Efen, of the Frozen Coast

To someone that knows Efen is a traveller, a warrior, for the Frozen Coast. A bleak part of Altria where all the land is snow and water ice, it’s a harsh environment to travel through and if the cold doesn’t kill you the beasts that live there will. Despite this depiction it is inhabited, not much is known of the people who live there, only really what travellers would tell and when they do tell they tell of a proud people, people who defend the land with their lives and worship the moon and ocean and some among them who command the ice and snow itself.

To those who don’t know Efen is a traveller, a warrior, has something for blue, a man who carries a decorated bone spear.

On his travels our protagonist has picked up an assortment of things that look almost out of place with him, brown leather armour, warn under his pale blue cloth wrap but above his dark blue cloth shirt. A pony that follows him loyally, carrying Efen’s load over it’s back, a sharp short dagger made of steel tucked under his belt on which a money belt also sits, given the chance to camp with him you’d also find a small wood box of Passionflower leaves, a percolator and mess kit. His dark blue shirt keeps close to his form and its sleeves covering the palms and backs of his hands, but not his fingers, his leggings, seaming of the same piece, reach down into travellers’ boots and a pale blue cloth reaching down to his knees and around his waist. Waterskins hang by his sides, straps crossing each other across his chest and back, the stoppers closed but facing forwards rather then up.

Overall Efen is not an impressive sight, particularly as he stands before the man, on the stool, behind the stand, on the road. People often don’t know how to react around Efen, he doesn’t appear like a warrior with his spear in hand and they would probably be right to, Efen is capable warrior with a spear but he can’t wait to break the shaft. All males of his tribe are trained to use the spear and females with the javelin, in memory of a time when the water and land was not frozen, as a tradition once someone has mastered using water bending to defend themselves they break the shaft of their spear or javelin. From the moment of breaking the shaft that person’s responsibility is no longer the survival of the tribe but the survival of art form that water bending is considered to be.

Efen himself left the tribe long before breaking the shaft of his spear, he still hasn’t broken it, he left the tribe because he was not considered an acceptable husband to the girl he had idolised. Although this seems like a self imposed exile it isn’t, it’s a tradition, an unwritten law, that if a man does not receive the blessing of the farther of the girl he is courting then he must leave and return in a year with a gift to prove his worth. Efen has been away for 9 months, hasn’t found a suitable gift for the girls farther and is having second thoughts to the girl he was courting. His journey has opened his eyes to the world.

"Now! Prepare for the wrath of the Empire!"