Background:

D'Arcy was lucky, as these things go. Unlike most others of his kind, he was adopted into the family of his human mother, and raised with the love of his mother, adopted father (a wealthy rural landowner), and most of his half-siblings. It was as an idyllic a childhood as a child like him could expect - growing up riding, hunting, and tending his family's fields and animals.

All of that ended when, at 15, he killed his half-brother in a fit of rage. He fled as far and as fast as he could, and spent months begging and stealing to survive before enlisting in the army. He spent a miserable two years as a peasant conscript before deserting (along with most of the rest of the army) following a bloody rout. He has spent the last 7 years as a brigand and mercenary (there's often little difference, in his experience), but has become sick of the senselessness of that life and is tormented by memories of a happier time. So he has left it behind (he hopes) and set off to find a better use for his talents, bloody as they are.

Big, even for a half-breed, he is dressed in stained, oft-patched leather armor and is bristling with weapons that show signs of heavy use. He carries himself with the violent distrust of an outlaw or mercenary, though he speaks with an elocution surprising from one of his presumed social class. And he knows on which side of the plate the strige fork goes. Though it has brought him nothing but misery, he still often struggles to control his temper.