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Aldric Charbanneau – The Arbiter
Skaa Masquerader
Name/Handle: Grimwether
Contact: Discord, PM
Name: Aldric Charbanneau
Alias: Baer, The Arbiter
Type: Skaa
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Place of Origin: Tremredare, Western Dominance
Occupation: Masquerader, "Lord" of House Charbonneau
Relationship Status: Single
Baer is a slightly tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed Skaa, who can both blend into crowds and stand out when he intends to. He is slightly handsome, but he can also blend in when he needs to, due to his typical coloring and his ability to look subdued. Normally, however, Baer walks straighter than your typical skaa, a sign that he isn’t broken. He’s 5’10”, and solidly built, though not overly large. Baer’s appearance allows him to impersonate either nobles or slaves with ease – he’s the perfect chameleon.
Baer isn’t a reserved man – why would he be? He’s free from the oppressive reign of the nobles, and has cultivated a spirited attitude throughout his life as an anti-noble. He has been known to get out of line near the nobles, however, which has led to punishments, beatings, and attempted murders.
Baer, while himself, has a refined manner of speaking that stands out from that of most skaa. When impersonating, he changes his speech to match various accents and dialects as the circumstances permit. He falls deeply into character when he impersonates, taking on the personality and life story of whomever he is pretending to be. He has been known to fall so deeply into character that he changes his mind about a subject until he becomes someone whose beliefs are contrary to what he previously thought.
One of his most notorious characters is the Arbiter. The Arbiter is an orchestrator of revolution of sorts, a patriot that seeks a greater empire than others dare to imagine – a land of equality between the skaa and the nobility. He’s a patron of the arts, a nobleman who encourages growth and progression, and one who wages a gentleman’s war on the Lord Ruler. As The Arbiter, he goes by the name Aldric Charbonneau.
Honestly, he can’t remember if he was Baer or Aldric first. He has memories of both lives up until he was twenty, and it’s all blurred, like two charcoal drawings getting rubbed together.
Baer is lonely because he won’t let himself get caught up in relationships with others. He sees sentiment as weakness, so he doesn’t attach himself to others. It allows him to move on quickly when he needs to, but it leaves him in a state of mourning every once in a while.
Special Skills: Reading, Writing, Lying, Impersonation, Knife Fighting
Strengths: Baer is a master of impersonation. He can impersonate a Noble perfectly, something that he does all the time whenever he’s at Charbonneau Estate. He has a vast store of finances by skaa standards. The wealth and income of Charbonneau is modest by the standards of nobility, average for a minor house, but it is more than enough to supply various rebellion cells, if they earn his patronage. He’s handy with a knife.
Weaknesses: Baer is virtually useless in an extended fight. He’s in good physical condition, but due to the nature of his weapon, if he’s fighting an enemy with a longer weapon, or if the fight starts to drag, he doesn’t stand much of a chance. Baer also gets confused by the strange memory lapses between Aldric and Baer. Baer has almost no artistic aptitude, but he loves the arts. He loves hearing music, seeing paintings, and reading books, but he can’t play music, paint, or write anything that requires a spark of creativity.
NOTE: While the following information is available to players, it is not known by any characters. Baer’s backstory is a complete mystery to the denizens of the Final Empire, except for the knowledge of a single character.
Baer, born in 875, was terrified of his past.
It wasn’t due to the clarity of traumatic events. No. That would be too simple. It wasn’t because his six-year-old brother was killed after he began manifesting Allomantic abilities, after his skaa parents turned him out of their small hovel and sent him on his own to keep the Obligators from finding the family. It wasn’t because he also remembered his noble parents beating him every day to try to make him Snap.
It was because he remembered both of those things.
Baer’s entire early life, from when he was a small child to when he was a baby, was a blurry smudge, with conflicting memories of identical times in his life.
He remembered growing up as Baer, a skaa living in Tremredare, stealing from nobles without his parents knowing to help keep the family on their feet. They thought he’d made the money working for a small noble family in the city. He remembered eventually stealing enough money and escaping the Western Dominance, seeking Luthadel, a supposed utopia where he could be something greater, where the proud and just Lord Ruler sheltered his people.
He remembered finding out that the skaa weren’t the Lord Ruler’s people – that, just as in the Western Dominance, the nobility of Luthadel oppressed skaa. He remembered joining a thieving crew, and working as a point man in cons and scams, mastering impersonation through characterization.
He also remembered growing up on Charbonneau Estate, a sprawling farm outside of Luthadel. He remembered his parents beating him, trying to make him Snap, only to eventually realize that he was simply a pitiful child without any aptitude for Allomancy. He remembered learning to read and write, learning how to properly find and identify hard workers and leaders to make business endeavors successful.
He began to suffer from the double memories – some of one life, some of another – when he was around twenty. He remembered the deaths of skaa from his memories of experiencing the fear, the pain, and the docile nothingness that came after being broken. He also remembered being on the other side of that, ordering rebellious skaa to be beaten. He had become disillusioned. The social strata of the world carried no real meaning. One cast was supposedly better than the other, but both sides had criminals, bullies, and good people who were simply fighting to survive in something greater that threatened to sweep them away and cast them aside if they didn’t play along.
After the memories blurred, he was at the Estates. Everyone referred to him as “Master Aldric”, but his memories as a skaa – as Baer – somehow felt realer than the memories of the life that he was obviously living, a life of luxury as a nobleman.
He remembered murdering his parents.
Or Aldric’s parents. He felt that he was Baer; he felt that he was a con man, a skaa that had somehow impersonated someone so completely that he had become that man he pretended to be. Everything about the lives of the nobility seemed wrong. It couldn’t have been his life. No. Instead, this strange memory issue was an opportunity. It placed him in a unique situation. He simply needed to figure out how to take advantage of it.
He spent years after killing his parents fretting over what should be done. He played along with society, attending balls and parties as a nobleman, but he also stayed active in the underground. He didn’t know what had happened to his old thieving crew, but he reached out to several crews of disgruntled skaa in the underground, offering them payment for the sabotage of storehouses and factories around Luthadel, though never frequently enough to appear as a true rebellion.
He became known as the “Arbiter” to the skaa that he employed. He always wore a tailored suit while a nobleman. As the Arbiter, he always wore a different mask, each one designed by a different artist. The Arbiter supplied several crews with bases of operations in exchange for their services as saboteurs.
As Lord Charbonneau, he held art expositions, open for viewing by the nobility, on his land, allowing skaa artists to participate in the expositions. He played the nobility’s games, attending parties, working on political connections, and vying for influence within the Central Dominance.
Occasionally, he moonlighted as himself. He was Baer, a talented impostor, a skaa who had connections in the underground.
Who was he? Was he Aldric Charbonneau, an artistic connoisseur and an aristocratic opportunist? Was he the Arbiter, waging a one-man war on the Lord Ruler, a god? Was he Baer, a skaa patriot?
Finally, after years of coordinating a half-hearted series led by an insane man, true rebellion came. He came. The Shade. The one they called the Architect of the Rebellion.
The rebellion no longer had to be a game of shadows. The Shade’s rebellion proved to be far more aggressive than The Arbiter’s. They could complement each other. Baer was uncertain of whether they were allies or simply rivals, but one thing was certain. The Lord Ruler would know Baer’s name by the time he was done.
Baer paced up and down the street in the Sootwarrens, looking around for his contact. He had given himself a slightly-slumped posture, and shorter strides, to appear a nervous messenger. His suit had been left at the Estates. Instead, he wore an open vest and a pair of trousers. Ash and soot dusted his face, and his typically brushed-back hair was a tangled mess. He was on the older side for a messenger, but it wouldn’t be unbelievable.
His contact, a light grey-eyed skaa, turned the corner ahead of him, nodding and humming “As I Watch the Dying Fire” to himself, a tune that Aldric Charbonneau had paid a musician to compose. That was the signal to identify the contact, though Baer hadn’t needed it. This man was way too deliberate in his nonchalance to be anything but a man either waiting for an ambush or on his way to a meeting.
Baer sauntered up to the man as he turned a corner into an alley. A quick knife thrust could kill Baer in this type of situation, but he didn’t expect that type of thing from this man. Lord Charbonneau was too valuable of a resource, and killing Baer, his messenger, wouldn’t gain any sort of popularity with the Lord.of Charbonneau. “Wh-what news fer th-th’Arbiter?” Baer asked, impressively faking a natural-sounding stutter.
The contact swore and yanked Baer deeper into the alley. He allowed himself to get tugged along deeper, where the light-eyed skaa pinned him against the wall. “Are you a fool? You could’ve exposed us!”
Baer stared at him, lip trembling.
“I never took the Arbiter for one who would hire on such a timid fool as his messenger. Where is his ruthlessness? He always did have a soft spot for skaa. It makes me worry about what could happen if an enemy managed to slip a skaa assassin into his ranks.” The man obviously had no regard for Baer’s competence, to let his tongue loose about such matters while a messenger was here. “No matter. I have important news for your master. We’ve found a potential in.”
“Wh-what? A w-way int’the r-rebellion?”
“It’s not much. But it’s a lead. There’s a kingpin of sorts. Datura. She runs a tight crew, and one of our contacts believes that she may have an affiliation with the Skaa Uprising, and, by association, the Shade. Let your master know. I have other business to attend to.”
The light-eyed skaa dusted himself off, and then walked away, shaking his head. Baer waited several minutes, and then followed suit.
Finally, he had it. An opening. An opportunity. Baer left to report to his master. For some reason, the thought made his head hurt like crazy, but he grinned through the pain. The Arbiter would be able to strike, and hopefully Luthadel would see a storm like it had never known before – a clash between three madmen and a god.
Edited by Grimwether, 08 December 2017 - 10:24 PM.
