Terrence Walcott - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Terrence Walcott

Nickname

The Old Guard

Race (Grade)

Human (E)

Class

Warrior

Height

6'1"

Birthday

Greenrise 10, 1265

Age

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Birthsign

The Radiant Treant

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Terrence Walcott, The Old Guard

Appearance

Terrence keeps his hair shaved close out of old habit more than current necessity, and the build he earned in uniform has held up well against a farmer's daily labor, thick through the shoulders and forearms in a way that a plain, patched work tunic does nothing to hide. His expression rests naturally somewhere between stern and unreadable, a holdover from a career spent giving orders and expecting them followed, though it softens considerably and without warning around animals or around Varon. He wears a short, neatly kept beard and carries himself with the deliberate economy of a man who has spent years learning not to waste motion, whether that motion is swinging a blade or mending a fence.

Unique Characteristics

Terrence does not carry a weapon on his property, not one, by a personal rule he has never fully explained to anyone who has asked, including Varon. He still moves like a man who could reach one in a heartbeat if the moment ever demanded it. He has a habit, entirely unconscious, of addressing his emus in the same clipped, formal tone he once used on new recruits, and Valonrae's children have learned to find this endlessly funny.

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Personality

Positive Traits

Unshakeable loyalty to the people he's chosen to trust
Dry, deadpan humor that catches people off guard
Endlessly patient with animals, less so with people
Steady hands and a steadier temper under real pressure
Genuinely proud of Valonrae's growth, not his own part in it

Challenging Traits

Refuses to carry a weapon anywhere on the farm
Deflects any conversation about his years in uniform
Overprotective of Varon in ways Varon finds exhausting
Stubborn about doing physical work himself, hurt or not
Short with anyone he decides is wasting his time

Varon didn't ask me to follow him out here. I didn't ask him either. Some things you don't discuss, you just do, the same as we did every day we wore the same colors.

I've killed men and I've delivered lambs, and I'll tell you plainly, the lambs are better work. Nobody's ever tried to kill me back over a lamb.

People ask why emus. I ask why not. They don't need much, they don't forget a face, and they've got better formation discipline than half the recruits I trained.

Likes

Watching a new lamb make it through its first night
Quiet mornings before the rest of Valonrae wakes up
Varon's company, whether either of them is talking or not
A well-mended fence and a job finished properly
Emus, for reasons he's stopped trying to explain

Dislikes

Being thanked for his military service
Predators that get past his fences
People who romanticize what war actually is
Being rushed through work that deserves care
Rank and formality, wherever he can avoid it

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Background & History

Two Boys, One Regiment

Terrence was already two years into his service when a younger, quieter Varon Steelheart was assigned to his unit, and it was Terrence, older and considerably less patient with nonsense, who took it upon himself to make sure the newcomer survived his first real deployment. What started as an older soldier looking out for a promising recruit became, over the following years, the kind of friendship that gets forged specifically by shared fear and shared relief at still being alive afterward. Neither man has ever needed to call it more than that. Neither man has ever needed to call it less, either.

Different Roads After the Loss

When Varon lost his family and left active service, Terrence stayed in uniform a while longer, taking on frontier garrison postings that suited a man who had already started to find pitched battle less appealing than steady, unglamorous duty. The two men saw each other rarely during those years but wrote when they could, and Terrence was one of the few people who never once suggested Varon should simply move past what had happened to him. He understood, better than most, that some things you carry rather than resolve.

The Call to the Highlands

When King Xaneborr elevated Varon to Duke of the Windswept Highlands in Heatwave of 1304, Terrence had already quietly mustered out of service and was working a rented plot of land he didn't much care for. The offer to help settle the new territory wasn't really an offer so much as an inevitability. Terrence packed what he owned, claimed a stretch of open ground on the frontier that would become Valonrae, and followed his oldest friend out to build something neither of them had been trained for.

Sheep, Emus, and an Old Soldier's Peace

The sheep were the practical choice, wool and meat that Valonrae's small population needed and that Terrence, drawing on childhood spent around his family's flocks before he ever enlisted, knew how to raise well. The emus were not practical at all. A traveling stock merchant passing through the highlands with a small, half-wild breeding pair and no buyer caught Terrence at exactly the wrong, or right, moment, and he has never regretted the trade. His flock and his small, ill-tempered brood of emus have become something of a local landmark, and Terrence, to the quiet amusement of everyone who has watched him do it, drills them with the same clipped patience he once gave green recruits.

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Goals

Building a Flock Worth the Land

Terrence intends for his farm to be more than subsistence, working toward a breeding program sturdy enough to supply wool and stock to settlements beyond Valonrae's own borders. He treats this as a genuine second calling rather than a retirement hobby, and he takes it exactly as seriously as he once took soldiering.

Teaching Without Arming

Terrence has quietly begun running basic defensive drills with a handful of Valonrae's younger farmhands, teaching them to recognize danger and hold a line without putting a weapon directly in his own hands to do it. He tells himself this does not count as breaking his rule, since he is teaching rather than fighting. He has not examined that distinction as closely as he probably should.

The Promise He's Afraid to Test

Terrence has not raised a weapon in anger since before Valonrae existed, and some private part of him is genuinely afraid of what happens the day that changes, whether because the old skill has rusted or, worse, because it hasn't. He has not said this fear aloud to Varon, who he suspects would understand it better than anyone alive and would also, characteristically, not let him get away with pretending otherwise for long.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Valonrae

Role

Sheep & Emu Farmer

Friends & Allies

Duke Varon

Oldest Friend

Grax Viyek

Fellow Farmer & Veteran

Olav Winterstone

Fellow Farmer

ATTENTION!

Terrence has not carried a weapon in years and keeps none on his property by personal choice, not because he has lost the capability that once made him a soldier. Those who served with him describe him as every bit Varon's equal in a real fight, and nothing about farm life has dulled those instincts, only his willingness to use them. Threatening Valonrae, or the man he still considers his closest friend, is the fastest way to find out exactly how much of that old soldier is still in there.