Bulfen Wilendare was a young lad full of piss and vinegar. The youngest of five sons of Wilmah and Gern Wilendare, he was schooled properly but always eager to prove himself. He took the first opportunity to enlist in the King’s army as a footman at age fifteen.
Soldiering was to his liking but it came to an abrupt end during his first engagement when he was taken captive during a battle with dark elf raiders. Shackled and marched deep below the earth to the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu, he found himself fighting for his life in gladiatorial combat against all manner of underdark beasts and humanoid filth in the Ceremonial Arena. His naivety soon vanished and his martial training and natural strength kept him alive long enough to catch the eye of Fezerina, a drow noble of house Tormtor.
When Wil was put up for auction in the Ghetto of Chattel, Fezerina purchased him to serve in House Tormtor’s slave army. Thrust amongst a rough jumble of humanoids in the slave pits, Wil had to adapt. Pleased with Wil’s natural aptitude for language, tactics and leadership, Fezerina singled him out for command. Wil served in this role for many long hard years, eventually commanding House Tormtor’s elite slave strike force. They were tasked with all the dirtywork – the missions that the house did not wish to risk their own soldiers on. They were of numerous races: drow, humans, orcs, deep gnomes, reeking trogs, kuo-toa, duergar, hulking ogres, bugbears, goblins, trolls and quaggoth. Wil learned a bit of each races’ language – enough to lead them in battle. The fighting was gruesome and bloody business, taking him to many dangerous regions of the underdark but somehow Wil always survived. He joked that it was his one great talent and indeed it was miraculous that he lived through it all.
As the years passed Wil earned the grudging respect of Fezerina, who came to rely on him as one of her most capable slaves. In the later years the two developed a strange friendship, and under Fezerina’s protective wing Wil was spared some of the harsher mistreatment that most slaves of the drow endure and even provided some minor creature comforts. He was well fed, trained by the house weaponmaster, provided with quality equipment, and given a residence in the Ghetto of Savages from which to operate. He was even enabled to act with a measure of Fezerina’s authority when planning and performing missions or purchasing and training slave warriors for House Tormtor’s use.
Wil properly feared the wrath of his mistress but he came to love her despite her quirks and strange sexual appetites. He was not privy to the scheming and plotting of the noble houses of Erelhei-Cinlu, so it came as a surprise when House Tormtor was disgraced, deposed, and eradicated in spectacularly abrupt fashion. Returning to the city after completing a mission to find fighting in the streets, Wil witnessed the public execution of House Tormtor’s nobility, including Matron Mother Verdaeth and his beloved Fezerina at the hands of House Xarzax’s priestess Miraal.
Wil escaped the city in the confusion and fled to the shallows.
Wil’s fighting style is an incredible amalgamation of tactics, tricks, and maneuvers that he has picked up, adopted, or invented over years of fighting beside and against dozens of different races. He is full of advice which he will give willingly to ensure the safety of his comrades.
“Watch an ogre’s feet, they deliver heavy swings and the feet will give them away.”
“Duergar almost always throw three quills at a time, usually overhand like this (he demonstrates). Head! Chest! Groin!
“Just a few goblins is a bad thing. They are good solo as sneaks and scouts, and also effective in huge numbers, but just a few? Forget it. They will break and run every time.”
“Don’t eat that mushroom. Oh yeah. Just don’t.”
“Hobgobbers have a saying: ‘chunaka ou’ pai.’ It means roughly: ‘the ballista or the pin.’ Sort of like we might say ‘all or nothing,’ but they are always thinking about war so its: give em the frontal assault with siege engines or slip an assassin in and poison the head honcho.”
“That scar? I’d like to say that was a battle wound but my mistress… er, former owner kept these spiders, and she would undress and have me… uh, maybe I shouldn’t tell this one.”
