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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thormagni" data-source="post: 3675216" data-attributes="member: 13637">I have had a hard time grabbing onto a role-playing handle for this character. But finally, early in the game on Sunday I really started thinking I might have a handle on who Thorm is. In short, I think he is a Republican. As a noble and a knight, he was used to a life in the upper class. Servants and slaves, high dinners and an inflated sense of honor. As a member of the ruling elite he bought into the all-too-common mentality that he was there because of his superior breeding, talents and gods-given superiority. The lesser people live the way they do because they are, well, lesser. He had the leisure to devote his life to the physical pursuits and he has the arrogance of a pampered athlete. But the kicker is that he really IS a hell of an athlete. Huge, muscular but still graceful. Built like a linebacker and focusing all of his energy into mastering the sword and shield. He has really had nothing to do his whole life but train and practice. It is what he did all day, all that was expected of him.Then the war started and it became apparent that all the talk of honor and noblesse oblige was really a bunch of horse crap.  The nobles sold out the people. But because he bought into the whole dog-and-pony show, he wasn't able to just surrender. No, he has decided that honor demands he fight. Or more accurately to lead a cadre of loyal troops into battle, earning the accolades he so richly deserves.He is convinced that he is the smartest one in the room by sheer virtue of being born into the class he was born. He's none too bright but thinks that he is a genius.  So he will make boneheaded decisions and fully commit to these "gut instinct" snap judgments, convinced that he can't be wrong. Telling him to sit, stay, stand here and shut up is useless because he is convinced that he knows best. He's no simpleton or good-natured buffoon. He is the overmuscled jock who never bothered to study because he was so good at his sport.He is dismissive and disdainful of those with "book learning" who didn't grow up in the high courts he did. If they were so smart, why weren't they rich and powerful like him?Perversely, the very wrongness of his actions makes him even more convinced of his rightness. His failures aren't really his, you see. They are the failures of those who didn't fully commit to his plan of action. If everyone just followed his lead everything would always work out perfectly.And while he believes it is his duty to justly rule the little people, he also thinks that they are all sort of smelly, dirty and uncouth. They should do what he wants because he is a noble after all. And if the occasional commoner needs a good clout to the ear, that's fine too. And of course having lived a life of constant dueling and contests of arms, at which he excelled, he is always quick to go into battle especially in single combat. He lives for that sort of thing. But in the larger scheme of things, if we go to war, why then he should be the leader of a large group of men. That is why he is here, after all. It is the natural way of things. He leads. Others follow.His goals are to raise a force that he can lead into glorious battle. To retake his rightful place in the lap of luxury. All the bad happening in the world? It is just a prelude to the great and heroic saga of Thorm. To his detractors he is probably a stubborn, stupid, stuck-up ass with a quick trigger finger and an inflated sense of entitlement.  Why would anybody put up with him? Well, have you seen him? He is a guy you want to have on your side in a scrap. The man is huge and he is really good with that sword. And if you can convince him to go the direction you want him to go, he is so bull-headed arrogant that he will never back down. Plus he is fairly easy to manipulate, being none too bright.  And he is courteous to the ladies.</blockquote>

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