__________________QUICK STATS
Name John Jameson
Age Early thirties
Gender Male
Species Human…?
Ethnicity Connlaothian
Height 5’10” / 178 cm
Occupation Ex-soldier
Residence Connlaoth
__________________IN-DEPTH STUFF
Physical Description
John Jameson has the strong, reliable, warm presence of sturdy Connlaothian stock. His build is that of a solid, Connlaothian soldier: broad shoulders, a strong chest, trim waist, and muscular form; though he’s gotten a bit thinner since his injury than he was as an active soldier. His dark, curly blonde hair is usually kept short cropped and is accompanied by a neatly trimmed short beard. John’s warm brown eyes lend a kindness to his strong face.
Despite his presumably humble background, John carries himself with a posture and mannerisms reminiscent of a gentleman or an officer. And though he dons plain clothing, he keeps himself as tidy and well-groomed as circumstances allow since his recovery. Beneath his neat and very Connlaothian exterior, though, a large scar marrs his left breast. It is no ordinary scar, though. Smooth and hard, it’s etched in black and green and purple across his breast. Not understanding its nature, John keeps it disguised at all times.
Personality
Kind, loyal, and sturdy. John is a patient, well-mannered man with a strong, calm presence.
Magic/Abilities
John is a natural horseman and a good shot with a musket and a bow. An injured shoulder from his soldier days have diminished this skill a little, but he’s still a good enough shot. John is also a good ‘people person.’ He has good manners, a reassuring presence, and a trustworthy demeanor. He has the natural ability both to get people to trust him and to listen to him.
Those are skills John understands. What he does not understand is, after his long, drawn-out recovery, it seems that any new injury he suffers heals slightly too fast. Too easily. He has no explanation for this. One more mystery he lives with.
Relationships
Enid Jameson - Deceased wife, perhaps.
Aubrey - Son, deceased.
History
This is what John remembers…
...John awoke in a small, warm, and isolated home deep and hidden in the forest. He was weak, broken and in pain, but recovering. And with a searing, scorched scar across his breast. The person keeping him alive was a young, beautiful redhaired woman who was, she said, his wife. Enid. She cared for him with the warmth, love, and tenderness of a wife, but search his mind as he did, John could not remember her or the forest home she said was theirs. But, she explained, he’d been gravely injured in the war. Thrown by his horse, half trampled, and run through by the enemy, he’d been dragged much later, she said, from the battlefield. Left for dead. When Enid had heard of the battle and heard no word from her husband, she flew to search for him. The army medics had just kept him alive, but he was no more use to them. So they released him to her, and she’d been taking care of him since.
John didn’t remember any of this. Or any of her. But, he didn’t remember anything else, either, to contradict it. And the pain of his body seemed to attest to her story. Too weak to challenge it, John accepted his wife’s tale. What else did he have? But she had no answers for the scar on his chest that preoccupied him so, and evaded any question he gave about it. For many months he lay bedridden, with only Enid taking care of him, giving him healer’s drafts that dulled his pain and kept him, much of the time, in a healing sleep. Her kindness and gentleness lowered his defenses, and with him, he convinced himself he remembered more and more of the stories she told him of their courtship and marriage. How had he forgotten? With time, much time, he healed and slowly, slowly began working around the house; cutting timber and hunting for as long as his worn body would let him.
Somehow, John never questioned why they lived isolated in the forest. Why they were self-sufficient and unreliant on others. A town, he knew, was only just over a day away. But they never went… That was, until Enid became pregnant. Elated, she assured John that she would need no help. She was a healer; hadn’t she healed him? But in the final months of her pregnancy, Enid started rapidly failing. She was getting weak, couldn’t eat, and clearly sick. The lives of both his wife and unborn child, he knew, depended on getting help. Too weak now to fight him on it, John carefully loaded Enid into the timber cart and pulled her, himself, to the nearest village, desperately seeking a healer.
But the villagers had other ideas. Their eyes went wide, their faces white, when they saw Enid. Cries of ‘witch!’ quickly rent the air. Hysterical claims that his wife, his gentle Enid, had cursed the land with the Long Winter, cursed their crops and their wells. Angry shouts that she had been told what would happen if she ever returned. Before John could understand what was going on, a stone flew from the crowd and hit Enid with a sick thud in the head. The briefest silence and stillness followed before a volley followed from the villagers. John tried to fight them, but was held back as the villagers - whose help he had sought - murdered his wife.
He knew the moment she died. The sensation was something like waking up from a dream. It took him a moment to understand where he was, who he was. But once he did; he remembered the child. He fought his way to the dead young woman - his wife? - and it was only an old woman who helped him now. The rest left, muttering darkly and cursing, some spitting at the body as they passed. But the crone told him to follow her quickly; she hated the witch as much as any of them, she told John, but that should not condemn the babe. If they worked quickly… But they could not be quick enough. By the time the old woman cut the babe, a boy, from his mother’s womb, it only had enough life to turn once, squint its eyes, muster a silent cry, then die.
The woman let John grieve, coated in the blood of the woman who seemed less and less like his wife and the babe that was most definitely his. When he mustered his strength, he took both bodies back to the forest home and gave them proper burials. Already this place seemed strange. Somehow fake. And he would not stay there. The last time he saw the still face of the woman who’d claimed to be his wife, she already looked like a stranger. But had he loved her? On his son’s gravestone, he carved the name that had materialized as though from the ether in his mind when he’d looked at the boy. Aubrey.
Then John packed enough to last him, enough to carry, and left the forest home, never to return. With a past that seemed more and more unreal behind him, and an uncertain future before him.
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