History
Aytlira Kurzen: Another Stranglethorn ghost story
Using Caleb's template, as it seems quite packed and capable 
Will of course be updated periodically as soon as I remember stuff it should have.
Full Name: Aytlira Finn Kurzen
Nicknames: Attie.
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Martial Status: Single. Currently uninvolved
Race: Human.
Sexual Orientation: Non-sexual, undetermined.
Place of Birth: Stormwind.
Place of residence: Varies per place of duty. Currently Moa'ki Harbor, Northrend.
Occupation: Alliance scout specializing in hostile terrain recon, personnel disposal operations, and animal handling. Also part time armed escort for the Nessingwary Expidition.
Height: 5'5
Weight: Lean muscle, very little fat aside from a few remnants of adolescent baby fat.
Posture: Straight, but walks on her tiptoes out of habit.
Build: Wiry, lithe.
Hair: Varies (currently white).
Skin: Deeply tanned.
Eyes: Deep blue
Scars: Two on her right knee, six on her shins, four on her chest, all small. Her sides bear three recent ones about 4 inches in length.
Known Relatives: Colonel Walter Kurzen (Father, MIA but presumed deceased)
Known Friends: (TBA)
Religion/Philosophy: Unknown, but seems to hold to an odd form of Stranglethorn paganism, only visibly exhibited by her ritual of keeping grisly trophies of particularly challenging battles. Particularly nosy anthropologists would liken it to a bastardization of Bloodscalp tribe beliefs.
Group/Guild affiliation: Servitors of Lothar, Nessingwary Expedition, advocate and ally of the Kalu'ak tuskarr tribe.
Guild Rank: Guard-Initiate of the Servitors of Lothar
Weapons of Choice: Nessingwary 4000 semi automatic, custom made elek rifle (personally presented to her by Hemet Nessingwary, currently retired on a rack in HQ's rifle locker), "Jungle Clearer" shotgun (break action shotgun, only deployed for house to house engagements), Kalua'k shark hunting spear, razor sharp machete.
Background
Aytlira's tale begins properly with that of her father, an ambitious and talented Stormwind officer who gained the distinction to be the youngest soldier to attain the battlefield rank of Colonel. Attie's first three years of life saw her spending it unremarkably behind's Stormwind's walls in the care of hired nannies, as her mother's own military standing saw her constantly deployed as well. Befitting a rising star of his time, one of the Alliance's major tactical projects fell into his lap; a second expeditionary push into Stranglethorn to establish a permenant foothold in the region, in the hopes of providing an even stronger southern bulwark against Horde and pirate incursions, a morale boost after the Blackwater Port disaster, and also an easier access route to either trade with or muscle in on Booty Bay. Despite warnings to the contrary, Colonel Kurzen insisted that he and his personal expeditionary forces be accompanied by his wife and daughter, on the basis that he intended to make the Stranglethorn holding not just a tactical position, but his home. Strange demands were overlooked on the simple basis of it's importance and noone else being willing to take on the daunting task of breaking ground in one of the most dangerous regions in Azeroth.
Through constant battles with local wildlife, violent weather, tropical diseases, Bloodscalp raiders, and the heat, Kurzen's camp grew slowly but steadily. It was in those tight and hellish conditions that Kurzen lost his wife to indigenous illnesses, but saw his young daughter thrive and grow strong. The child learned not just from her father's military and survival proficiencies, but also from others in the camp under his command. She learned how to hold a rifle and bow as soon as she was old enough to grasp them, and proved to have her father's penchant for marksmanship as well. Unlike the men and women of the camp, however, little Aytlira did not fear the jungle beyond the compound's borders. Despite bearing the obedience and discipline expected of a child raised completely in a military camp most of the time, she did frequently anger her father and the camp's guards by sneaking out at odd hours to alleviate her cabin fever and experience Stranglethorn up close. These excursions earned her quite a few lectures, scars, and near death experiences. Despite some of the watch's reccomendations that her bedroom be relocated permanently to it's own spot in the brig, Kurzen instead decided to use his daughter's wanderlust to the camp's advantage. Her late excursions would be excused so long as she reported back any and all movements of either native troll warbands or Horde freelancers. She happily did so, and the tactical information she brought back helped repel many a foolhardy attack. Scouting turned out to not be her only gift either, as she showed an unusual rapport with the larger and more dangerous wildlife, the mark of an animal handler. Raptors, tigers, panthers, showed her far more defference than they did other sentient beings, so she often aided in training the compound's managerie of attack tigers and panthers. For a time, it seemed like Outpost Kurzen would indeed become what the Alliance had hoped and make up where previous attempts at a foothold failed.
But as any who know of Stranglethorn's many ghost stories, it wouldn't last. The potent dark magics of the Mosh'ogg ogres wove madness into the compound like a virus almost from the first day Kurzen's men picked up their shovels and hammers. By Aytlira's adolescence, the madness was a full blown contagion, with few spared. The Colonel himself began to isolate himself in the cave stockpiles, issuing orders like some dark king and refusing any audiences aside from a tiny handful of his most elites. Even Aytlira could not see him, and had to speak only to his proxies. Quartermaster Herod spent virtually every waking hour trying to reason his with his superior, but to no avail. Kurzen's soldiers began acting no saner, egged on by isolation and worsening weather in addition to the Mosh'ogg spells. Arguments turned into fights. Fights turned into murders. Punishments were handed out for petty or bizarre reasons. To cough out of turn meant to have your tongue cut out. To miss a bedcheck meant 1 minute in the panther cage (with the panther). Stealing food, even the accusation of it, resulted in simply being tossed to the ever-starving war tigers while the camp was required, at gunpoint, to watch and cheer on the carnage. One did not know from day to day what the new laws would be or how they would be punished, except it was always bloody. Aytlira seemed unaffected by the madness, among only a small number, and even in their madness, the rest of the camp was hesitant at first to risk the wrath of harming the Colonel's only child. She used this to her advantage, filing false reports of Bloodscalp movements and raptor packs drifting too close to the camp to rally the camp back together for a common cause instead of finding new reasons to creatively butcher each other while their commander sulked in the stockpile. The Mosh'Ogg damage was done, however, and this diversion lasted only a week. Quartermaster Herod woke the girl after one particullarly drunken execution celebration and told her to leave, that they would have her next in ways too horrific to elaborate. If there was a way, he promised, of restoring her father or her men to sanity, he would find it, but losing her would be too much to bear for the few left sane.
Fearfully, she obeyed, spiriting herself away with only her rifle, her clothes, a little water, and her then pet boar-hog Prince Henry Stout. The dire prediction had been right only by a matter of hours, for when they found her missing bed check, the taskmasters declared Aytlira to be a deserter and a traitor to be executed. For days, they pursued what they could of her trail, and patrolled the established roads with guns and blades drawn. Aytlira, however, had now years of experience with the jungle, and was able to stay a step ahead, waging a hit and run war with every one of her father's men, each skirmish leaving more bones for the jungle to consume. Still, with few supplies, and harried not just by insane soldiers but Bloodscalps, raptors, basilisks, and a hurricane at one point, it took it's toll on the girl. By the time Aytlira Kurzen stumbled one clear morning into the Strangthorn camp of Hemet Nessingwary she was a ghost wracked with sleeplessness and dysentery, covered in blood with her clothes in torn rags, and only an empty rifle to her name.
The game wardens nursed the girl back to health and took in her mad recounting of the fate of the Kurzen village. Hemet was not behelden to the Alliance, and was willing to offer shelter to the girl within his camps if only for curiousity value of how a kid of her stock was able to survive like a pursued animal in the jungle with so much hell following her. Once her mind (apparently) and body healed, Aytlira was allowed to stay with the Expedition serving as a camp guard. Hemet, after all, wasn't about to turn down such a strange and capable human who only had to be paid in shelter and three square meals.
Deathwing's rampage that sundered Stranglethorn in half upset even these plans, however, and forced the camp to disband temporarily. After 17 years gone from it's gates, Aytlira came back to Stormwind and signed on as an Alliance freelancer, furthering her resume of abilities in service to them, and briefly in the Argent Crusade's campaign to restore the Plaguelands.
Why she joined the Servitors is a bit estoeric, if you actually ask her. Most of the time she'll simply say she got a good "vibration" from the recruiter and the literature given to her. Privately, however, she thinks the outfit has the same mentality as her father's outfit before the madness took hold and gains some comfort soley by her membership. This much, however, she has yet to confide in any of the Servitor's leadership or rank and file.
Beastial Assets
Important as they are to Aytlira's career, some of her growing stable of attack animals have their own little colorful stories behind them.
Prince Henry Stout
Function: Anti-undead
The most visible of her partners, the bull mastiff PH Stout is a frequent sight around HQ and quite popular for his excessive friendliness and penchant for booze drinking. Named after the pet boar that Aytlira kept during her time in her father's compound, Stout is in fact a former Plaguehound rescued and cleansed of necromantic taint by Argent Dawn priests. The pooch was then raised and trained as an Argent warhound to aid in combat against low level Scourge forces. Stout took such a shine to Aytlira's presence, however, that she asked simply to adopt Stout in lieu of monetary compensation for her patrol work for them. Mostly, he is simply a social companion, but in battles against undead forces of any kind, he's a holy terror of knife sharp teeth and canine rage.
Banglakha
Function: Assassination
When Nessingwary's expedition bagged the legendary Bangalesh, the cubs too were taken in by Hemet's cadre of animal trainers. In a move that would no doubt make many druids and DEHTA operatives bleed from the eyes, they raised Bangalesh's brood as trained hunters in their own right, but were quite tempered in only supressing their natural bloodthirst in service to their handler. The brood is now in it's third generation, and Banglakha (son of the son of Bangalesh in Bloodscalp troll tongue) was Aytlira's project as an animal handler during her initial stay with the expedition . Recently, the tiger came of proper hunting age and is now in regular service to her inside and outside of her Expedition activities.
Like his grandfather, Banglakha is proud, headstrong, and utterly lethal. He's trained to be social in non-combat situations, but absolutely demands only quality cuts of food and the petting of his magnificent coat by those around him.
Will of course be updated periodically as soon as I remember stuff it should have.
Full Name: Aytlira Finn Kurzen
Nicknames: Attie.
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Martial Status: Single. Currently uninvolved
Race: Human.
Sexual Orientation: Non-sexual, undetermined.
Place of Birth: Stormwind.
Place of residence: Varies per place of duty. Currently Moa'ki Harbor, Northrend.
Occupation: Alliance scout specializing in hostile terrain recon, personnel disposal operations, and animal handling. Also part time armed escort for the Nessingwary Expidition.
Height: 5'5
Weight: Lean muscle, very little fat aside from a few remnants of adolescent baby fat.
Posture: Straight, but walks on her tiptoes out of habit.
Build: Wiry, lithe.
Hair: Varies (currently white).
Skin: Deeply tanned.
Eyes: Deep blue
Scars: Two on her right knee, six on her shins, four on her chest, all small. Her sides bear three recent ones about 4 inches in length.
Known Relatives: Colonel Walter Kurzen (Father, MIA but presumed deceased)
Known Friends: (TBA)
Religion/Philosophy: Unknown, but seems to hold to an odd form of Stranglethorn paganism, only visibly exhibited by her ritual of keeping grisly trophies of particularly challenging battles. Particularly nosy anthropologists would liken it to a bastardization of Bloodscalp tribe beliefs.
Group/Guild affiliation: Servitors of Lothar, Nessingwary Expedition, advocate and ally of the Kalu'ak tuskarr tribe.
Guild Rank: Guard-Initiate of the Servitors of Lothar
Weapons of Choice: Nessingwary 4000 semi automatic, custom made elek rifle (personally presented to her by Hemet Nessingwary, currently retired on a rack in HQ's rifle locker), "Jungle Clearer" shotgun (break action shotgun, only deployed for house to house engagements), Kalua'k shark hunting spear, razor sharp machete.
Background
Aytlira's tale begins properly with that of her father, an ambitious and talented Stormwind officer who gained the distinction to be the youngest soldier to attain the battlefield rank of Colonel. Attie's first three years of life saw her spending it unremarkably behind's Stormwind's walls in the care of hired nannies, as her mother's own military standing saw her constantly deployed as well. Befitting a rising star of his time, one of the Alliance's major tactical projects fell into his lap; a second expeditionary push into Stranglethorn to establish a permenant foothold in the region, in the hopes of providing an even stronger southern bulwark against Horde and pirate incursions, a morale boost after the Blackwater Port disaster, and also an easier access route to either trade with or muscle in on Booty Bay. Despite warnings to the contrary, Colonel Kurzen insisted that he and his personal expeditionary forces be accompanied by his wife and daughter, on the basis that he intended to make the Stranglethorn holding not just a tactical position, but his home. Strange demands were overlooked on the simple basis of it's importance and noone else being willing to take on the daunting task of breaking ground in one of the most dangerous regions in Azeroth.
Through constant battles with local wildlife, violent weather, tropical diseases, Bloodscalp raiders, and the heat, Kurzen's camp grew slowly but steadily. It was in those tight and hellish conditions that Kurzen lost his wife to indigenous illnesses, but saw his young daughter thrive and grow strong. The child learned not just from her father's military and survival proficiencies, but also from others in the camp under his command. She learned how to hold a rifle and bow as soon as she was old enough to grasp them, and proved to have her father's penchant for marksmanship as well. Unlike the men and women of the camp, however, little Aytlira did not fear the jungle beyond the compound's borders. Despite bearing the obedience and discipline expected of a child raised completely in a military camp most of the time, she did frequently anger her father and the camp's guards by sneaking out at odd hours to alleviate her cabin fever and experience Stranglethorn up close. These excursions earned her quite a few lectures, scars, and near death experiences. Despite some of the watch's reccomendations that her bedroom be relocated permanently to it's own spot in the brig, Kurzen instead decided to use his daughter's wanderlust to the camp's advantage. Her late excursions would be excused so long as she reported back any and all movements of either native troll warbands or Horde freelancers. She happily did so, and the tactical information she brought back helped repel many a foolhardy attack. Scouting turned out to not be her only gift either, as she showed an unusual rapport with the larger and more dangerous wildlife, the mark of an animal handler. Raptors, tigers, panthers, showed her far more defference than they did other sentient beings, so she often aided in training the compound's managerie of attack tigers and panthers. For a time, it seemed like Outpost Kurzen would indeed become what the Alliance had hoped and make up where previous attempts at a foothold failed.
But as any who know of Stranglethorn's many ghost stories, it wouldn't last. The potent dark magics of the Mosh'ogg ogres wove madness into the compound like a virus almost from the first day Kurzen's men picked up their shovels and hammers. By Aytlira's adolescence, the madness was a full blown contagion, with few spared. The Colonel himself began to isolate himself in the cave stockpiles, issuing orders like some dark king and refusing any audiences aside from a tiny handful of his most elites. Even Aytlira could not see him, and had to speak only to his proxies. Quartermaster Herod spent virtually every waking hour trying to reason his with his superior, but to no avail. Kurzen's soldiers began acting no saner, egged on by isolation and worsening weather in addition to the Mosh'ogg spells. Arguments turned into fights. Fights turned into murders. Punishments were handed out for petty or bizarre reasons. To cough out of turn meant to have your tongue cut out. To miss a bedcheck meant 1 minute in the panther cage (with the panther). Stealing food, even the accusation of it, resulted in simply being tossed to the ever-starving war tigers while the camp was required, at gunpoint, to watch and cheer on the carnage. One did not know from day to day what the new laws would be or how they would be punished, except it was always bloody. Aytlira seemed unaffected by the madness, among only a small number, and even in their madness, the rest of the camp was hesitant at first to risk the wrath of harming the Colonel's only child. She used this to her advantage, filing false reports of Bloodscalp movements and raptor packs drifting too close to the camp to rally the camp back together for a common cause instead of finding new reasons to creatively butcher each other while their commander sulked in the stockpile. The Mosh'Ogg damage was done, however, and this diversion lasted only a week. Quartermaster Herod woke the girl after one particullarly drunken execution celebration and told her to leave, that they would have her next in ways too horrific to elaborate. If there was a way, he promised, of restoring her father or her men to sanity, he would find it, but losing her would be too much to bear for the few left sane.
Fearfully, she obeyed, spiriting herself away with only her rifle, her clothes, a little water, and her then pet boar-hog Prince Henry Stout. The dire prediction had been right only by a matter of hours, for when they found her missing bed check, the taskmasters declared Aytlira to be a deserter and a traitor to be executed. For days, they pursued what they could of her trail, and patrolled the established roads with guns and blades drawn. Aytlira, however, had now years of experience with the jungle, and was able to stay a step ahead, waging a hit and run war with every one of her father's men, each skirmish leaving more bones for the jungle to consume. Still, with few supplies, and harried not just by insane soldiers but Bloodscalps, raptors, basilisks, and a hurricane at one point, it took it's toll on the girl. By the time Aytlira Kurzen stumbled one clear morning into the Strangthorn camp of Hemet Nessingwary she was a ghost wracked with sleeplessness and dysentery, covered in blood with her clothes in torn rags, and only an empty rifle to her name.
The game wardens nursed the girl back to health and took in her mad recounting of the fate of the Kurzen village. Hemet was not behelden to the Alliance, and was willing to offer shelter to the girl within his camps if only for curiousity value of how a kid of her stock was able to survive like a pursued animal in the jungle with so much hell following her. Once her mind (apparently) and body healed, Aytlira was allowed to stay with the Expedition serving as a camp guard. Hemet, after all, wasn't about to turn down such a strange and capable human who only had to be paid in shelter and three square meals.
Deathwing's rampage that sundered Stranglethorn in half upset even these plans, however, and forced the camp to disband temporarily. After 17 years gone from it's gates, Aytlira came back to Stormwind and signed on as an Alliance freelancer, furthering her resume of abilities in service to them, and briefly in the Argent Crusade's campaign to restore the Plaguelands.
Why she joined the Servitors is a bit estoeric, if you actually ask her. Most of the time she'll simply say she got a good "vibration" from the recruiter and the literature given to her. Privately, however, she thinks the outfit has the same mentality as her father's outfit before the madness took hold and gains some comfort soley by her membership. This much, however, she has yet to confide in any of the Servitor's leadership or rank and file.
Beastial Assets
Important as they are to Aytlira's career, some of her growing stable of attack animals have their own little colorful stories behind them.
Prince Henry Stout
Function: Anti-undead
The most visible of her partners, the bull mastiff PH Stout is a frequent sight around HQ and quite popular for his excessive friendliness and penchant for booze drinking. Named after the pet boar that Aytlira kept during her time in her father's compound, Stout is in fact a former Plaguehound rescued and cleansed of necromantic taint by Argent Dawn priests. The pooch was then raised and trained as an Argent warhound to aid in combat against low level Scourge forces. Stout took such a shine to Aytlira's presence, however, that she asked simply to adopt Stout in lieu of monetary compensation for her patrol work for them. Mostly, he is simply a social companion, but in battles against undead forces of any kind, he's a holy terror of knife sharp teeth and canine rage.
Banglakha
Function: Assassination
When Nessingwary's expedition bagged the legendary Bangalesh, the cubs too were taken in by Hemet's cadre of animal trainers. In a move that would no doubt make many druids and DEHTA operatives bleed from the eyes, they raised Bangalesh's brood as trained hunters in their own right, but were quite tempered in only supressing their natural bloodthirst in service to their handler. The brood is now in it's third generation, and Banglakha (son of the son of Bangalesh in Bloodscalp troll tongue) was Aytlira's project as an animal handler during her initial stay with the expedition . Recently, the tiger came of proper hunting age and is now in regular service to her inside and outside of her Expedition activities.
Like his grandfather, Banglakha is proud, headstrong, and utterly lethal. He's trained to be social in non-combat situations, but absolutely demands only quality cuts of food and the petting of his magnificent coat by those around him.
Is it so frightening to have me at your shoulder?
Thunder and lightning couldn't be bolder.
I'll write on your tombstone, ''I thank you for dinner.''
This game that we animals play is a winner.
Thunder and lightning couldn't be bolder.
I'll write on your tombstone, ''I thank you for dinner.''
This game that we animals play is a winner.
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