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| Augustín Drocco Roca | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Ca. 280 AC |
| Died | N/A |
| Spouse | None |
| Issue | None |
| Religion | Dogmatic Unionism |
| Parents | Unknown |
| Affiliations |
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| Persuasion | Augustín's Stat is 16 for Persuasion /Dice |
Augustín Drocco Roca, the 'King of Hel', is a world-famous mercenary captain from the City of Daénia (Daenshore), in which his bloody ascent from street urchin to respected society man is an urban legend. As a mercenary captain, Roca has served contracts around the known world for extremely lucrative bidders, painstakingly spending the two decades since he first started working on his plan building a Company that is not subservient to any one religious creed or national purpose, but shares in his dream of a land without extortion or war for all the people who have suffered without reward. Despite this, Roca's hero-status is marred by his bloody enmity with the Viridian Order, of whose ranks he has killed six Knights in duels, and his descent as Arkenborn of the Arken of Fury that marks him with mistrust in Conservative circles across the Empire.
Roca is successful because of the fanatical loyalty that he inspires in his followers, seemingly even when they are warring against their co-religionists or co-nationalists, and because of his indomitable physical strength. This loyalty is fed both by his prowess in war, but also by a reputation for richly rewarding the people who are loyal to him, which by all accounts has held to be true thus far. Besides his Arkenborn status, Roca himself is a Mundane without any sense of spellcraft. However, his terrifyingly large collection of Artifacts is said to number in the hundreds, many of which he is able to carry on his person simultaneously, and a combination of these and his inhuman martial ability make him able to punch up against heroes and Mages who would otherwise in theory defeat him man to man.
Early Life
Little is known about Roca's early life, because he was not yet a man to pay attention to, and because he intentionally obscures his past allowing multiple parallel stories to persist without correcting them. The Arken of Fury is known to be his father, and he is known to have been raised Unionist by a Tierraveran mother local to Daénia before something unspecified happened and he chose the life of a criminal, his mother disappearing from the narrative. As a young man, he destroyed and absorbed several of the gangs in his local neighborhood on the Camino de la Carabela Carmona, before facing off with larger enemies among the established Cortés (the neighborhood power structures of the broader city), the Asha Corsair outposts, and even the local Finul minority, defeating them all and absorbing their rank and file while killing or running out their leaders.
Roca Company
Around the age of twenty to twenty-five, Roca took serious efforts to have his criminal enterprise nominally legalized as a mercenary company, while curbing their criminal activities and refraining from the extortion and racketeering that was common in his home city. In the process of doing so, he had a run-in with a Viridian Knight from the Capital trying to hound him under murky circumstances, which led to his brief imprisonment, his release, and his murder of that Knight in a duel and theft of his dogtags. Since that time, a small number of Viridian Knights have challenged Roca to duels (which he provoked, according to them, and which they forced him into, according to him), in which they have inevitably been killed as well and their dogtags added to his collection. Out of spite, this has made him a significant patron of the Bloodcast Order wherever he can find it.
For the next ten to fifteen years, Roca's Company with its Tierraveran core of local Ailor, Elves, and Asha, would become a truly international company as he built up a formidable track record warring both for and against the local Selvath on the frontier, then against the Elven Princes of Sonä Livine, then saved the Sol of Amontaar from having his Sollay fall to the military intrigues of the Princes of the old Allorn capital, Emval Soron, after which he went north to serve several contracts for the Ithanians in Perrion, then west to Agnevaal to fight on the side of the Suvial in their war with the Kathar, then to Osciird to fight for the Draconist Princes there against the Suvial, then to Ilha Faiaal to assist them against the Sendrassians in naval warfare on the islands, and finally back to his native Daénia.
Amontaar
In 314 AC, Roca finally played his hand and revealed that his plan was to invade the lucrative trade port of Amontaar in its hour of weakness, since it laid apart from both the Regalian and Allorn Empires and profited richly as a neutral trade port and dialogue point between the two nations. Because he ultimately failed and was repulsed by the Sol with the aid of both Regalian and local allies, there is no clear narration on what his victory would have entailed. To various benefactors, Roca claimed variably that he did or didn't want to bring Amontaar into the Regalian Empire, that he did or didn't want to transform it from an Elven city into a Tierraveran city, that he did or didn't want to settle his soldiers in its countryside, that he would or wouldn't depose its Sol, and many other contradictory implications left dubious in an attempt to secure his victory.
His attempt to invade Amontaar only numerically committed a small amount of his company, much of which remained employed abroad to continue generating revenue, but contained many of his finest officers and old friends from the first days of his conquest. His very first Elven lieutenant, a sound Mage named Elsys, was killed in the fighting, as was his main Asha Corsair liaison, Khufu of the Sons of Akhet (the first by opportunist anti-Regalian radicals looking for money from the Sol, and the second by the Sol's Elven loyalists led by a Suvial artillery Mage who struck his camp with a comet under cover of darkness). Despite the fact that his enterprise is still operational, Roca is smarting from the loss of important officers, and nursing his bitterness about how many Capital Regalians ultimately opposed him and sided with the Sol.
Regalia
Very recently, Roca has appeared in the Imperial Capital to lobby and persuade local notables to support him in some of his further missions, both in the familiar Daen region and in unexpected far-flung places. While his intermediate steps and motives are unclear, his end goal remains just as always stated, to found a land without war or strife where his loyal soldiers, many of whom are bereaved by or veterans of the Regalian wars of the late 3rd and early 4th century, can finally settle down in comfortable wealth.
Morality
Augustín Roca is an incredibly morally gray figure who begs detailed examination. Many people write him off at face value, either because they are loyal to the Sol of Amontaar and despise him for invading that country, because they are Purist-Conservative and unwilling to consider an Arkenborn as morally righteous, or because they are Mage-Supremacists or other, similar ideologies and disdain the fact that he is a Unionist, even if not an incredibly devout man. He has killed a lot of people on his way up to power, including the Tierraverans that he is the champion of, in the process of dismantling their pre-existing power structures, which he is known to deeply regret.
However, as the hero of the Frontierra, a utopian mastermind, and the 'King of Hel,' for many people Roca presents the only viable alternative to the strangling corruption of the Cortés or what the Tierraverans see as the jackbooted imperialism of rule by dictat from the Imperial Capital. He has always remained just with his own followers, a merit-based appointer of positions who does not hoard the spoils of victory for himself, and in fact lives quite plainly while he lavishes his soldiers with gifts and awards. His utopianism makes him seemingly incorruptible, and his contempt for what he considers the wasteful aristocracy and criminals who only take and never give back make him a ready ally at a low cost.
Appearance
Roca is a towering man, standing just over two meters tall, and built like a truck. He has dark tan skin typical to his people, but the Fury Arken's sandy blond hair and burning lava eyes. This hair he usually keeps cropped somewhat short, though not all the way to a buzzcut, and paired with a scratchy but full beard. Roca usually dresses himself in the plain, unassuming fashions of a Daénia city resident with a soldier's jacket and a starched white shirt. His attire has always been as simple as that of the soldiers who follow him, but despite this his immense physicality and commanding presence make him impossible to miss in a room. Even though he has been around the world warring for more causes than can be counted, he remains unscarred, with whatever wounds he has received healing over without leaving a mark.
Personality
Roca is usually immensely soft-spoken, despite his impositions, and uses plain, direct, and casual language even with the most lowly subordinate at the bottom of his Company hierarchy. He has a pleasant disposition, though he does not smile frequently, and is almost impossible to offend with simple gaffes or mis-assumptions, so long as his corrections are politely accepted. Roca's hard-won everyman image is cultivated by this behaviour, and his willingness to shake hands with anyone. That said, Roca has an incredibly difficult relationship with any kind of betrayal, especially betrayal in favour of the Viridian Order or betrayal bought with money in the manner of his home city. When he feels wronged, Roca is incredibly difficult to win the favour of again, losing his usual sensibility in his attempts to brutally sabotage, kick down, or even kill the one who thought they could get one over on him.
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