Age: 27
Gender: Male
Native Hold: Southden
Race: Human
Occupation: Ranger
Appearance: Doran strikes a kingly figure at 6'3 and 174 pounds with once-pale tanned skin and deep azure eyes. His hair is dark orange, almost red and goes straight down to between his shoulder blades in the back, his chin on the sides, and stops just above his eyebrows at his bangs. He's got a slightly long nose, full lips and a short boxed beard that's a tad lighter than the hair on top of his head. He doesn't have an especially handsome face, or at least he doesn't think so, thanks to the vertical scar on his left cheek. He's very muscular thanks to his lifestyle, and since he spends so much time moving it's very lean muscle, leaving him thin enough to stay flexible and mobile.
Doran's apparel is pure practicality. He has plain gray cotton undergarments to stay warm and for just a bit of extra padding, which he switches to wool whenever going somewhere especially cold. His middle layer consists of a deep green, long-sleeved tunic and earthy-brown pants with a belt holding various small pouches. On top of his regular clothing he wears a plain brown leather brigandine, brain brown bracers, leather grieves dyed the same green as his tunic, and thick brown leather boots. Over all else he wears a forest green hooded cloak clasped together by a blue drake brooch. Most of the time he is content to let his hood be the only deterrent to his face, but whenever he knows he is going straight into danger or has a particular interest in anonymity he dons a padded-steel mask.
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Personality: Like many frontiersman Doran is not the most sociable fellow until he gets a few good, strong drinks in his system. All the time spent in the wilderness has molded him to keep to himself, and even when around others he doesn't usually speak unless spoken to, or if he has something fairly important to say. Whenever he does communicate with people he is always very polite, especially to women, and won't let anyone mistreat a woman in his presence. He's well aware some women want to be independent but that doesn't stop him, it's just a part of how he's wired. Doran does his best never to get involved in anything violent, unless it's to punish someone nobody else will or can, or to directly protect someone he sees as vulnerable from unjust suffering.
Doran loves a good drink and spends plenty of time in pubs and inns trying to find them, and consume them. When he's had enough to drink Doran can actually get quite loud and raucous, although throughout all the joking and storytelling he still chooses every word carefully. Storytelling actually happens to be one of Doran's favorite pastimes, the only time he ever becomes talkative while sober is when he's telling a good story. Like the few other individuals he's met through his lifetime that identify as rangers, Doran has a deep respect for nature and animals. He won't stand for people disrupting the natural order of the world more than necessary when he can do anything about it. Thanks to both his parents and his own experiences this reverence extends to dragons, he sees them as the apex of nature, as well as the wisest and most powerful of the more natural creatures.
The ranger has a very strong, but not completely black-and-white sense of right and wrong. He never breaks any laws unless there's a very good reason for him to make an exception or the law was ridiculous to begin with. He extends this sense of morality to those around him, always speaking up against unlawful acts, even when he won't raise his own hand to stop them.
History/Background: Doran was born in a village in Southden to Breln and Diana Aiwyn, an oddity right away because his sunset-orange hair looked nothing like either of his parents' locks. Breln and Diana were very devout worshipers of dragons, although they preferred to keep their reverence private. All the religion didn't really sit right with Doran, even as a child he couldn't bring himself to take any kind of worship very seriously even though he did agree that Dragons are amazing creatures. The boy was worried about what his parents would think, but his feelings became obvious to them rather quickly, and they respected his sentiments.
Breln thought his son might enjoy learning something more practical instead of just hearing preaching, and how to respect dragons, and about the economy all day, so he started to take him out hunting after he turned 11. Doran took to the acts rather quickly, he excelled at tracking and marksmanship. He also very easily memorized the names, appearances, uses, dangers, and environments of just about every herb his father told him about or he found in books. Father and son grew much closer on these trips, and whenever Doran and Breln finished one of their hunting trips and returned home the boy got to bond with both of his parents at once while they taught him nutritious and delicious ways to prepare the flora and fauna he'd gotten a hold of.
The wonderful and simple chapter of Doran's life couldn't last forever, in fact it was cut all too short by one single act of misfortune. One day a traveler passing through needed a place to stay, he'd just so happened to arrive on one of the only occasions where the village had no inn space at all. Breln and Diana were all too happy to bring the weary man into their home and allow him the respite he needed. Doran had spent the past few days planning his first solo hunting trip and wasn't going to let something as simple as a visitor put it on hold; as much as he would have liked to hear if their guest had any interesting stories he still set out on his own that night.
It took most of the day, but around sunset Doran was hot on the trail of what he thought was a fairly big buck. He'd found hoof prints in a patch of mud, tiny chunks of trampled foliage, and even some droppings. After less than an hour more following the trail Doran crested a small hill and laid eyes on a creek and there, lowering it's head to drink from the running waters was his deer! He pulled his short bow from it's quiver, strung it, and crept towards the creek as quietly as he could. Once he felt he was close enough that the bow's small size wouldn't impede his accuracy he nocked an arrow, felt the wind for a few seconds, and fired. It took quite a while to get home with his haul, even after making camp and removing as much of the meat and hide as he could from the carcass and leaving the rest for the scavengers. When Doran finally returned he felt strange right away, the house was quiet and nobody had answered him when he called for help lugging the meat and hide inside, his nervousness was proven an understatement when he finally set down the package and opened the front door to blood and scattered debris.
It made no sense... why kill his parents? By all accounts Breln and Diana were some of the most gentle, and kind people in the entire village, they had no enemies. Doran couldn't even bare to look at his parents in the dining room so he looked through the rest of the house, as he searched he grew even more confused. Nothing had been stolen, nothing was even broken anywhere other than the dining room where his parents apparently put up a fight. When it was clear there would be evidence nowhere else Doran finally decided to examine... the bodies. Breln and Diana had no wounds besides some bruises... and gashes across their throats; Doran retched and voided his stomach into the kitchen sink at the sight. He still had no idea just
why his parents had been killed, but with the only real wounds being on their necks it seemed to be some sort of ritualistic act.
Once he'd finally deduced what had happened more or less, Doran went to a dark place he'd never been before, and has never been since. He gathered up as much preservable food as he could as well as extra flint, moved his parents into a more respectable position and cleaned them up a bit, then moved on to real preparation. He grabbed every extra arrow his father had fletched, and moved on to his parents room. He took his great grandfather's bastard sword off of the wall, then grabbed his father's favorite knife, a large Kukri, as well as his cloak. His mother didn't have too much in the way of practical equipment, but he took a brooch in the shape of a blue drake from her 'dragon drawer' where she kept her religious items. He also noticed a strange steel mask his mother wore whenever she was doing one of his parents' personal rituals, he felt it should be the last thing their killer saw.
Tracking the murderer turned out to be a much more arduous task than the buck earlier, he seemed to have left almost immediately after the crime was committed because any signs of him Doran found were old and faint. Apparently the man was somewhat of an outdoors-man himself; when Doran finally found the bastard he was cooking a meager meal in a small camp. It had to be quick and brutal, the boy's odds against beating a grown man in a fight were dismal, and he'd have to use one of his knives since he was too small to make effective use of the sword. Doran readied his hunting knife, knowing the Kukri was much more suited to slashing and crept towards the man, ignoring the nervous sweat stinging his eyes. Once he was right behind the man Doran yanked his head up by the hair with his left hand and drew the knife across the man's throat with his right.
His parents' killer began to burble out what may have been words, and when he turned towards Doran, he was smiling. He had no time to ponder the enigma's disturbing, bloody smile however, as soon as the man looked down at his mother's brooch his smile vanished and he lunged at Doran. The boy fought as hard as he could, stabbing into the man as many times as he could, but the man was strangling him, he couldn't even get a breath in and began to lose strength. In the end the man was losing too much blood from his neck and the stab wounds in his chest, and Doran was able to break free just as his vision began to darken.
Doran could do nothing but stare at the man's corpse when he finally died, even long after he regained his breath. He still had no idea what the man's motivations were, or even who he was, but he knew he couldn't bear to stay in his home any longer. He returned to the town long enough to leave an anonymous tip with the authorities to check his house, and returned once more to attend his parents' funeral. Before arriving Doran donned his cloak and his mask once more so he wouldn't be spotted by fellow mourners, his way of being able to grieve alone even amidst the crowd. Once he saw the only people he'd ever loved put in the ground and given the proper rites, he left the village, hoping never to return to it's painful memories.
After leaving his childhood home behind Doran wandered around for a few months before finally settling on living out his teenage years in a small, where he could hone his woodland skills among elders and peers of the same ilk. In the middle of his seventeenth year alive Doran started to grow dissatisfied with staying in one place, and hungered for more purpose. Recently he'd been hearing more about people who were like he wanted to be: career frontiersman who wandered throughout the various lands, learning of and bonding with nature, as well as helping the less savvy who were caught unawares by it's dangers. Rangers were the men and women who went where nobody else did and not only survived, but thrived.
Rangers aren't exactly an established order with rites of membership and entrance exams, so after making his decision Doran simply left the town to wander and continue improving his body and mind. The self-proclaimed ranger has done many things great and small - though mostly small - since, he's even taken down a bandit chief or two for villages that were being terrorized. Wherever he goes Doran always does his best to respect nature, especially dragons, he still considers them the greatest of the world's creatures, and much more than simple beasts.
Skills: Doran is an excellent tracker, hunter, and marksman thanks to his lifestyle. He is also an impressive duelist, though he's far from an expert swordsman.
Weaponry: A custom-ordered recurve bow:
ÆDHELWEARD (ay-dull-veer-ed), a bastard-sword light enough to be wielded with one hand, but with a long-enough hilt to be held in two hands for extra power, perfectly balanced for versatility.
A long Kukri knife for slashing.
A short hunting knife with a serrated edge.
Combat Style: Whenever he has the space Doran prefers to pierce any target with a well-placed arrow. Failing that, he's likely to attempt to use his hunting skills in a more "cloak-and-dagger" fashion like an assassin. If it comes down to direct combat however, Doran is a skilled - though by no means masterful - swordsman. His one exceeding talent is adaptability, he has many different ways to fight, and to move if necessary.
Additional Information: Although it's uncertain whether they deserve to be called a faction or not with how loosely connected they are, (many of them haven't met each other) Doran is one of the individuals people like to call Rangers. The Rangers aren't officially a group, but are known for their exceptional skills as outdoorsman, willingness to guide lost travelers out of or through wilderness, and nomadic styles of living.
