Lord Erasmus Tyde
Looking in from the outside, you realise how fragile it all is. How vulnerable. How petty our politics, how blinkered our sight. You want to grab every princeling in the realms, pull them into the dark and make them realize what they could lose.
Description: Erasmus is a tall man with an expressive, lived in face and longish pepper hair salted with age. Not that he's old, by any means - his blue eyes are vigorous bright and his carriage still straight and snapping when he's about his business (though he tends more to lanky lounging than looming when he is not).
Personality: Despite his storied reputation as sailor and soldier, Erasmus' greatest trait - or curse, depending on how you see it - was an inability to let somebody down. Family, House, comrades in arms, it didn't matter. The needs of the many always far eclipsed anything personal Erasmus might have wished for. Some referred to him, jokingly, as the fish out of water - how could a man so caring and devoted to others have been born to Thrax? He would take others burdens as his own, and keep the faith when everything seemed dark.
But there's dark, then there's Darkwater deeps. After interminable years lost and suddenly returned to light, he truly is adrift, seeking familiarity in a strange city, his old comrades and family long departed. The best of Erasmus may have been left behind under the surface. Plagued by nightmares, half-remembered shadows, Erasmus is encumbered by the gnawing knowledge that all the intrigues of Arx pale against what lies beyond. Nevertheless has a House to serve again, and perhaps that sense of duty will serve as the guiding star to bring him back to the man he once was - before he is dragged under forever.
Background: Lord Erasmus Tyde was a legend. In his youth, the dashing captain and brother of Duke Victor Tyde was as respected through the Mourning Isles for his great talent as a sailor as he was for his honorable devotion to his family. Hardened in a decade of battles, he became most famous for bravely leading Tyde and Thrax forces into battle against the Pirate King Cordereon, serving as the overall commander for highlord Drake Thrax and Duke Victor Tyde at the Battle of Gray Ice Point. He distinguished himself well enough, but it was his actions after that made many of the hardened reavers take notice. It is said that Erasmus personally met with every family of every fallen Islander to relay his condolences privately, all because of a casual, offhand promise he made to deliver news to families if the worst should happen, and he was a man of his word. From then and half a hundred times since then, he showed his devotion to those that served under him. A devotee of Limerance, when he gave his word, it was certain.
Well regarded throughout the Isles, he helped teach the young heir to Maelstrom, Prince Donrai Thrax, how to sail, though the lessons came to an end after Lord Erasmus respectfully disagreed with Donrai's callous treatment of commoners serving under them. "Nobles have their ranks and privileges due to our duty to serve our people," Erasmus had said to the young prince, and an argument with the heir apparent of the Mourning Isles left the two not on speaking terms. Not long after their quarrel, Lord Erasmus Tyde volunteered to lead an expedition into the Darkwater Deeps to attempt to rescue a galley of Tyde commoners who were blown off course by a storm and thought to have ventured into it by accident. He promised he would return, and the devotee of Limerance always had kept his word.
Decades later, sailing out of the Darkwater Deeps, a man claiming to be the same legend has returned. While almost no one from his time period still lives, some of the oldest claim he does resemble Lord Erasmus Tyde, the great uncle of the current Duchess of Tydehall, Duchess Margot. While most think the story preposterous and he's clearly an imposter, the man has no claim to the duchy nor has he made any attempt at one- he promised always to serve the rightful head of house, which Margot clearly is, and the man keeps his promises.
| Name | Summary |
| Catalana | Hard to tell if he is friend or foe yet. Only time will tell I imagine. |
| Gael | Compassion is a rarity in the fevered pitch of this rotten city, but he had some to give. Some. Still, I spy beneath all the wisdom and empathy a sharper, bladed, more edged tool seeking precisely an answer to a question I've yet understood, one so cleverly hidden he wouldn't even share his name to betray it. So be it. We all have our secrets. |
| Haakon | Greybeard old salt. Seems off.. amiss somehow. One of the sad, reflective sorts. |
| Ian | My brothers used to tell me stories about him. Most of them probably weren't true, especially the ones Porter told me, but when I was ten, I believed them all. I'm not sure even as a ten year old, I would have believed I'd be running into him now. |
| Mabelle | A sailor Lord who does seems burdened by.. belonging to the peerage or perhaps its just his sense of duty. I'm sensing there is more than meets the eye. |
| Maris | The outward appearance of an old sailor who's been through one too many bad storms and mugs of ale. But the mind and eyes of a noble; gauging, weighing, calculating. Interesting to say the least. |
| Medeia | A solemn fellow who seems to have been away for a very long time. Not without reason, I assume, though I did not learn it. Feels fair toward Duchess Margot, so I am inclined to see him again. |
| Porter | A noble of House Tyde and with some sort of mysterious past that can only be discussed over drinks! Curious and intriguing! I'm sold. |
| Raimon | The man who once famously said: "Nobles have their ranks and privileges due to our duty to serve our people" has always numbered high on my list of unsung heroes. And here he is, alive and in person at the Academia Ari Hall of Memories for a ceremony Honoring Pravus for the events of the Skal'dajan War. Sometimes Fate is kind indeed. The man is a Legend; I am honored to meet him. |
| Sebastian | An older sailor of Tyde, he seems the sort of man more at home on the deck of a ship than in a the midst of a celebration. I bet he has interesting stories to tell. |
| Sirius | In him I see the stillness of a placated sea; the exiguous strength of a man struggling, heaving with a need to be given reason to have unleashed. It leaves me to wonder, is it anger... or resentment? |