not wanting to be a soldier, and thus of no consequence to him. For as much as Koro despised him, it seems he believed the hobgoblin when he said that everyone in Snobbite thought the way he did, and so he returned to the door of the house in tears, body wearing from malnutrition, promising to be a soldier. The hobgoblin pushed him in training twice as hard as he ever did at Koro's healthiest as punishment, not for refusing to train, but for crying in front of him, because in his words: "Only the weak cry, and a soldier must never be weak."

Unbroken training sessions half a day long each day for months, manual labor, ordered readings of tactics textbooks hundreds of pages long before an arbitrary time had passed to avoid punishment, never being allowed to speak to others or leave the premises unless ordered to or accompanied by the swordsman; this was the life the young Koro was forced to comply with if he didn't want to starve. Koro eventually learned how to do the bare minimum amount of effort in his studies and training that would still get him fed and housed, as the harder and longer the swordsman pushed him, the more hatred he could not afford to let loose grew inside of him, towards the hobgoblin specifically and the whole concept of soldiering as a profession. As he continued to come of age, Koro would finally receive some small relief from the overbearing swordsman when he was sent to Dragon Turtle Bay to learn the ways of seafaring, a common Snobbish cultural touchpoint. He cared little for this too, and any possibility of companionship with peers his age easing the pains that came with his upbringing were snuffed out as Koro looked at their faces and saw wide smiles and twinkling eyes: there wasn't anything that could possibly make them happier than this. The roiling anger continued to grow.

Of course, those other young people had the choice of picking another of the career paths valued in Snobbite: calligraphy, textiles, boatwrighting, or smithing; Koro did not. But then something curious began to happen. Though he despised it with all his being and didn't give it his all, Koro's body was forged strong by his training, even beginning to match the ever-aging hobgoblin. As this threshold was crossed, the hobgoblin would increase the harshness of his words to his cadet. He insulted his sluggish movements in comparison to the element he embodied, he mocked the anger Koro openly showed on his face towards him at this point, and he suggested that maybe his disdainful qualities were apparent to his parents at birth, and that that's why they dumped him in Snobbite, he was too inconvenient to raise so they decided to pawn him off on someone else.

The next thing Koro knew, he was exiting the house with a stolen katana and bow in his hands, electricity crackling from his fingers. He made for the Badlands and never looked back. He wasn't hindered, he wasn't burdened, he was free as the wind, and he could do whatever he pleased; that's what he told himself anyway. Seemingly in an attempt to prove this conviction, he drifted from place to place as his whims took him west, taking on all manner of mercenary jobs from whoever was offering food and shelter. Eventually this landed him in the Badlands, where there was no shortage of work to be done for the various factions. He found himself more often than not taking jobs for the Shepherds, as their nomadic lifestyle fit his similarly ever-wandering one.

As he settled into this new life he was intent on making for himself, a thought stuck in his subconscious like an immovable glue, as memories from his past usually do despite his efforts. The one thing the old hobgoblin never taught Koro about the various wars were the timelines of them: when they started, when the ended, the 'when' never seemed important enough to impart to Koro under any circumstance. In Koro's travels after Snobbite, as offhand comments about past wars of the land and jokes regarding the lifespans of various peoples were overheard in seedy taverns or pop-up desert encampments, Koro wondered if it was even possible for that old hobgoblin to have been born in time to serve in any of the wars he venerated so much...

Languages

Koro grew up only learning Common, the old swordsman never bothered to teach him any other. Though strangely, Koro does seem able to understand Primordial almost instinctually.

Powers and Abilities

Koro utilizes Kensei martial tactics in battle, often in an aggressive and unrefined way that is unemblematic of the typical user of such arts. He utilizes katana, bow, and fist in combat engagements, often times taunting his opponents with insults to get them to attack in a predictable way he can exploit. His Genasi ancestry also affords him limited use of elemental power, like generating electricity from his palms and manipulating the wind to lighten his body or briefly lift things into the air.

Attacks and Weapons 

Koro is always equipped with his katana and longbow, but also keeps a supply of large metal darts on hand. He can also resort to passable hand-to-hand combat if necessary, but prefers to use his weapons if he's able.

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