Harkalios

Backstory
Harkalios was born in 27 bsr to the daughter of one of the elders of the elf city of Marenwald. This daughter's name was Kirahas, daughter of Harkiriel. Kirahas had already been promised to the son of another one of the elders of the city. Kirahas resented this match and disappeared from the city for several weeks, eventually returning of her own volition, pregnant. To this day, though pressured by her father, she has refused to talk about those weeks that she spent outside of Marenwald. Harkiriel naturally was furious by his daughters actions and made doubly furious when he feared that the child was not a full elf. However, Kirahas bargained with her father against her own exile, and said that she would quietly marry her betrothed, if he would let her only raise the child until he was old enough to fend for himself. In a further attempt to soften her father's temper, she named her son Harkalios, after her father. This peace-offering was ill received. Harkalios was raised in the duplicitous environment of both love and thinly-veiled contempt. His mother was as loving as she could be, though only when his maternal grandfather was not around. His step-father distantly acknowledged him, but Hark knew he was only waiting for the moment that Hark was gone. His grandfather and the elders of the village liked to ignore him as much as possible. Despite the hostility of the elders, Hark did become friends with many of the young elves in his village, becoming best friends with an elf named Kier. Many of his playmates were fascinated with the way he aged faster than they did, as his human blood became more apparent as he aged. Not all of the adult elves were hostile to Hark either, and in the few years before his exile he was mentored by the bow-maker of his village, who taught him to string and shoot a bow. The bow maker's wife also had a soft spot for Harkalios, often treating him like a son and showing him more consistent love than his own mother. However, shortly before his ninth birthday, and in light of the weapons training he had been given by the bow-maker, Harkiriel deemed Harkalios able to fend for himself and exiled Hark from all Marenwald and all the other surrounding elf villages. Confused, but not entirely surprised, Hark went. On the way outside of the village, the bow-maker (fearing for Hark's safety and knowing that Harkiriel would just as well that Hark died) slipped Harkalios a bow and a quiver of arrows. Learning how to survive on his own at such a young age was not easy. Realizing that none of the other villages in the Whispering Woods would give him aid and that stealing from such villages would earn him a beating (eventually, though, he got stealthy enough that he could steal without being seen), he turned to survive in the surrounding forest, because that was the only world outside the elf city that he knew. The learning curve was a steep one and Hark once spent several days trapped in a sinkhole in the middle of the forest, watching buzzards circle overhead. Exhausted and dehydrated, he eventually climbed his way out of the hole after three days. For Hark, this was the first real challenge of life on his own and when he began developing his ideas about the world and his place in it. <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Harkalios began to realize he could be fast, strong and smart, or he could be dead. Nature was unforgiving that way. At the same time, he realized that he was inexorably part of the natural cycle of life. He may kill the deer that eat the plants, and thus be better at perpetuating his own existence than the deer, but he was still dependent on the deer for his own survival. Over the years, he began to almost deify Nature as he lived in this duality. Having no formal religious training, Nature itself became his deity. He established the tenets of his own creed. He places survival at the top of his creed, and striving to ever become faster, stronger and more cunning in order to ensure his survival. However, he never loses sight of his place in the natural order of things, recognizing that however strong he gets, there will always be something stronger that may or may not threaten his existence. He feels that all the races should learn to live in accordance with natural law, recognizing that Nature is the ultimate winner, as Nature will survive long after all the current nations have crumbled to dust. Nature to him is the ultimate survivor, and he detests anyone who tries to interfere with this natural order. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hark's life philosophy can lead him to hating the weak that do not strive to improve their position, or who have given up on or make excuses for not improving themselves and lead him to bowing to tyrants due to their positions of power, if their actions do not run contrary to his philosophy. On the same token, he hates weak dictators, who rule not through personal power, but through the power of others or through fear. The only blind spot he has in his creed is for children, whom he has the tendency to show unconditional favor for. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Harkalios spent eleven years in the forests around Marenwald, before realizing that there was a greater world around him. At this point he began to travel around as a caravan guard for merchants, using the bow skills that he had acquired for defense of these caravans. He was a popular guard, because he asked for little money in return, instead favoring being paid in food and supplies. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hark hopes someday to find a place he considers a home and raise a family of his own, yet this hope is tempered by his desire to find a secluded place in nature that he feels is his personal Holy Place. Though, both goals are rooted in Hark's desire for a permanent home, it's yet to be seen which is the more likely outcome.

Personality
<p style="margin:4.8pt0in6pt;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hark can be rather taciturn at times, watching and waiting, and this can make him seem kind of distant, cowardly or paranoid. The keen observer will realize though, that this silence isn't the result of his being stand-offish, but rather his biding his time and waiting for the precise moment to take action. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">As a Druid, Harkalios has a taste for both nature and meditation. His preferred environment is somewhere high in the mountains or secluded somewhere heavily forested. When he is forced to be in urban sprawls for any length of time, he will often turn to meditation in his free time in an attempt to reconnect with the natural world, such as it is in a city. When not meditating, Hark will often practice his skill with his bow on targets or on local game. After years of surviving on his own, he still prefers to hunt his own dinner rather than have it made for him. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">The natural world is not always his friend, however, and years of broken bones and bruises have left him with a lingering resentment of climbing and sleeping in trees. Along the line of broken bones, splinting bones and sewing stitches are another one of those tedious things that afford Harkalios no enjoyment. Wounds affect Hark on a deeper level than flesh though, as one of his fears is becoming unable to fight or support himself, through illness or injury. Rather than let this make him a hypochondriac, Hark has the tendency to push through serious illness or injury. <p style="margin:12pt0in;line-height:15.75pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Harkalios likes his freedom and despairs over the restrictions of urban life and chafes under the thought of being imprisoned for any length of time and for any reason. He has the tendency to become rather flighty (literally) in any situation where he feels trapped.

Corva
Corva is Hark's animal companion. She is a golden eagle and can be generally found on perched Harkalios' shoulder or bracer. If she's not there, she'll not be far away, protecting or scouting for her master from a distance. Corva is an immense asset to Hark in battle and in everyday life. She is one of the reasons that Harkalios' favored animal form is a golden eagle.

Harkalios befriended the eagle during his years spent in the forests around Marenwald.

Events during and after 25 a.s.r.
Harkalios was involved in the quest to finally rid Phentis from Gernon and gained a wish from Lucifer for helping to take down his unruly subordinate. He wished for the restoration of all the burned forests on Gernon, especially the Whispering Woods which had been nearly annihilated. Since then, he has been living in the Cranborne Swamp, and occasionally working with his friend King Kusotare to help keep the peace in the Union of the West.